Archive for January, 2008

On Tuesday came the moment we’ve all been waiting for. The report of the National Surface Transportation Policy and Revenue Study Commission…well, maybe not everyone was on tenterhooks but it’s actually a pretty significant document that outlines how $225 billion should be spent EVERY Year for the next 50 years on transportation and infrastructure in this country.

The size of the report itself is equally impressive at several hundred pages, 125 MBS complete with minority statements, addenda and the whole nine yards. The main recommendations appear in the 54-page Volume 1, and that’s where I’m going to direct my few cheap shots. The Commission took 20 months to listen to input (and yes, we did submit comments) and weigh options for creating a bold new transportation future – and in the 54 pages the word “highway” appears 128 times. Rail comes in second with 106 mentions, freight weighs in at 96, with transit a distant fourth on 57. The words bicycle, bicyclist, bike, pedal cycle, and pedal cyclist combined are mentioned just one time, on page 24, in the same sentence as the only mention of pedestrians, walking and other foot-based derivatives. Is it fair to judge a monumental report on such a trivial word search…maybe not, but it kinda tells you something nonetheless.

I looked up the various policy issues in play. “Climate change” warranted three mentions along with nine “greenhouse gas” references. “Environment” got 55 plays…although at least a dozen were in reference to the need to speed up project delivery by reducing environmental reviews. Congestion was a big issue (54) along with safety (47) energy (44) and the economy (13). Health issues, just 8 mentions. Obesity, not a peep. Mobility (transport as an end in itself) was addressed almost twice as often as Access (transport as a means to an end; the ability to actually get somewhere).

You can see where I’m going with this. The transportation future envisaged by this panel does not appear to include bicycling, nor is it yet ready to hold the transportation sector accountable to other national policy imperatives. States, and our beloved state DOT’s, were addressed ten times as often as “city” or “cities”.

The final superficial count I made: the pictures. What do the photos tell us about the direction of the report? Funny you should ask. There are 137 pictures in the 54-page report. Just 22 have any people visible in them, and of those eight are people sitting in cars and five show emergency services personnel at a crash scene, or researchers in lab coats. There is just one bona fide picture of people walking in the street; there’s one deer; one duck; and not a single person on a bicycle. Maybe you can’t read a lot into the photo count, but when bicyclists don’t even rise to the level of attention given to ducks and deer, it sure tells you something.

I really do love this time of year. Although often contrived I find it hard to not feel excitement and encouragement at the idea of a new beginning. This New Years I found a new type of encouragement in my home town. While visiting my family in New York City I went to check out the new seven block “Street of the Future” on 9th Avenue. This innovative design, where parked cars separate the bike lane from the road, is the first physically-separated bike path ever installed in the city’s urban nucleus.

I grew up in the heart of New York City where even going outside alone before the age of ten was pretty impossible. I can’t relate to the often-mentioned freedom that bicycles offer children or the youthful memories that cycling supposedly digs up. What I do remember is being very intrigued by the idea that kids in other parts of the country could bike to school. When I got my first bike in seventh grade I would often walk with it well out of the way to school so I could get to an avenue with low pedestrian traffic. I would cycle on the sidewalk for as long as I could, and then walk the remainder of the way. On the weekends when the loop road in the park was closed to vehicles I would trek there with my bike to get in a few miles of solid riding. It wasn’t until I moved to Maine for college that I could bike regularly, and I haven’t looked back since…nor have I moved back to New York.

This winter, however, I felt a new sort of connection with the city I sometimes forget is my real home. I hope this is the first of many new projects the New York’s transportation commissioner will explore to make the streets and the city a more livable place for cyclists and pedestrians in the future