Walking Is Transportation

Congestion Pricing, Take 2

Our house at the corner of St. Marks Place and Westervelt Avenue, St. George, Staten Island, N.Y., Thanksgiving Day, 2007

Resurrecting an old idea (and maybe a better one)

[I'm convinced that no matter which form the Feds decide to fund and the city finally adopts, Congestion Pricing will be a major benefit to pedestrians and walkers--and all New Yorkers. Not only because it'll generate the revenues needed to pay for expansion of and improvements to New York City's public transit system, but because it will make our streets safer and more pleasant for all those who use them.]

In a November 12, 2007 editorial in the Daily News, veteran transportation consultant Brian Ketcham proposes to base Mayor Bloomberg's Congestion Pricing (CP) proposal on an idea that planners, politicians and transportation activists have been yakking about for decades.

"Charging cars and trucks to get into the central business district makes perfect sense," Ketcham says, "but the rest of [Mayor Bloomberg's] scheme would be a logistical nightmare," requiring "costly administration and enforcement" and "adding little revenue."

Calling the mayor's existing CP proposal "needlessly complex," Ketcham advises the mayor to "ditch the elaborate detection grid"--"a full-scale network with 340 charging stations on Manhattan streets south of 86th St."--and replace it with a system that would "close the loophole of the four untolled East River bridges in Brooklyn and Queens."

Take 2: An alternate Congestion Pricing plan

Ketcham proposes the city install overhead charging monitors on the six inbound bridge spans and set the congestion fee so that there's no unfair difference between any CP charge and regular MTA tolls.

He would also install 19 toll collection stations that would, he says, eliminate the free ride now enjoyed by those who enter the central business district from starting points north of 60th Street.

And that's not all.

Paying for the right to occupy prime real estate

Ketcham also recommends the city "eliminate all free and long-term street parking and charge hefty garage rates at on-street meters." Such a pricing recommendation brings the cost of street parking into line with what Manhattan parking lots and garages charge and substantially boosts potential revenue.

But market-based pricing offers benefits that may be even more important. This alternate CP proposal sends the message that bringing a private car into one of the most congested sectors in the country isn't a basic human right; that streets are public spaces that must be shared; that automobiles can't continue to dictate who uses the street and how.

All in all, I think Ketcham's proposal makes a lot of sense. It's easier and less costly to implement and maintain; it makes the cost of entering the central business district by car more equitable (drivers pay the same, no matter how they get there). Ketcham's research shows that closing the various loopholes also eliminates more cars and yields more revenue than the mayor's existing CP plan.

I hope Ketcham's proposal gets the serious consideration--by the New York City Traffic Congestion Mitigation Commission, among others--that it deserves.

S.I. Greenbelt plan to banish invasive plants may benefit walkers, too

Section of cobblestone street-tree base, Richmond Terrace, St. George, Staten Island

NOT, I ADMIT, WHAT I WAS EXPECTING

First, Staten Island Greenbelt Administrator Adena Long spoke about the park's need to accommodate alternative forms of transportation. She actually used those words. Then Long described plans to provide a path for walkers and cyclists.

Long addressed the November 1 semiannual meeting of Protectors of Pine Oak Woods, Staten Island's largest environmental organization. I was there not only as a Protectors member, but to make my case for safe access to the Greenbelt for walkers and cyclists, which I assumed meant installing sidewalks. I had expected opposition to this idea. Maybe even confrontation. And then, before I could open my mouth, Adena Long made it clear the pedestrian and bicycle path I planned to fight for was already in the works. Not a discouraging word was heard from the audience, many of whom had fought long and hard to create the Greenbelt decades ago and are determined not only to protect it, but expand it.

Long said the path will be created as part of a plan to defend the Greenbelt at its perimeter, which is the usual point of entry for invasive weeds and vines that can destroy very quickly the diversity and balance of plant life within the park. This perimeter 'strip' won't be just a poured concrete walk along the edge of a roadway. It will be designed, landscaped and maintained--with the bicycle and walking path included as part of the design.

This project will take years to complete, of course. What matters more, I think, is that it's being done at all. And that it just may represent a change in consciousness at the city's largest park. A change that begins to acknowledge pedestrians and bicyclists as co-equal users--with motorized vehicles--of public streets and roads.

More on pedestrian access to Staten Island's Greenbelt

Sculpture: Victoria Bellinger, Silver Lake, S.I. ( victoriabellinger.com/index/html )

Unfit for pedestrians

Last August, I walked from home to the perimeter of Staten Island's Greenbelt, whereupon all pedestrian amenities vanished and I was forced to continue my walk in a gully at the side of the road, along with the beer cans, bottles and other assorted trash thrown there. Drivers whizzed by, leaving only a very few feet between me and them. It was scary and I was mad.

Here's some of what I wrote about that incident in a post dated August 27:

"Walkers have right of safe access to the Greenbelt, just as those who arrive in cars do. We represent a fraction of the footprint of a car, in terms of the space we occupy and the impact we have on the environment. Yet cars, often with only one occupant, are provided roads that are built and maintained by the tax dollars of walkers as well as drivers. For our tax dollars, we get a narrow, dangerous strip of deteriorated macadam.

"Sidewalks should be installed bordering every main road, street or avenue in the Greenbelt. I understand the legitimate concern of those who see only another encroachment on the Greenbelt's 'Forever Wild' mandate. But providing a means of access for those who walk rather than ride is a matter of fairness and equity--a pretty fundamental ideal."

A meeting with the Greenbelt's administrator

I learned later from fellow blogger Steve Patterson of Urban Review STL.com that there is a national organization called Complete the Street which is promoting precisely this idea--but a better one than mine because it provides for cyclists as well as pedestrians.

I intend to state the No Safe Access for Pedestrians problem and suggest the Complete the Street solution at a meeting tomorrow evening of Staten Island's premier environmental organization, Protectors of Pine Oak Woods, of which I'm a member. The Greenbelt's administrator is scheduled as guest speaker, so I'll be directing my questions and comments to her.

I'll report on the meeting in a day or two.

Different day, same illegal parking

It's been two weeks since September 20, when I observed several cars parked on the sidewalk in front of a strip mall occupied by a municipal agency and a not-for-profit on Richmond Terrace between Stuyvesant Place and Hamilton Avenue in St. George, Staten Island. I took pictures of the offending vehicles and promptly posted them here.

When I returned to that location today, I discovered even more cars parked on the sidewalk, including a dark-colored SUV parked so close to the curb, it forced pedestrians into the street to get around it.

Around the corner, on Hamilton Avenue between Richmond Terrace and Stuyvesant Place, there were three cars parked half on the sidewalk, half in the street, all right near a clearly visible "No Parking Anytime" sign. This location is only one block away from, and on the same side of Richmond Terrace as, the 120th Precinct, NYPD. How is it these violators are allowed to remain unticketed and unchallenged, day after day?

What's more, this location is only two blocks from the ferry terminal, the borough's multi-modal transportation center, where the ferry docks and where the MTA-operated Staten Island Railway and most MTA-operated bus lines begin and end . Why--considering all the negatives associated with private transportation--are so many people still bringing their cars into St. George, probably the most densely developed and populated neighborhood on Staten Island, and the best served by mass transit?

It looks like it's time to spread the word--and the pictures.

Sidewalks are for parking

Strip malls inserted into urban streetscapes--like the one shown below, on Richmond Terrace between Stuyvesant Place and Hamilton Avenue in St. George, Staten Island-- are always a mistake.

These mini-malls don't conform to the existing pattern of commercial development. That is, they don't isolate parking in the back, behind a line of stores whose fronts are at the building line established by other buildings on the street. Rather, they recess the storefronts and locate the parking in front, forcing those on foot to enter a parking lot in order to reach the stores.

Worse, strip malls in urban settings erode the traditional area of pedestrian safety between sidewalk and roadway, making pedestrian use of the sidewalk contingent on the willingness of the driver to let him/her pass without challenge. In most cases, the pedestrian defers to the potentially lethal automobile.

The following photos show the strip mall phenomenon taken to the next logical step: Not content to share the sidewalk with pedestrians for access and egress, drivers who work at or visit this St. George strip mall have taken over the sidewalks, too, forcing pedestrians to walk around parked cars on sidewalks where they, not cars, are supposed to be the prime users.

In the winter, when sidewalks get icy, this situation isn't just inconvenient; it's dangerous. And winter is right around the corner.

120th Precinct, S.I.: Why aren't these cars ticketed or towed?

CROSSWALKS, TOO!

This crosswalk, also at Stuyvesant Place and Richmond Terrace, St. George, Staten Island, is like many on Staten Island; it has a car parked smack in the middle of it. But it's hard to get too exercised over this violation of the law, except in the abstract.

That's because––though it may not be visible in this image––the crosswalk, with or without a car parked in it, leads not to a sidewalk but directly into the center of a stout and stately Sycamore tree, reportedly the favorite of Robert Moses, who planted millions of 'em throughout the five boroughs during his reign.

Still, one has to wonder: What were the DOT traffic engineers thinking?

Is driver intimidation of cyclists and pedestrians getting worse?

In a report entitled "Biking the Mean Streets of L.A." in the September 6 STREETSBLOG (http://www.streetsblog.org), contributor Jason Varone quotes from a Los Angeles Times story on the alarming rise of violence directed against bicyclists in L.A. by automobile drivers:

Scott Sing has had a tire iron hurled at him, a water bottle thrown at his head and been bombarded with racial epithets. And all he was trying to do was ride his bike on Los Angeles city streets.

His cycling and running brethren tell similar tales -- of being peppered with flying objects, cursed or otherwise assaulted -- and those don't even include the stories of near-misses and actual collisions.

To any pedestrian who's been yelled at or even threatened by a furious driver for not crossing quickly enough--or, worse, for failing to defer to the driver's assumed "right" to proceed across an intersection before the pedestrian does--Scott Sing's story has a very familiar ring.

Bicyclists who ride on city streets are certainly more physically vulnerable than pedestrians/walkers. But both groups share a common characteristic in the driver's mind. They--we--are impediments many drivers tolerate, but barely. We are a foot on their brake pedals, forcing them to slow down or stop; forcing them to take account of something other than other cars. When what they want to do, of course, is exercise their right to accelerate and roar off down the street--a right that countless TV commercials tell them is inalienably theirs. We are what stands between them and their ability to exercise that right.

My expectation, I'm sorry to say, is that as more and more people choose transportation modes other than the private car--and as they become a larger and more vocal constituency, demanding an equitable balance in how sidewalk and roadway space is apportioned--intimidation and outright violence directed toward bicyclists and pedestrians will worsen.

And you? What has your experience been? What are your expectations?