Talking Headways Podcast: The Streets Revolution Will Be Televised in Purple

This week’s guest is Streetfilms’ own Clarence Eckerson Jr. Clarence tells us about his start working in video with the BikeTV cable access show, what goes into making Streetfilms, and the best way to approach people on the street for interviews. Listen and you might also catch a few stories about Veronica Moss and the Zozo.

The Caltrain Precedent

We know that transportation funding is in peril and even good projects like Caltrain seem to be in trouble.  But we must not freak out when we hear the President's budget just like we shouldn't have gotten too excited when a budget from President Obama came out.  Remember this?

Boosts Transit Funding: Obama proposes a large increase in transit funding, budgeting $23 billion in 2016 and a total of $123 billion to transit over six years. That would represent a 75 percent increase over current levels. The would go toward both expansions and the maintenance and improvement of light rail, BRT, subway, and commuter rail networks.

Ha! Never going to happen with a Republican Congress right? But the flip side is worse. Because we know what that Republican Congress wants to do with a transit budget. A new classic quote via CityLab.

After all, the Republican Party’s official platform calls for a total elimination of federal subsidies to public transportation.

CityLab covers even more issues that might arise from "sanctuary city" pushback too.

But if I may add something more to the conversation, the move to stop Caltrain from getting transit money through the New Starts or even Core Capacity funding programs seriously puts a damper on any future capital projects whether they are repairs or new.  Caltrain in particular has been 4 years in the New Starts program showing how long it takes to go through the federal funding process only to have it cut out. 

I think those saying "silicon valley is rich, they should pay for it" are missing the point. First is that we pay a significant amount of of tax to the federal government and should be able to recover that money.  It's not like the region is building new huge ass freeways all the time sucking up our tax outlay, Doyle Drive not withstanding. 

Second is that this is the process that has been laid out and the rules were followed and have been since 1991.  The process to get federal transit funding is way more rigorous even than getting highway funds.  Do I think it's perfect?  No.  But neither are state or local programs that prioritize projects like BART to San Jose or HOT lanes over needed transit connections and upgrades.  We must do better, but don't hang us out to dry on good projects because of a stupid grudge. Once the central valley Rs start a Hatfield McCoy, who knows where it ends.

The reason why I started thinking about this was seeing planning begin for a project in Norfolk and an alternatives analysis for a Pittsburgh to Oakland BRT line that has been discussed forever.  These projects haven't decided on funding yet but its possible they could go local.  Though that is unlikely to happen.  If federal funding dries up, so do these projects.  They are not in California, a place that values transit spending but rather states that aren't so keen on funding capital projects and regions that have somewhat tempered pasts on active transportation.

And sure you can argue for devolution but what are we devolving to?  States that don't give a damn about cities?  Regional MPOs dominated by the suburbs? In a perfect world we have a balanced transportation system funded by regional governments that know what needs to be done to facilitate travel.  But here in the real world, federal funding is necessary to cut through some of the crap cities have to go through to do projects they think are valuable. 

Moving the goalposts is a dangerous precedent to set on a project everyone agrees on except those who believe in loyalty over a pretty solid measured process.

Podcast: Transit Predictions for 2017 with Yonah Freemark

This week we’re joined by Yonah Freemark, author of the Transport Politic and Streetsblog’s new series Getting Transit Right. Each year, Yonah and I predict what’s in store for transit in the next 12 months and break down the results of last year’s transit predictions. In between, Yonah and I talk about high-speed rail, transit and development, Elon Musk’s crazy tunnel ideas, and the future of federal policy.


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Transportation Election Results 2016

Ok! It's that time!  Every four years we cover elections here at The Overhead Wire.  Here are the results from 2008 and 2012.

This year we're not going to record them here.  But you can find a nifty spreadsheet at The Transport Politic that will be updated live.  Also CFTE is covering as well.  So check them out and follow along.  Also, I'll be tweeting using the hashtag #TransitVote. 

Good Luck! 

Podcast: Live from Rail~Volution

At Rail~Volution we recorded a podcast in front of a live audience.  We talked with Catherine Cuellar of Dallas about the arts district and her love of transportation alternatives as well as Dave Unsworth about the new Portland bridge which doesn't allow cars along with a whole host of other transit projects.  Hope you enjoy it.

Podcast: Learning About Louisville

This week on the podcast, Branden Klayko of Broken Sidewalk comes on the blog to talk about Louisville Kentucky.  Learn about this history of the city, the 8664 freeway fight, and local urbanist Grady Clay.

Too Long for Twitter or Why We Lack Urban Vision in Transit

Reading this article by Conrad deFiebre I was struck by how the comments from streets.mn's David Levinson could be said about most regions around the country...

The council's draft 2040 Metropolitan Transportation Policy Plan "is not an urbanist vision," protests U of M transportation guru David Levinson in a new blog. "It is, unfortunately, not a bold vision. It is a fiscally constrained vision. It is a vision of an organization ... representing seven mostly suburban counties."

 It's too long for twitter, but too important to miss.

Grating on a Curve

I was in Houston for a work meeting last spring and went on a tour with our good friend Christof Spieler who has taken a hiatus from blogging at CTC Houston while he is an active member of the board for Houston Metro.  He was kind enough to take me around to a lot of the new construction going on to complete Houston's three newest light rail lines.  I must say I was blown away at the progress and opportunities that the system holds.

Houston's Light Rail Plans via Christof Spieler

I know there is a lot of consternation in Houston from certain congressional parties that if they had it their way would never have let the city build its first line.  But I'm sure glad they did because it's allowed them so much political support to push forward with the system they are installing now.  While even that had its fits and starts as well as issues with general managers and vehicle orders, I firmly believe that this will be the most European system in the United States when completed.

North Corridor Construction



Unlike any other LRT system in the United States, they eschewed existing freight rights of way and made the conscious decision to run in the major corridors with dedicated guideways.  This is going to bring unprecedented mobility to the newly served areas as well as perhaps a few issues as well.

While many say that Houston has no zoning, what it really means is that Houston has no use restrictions.  Unless your neighborhood has existing deed restrictions, anything is fair game as long as it pencils in your pro-forma.  Making that pro-forma more difficult is all of the setback and parking regulations that are required from the city.  It costs a lot of money and changes development dynamics but the lack of use restrictions allow development such as the housing below.  Townhouses on small lots that would never have been allowed in any other single family neighborhood. 


Southwest Corridor in East Downtown (EDO)



This also raises the issue of affordable housing.  While the lack of building restrictions keeps prices fairly low, extremely low in fact when compared to SF or NYC, it doesn't mean that neighborhoods won't see some drastic changes coming to their neighborhoods.




If you would like to see a few more of the images from the trip, check out my Flickr page

Who Said That?

The leader of which country made the following statements?

He said one great problem facing cities was historic under-investment in public transport, which meant services were under heavy strain or, on city fringes, non-existent. Better planning was needed to ensure communities were not separated from jobs and services. "Isolated communities breed social exclusion and entrenched disadvantage," Mr **** said. 'Increasing density in cities is part of the solution to urban growth, alongside greenfield development." He said the development had to happen with regard to climate change, with carbon emissions reduced through better design and greater consideration of water use.

Why Australia's Prime Minister Kevin Rudd. The willingness to punish for past and possible future transgressions was not unnoticed either.

Kevin Rudd wants to seize greater control of urban planning by denying infrastructure funding to states and councils that won't agree to improve public transport and ban haphazard housing development.

If only didn't spend more money on cars than transit here in the United States and had rules with teeth. But in the current system everyone has to get theirs whether they deserve it or not.

Governor Good Hair

Does this mean that we can give Governor Perry a hard time for all his contacts within the toll road community? I'm not sure he really wants to start this fight.

Take Off!

That's the loud phrase I used to hear from one of my college track coaches, Bubba Thornton, during races urging me and my teammates to move faster. A similar call was made by UTA's (That's Utah Transit Authority, Not Univ of Texas at Arlington) John Inglish when he spoke before the Banking Committee Friday. This time however, it was a call to speed up the New Starts program.

Inglish and UTA however somewhat gamed the system when they got the federal government to pay 80% of the Mid Jordan Line and a piece of the Draper Line if UTA constructed three lines by themselves. This meant that the other three lines didn't have to wait a huge amount of time while costs escalated and people complained. Here's the wording of the MOU from the FTA:

In August 2007, FTA and UTA executed a Memorandum of Understanding to set forth their mutual expectations for Federal financial participation in two of five projects that comprise UTA’s “Transit 2015 Program.” UTA was seeking a combined $570 million in Section 5309 New Starts funding for the Mid-Jordan and Draper LRT extensions. In return, UTA made a commitment to build, by 2015, the West Valley City and Airport LRT extensions, as well as the South Front Runner (commuter rail) extension without Federal financial assistance. The current total capital cost estimate for the five projects in the Transit 2015 Program is $2.85 billion.

That's a pretty good deal. And UTA is having a better time than their counterparts in Denver who decided to wait to buy up existing rail lines. I'm not a huge fan of using existing rail lines unless they go exactly where you want to go, but UTA bought up 175 miles worth for $185 million dollars back in 2002. With the Fastracks plan, the railroads can pretty much get away with murder and seem to be trying.

But all of this points to the need for the FTA and DOT to start thinking strategically about regions that don't want to build systems line by line. Fixing the new starts program such as Congressman Oberstar wants to is great (PDF 42), but it still isn't a holistic look at how to provide support for regions that are going for more than one line at a time. I'm sure there are some other programs that allow regions to program funding, but I'd like to see the feds take a look at directly enabling this type of expansion. Obviously there are a lot of regions with a lot of expansion needs, and if they are going to succeed and not waste any money, they need to speed it up.

I Wear My Sunglasses At Night

Over at Politics and Place they're talking about the effect of train goggles with an excellent discussion on this issue that I mostly agree with. Yes I have them too. Apparently I'm a Choo Choo Head. I won't go into the dog whistle effect that the term choo choo has for rail transit opposition but it's there and it's strong. But as Paz states:

Munch on this for a second. If all of the sudden every streetcar and commuter train that ever ran was to suddenly reappear, would we still need buses? I would argue "absolutely, yes".

Ditto. As Bruce McF always says, buses and trains should be friends.

Always Someone Cooler Than You

Supervisor Chiu and others have called for a second Freeway revolt. This time its a bit more passive, but its good to have people start speaking out in favor of even more spending on transit. What is also shows is how clueless MTC is when it comes to the United States as a whole.

In response, Randy Rentschler, a spokesperson for the MTC, called the RTP "the most transit-friendly plan of any metro area in the entire country."

I'm sure it's not as friendly as New York City. As Ben Folds says, always someone cooler than you.



But the bigger point that even if you were the most transit friendly plan in the United States, that isn't really saying much, considering how regions in the United States treat transit.

McGovern Calls for Transit Spending

Former Democratic presidential candidate George McGovern is asking President Obama to think about halving the military budget and spending more of it on things like railways. Things are getting interesting out there.

Finally, I would like to see America build the fastest, safest and cleanest-powered railway system in the world. This nationwide system of passenger and freight rail service should be integrated with equally superior public transit facilities in our cities.

Very few Americans are in the market for a tank or aircraft carrier. There are many eager consumers for the world's best, fastest and safest rail and transit systems.

A recent study showed that public transit spending was much higher in returns on jobs than defense spending and other national priorities. I don't understand why we don't jump on this faster.

Texas Legislature Holds Dallas Hostage

It's unfortunate that legislators in Texas choose to keep people from voting on a tax. Not the tax itself, but the ability to pick a fee to vote on to fund transit. Sigh.

When "Striking a Balance" Means "Fund Less"

Peter Rogoff, the possible new FTA administrator, was on Capitol Hill getting grilled by Senators. However I have a slight problem with what he had to say on the topic of funding. It seems as if he's operating still under the 20th century mindset of autos over transit in saying that we need to balance building new projects with repairing our existing assets. This assumes that capital transit funding will continue along its same path and is not acceptable.

"Some of these deferred maintenance issues quickly become safety issues," Rogoff warned. He urged the senators to strike a balance between funding new public transit projects -- for which "it's a lot easier to garner enthusiasm" -- and repairing the already broken systems in major cities.

I agree that we need to fix what we have, but we should be expanding rapid transit at a greater clip. "Striking a balance" to me means fund less. It's already hard enough to fund new transit and there's a huge backlog to the tune of $250 billion, possibly more. What we should be doing is be striking a better ballance between highway and alternative transportation funding, such as Congressman Oberstar is advocating with modal parity.

Where's the Transit in Electric Grid Discussion?

I'm all about this rethinking of the national energy grid. But why are we not looking further into connecting the grid back into transit. Why not more money for trolley buses and that connection to the grid? It seems to me that it would be a great for two reasons... seeing the wires reminds you that you're being clean and we also forget that transit used to be directly tied to the electric companies. It's possible that this could be the way to fund transit as well. Back again to Scott Bernstein's guest post on how to bring back the streetcars:

As we've discussed on this list, only by switching from liquid fuels to non-motorized and electric transportation can we meet any of our energy independence or climate goals.

And only by reducing dependence on individual vehicles to a greater reliance on mass transportation can we transition to a nation of great cities and regions.

Here are some tools to think about in framing methods of getting there--

1. Local electric distribution utilities never lost the legal right to power electric transportation; all 50 states have a common method of enabling electric distribution utility financing of all or part of the necessary systems, which is a rate filing to help finance these systems. This offers opportunities for cities, transit operators, developers, metropolitan planning organizations and states to build new kinds of financing mechanisms to more systematically support local and regional surface transportation infrastructure. A similar case can be made for local governments and special service districts (which own and operate almost all of the nation's airports outside of NJ, MD, Alaska and HI) to partner with the electric utility industry to support the infrastructure necessary for inter-city high speed rail.

2. Deregulation of the electric utility industry has been a mixed bag, but in over a dozen states a fait accompli. So in a sense this is an opening to partner with contemporary holding companies too. These companies need to re-certify their "market-based" rate making authority every three years with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, another opening for the new administration to address potential urban consequences of energy and climate policies.

3. PUCHA was repealed in the 2005 Energy Policy Act ( one outcome has been at least 100 municipalization efforts, 20 successful, most recently Winter Park Fl, but the repeal also opens up the potential for other kinds of ownership too)

4. A national debate on the future shape and location and purposes of the electrical grid has started and needs an urban voice, no less than does the analogous debate about transportation infrastructure.

5. A push by leaders in the public accounting profession and in the investment community for more transparency in State and municipal accounting led to the creation of the Government Accounting Standards Board in 1984, and their rules on accounting for infrastructure investment, aka Statement 34, implemented from 1999 to present, lay a first-time basis for disclosure of the life-cycle costs associated with different types and patterns of major capital investments. More recently, a push for better state and local disclosure in the waning days of the Bush administration, has been taken up in the Senate and House Banking committees. This is a real opportunity to show well how the hidden assets of cities and urban places perform.

Chris Leinberger Says It

I've seen a lot of these quotes recently.

Rail transit drives walkable urban places. I've never seen one dollar of real estate investment invested because of a bus stop. But if you have [rail] transit, it's a different story altogether.

The Problem is Not Just in Atlanta

Jay Bookman always has great columns in the AJC about how messed up things are in Atlanta and Georgia in general. But after reading it, it just sounds like every other MPO or State issue in the country. Too much money gets political and not data driven attention and that means a lot of money generated by Metro areas gets funneled into the less urban parts of the state. Even within metro areas the funding goes to the suburbs rather than urban areas. This is why I'm worried that in most places, even funding the MPOs by bypassing the state won't be good enough to step the tide of urban underinvestment.

If transportation funds were instead allocated on the basis of data, need and transportation impact, metro Atlanta would fare much better. This is where the need is greatest; this is where the impact would be most noticeable. But that’s not how things work.

State leaders are now trying to muscle through a “reform” of the system. But rather than make our transportation planning more professional and data-driven, the goal is to make it even it more political. For example, it is supposedly “reform” to give the Legislature the power to spend up to 20 percent of transportation money on projects it gets to approve. Now, how many professional transportation planners sit in the General Assembly? Do you think that money will be allocated to where it would do the most good for Georgia, or to where it would do the most good for powerful legislators?

In Texas, they are deciding on a bill to allow regions to tax themselves, and in recent years it's been state legislators who have cut it down for what I can see because they just are against taxes. It's not about letting people decide for themselves that they need more local funding. In fact, this need to raise taxes is a direct function of funding not being allocated correctly in the first place.

I do have to disagree with Jay on one thing, traffic isn't the issue. They've had more than enough money to build roads that are rediculously huge and part of the reason why traffic is so bad is because of Metro Atlanta's land use problem. They have let developers go nuts wherever they want and subsequently people are living in one place and driving everywhere to get there. I highly suggest A Man in Full by Tom Wolfe for some real estate fiction based on Atlanta.

Why People Are Going to Hate You

Because you're floating a bill that would make transit planning a state function instead of a more local one. That is dumb on so many levels.

The main reason the measure is so politically fraught is that it seeks to take metro-area transit authority away from the powerful and long-entrenched Metropolitan Council. Hausman says the present concentration of transit dollars and planning power in the Met Council and the Counties Transit Improved Board (CTIB) creates inefficiencies and unwisely forces the whole state to hew to a long-range rail transit policy dictated by a handful of metro entities--particularly Hennepin County and the city of Minneapolis.

Why would you take the transit authority away from the regional planning agency? This makes absolutely no sense unless you want to steal funding for "other" transportation priorities. One of the problems in the Twin Cities is that the current righty Governor appoints members of the Metro Council which controls regional policy. Somehow fix that first.