Steve Miller's Blog — II

The Charles River is one of the defining features of our region.  From the time humans first arrived, we have used it for sustenance, pleasure, and travel.  While the basin feels like a refuge of nature in the midst of our urban lives, nearly every inch of the river – from the shore to the deepest channel – has been shaped by human activity.  The river and the structures around it need to be managed to preserve their value to the life cycle while maximizing their human functionality.

In particular, the bridges over the river can help connect our communities, provide access to the riverbank, and be an aesthetic asset.  Or they can make travel difficult, even dangerous, block us off from the river, and serve as walls preventing movement on or beside the water.  As the state begins a once-in-a-lifetime process of repairing and improving almost every bridge along the Charles, we need to make sure that it’s done right.  Read the rest of this entry »

Or…How to Improve Our Quality of Life and Get Maximum Leverage from Limited Public Resources by Integrating Complementary Aspects of Policy & Programs in Transportation, Health, Development, Environment, Energy – and everything else!

I was once one of those people who joined in the American chorus of contempt about the inefficiency and incompetence of public programs.  Until I began working in the private sector.  I quickly learned that the dearth of really good managers, the culture of petty bickering and buck-passing, the incredible lack of inter-departmental coordination and inter-subsidiary synergy was just as common in business as it was in government – if not worse because it was hidden from public view behind the narrow window of bottom line results.  So long as the ink was black, internal corporate operations could get away with utterly amazing amounts of wastefulness, nastiness, short-sightedness, and bungling – often because the competition was doing the same!

But times have changed.  We now need to rethink the way we do business or run public programs.  We need to foster a new kind of leadership, one that uses resources to catalyze and shape broad coalitions rather than go it alone.  And it is likely that public health, with its history of concern for the built environment and population-wide campaigns, might be the right base from which to make this happen – in transportation, land use, energy, environment, and community development.  Read the rest of this entry »

It’s winter in Boston – cold, windy, occasional snow.  And yet every time I go out I see people bicycling.  They weren’t here ten years ago; or even five – certainly not in the winter!  It suddenly feels like we’ve reach an inflection point:  there are enough people who use cycling as a major form of transportation that it’s become a year-round presence.

The US Census Bureau agrees.  Their 2008 American Community Survey found that the share of bicycle commuters nationally increased 43 percent since 2000.  In supportive environments it grew even more:  the 27 large cities recognized as Bike Friendly by the League of American Bicyclists had increases nearly 60 percent larger than the national average.  (http://www.bikeleague.org/resource/reports)

There are lots of reasons for this upsurge but in these fiscally tight times it’s illuminating to particularly analyze the dollars and sense aspects.  It turns out that bicycling is a good deal for both the cyclist and the city. Read the rest of this entry »

Over the past half century, Congress has created a new national transportation funding bill every six years or so.  Originally, the primary role of the Highway Trust Fund was to send federal gas tax money to the states to subsidize construction of the Interstate Highway System and other roads.  Over time, as national priorities have changed, the bill has authorized the Fund to cautiously include other modes (railroads, transit, bikeways, and walking paths) and a broader perspective (reducing traffic-related air pollution and safety).  The most recent six year cycle ended in 2009, and the next Transportation Funding Bill – now being debated – will not only shape how we travel but also the nature of our communities, the cleanliness of our environment, our level of daily physical activity, and much more.  All of us have a stake in the outcome.  Read the rest of this entry »

The public sector can certainly benefit from the adoption of many business practices, from a focus on customer service to more efficient work flow, from TQM to greater transparency.  But no matter how important these practices may be, no matter how much the public sector can benefit from their use, there is a fundamental difference between the two sectors that will perpetually lead to differences: the public sector rests on a foundation of democracy while private organizations do not.  This plays itself out in at least five ways: government’s requirement to serve everyone, government’s requirement to fulfill its entire mandate, the multiple and sometimes competing dimensions that defines quality in public programs, the complicated way public revenues are generated, and the population-wide ownership of the public sector. Read the rest of this entry »

No matter what our concern, each of us has a stake in having government operate effectively and accountably, respecting legal rights while being creative and fast-acting enough to deal with public issues.

Some people say this means that government should be run like a business.  But government is not business.  Its bottom line is much more complicated than profit, its operations are subject to many more constraints, and it operates with far more public scrutiny than any firm could endure.  (For more on the differences, see the associated posting “Why the Public Sector – Schools in Particular – Can’t Be Run “Like A Business.”)  But there are a lot of business methods that the public sector can adapt to its own unique circumstances and use – needs to use – if it is to do its job.  Here are comments about a few of them – measuring performance, involving the public, outsourcing, and technology.  Read the rest of this entry »

Imagine that you wanted to invent a better public mass transit system.  Like a railroad it would run on an exclusive right-of-way, have weather-protected stations where people with already-bought tickets could wait, and multiple cars with comfortable accommodations.  Like a subway, each car would have lots of doors so that large numbers of people, standing or in wheelchairs, could quickly get on and off from a platform that is level with the doors.  Electronic signposts at every station would display the waiting time before the next pickup. Like a bus it would change its route and stopping locations as changing need requires.  It would be clean and safe and fast and high-status enough to attract both rich and poor.  It wouldn’t cost nearly as much nor take nearly as long to build as rail.  And it would work best where traffic congestion is worst.  Pretty good, right?

What you want to invent already exists.  It’s called Bus Rapid Transit, or BRT.  I’m not talking about Boston’s Silver Line – which is no more BRT than Amtrak’s Acela is a true high-speed rail line.  Both use a label that they don’t deserve to cover up their basic failures.  They are a sad reminder that the most powerful way to undermine a good idea is with a bad first example.  But true BRT already exists in a few cities in this country and many more around the world.  We in the Boston area need to erase our negative impressions, start again learning about BRT as if the state hadn’t already spoiled the concept.  In fact, there are several places in our own region that could be well served by such a system.  Read the rest of this entry »

Republicans are claiming that Scott Brown’s election was an affirmation of their conservative ideology.  But it is unlikely that the majority of Massachusetts voters have so radically changed their values and views.  It is more likely that his election was the result of two other dynamics — the capture of the election process by our reality-show celebrity culture and the widespread anger about the mess that national elites have made of our society.  Both have implications for advocates.  Read the rest of this entry »

A couple months ago Bikes Not Bombs both celebrated its 25^th anniversary and announced that the last of the founding organizers, Carl Kurtz, was leaving.  But its core mission of international anti-war solidarity combined with local bicycle and youth services remains.  Still based in Roxbury and Jamaica Plain, BNB is now being run by the next generation — people who have grown up with the organization, or connected through the international network of local bike shops that BNB continues to support, or who were attracted by BNB’s combination of political vision and pragmatic services.

It is of enormous credit to the entire BNB community that the organization has lasted this long.  And it’s of equal credit to Carl that he has been such a steadfast leader and worker for the entire time.  Listening to the speeches, and reflecting on what I know about the organization, helped remind me of what it takes to create sustainable change from the bottom up.  The simplicity of the words hides the enormous skill and art of making them happen:  compelling vision, optimistic faith, coherent mission, operational efficiency, good leadership, and luck.  Read the rest of this entry »

Why don’t more people just leave their cars at home?  Why do so many people eat such terrible food?  I am frequently in conversations where someone asks these types of questions.  Sometimes the speaker is just a snob, using the question to really announce their own sense of superiority.  But sometimes it’s a sincere bewilderment.  Why do people make choices that end up hurting not only themselves but our society in the long run?  And how can we get them to change? Read the rest of this entry »

(This is the full text and title of a letter that appeared in the Boston Globe on 1/10/10)

We all hate bureaucracy – big, rule-based, inflexible.  But the impersonal efficiency of bureaucracy is exactly what big organizations need to run effectively.  So the James Michael Curley legacy that is most damaging to today’s Boston is not the corruption or ethnic-neighborhood chauvinism or even the patronage described by Peter Canellos (“Curley’s People”, Jan.1, Ideas), but the pattern of delivering public service entirely on the basis of personal relationships.  If you want something done, you have to know someone who works in city hall.  Even within City Hall, inter-office coordination is more about calling your cousin than oiling a functional machine.

In contrast, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg sits on top of a corporate-style bureaucracy.  This allows him to express a vision, set policy direction, even get personally involved in starting particular projects – and then turn things over to his staff to implement.  Like a progressive private sector CEO, Bloomberg understands that today’s technology allows policy and oversight to be centralized, middle-management to be thinned, and front-line staff empowered to take creative initiative.  Of course, it doesn’t always work as well as desired, either in the private or public sectors.  But the cultural norms aim towards that mode of operation.

In Boston, Mayor Menino is full of energy, ideas, and deep commitment.  The goals laid out in his latest inaugural address are worthy and important.  But he can’t do everything or be everywhere — once the spotlight of his attention passes and key staff have to move on to other projects, implementation of his visions often falters.  There are many smart, well-meaning, capable public servants in Boston.  But their ability to act is too often swallowed by the traditional culture of personal connections.

So all of us who deeply care about Boston welcome the new Chief of Staff, Mitchell Weiss (“He’s bringing Boston fresh attitude”, Jan.3).  And, despite our dislike of the word, some of us hope that his main focus will be on creating an efficient, public service bureaucracy.

It hasn’t been just the biting cold and the encroaching night that has made this December depressing.  The collapse of the Senate’s version of Health Reform into an insurance and drug industry subsidy program, the failure to reach agreement on a climate recovery treaty in Copenhagen, the continued war in Iraq and the announced escalation in Afghanistan….for many of us, these developments have eliminated our little remaining hope that the Obama election would create deeply transformative change – in transportation or anything else.

It’s true that each of these disappointments includes many incremental improvements and sometimes creates a platform for future progress.  Simply having an African-American as President is culturally transformative and well worth the effort of his election.  But we no longer seem to have enough momentum to push through the structural changes we anticipated.  This is important both for what it teaches us about politics and how we have to adjust our strategies going forward. Read the rest of this entry »

Mayor Menino says he want to make Boston a “world class bicycling city.”  And now that he’s been elected to an unprecedented fifth term, he says that he’s ready to take additional risks to bring significant improvement.  So what needs to be done to realize the vision?

Here are ten ideas, and one over-arching concept:  All these suggested actions will have a much greater chance of success, and have a much greater impact on local culture, if the city frames them as steps towards achieving an ambitious set of high-level goals – and then measures annual progress.  Appropriate goals might include increasing the city’s total number of cyclists by 10% per year and cutting the number of traffic-related pedestrian and cyclist injuries in half every two years.

In addition, since I think that improving conditions for cycling significantly overlaps with improving conditions for walking and traveling in a wheelchair, this list includes some suggestions for all three.

Of course, these are my suggestions….I urge readers to contribute their own!  Read the rest of this entry »

Despite having a high percentage of transit-dependent households, the mostly low-income and non-white sections of Roxbury, Dorchester, and Mattapan have some of the area’s worst transportation options.  The buses are old, over crowded, and slow.  There is no trolley or commuter train service.  Since the latest estimates are that a two-person Boston household spends up to ,324 a year more if they use cars rather than trolleys, buses, and feet, many of these people have little choice but to take what’s given them. It’s hard not to see this as discriminatory.  And many residents do.

So, the only good that may emerge from the withdrawal of the state’s application for about one hundred and fifty million dollars to upgrade bus service along Blue Hill Ave – because of community opposition to the state’s plans – is that it becomes a case study in how NOT to implement successful transportation projects.  What went wrong, and what can we learn?  Read the rest of this entry »

Except for the Mass Ave bridge, every bridge in the lower Charles River basin is going to get repaired over the next five years or so. Hopefully, the end result will be structurally sound structures within a transportation system finally able to serve pedestrians, bicyclists, and transit vehicles as well as cars — and that also provide improved access to the region’s river-side parklands. However, the construction period will cause a massive reduction in the system’s car-carrying capacity. The state needs to act, now, to encourage a significant shift from cars to transit, bikes, and walking. But how can this be done? Read the rest of this entry »

Massachusetts’ new Transportation Reform Act mandates that the Department of Transportation collaborate with Health & Human Services, Environment & Energy, and others to create a Healthy Transportation Compact.  But what does it mean to have a transportation system that is “healthy” – for the environment, for our climate, for the economy, for our communities and families, for the physical and mental wellbeing of those who are moving around and those who are being passed by? Read the rest of this entry »

People are free to choose the way they get around.  But the context shapes their likely choices.  This is Part III of a three-part series suggesting high-leverage actions that would shift the context from one that makes getting into a car the default option to one where walking or cycling would be equally – and in some situations more – easy to do.  Because mass transit is such a huge topic, I will deal with it separately in a later series of posts.

The ideas discussed in Part III include:

8. PRICE PARKING PROPERLY
9. CHANGE LIABILITY ASSUMPTIONS
10. SET GOALS AND MEASURE PROGRESS

Ideas 1-3 are discussed in Part I and ideas 4-7 in Part II.  However, this is my list of the top ten ways to transform transportation.   I’m sure readers have others.  Please comment and add your own. Read the rest of this entry »

People are free to choose the way they get around.  But the context shapes their likely choices.  This is Part II of a three-part series suggesting high-leverage actions that would shift the context from one that makes getting into a car the default option to one where walking or cycling would be equally – and in some situations more – easy to do.  Because mass transit is such a huge topic, I will deal with it separately in a later series of posts.

The ideas discussed in Part II include:

4. EXPAND SAFE ROUTES TO SCHOOL and SAFE ROUTES FOR SENIORS PROGRAMS
5. REQUIRE LOCAL CITIZEN’S BIKE/PED ADVISORY COMMITTEES
6. CHANGE REGIONAL & LOCAL DECISION-MAKING PROCESS
7. ENCOURGE SMART GROWTH

Ideas 1-3 are discussed in Part I and ideas 8-10 plus a list of the provisions of the new Bike Safety Bill in Part III.   However, this is my list of the top ten ways to transform transportation.   I’m sure readers have others.  Please comment and add your own. Read the rest of this entry »

People are free to choose the way they get around.  But the context shapes their likely choices.  This is Part I of a three-part series suggesting high-leverage actions that would shift the context from one that makes getting into a car the default option to one where walking or cycling would be equally – and in some situations more – easy to do.  Because mass transit is such a huge topic, I will deal with it separately in a later series of posts.

The ideas discussed in Part I are:

1. LOWER SPEED LIMITS
2. DESIGN FOR ORDINARY SITUATIONS AND ORDINARY PEOPLE
3. STRENGTHEN DRIVER TESTING and TRAINING

Ideas 4-7 are discussed in Part II and ideas 8-10 plus a list of the provisions of the new Bike Safety Bill in Part III.   However, this is my list of the top ten ways to transform transportation.   I’m sure readers have others.  Please comment and add your own.  Read the rest of this entry »

I know that, in general, bicyclists behave no worse than anyone else.  I know that, ultimately, the current rage at cyclists who run red lights, weave around lanes, and endanger pedestrians is just a car culture temper tantrum, like an older child outraged at the pushy presence of a newly arrived younger sibling.  Still, when even my closest friends – not to mention my wife – start cursing at the arrogant, stupid, endangering nuts on two wheels, I’ve got to acknowledge that something else is also going on. Read the rest of this entry »

It isn’t often that a complex problem can be significantly solved by a single remedy.  But when it comes to finding ways to make car-dominated streets more pedestrian and cyclist-friendly, narrowing the lane widths is a game-changer.  Critics worry about safety and capacity, but new research refutes these fears. Read the rest of this entry »

Most groups that believe they both stand for important values and suffer the scorn of mainstream society, create an in-group culture.  Bicyclists are no exception.  One component of bike culture is an activist orientation that has placed cyclists in the forefront of grass roots campaigns for road improvement starting with the “Good Roads” movement in the early 1900s.  It is possible that just as paved roads ended up setting the stage for an auto-centric culture, today’s push for more bike facilities may lead to the swamping of “bikey” culture by “ordinary” people.  But, so what if it does? Read the rest of this entry »

Why haven’t Massachusetts cities installed traffic light violation cameras, like New York and many other cities, that capture the license plate number of a vehicle running a red light and automatically send a traffic ticket?   Traffic-light violation cameras significantly reduce intersection violations and pedestrian injuries.  Critics cite possible privacy violations and the possibility that the vehicle owner may not be the driver breaking the law.  But neither argument has merit.  Just as a landlord can be held responsible for the public nuisance created by his tenants, a car owner is responsible for the behavior of anyone to whom she willingly lends her vehicle.  And breaking the law automatically cancels a person’s privacy rights. Read the rest of this entry »

Police talk about the “broken window syndrome” when visible neglect creates a feeling that anti-social behavior is acceptable.  But maybe there is also a “broken street syndrome” when the noise, smell, and danger of speeding cars and unfriendly public spaces scares people away and makes our neighborhoods ripe for decay. Read the rest of this entry »

American medicine is only peripherally about health; it is primarily about treating disease.   It is a sickness treatment system.  Even so-called preventive medicine is really about screening and early treatment.  What we need is pre-disease prevention:  ways to create a lived environment that directly and through its impact on behavior significantly increases wellbeing and reduces the risk of getting sick in the first place.  This is where Transportation comes in. Read the rest of this entry »

“’Sometimes we have to use cars, but that doesn’t mean they have to dominate our lives.  Instead it should be dominated by human interactions…the level of car us in New York City is so inconsistent with what we want out of our city,’  whether in terms of health, quality of public life, or air quality.”

Paul Steely White, Executive Director of Transportation Alternatives

in Pedaling Revolution, by Jeff Mapes

[Healthy] communities have gathering places that are within walking distance of homes, or a short bike ride, drive, or shuttle trip away. These critical neighborhood ‘meet-ups’ can include parks, libraries, community centers, places of worship, gyms, Internet cafes, ice cream stores, or neighborhood diners. Small neighborhood parks, town squares, and plazas are great places to sit and read, catch up on e-mail, talk with friends, or watch kids play. Larger parks and greenways can offer walking trails, bike paths, and sports.  Getting to these meeting places provides some of the physical activity that keeps us healthy. Being there in the company of friends provides the critical social interactions that keep us connected and engaged. Being part of a community also triggers an informal network of folks who might keep an eye out for each other [which provides]…more social support and reduced psychological distress.

Growing Smarter, Living Healthier.

EPA pamphlet on creating healthy communities

Mayor Menino, like politicians around the country, has been talking about the need to create a more energy-efficient, safe, health-promoting, and community-friendly transportation system that creates less noise, has lower costs, and releases fewer green-house gasses.  He has begun a whole list of initiatives, from painting bike lanes to developing “complete streets” policies.  But going from vision to reality on a systemic, long-term, city-wide basis will not be easy.  There are at least four major challenges facing whoever takes over city hall. Read the rest of this entry »

Forget your physics class.  Travel is another dimension, where things happen according to a different set of natural laws.  I’ve modestly labeled the following as Miller’s Laws of Motion, but readers of this blog are welcome to add their own to the list…. Read the rest of this entry »

Some bicycle advocacy groups promote the slogan “Same Roads, Same Laws” to support cyclists’ right to use the roadway along with car traffic.  I think it’s a bad slogan; at best incomplete, at worst self-defeating.  Bikes and cars are radically different types of vehicles, exposing cyclists and drivers to radically different conditions.  In addition to the laws that all vehicles should obey, we need special laws and road designs to protect the safety and promote the use of bicycles. Read the rest of this entry »