Walking Is Transportation

D.O.T. FINALLY ACTS AT PROBLEM INTERSECTION; ALL ABOUT ED

Beautiful but deadly for pedestrians and local residents is this problem corner, where Duer Lane and Castleton, Woodstock and Glen avenues converge in Brighton Heights.

AFTER 30 YEARS OF
STOPGAP SOLUTIONS,
DOT INSTALLS  A TRAFFIC LIGHT

The good news is, there's now a traffic light at the intersection shown left. It will likely save lives, lower the cost of personal injuries, and reduce property damage. The outrage is, it's taken DOT three decades to get it right.

I published brief photo/text coverage of this problem corner on April 30, but I didn't uncover any great secret. Local residents have been complaining about the unsafe conditions at this corner location for years--more than 30 of them, in fact, according to a Staten Island Advance story by Phil Helsel that appeared on May 4.

Part of the reason for this three-decade-long delay appears to be a built-in failure in DOT record- keeping. As Helsel's May 4 Advance story revealed, the department keeps count only of crashes that cause more than $1,000 in damage.  Using that standard, only four accidents have been recorded as having occurred in that location over the past five years. This is palpable nonsense.

DOT POLICIES
ENABLE RISKY DRIVING
AND PEDESTRIAN INTIMIDATION

It's not as though DOT didn't know. The sole stop sign, at Woodstock Avenue, was reinforced in 1977--1977!--with a pair of flashing red lights. "More recently," according to Helsel's report, "a yellow caution flasher was installed to warn drivers on Castleton Avenue. In 2002," the report continues, "metal guardrails were installed at the corners, where cars frequently ran up on lawns."

Thirty years of stopgap improvements–– motivated, as usual, by a policy priority to keep traffic moving, not keep people safe--have been a miserable failure. And DOT's grudging concession to install a traffic light that should have been installed three decades ago proves it.

DOT HAS TO START TELLING THE TRUTH

DOT's Happy Motoring policies--policies that advantage cars and drivers over all others--are becoming less and less tenable as we contemplate a future of expanding population and limited resources.

For starters, let's demand a true accounting of the real numbers of collisions that occur, whatever the cost of their associated damages may be. By understating this problem, DOT distorts the facts, twisting reality to suit its policies, rather than adjusting policies to deal with the reality of a crowded world in which streets and roadways are shared space that belong to all citizens equally.


THE NEIGHBOR WHO DOESN'T LIVE HERE
BUT QUALIFIES AS ONE ANYWAY

Ed's our UPS guy. I see his smiling face more often than I see the faces of people who live only a few houses away. So by me, Ed qualifies as a neighbor on that basis alone.

Ed didn't hesitate to have his picture taken for this blog, but he didn't want his last name used. He feared that revealing it might somehow add new multitudes to his existing horde of fans.

Yeah, Ed's a popular guy around here. He's smart and strong and dedicated. He also exposes those shapely calves to the elements a full 12 months of the year.

Though Ed has the misfortune to live not in St. George but somewhere in New Jersey, I see him all over the neighborhood, all the time. We wave. It's the kind of small-town thing big-city neighborhoods aren't known for.

Tired of UPS guys who hand you a package, give you something to sign, then walk away? Maybe it's time to move to St. George.

RANT-O-RAMA 2

DON'T GET ME STARTED . . .

THEN AS NOW: When this postcard was manufactured at the turn of the last century, Westervelt Avenue in St. George (then, New Brighton) was already very much a pedestrian street. A little more than a century later, the roadbed is macadam; the vehicles are more plentiful, motorized, and look radically different. What hasn't changed is this: More than in any other Staten Island neighborhood, people walk up and down our hilly streets to get where they're going today, just as they did then.

HOW THE DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION'S
AUTO-CENTRIC POLICIES
FAIL STATEN ISLAND'S MOST WALKABLE NEIGHBORHOOD

As a person who gets around Staten Island on foot as soon as the weather starts to warm, it can seem as though, in the Staten Island Department of Transportation's (DOT's) view of the world, pedestrians are just another traffic obstruction. Like those pesky yellow buses that drivers have to stop for when school's in session. Or those annoying sanitation trucks that slow down motorists unlucky enough to pull up behind them on narrow streets.

[Click images to enlarge.]

 














ABOVE LEFT, a man pushes a stroller, his child in his arms, as he walks west on St. Marks Place, approaching the northeast corner of Westervelt Avenue ABOVE RIGHT].

If the man wants to cross Westervelt--maybe to get a gallon of milk at the deli in the St. George Gardens Stores--he'll have to take his chances with oncoming north- and southbound traffic that often races by at speeds well above the legal limit. There is no crosswalk to alert drivers that they are approaching a pedestrian crossing. The nearest one is a block and a half away.

From St. Marks Place south to the V formed by the meeting of Westervelt and Hamilton avenues, the only section of roadway with a designated crosswalk is the one shown at left, from the southeast to the northeast corner of St. Marks Place and Westervelt Avenue. The man seen here is walking north on Westervelt Avenue toward Richmond Terrace.

MAKING STREETS MORE NAVIGABLE FOR CARS
USUALLY MAKES THEM MORE UNSAFE FOR PEDESTRIANS

Though I've read that awareness of the issues that plague pedestrians is improving at Department of Transportation offices in the other boroughs, on Staten Island, DOT is in the business of business as usual: Keeping Traffic Moving. That's car traffic, you understand. The other kind--the pedestrian kind--just has to wait till the cars pass. It's clear who owns the street and owns it both by design and default.

What DOT doesn't seem to understand is this: part of the agency's job description is moderating traffic to allow pedestrians to cross streets safely. Proof of this failure of understanding isn't hard to come by. All I have to do is walk out my front door and try to cross the street--busy Westervelt Avenue.

The photo at right shows Westervelt Avenue, looking south, approaching the V where Westervelt joins Hamilton Avenue. As you can see, the street-navigating guidance DOT gives drivers (who get some) or pedestrians (who get none) is the barely visible yellow line down the middle of the street.

At right, also barely visible but shown clearly in the photo below, is the S42 bus stop, where passengers routinely get off and cross the street at mid-block. DOT provides pedestrians no alternative to this dangerous practice. As you can see, cars coming over the hill often can't be seen at all.

AT TWO OF ST. GEORGE'S BUSIEST INTERSECTIONS,
DOT GIVES PEDESTRIANS ONLY ONE CROSSWALK
WHEN ACTUAL USAGE SHOWS WE NEED SIX.

The corner outside my house is the intersection of two major streets--one of two (the other is at Hamilton and Westervelt) within the span of a single block. Both are:

thru traffic routes;

bus and school bus routes with stops;

pedestrian routes for local shoppers,

two public and one parochial elementary school,

students of Curtis High School,

commuters going to or coming from any of four bus lines that stop nearby,

and the Staten Island Ferry.

On Sundays, many of the worshippers at four different churches arrive on foot for services as well.

Don't try taking the photo of Westervelt Avenue, above, on a weekday before 10 a.m. or after 2 p.m., when this location becomes a parade of cars, trucks, buses and school buses, with occasional gaps that allow pedestrians to cross.

The Saint George Gardens Stores on the west side of Westervelt Avenue between Hamilton Avenue and St. Marks Place are an official New York City landmark. They were built just before the Great Depression to provide retail services to the nearby St. George Gardens apartment development, now known as Sea View Estates. Sporting a distinctive tilework facade and lots of garish signage, the stores serve very basic, very local shopping needs.

PARKING SIGN, RIGHT: This is no high-end  shopping center whose well-heeled  patrons spend hours going from store to store.

C'mon, this is Westervelt Avenue. These are the St. George Gardens Stores--the place to get a container of milk, place a Lottery bet, do some laundry, take out some Chinese food, or take in some dry cleaning. Mostly on foot.

So why does DOT designate the section of the street in front of these stores a two-hour parking zone? Such generous parking time limits only encourage drivers to dawdle, promoting double-parking on a bus route at a major intersection. Not smart. And not necessary.

  

IF YOU HAVE TWO WHEELS AND A MOTOR,
YOU OWN THE STREET

Despite all this pedestrian activity, vehicular traffic on Westervelt Avenue between St. Marks Place and Hamilton Avenue is essentially unregulated.

That means drivers call the shots and pedestrians have to wait patiently for an opening in the onrush of traffic.

At a time when Road Rage rules, find me the pedestrian who'll take on a Cadillac Escalade over who gets to go first. That's DOT's job to mediate, with signage, road-markings, and enforcement.

In the single block from Westervelt Avenue at St. Marks Place to Westervelt Avenue where it meets Hamilton, there are six locations where pedestrians cross the street--all high vehicular traffic locations, particularly in the early-to- mid-morning and mid- to late-afternoon hours.

Only one of these high-pedestrian-traffic locations has a marked crosswalk.

DOT'S EISENHOWER-ERA POLICIES DON'T SUPPORT
COMMISSIONER SADIK-KHAN'S PUSH FOR
MORE WALKABLE, LESS CAR-DEPENDENT NEIGHBORHOODS

Pedestrians pay taxes just like drivers, but on Staten Island we're strictly second-class citizens when it comes to the use of the streets whose upkeep we pay for. In a time of scarce resources and a severely wounded environment, pedestrians are treated like the child who's a credit to her family and is routinely ignored. All the attention goes to her out-of-control, problem-child sibling. In this case, the out-of-control sibling is the automobile.

Under a more progressive commissioner like Janette Sadik-Khan, you'd think DOT policy would encourage pedestrian use of city streets, and in other boroughs this seems to be happening. But not here, not yet. On Staten Island, we're still Happy Motoring our way through the 1950s.

WHAT STATEN ISLAND DOT HAS FORGOTTEN:
THEY'RE OUR STREETS, TOO.

This, despite the fact that pedestrians, powered by human engines, don't pollute or make noise. We don't degrade the roadbed or sidewalk. Don't require insuring, towing, licensing or servicing and take up a fraction of the space the average car does. And because pedestrians get more exercise walking, we tend to place fewer demands on city services related to obesity, diabetes, heart disease, pulmonary illness and the like. And yet transportation policy is built around serving the mobility needs of drivers, not pedestrians.

Huh?

This pro-auto bias is nonsensical, sure. More to the point, though, it's unfair. And that unfairness is an imposition on OUR rights to clean air, noise pollution abatement, and freedom from intimidation by drivers, who in physical terms have all the power. We need laws that transfer some of that power to pedestrians. They're our streets, too.

THE KINDS OF TRANSPORTATION POLICIES
WE NEED FROM STATEN ISLAND DOT

Transportation policy is not a zero-sum enterprise. Policies that produce safer streets don't achieve that goal at drivers' expense. Safer streets are safer for everybody, including drivers. Specifically, here are the kinds of policy changes we need from DOT as we face the challenges of an era of scarce resources, deepening environmental calamity, and a clearer understanding of the public health costs of favoring driving over walking:

--more traffic lights that last longer, allowing people to cross at a reasonable pace--not making them wait in the middle of a traffic island for the light to change

--more bike lanes on high-traffic thru streets

--more speed bumps, rotaries and other traffic-calming improvements

--a moratorium on the changeover of major streets from two to one way, which turn local neighborhood streets into speedways (VanDuzer and Targee streets are exactly what we don't want our local streets to become)

--intensive use of pedestrian crosswalks that promote pedestrian safety--and make streets into shared space rather than high-speed roadways with small strips of concrete set aside for those who'd rather walk than drive

--traffic-free streets (Stuyvesant Place in St. George and Little Bay Street west of Tompkinsville Park are logical candidates). In both these situations, retail is mainly local; people don't drive long distances to buy a slice of pizza, a box of tissues or a loaf of bread. Eliminate cars and turn these streets into real marketplaces with tables and fountains and public spaces for public events.

*         *         *

The most urban, most walkable neighborhood on Staten Island needs a DOT rethink that considers the rights, needs and preferences of pedestrians who live here as well as the rights, needs and preferences of motorists who speed through our neighborhood on their way somewhere else.

NYSDOT Public Forum: Beating the Drums for Funds

TOO MUCH SUNSHINE?

Maybe we've taken the Sunshine Law a little too much to heart. Perhaps there are meetings of various agencies of government that it's pointless for someone outside of government to attend. The New York State Department of Transportation (NYSDOT) public forum held Wednesday, March 5 at the College of Staten Island was that kind of assembly.

The topical, uh, springboard for the forum--which included a roundtable discussion among a panel of government officials, transportation professionals, and civic leaders--was a presentation entitled "Multimodal Investment Needs & Goals for the Future" in print and Power Point formats.

Basically, the presentation is a pitch for additional transportation funding from the Feds. The goals are to accommodate significant projected local population growth, and to respond more aggressively to seriously deteriorated infrastructure and inadequate public transit services statewide.

PA? MTA?––NOT!

The presentation, delivered by NYSDOT commissioner Astrid C. Glynn and New York Metropolitan Transportation Council Executive Director Joel Ettinger, included the rather startling announcement that the presentation did not include consideration of the services, facilities or operations of either the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, or the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA).

Huh? Why invite the public, when the transportation services we use most are outside the bounds of consideration and, thus, discussion?

Following the presentation there was a completely unfocused and inconclusive roundtable which kept returning to the possible impacts, pro and con, of Congestion Pricing; and the public health disaster that is the Cross Bronx Expressway. If not for the commentary of Jonathan Peters, College of Staten Island Associate Professor of Finance--probably the most informed spokesperson for progressive transportation policy in the borough--the forum could as easily have been held in Far Rockaway or Spuyten Duyvil.

ABSTRACTIONS PREFERRED

And when it came time for the public to speak at this public forum, we were instructed not to address specific projects or policy matters but to speak only in the sort of broad, abstract terms--think 'multi-modal,' 'regional' and 'statewide'--NYSDOT used in its presentation. I spoke of the need for a truly functional Staten Island transportation system--adding that such a system can come about only if we stop thinking of Staten Island mass transit as a commuter service.

One panelist checked her watch. Another barely stifled a yawn. I know there's a lesson here, somewhere . . .

State DOT Public Forum on Staten Island Transportation Needs Tomorrow (Wednesday) Night

DON'T BLAME ME

If you're exasperated, as I am, at having to scramble your schedule, with one day's notice, in order to attend what could be an important public hearing, let me assure you, I know the feeling well. Happens all the time.

It's 6:10 p.m. as I write this; the announcement e-mail was received here only hours earlier, at 3:15 p.m. I'm grateful to the Campaign for New York for informing me; I would have heard nothing otherwise.

Here's the e-mail message in its entirety. I will attend and hope as many Staten Islanders as possible will join me.

------------------------------------

NYSDOT TO HOLD PUBLIC FORUM
ON TRANSPORTATION NEEDS IN NEW YORK CITY

Public Meeting and Roundtable Discussion to Focus on Traffic Congestion

New York State Department of Transportation (NYSDOT) Commissioner Astrid C. Glynn will host a forum Wednesday, March 5, in [sic] Staten Island to focus attention on transportation needs in New York City over the next 20 years.

The forum will bve held in the Williamson Theatre at the Center for the Arts, College of Staten Island, 2800 Victory Boulevard. The public meeting will be from 6 p.m. to 8:30 p.m.

The forum will focus attention on the next authorization of Federal Transportation programs that fund almost half of New York's transportation investments in highways and transit. Commissioner Glynn will oen the public session with a presentation on NYSDOT's 20-Year Needs Assessment and 5-Year Capital Program.

New York Metropolitan Transportation Council Executive Director Joel Ettinger will then follow with an assessment of local impacts. A roundtable discussion by New York transportation experts will then expand on these issues, with a spotlight on the subject of traffic congestion. The panel will be moderated by NYSDOT Chief Engineer Robert Dennison.

Participants include:

•Daniel Albert, President, Queens Independent Living Center; •Linda Baran, President and CEO, Staten Island Chamber of Commerce; •Majora Carter, Executive Director, Sustainable South Bronx; •Cate Contino, Campaign Coordinator, NYPIRG Straphangers Campaign; •Allison de Cerreno, Director, NYU-Wagner Rudin Center for Transportation Policy and Management; •David Ewing, Eastern Regional Conference, Council of State Governments; •John Galgano, President, CommuterLink ride-matching service; •Josephine Infante, Executive Director, Hunts Point Economic Development Corporation; •Gary LaBarbara, President, Teamsters Joint Council 16; •James McGowan, Honorary Director, New York State division, Automobile Association of America; •Jonathan Peters, Associate Professor of Finance, College of Staten Island; •Sam Schwartz, NY Daily News columnist and president and CEO, Sam Schwartz PLLC.

The roundtable will be followed by a public comment session, giving attendees an opportunity to have a dialogue with the panlists, have questions answered, and raise locally significant transportation issues.

The campus can be reached via several MTA bus routes, including the S62/S92, S61/S91, S44/S94 and S59.

Congestion Pricing, Take 3

Attic window transoms with stained-glass insets, St. George, Staten Island

LATER TODAY, Thursday, January 24, 2008, the New York City Traffic Congestion Mitigation Commission will hold hearings in each of the 'outer' boroughs on five plans designed to reduce vehicular congestion in Manhattan's Central Business District while generating revenue for major mass transit improvements citywide.

I have submitted to the Commission written testimony about the plans, which appears later in this entry.

GO AHEAD, CALL ME A FLIP-FLOPPER

I know; I know.

First I supported Mayor Bloomberg's original Congestion Pricing plan and testified in favor of it at a hearing of the New York City Traffic Congestion Mitigation Commission (TCMC) late last fall.

But even as one of the plan's ardent supporters, I had to admit it sounded awfully complicated and seemed pretty expensive just to implement.

Then I thought I liked the sound of tolling the East River bridges--a simpler means of discouraging private car commuting into Manhattan's Central Business District. Not only was the bridge tolling plan projected to yield greater income than the mayor's plan; it was also projected to yield greater reductions in traffic congestion as well.

But like the original, this plan had some serious flaws.

The bridge-tolling plan charges for all trips into and out of Manhattan all the time. So it cannot distinguish between trips when traffic is light from trips that occur when congestion is heaviest. And it fails to charge for trips that start and end within Manhattan, where congestion is greatest. Further, how ever unintentionally, the bridge-tolling plan tends to penalize particular classes of drivers and particular locations, some of them small commercial vehicle operators and many of them low- and moderate-income motorists, disproportionately from Upper Manhattan and the Bronx.

I SUPPORT THE ALTERNATIVE CONGESTION PRICING PLAN

Of the three remaining plans being considered by the Commission, one fails to reduce traffic congestion adequately; the other fails to generate income for mass transit improvements. So neither of these can be considered viable. The remaining proposal, called The Alternative Congestion Pricing Plan, is a streamlining of the mayor's original PlaNYC proposal with significantly lower capital and operating costs. It also satisfies the revenue and traffic reduction mandates upon which funding by the Federal Department of Transportation depends.

Here's a profile of the Alternative Congestion Pricing Plan, taken from an interim report of the TCMC:

"The alternative congestion pricing plan is a modified approach to congestion pricing that eliminates the intra-zonal charge [$4] . . . charges inbound trips only, and moves the northern boundary of the charging zone to 60th Street [NOTE: The original plan's northern boundary was 86th Street.] Cars would be charged an $8 fee to drive into the zone on weekdays between 6 a.m. and 6 p.m. Trucks would pay $21, except for low-emission trucks, which would pay $7. Under this fee-based plan, drivers would pay once upon entering the charging zone and would be able to make additional trips in and out of the zone at no additional cost. For E-Z Pass users, the value of all tolls paid on MTA or Port Authority bridges and tunnels would be deducted from the fee up to $8." [The alternative plan includes three additional measures affecting taxi/livery service vehicles, parking rates, and parking tax exemptions.]

MY WRITTEN TESTIMONY TO THE COMMISSION

Greetings to the Commissioners.

I appreciate the opportunity to share my views on this important topic. My name is Dan Icolari. I'm a 30-year resident of Staten Island; the founder of Walking is Transportation.com and a co-founder of the St. George Civic Association and the Preservation League of Staten Island. I've served on Community Board 1 and am a member of numerous Staten Island civic and cultural organizations.

As I did at an earlier hearing, I would like to declare support for the concept of congestion pricing as an approach with many benefits to offer residents of every New York City borough. Chief among these are (1)
Reduction of negative health and conduct-of-business impacts of traffic congestion; (2) Development of a new funding source for mass transit improvements; and (3) Positive impact on climate change--a global
problem with potentially life-threatening consequences for our city.

Of the several plans proposed by the New York City Traffic Congestion Mitigation Commission, I support The Alternative Congestion Pricing Plan. I base my support on the alternative plan's reduced complexity
lower cost and greater ease of implementation. I believe these attributes offset the alternative plan's various weaknesses, as enumerated by the Commissioners in their interim report.

Thank you for your consideration.

Blog On

Late afternoon on St. Marks Place near Westervelt Avenue, St. George, Staten Island, January 31, 2007

NEW YEAR, NEW DIRECTION

Today--the first day of Bushyear the Last--begins the re-launch of WALKING IS TRANSPORTATION.com. As regular readers know, I've felt hemmed in by the narrow scope of the subject--the way I always had to ask myself, as I started to write, "What does this have to do with walking or transportation?" The blog began to feel like an impediment rather than a pathway.

But what really prompted the decision to re-launch this blog was your enthusiastic responses to my series, "The Vertical Life," which profiled in words and digital photos the lives we lead on the mostly-walker-friendly hills of Stapleton, Tompkinsville, St. George and New Brighton in the New York City borough of Staten Island. Some of you wrote from places as nearby as Vermont and as far away as Washington State.

So, very generally, my plan is to observe in words and images the life lived in these neighborhoods--a (comparatively) dense and diverse urban sector of New York City's most suburban borough. I hope you'll be pleased enough with the results to keep on reading.

The main thing I wanted to say is that WALKING IS TRANSPORTATION.com is back.

Thanks for checking in.--Dan Icolari

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.

Two trips to the same place--one by bus, one by car

LURE OF THE SHELVES: The fiction section, ETG Book Gallery, Tompkinsville, Staten Island, November, 2007

AN IMPROMPTU TRANSPORTATION-MODE COMPARISON

I've been living car-free for 15 years now. But that doesn't mean I've forgotten what it's like to finance, insure, maintain, repair and drive a car in New York. If I needed a reminder, the week so far has provided the perfect one: two trips to the same place, one by public bus, the other by private car.

Here's the story:

Last night, a friend offered me a ride to the opening of an art show at the College of Staten Island (CSI). The show was hung in a ground-floor gallery in the same building where, two nights earlier, I testified in favor of Congestion Pricing at a hearing called by the NYC Traffic Congestion Mitigation Commission. I'd gotten to the hearing, and back, by public transportation. The situation practically demanded a comparison.

From bus . . . to bus . . . to bus

To reach the hearing two nights earlier, on Monday, November 5, I took three buses--two public ones and one operated by CSI. On the main part of the trip--west, I think--on Victory Boulevard, a 4:30 bus was packed, but it moved at a reasonably good clip, and before too long I got a seat. When I got off at the campus stop, I walked to a waiting college-operated bus parked nearby. Soon I was inside the college auditorium, seated and reviewing my notes. The crowded but otherwise uneventful trip had taken me an hour, door to door.

The trip home was the same thing in reverse. The only negative I have to report is that, both coming and going, the wait for the Victory Boulevard bus was longer than I anticipated. I made the other connections fine; still, the 7- to 10-minute wait surprised me. On a bitter cold night, that long a wait could give even the most rabid mass transit advocate second thoughts.

Last night's trip by car was 20 minutes shorter than the trip two nights earlier by bus. But faster isn't always better.

Familiar and surreal

The first part of the car trip, on local streets, was slow but steady. Once my friend turned from local onto the Martin Luther King Expressway (440, I think), everything changed. We had been talking in a pretty animated way about neighborhood stuff and so it took me a minute to realize how dramatically our speed had slowed.

Outside my car window was a scene both familiar and surreal--cars, cars and more cars, ahead, behind, on overhead ramps, on the other side of the median, most inching toward the exit ramp like sand-grains in a funnel, descending in slow motion.

And in an instant, it all came back to me, this tense ballet I used to take part in as a driver, negotiating, maneuvering, alert to opportunity, contesting every inch. My friend, in most circumstances a genial sort, cursed and complained, honked and sighed and continued his rant in the parking lot, where we joined the competition for a parking space, circling the chariots, ready to pounce on any vacancy.

Two nights before, the college bus deposited me just outside the building where the hearing was to be held. Last night, after finally finding a spot in the designated parking lot, we discovered that the designated parking lot was one helluva trek from the same building I had reached so easily by the college-operated bus two nights before.

Better than expected

I experience this sort of thing again and again. Public transportation is almost always better than you expect it to be. It's cleaner, faster and more on-time than widely believed or reported--especially by people who seldom use it. And it's a lot cheaper than anything but your two feet.

Sure there are delays and inconveniences due to new construction. But most of the time the system gets you where you need to go in the amount of time you've allocated. People who would rather plan for delays that can be anticipated than complain about them can sign up on the MTA website and receive an advisory every week, detailing the coming weekend's schedule and the bus and subway lines affected. Similar ferry schedule alerts can be arranged on the DOT website.

Facts to counter the not-quite-lies

Public transit advocates have to be more vocal about the misrepresentations of the system so casually tossed around in conversation. The fact is, that system can compete with private cars not only in terms of cost and environmental impact, but as we approach near total gridlock in parts of Manhattan, perhaps even in terms of time.

If these off-the-cuff misrepresentations go unchallenged, they can be accepted as facts and can actually influence policy. And that's why we have to assert strongly what we know to be the truth. For most New Yorkers, most of the time, public transportation works.

What Congestion Pricing could mean for Staten Island(ers)

Decorative gate at the top of one-block-long Pearl Street, Stapleton

NOT JUST FOR COMMUTERS TO MANHATTAN

I'll be attending tomorrow night's (November 5) Staten Island hearing of the New York City Traffic Congestion Mitigation Commission at the Williamson Theatre of the College of Staten Island at 6 p.m. The commission will be taking public testimony on the congestion pricing proposal, one of many in Mayor Michael Bloomberg's ambitious and visionary PlaNYC.

The proposal would charge private cars $8 to enter the Central Business District (minus any other tolls they may have paid to get there). The proceeds would be devoted to expanding and upgrading mass transit services throughout the city to accommodate the projected increase in ridership that higher tolls and gas prices--and near-gridlock congestion-- would generate.

Those who've followed the arguments for and against Congestion Pricing probably are already familiar with the major points in contention--most but not all of which, in my view, have been manufactured by opponents to obstruct or derail a program model which has proven its viability elsewhere. One of the most vocal in its opposition, unsurprisingly, is a parking lot owners' group and its seeming mouthpiece, Assemblyman Richard L. Brodsky, a Westchester Democrat.

Following is the testimony I will present:

More vehicles = more congestion = more pollution = more pulmonary and other diseases

Staten Island is New York City's fastest-growing borough, with a mass transit infrastructure and a dispatching frequency utterly inadequate to the needs of our exploding population--one that does nothing to remedy the island's increasingly limited capacity to operate and store the numbers of vehicles we add to the existing number each year.

Expanded mass transit operations are the only solution, and the only source of funding for those operations is the Federal government--provided the city can come up with a plan that can significantly reduce the number of private vehicles entering the Central Business District each weekday. Only Congestion Pricing, or a plan very much like it, holds the promise of delivering on that requirement.

The transit solutions proposed under Congestion Pricing--like the entire transportation system on Staten Island--focus on the needs of weekday commuters to Manhattan. That's a start, but an expanded, enhanced Staten Island transit system must also respond to the needs of the many Staten Islanders who commute to jobs within the borough, do not drive, and depend exclusively on bus operations whose traditional focus has been coordination with the schedule of the Staten Island Ferry.

How to avoid two, three or more cars in every driveway

Staten Island's notoriously poor bus service practically guarantees that, as soon as they can, islanders abandon the bus, one of the most efficient transport modes, for the private automobile, the least efficient and most polluting. We need service that's so good, and such a good value, that people will want to leave their cars at home and walk to the bus stop or the railway station--whether they're commuting to Manhattan, shopping in New Springville, or visiting family in Grasmere. Congestion Pricing can start to move us toward that goal.

Poor bus transit, more than any other factor, actually promotes two- and three-car households, and the health problems, congestion, pollution, lost time and lost productivity that adding more population and more cars inevitably brings about. Over time, Congestion Pricing can help to bring Staten Island's use of mass transit more in line with that of the other boroughs.

Congestion pricing NOW

This New York City borough is, or soon will be, built out. Building new major roadways is simply not an option. Widening existing roads to accommodate increased traffic, where feasible, is really just a Band-Aid. Only a major investment in our mass transportation infrastructure can help us reduce congestion, improve air quality, better accommodate our current transportation needs and better prepare for the increased demand we all know is coming. That major investment will come only from the Feds and only if the plan submitted can meet their requirements. That plan is Congestion Pricing.

Thank you.

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.