The environmental movement has taught us that it’s a lot less harmful, difficult, and expensive to prevent toxins from entering the environment than to treat the problems poison creates once it is in our bodies and our world.    Even our medical system, which is essentially about treating sickness after it occurs, is beginning to put more emphasis on “preventive medicine” – the early detection and management of disease.

But the opposite of disease is not early detection, its wellness – staying healthy.   And one of the ways to do that, to be physically and emotionally well, is to be physically active.   According to the national Centers for Disease Control (CDC), “adults need at least 2 and 1/2 hours (150 minutes) a week of aerobic physical activity. This should be at a moderate level, such as a fast-paced walk for no less than 10 minutes at a time.”  The effort pays off in lower rates of obesity, high blood pressure, osteoarthritis, several kinds of cancer, diabetes, coronary heart disease and stroke.

You can be active by spending hours running in place or going to a gym, but it’s more likely that you’ll get in the needed exercise if it is part of your daily routine – as part of your commute, running errands and seeing friends, and socializing on the weekends. Facilitating daily routine exercise is one of the many jobs of our transportation system – making it easy, inviting, and even inevitable for people of all ages and abilities to safely walk and bicycle, while supported by a robust public transportation system.

• A study of over 3,200 overweight adults found that a good diet and walking 2.5 hours/week reduced their risk of developing diabetes by 58%. Participants aged 60 and older reduced their risk by 71%.

• Men who commute to work on public transportation are 44.6% less likely to be overweight or obese, probably due to the physical activity they get at the beginning and end of each trip, getting rid of the energy equivalent of a pound of body fat every six weeks.

• Of the women in the Harvard School of Public Health Nurses’ Health Study, those who walked 3 or more hours/week reduced their risk of a coronary event by 35% compared with women who did not walk.  The risk of death from breast and uterine cancer were reduced 19% in those who walked 1 to 3 hours per week, by 54% for walking 3 to 5 hours / week.

Any physical activity is better than none – even jiggling your body while sitting in front of the TV – but maximizing the benefits of walking requires a brisk pace that few people normally use.  However, slow, habitual cycling at an easy 10 mph, typical of many in-city commutes, has been shown to significantly increase fitness and longevity, even for people who are already active in intense recreational sports, giving regular cyclists an average level of fitness equivalent to people ten years younger than themselves.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we each truly had a choice about how we moved around – if enough was spent on transit, cycling, and walking facilities to make each of them safe and accessible for all? Unfortunately, our current transportation system falls unhealthily short: a CDC study found that almost 40 percent of Americans had not walked for 10 straight minutes in the previous seven days.    Whether or not Massachusetts diverts from that national reality and, instead,  creates a wellness-enhancing environment is significantly dependent on what happens with MassDOT’s proposed 10 year transportation plan, “The Way Forward”, along with an entourage of complimentary policies such as GreenDOT and Mode Shift – and all these are dependent on significant new revenue to meet our statewide transportation needs.

Of course, neither budgets nor plans and policies are enough to make things actually happen.  Advocacy is a critical part of the fuel that turns the engine of change.  And effective Advocacy requires us to both know what we’re talking about and then get involved.   In addition to what you can learn on the Transportation for Massachusetts website, visit our members’ websites to learn more. .  And when you’ve made up your mind, let your legislative representative know – the Metropolitan Area Planning Commission (MAPC) website lets you enter your zip code and the automatically provides a personalizable template addressed to the appropriate officials.  Use it – several times! – democracy only happens when we use it.

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Potentially as fast and as scheduled as rail and subways, but costing a fraction as much to construct, Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) is one of the hot topics in transportation planning these days.  Even MassDOT is looking into it.

Full or Maximum BRT is like a railroad, but without tracks or trains.  The vehicles are air conditioned, the seats comfortable.  BRT buses run within their own corridor, unencumbered by car congestion, able to achieve speeds comparable to (and sometimes faster than) light rail trolleys.   Passengers prepay, wait in comfortable stations, and quickly board from accessible car-level platforms.   There is room for Express lines to pass “local” stops which are, themselves, spaced further apart than typical bus stops, speeding the trip.  Advanced Information Technology (IT) is used to track vehicle location, inform passengers, and facilitate fare collection, administration, and public accountability.

Exemplary BRT systems, such as those in Bogota Columbia and Ottawa, Canada, were all specially built on new right-of-way corridors.  In other cities, such as Los Angeles, BRT systems were carved out of existing roadways.  In every case, the BRT systems were given special branding using intensive PR campaigns to distinguish them from the low-status regular bus system.  Like rail, BRT triggers and channelizes economic growth along the transit corridor, encouraging business development around its stops and raising property values – an effect that can be a powerful tool for city planning, as Cleveland is now demonstrating in its medical district transit.

Massachusetts’ first attempt to set up a BRT service, the Silver Line, is now generally recognized (even by MassDOT) as falling much short of Full BRT.  The second attempt, a last-minute proposal to install BRT on Blue Hill Avenue, got killed by community fury at having the project announced without previous local involvement in the planning process.  Despite the potential benefits the project would bring to adjoining low-income neighborhoods, community distrust of MassDOT was too strong for the proposal’s shortcomings to be resolved in the limited time available for the particular funding source.

Nothing discredits an idea like a terrible first experience. But BRT is too good an idea to die.  MassDOT is now exploring ways to improve and expand the Silver Line from South Station to Chelsea and working with the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy (ITDP) to identify other promising corridors.

Expanding and upgrading our fixed rail system (passenger trains, trolleys, and freight) is still an essential foundation for future economic growth – not to mention preventing highway gridlock from getting even worse, improving air and water quality, providing a supportive backbone for smart growth, and making active transportation an easier choice.  But fixed rail is expensive to build and, by definition, fixed in place – as is Full BRT.

We should push for BRT.  But we need to welcome BRT projects which take advantage of bus flexibility by allowing the vehicles to spend some time acting like more a regular bus service to do what fixed systems can’t.  Even more, we also need to push for improvements in the rest of the regular bus system that will pay off in both increased usage and lower operating costs, while reducing some of the lingering inequities of our transportation system.  For example, despite its BRT shortcomings, T records show that the Silver Line surface segment carries more passengers than any other bus line, has a better on time performance, and costs less per rider.

Of course, today, in Massachusetts, unless the state Legislature quickly approves substantial new revenues within the next 8 weeks, instead of exploring BRT options the MBTA will be forced to begin over $100 million worth of devastating fare increases and service cutbacks.  And next year it will have to do it again, while the Regional Transportation Authorities outside the Metropolitan area continue being unable to provide even basic service to their patrons.  Political commentators are now saying that unless members of the public soon start telling their Representatives to say “yes” to new revenue the state’s new 10-year transportation plan, The Way Forward, is dead.  Isn’t it time that we started making our transportation system better instead of fighting to merely keep it alive?
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Bills submitted by the Governor, by Legislative Leadership, or in response to a media-enflamed crises can go from idea to law very quickly.  The many thousands of other proposals have to wind their way through a very complicated and multi-stage process.  Almost every proposal has to go through several different committees and at least one public hearing.  Committee chairs have to decide which of the submissions to prioritize, balancing demands from leadership, other committee members, and their own constituency.  Opponents have to be negotiated with and compromises reached.  The vast majority of bills are either “sent to study” or simply never reported out of Committee and therefore never receive an up/down vote by the full House or Senate membership.   Even for those bills that pass the crucial “get out of committee with a positive recommendation” milestone, very little gets settled until a deadline hits or until the two-year session comes to an end, at which point a proposal either is voted up or down or has to start all over again from the very beginning in the next two-year Legislative session. It’s slow, seldom fully transparent, and often quixotic.

But it all starts with the initial submission of a proposed Act by a lead sponsor.  Here are some of the submissions for the just-starting 188^th General Court – the Massachusetts Legislature.  Without significant public pressure, few of them are likely to pass and those that do are likely to be significantly revised along the way.  If you feel that any of these are worthy of support (or opposition), please contact the sponsoring legislator, or your own representative, or the associated Advocacy Group.

This blog focuses on bills endorsed by the Mass Public Health Association (MPHA) and the state-wide ACT Fresh Coalition that MPHA helps lead (and to which LivableStreets Alliance serves as a Leadership Team member).  Building on Massachusetts’ long history of national leadership on public health issues, MPHA and its legislative allies have recently won the nation’s first Prevention and Wellness Trust Fund, strong regulations to improve school nutrition, and a state Food Policy Council.

ACT Fresh’s current legislative agenda includes issues ranging from Active Transportation to improving access to healthy food.  Subsequent postings will cover proposals endorsed by Mass Bike, Walk Boston, and Transportation For Massachusetts (T4Mass).

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ADVANCING HEALTH EQUITY THROUGH TRANSPORTATION POLICY

1.    An Act Relative to Active Streets and Healthy Communities (S68/H3091)  Introduced by Senator Harriette Chandler (D-Worcester) and Representative Jason Lewis (D-Winchester).  Also endorsed by the Metropolitan Area Planning Council (MAPC), Mass Bike,and Walk Boston.

Legislative co-sponsors include:  Representatives Atkins, Balser, Coakley-Rivera, Ehrlich, Fox, Gordon, Hecht, Henriquez, Hogan, Kaufman, Keefe, Khan, Lawn, McMurtry, Provost, Rosa, Sannicandro, Schmid, Scibak, Sciortino, Silvia, Smizik, Stanley, Swan, Vega, Chris Walsh, Walz, and Senators Brownsberger, Candaras, DiDomenico, Eldridge, Montigny, and Michael Moore.

The negotiations that allowed the state Transportation Department to issue its then-innovative Highway Design Guide exempted municipalities from following these and some other state rules on road projects funded by Chapter 90 state aid and local funding.  While not ending that loophole, this bill provides a small recognition and monetary incentive to encourage cities and towns to routinely include complete streets design elements such as accommodations for walking and bicycling in local projects.   In addition to increased functionality, safety, and health benefits, this will help meet the state’s goal of tripling the mode share of non-Single Occupancy Vehicle travel.

The legislation authorizes MassDOT to certify a municipality as an “Active Streets Community,” making them eligible for some increased transportation funding, if they have:

* adopted an approved complete streets bylaw, ordinance, or administrative policy that sets specific 5- year goals for increases in walking, bicycling, and public transportation;

* described how, and by whom, the policy will be implemented, including submission of annual progress reports;

* established a review process for all private development proposals to ensure complete streets components are incorporated into new construction.

2. Transportation Investment Act (S1646/HD3119),  Introduced by Senator Katherine Clark (D-Melrose) and Representatives Tricia Farley-Bouvier (D-Pittsfield) and Carl Sciortino (D-Medford).  Also endorsed by Transportation for Massachusetts (T4Mass).

Legislative co-sponsors: Representatives Andrews, Ashe, Brady, Coakley-Rivera, Conroy, Devers, Garballey, Gobi, Hecht, Kaufman, Keefe, Khan, Kulik, Lewis, O’Day, Provost, Sannicandro, Schmid, Scibak, Silvia, Smizik, Stanley, Swan, Toomey, Vega, Chris Walsh, and Senators Barrett, Brownsberger, Candaras, DiDomenico, Jehlen.

In a representative democracy, even one as imperfect as ours, getting approval to raise the money needed for a major initiative usually requires shaping overall package so that the benefits are shared among a very broad range of constituencies.  This sometimes results in a mish-mash of activities and projects that aren’t all equally aligned with larger public policy goals.  This type of politics is not necessarily a bad thing; it tends to spread resources more widely than might otherwise occur.  But, still, it would be even better if the choice of spending priorities within each “distribution channel” was influenced by the degree to which they will contribute to state-wide objectives.

This is, in fact, the purpose of the proposed Transportation Investment Act.  If passed, proposed transportation investments costing over $15 million would be selected based on their level of support for state policies such as increasing economic development in Environmental Justice (EJ) Neighborhoods and Gateway Cities; reducing greenhouse gas emissions and travel times; increasing pedestrian, bicycle, and transit mode share; and dealing with long-term operational/maintenance as well as initial construction costs.

The Act would also require that federal funding be equitably distributed state-wide among the 13 regional transportation funding bodies and that Gateway Cities and EJ communities be given funds to pay for the design of projects eligible for federal money – or for Complete Streets projects, Transit-oriented Development, and other local-priority investments.  The Act would also eliminate using capital or loan funds to pay for operating costs, which our state’s currently inadequate levels of transportation funding necessitates resulting in enormously inflated long-term expense.

ZONING REFORM FOR HEALTHY COMMUNITY DESIGN

3.  An Act to Support the Planning and Development of Sustainable Communities (H1859) Introduced by Senator Daniel Wolf (D-Harwich) and Representative Steven Kulik (D-Worthington).  Also endorsed by the Massachusetts Smart Growth Alliance and the City Solicitors and Town Counsel Association.

Legislative co-sponsors:  Representatives Andrews, Atkins, Benson, Binienda, Cabral, Cantwell, Cariddi, Coakley-Rivera, Cutler, DiNatale, Dykema, Ehrlich, Finn, Garballey, Gobi, Gordon, Gregoire, Hecht, Honan, Kafka, Kaufman, Keefe, Khan, Kocot, Koczera, Lawn, Lewis, Linsky, Madden, McMurtry, Murphy, Nangle, Peake, Provost, Rogers, Rogers, Rosa, Roy, Schmid, Scibak, Sciortino, Silvia, Smizik, Story, Straus, Swan, Turner, Vega, Chris Walsh and Senators Barrett, Brownsberger, Chandler, Donoghue, Eldridge, Jehlen, Michael Moore.

Cities and town set their own zoning, but the general rules describing what kinds of zoning choices are allowed is controlled by the state.  Unfortunately, Massachusetts has one of the most convoluted and inadequate Zoning Enabling Acts in the nation.  While not a complete overhaul, this bill will help cities and towns improve neighborhoods by requiring that they plan with the public’s health in mind, limiting practices that promote sprawl, improving communication between planning and local health authorities, and providing priority funding and technical assistance for places that meet high standards.  Smarter zoning codes can promote healthy community features like mixed commercial-and-residential districts that encourage walking and biking; preservation of open space that promotes active recreation; improved access to healthy food choices; and reduced exposure to pollution. These are features that help make our communities inclusive and prosperous.

STRENGHENING THE PREVENTION AND WELLNESS TRUST

4. Closing “Other Tobacco Products” Tax Loophole to Invest in the Prevention and Wellness Trust – (S1312/H2593), Introduced by Senator Harriette Chandler (D-Worcester) and Representative Jonathan Hecht (D-Watertown).  Also endorsed by Tobacco Free Mass.

Legislative co-sponsors:  Representatives Andrews, Atkins, Balser, Brady, Brodeur, Cariddi, Coakley-Rivera, Conroy, Decker, Ehrlich, Farley-Bouvier, Gregoire, Heroux, Holmes, Kafka, Kaufman, Khan, Kocot, Kulik, Lawn, Lewis, Linsky, Provost, Rogers, Sannicandro, Scibak, Sciortino, Silvia, Smizik, Story, and Senators Brownsberger, Candaras, Chang-Diaz, Jehlen, Spilka. 

Tobacco use is the leading cause of preventable death in Massachusetts. More than 8,000 of our residents lose their lives to tobacco each year, and tobacco-related illnesses cost us more than over $4.3 billion annually. We know that making tobacco more expensive reduces its use – especially among teenagers who are just starting.  However, while cigarette tax rates have increased, a loophole has exempted small cigars, smokeless products, and loose tobacco. These products – often candy-flavored – have become increasingly popular among youth, and the tax loophole makes them both cheaper and more attractive. Both the House and Senate bills would close this loophole and raise taxes on “other tobacco products” to the same rate as cigarettes, while dedicating the funds to the Prevention and Wellness Trust Fund to invest in proven community prevention programs. The Senate bill would also raise the cigarette tax by $1.25.

INCREASING CHILDRENS’ PHYSICAL ACTIVITY

5. Physical Activity and Physical Education for Healthy Kids Act – (S246/H478), Introduced by Senator Thomas McGee (D-Lynn) and Representative Jeffrey Sánchez (D-Jamaica Plain).  Also endorsed by the American Heart/Stroke Association and Boston Children’s Hospital.

Legislative co-sponsors: Representatives Atkins, Balser, Cantwell, Coakley-Rivera, Conroy, Decker, Devers, Fennell, Forry, Fox, Garballey, Garry, Gregoire, Haddad, Hecht, Henriquez, Hogan, Kafka, Kaufman, Khan, Lewis, Madden, McMurtry, Murphy, Provost, Rogers, Rosa, Sannicandro, Scibak, Sciortino, Silvia, Smizik, Stanley, Story, Chris Walsh, and Senators Brownsberger, Candaras, DiDomenico, Donoghue, Eldridge, Jehlen, Knapik, Rush, Spilka.

Regular physical activity helps young people control weight, improve health, and increase academic achievement.  However, less than half of Massachusetts high school students meet recommendations for physical activity and the number of students participating in regular physical education (PE) has decreased dramatically in the last 20 years.  If passed, this bill will:

• Require that students in K-8 receive a minimum of 30 minutes a day of physical activity through PE, recess, classroom energizers, or other activities.
• Prohibit schools from using physical activity as a punishment or withholding opportunities for physical activity as punishment.
• Require an evaluation of current Physical Education standards, practices and instruction.
• Establish a nutrition and physical activity best practices database that includes successful programs and policies implemented by local school districts.

A FRESH FOOD FINANCING INITIATIVE

6. An Act to Expand Access to Healthy Foods – (S380/H168), introduced by Senator Michael Moore (D-Millbury) and Representative Linda Dorcena Forry (D-Dorchester).

Legislative co-sponsors: Representatives Atkins, Cariddi, Coakley-Rivera, Conroy, Decker, Gordon, Hecht, Holmes, Khan, Kocot, Lewis, Malia, Rosa, Sciortino, Silvia, Smizik, Story, Vega and Senators DiDomenico, Eldridge, Rodrigues, Spilka, Welch, Wolf.

This legislation, based on recommendations of the Massachusetts Grocery Access Task Force, will provide funds and technical assistance to support a variety of methods of making healthy food available in urban and rural “food deserts.” It also supports local farmers markets, workforce development programs, and public education programs about healthy eating. The Task Force is a public-private partnership composed of leaders from the grocery industry, economic development, public health, and civic sectors.

PROTECTING FIRST RESPONDERS

7. Public Health Volunteer Responder Bill – (SD1375/HD396), introduced by Senator Richard Moore (D-Worcester) and Representative Denise Garlick (D-Needham).  Also endorsed by the Coalition for Local Public Health.

Legislative co-sponsors: Representatives Arciero, Beaton, Bradley, Boldyga, Calter, Cantwell, Conroy, Cutler, DeMacedo, Ferguson, Frost, Harrington, Hecht, Hill, Hogan, Howitt, Humason, Khan, Koczera, Jones, Kuros, Lawn, Lewis, Peterson, Poirier, Provost, Scibak, Sciortino, Silvia, Smola, Stanley, Winslow.

Volunteers are essential for the provision of public health services during emergencies as well as for more routine public health responses, such as vaccination clinics. Local Medical Reserve Corps (MRCs) have been instrumental in recruiting, credentialing, training, and ensuring proper oversight of volunteer personnel who are ready to answer the call and assist their communities in time of need. However, volunteer recruitment and retention efforts have been hampered by the fact that volunteers remain liable in some circumstances when called to service, creating gaps in response capacity. This bill would address this by providing liability protection for volunteers acting under the direction of state or local public health authorities.

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Thanks to Maddie Ribble (MPHA) for feedback on a previous draft.

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Related Previous Posting:

> What Transportation And Public Health Can Learn From Each Other About Changing Public Behaviors

While the Seaport gets all the headlines, of Boston’s traditional neighborhoods it is Allston that is about to undergo the most dramatic change physically, economically, and demographically.  As a result, it is an important case study and indicator of how the city will be implementing its commitment to Complete Streets, walkability, traffic calming, and the Mayor’s core statement that “the car is no longer king.”  The good news is that there is no doubt that transit, pedestrian, and bicycling facilities will be included in future plans.  The question is whether they will be treated as secondary, or as equals, or even (can we hope?) be given priority over Single Occupancy Vehicles – meaning cars.

Allston will change because of the impact of Harvard’s massive (multi-hundred acre) campus and sports facility expansion, New Balance’s intensive 14-acre New Brighton Landing (NBL) mixed-use development (including another major sports complex), and a new Framingham/Worcester Line Commuter Rail station.  Even Boston University is planning to expand its sports complex over 3 or 4 more blocks behind the Shaws supermarket between Commonwealth Ave. and the Mass Pike. Some of the ripple effects are already happening.  For example, driven by the fact that nearly half of the neighborhood’s residents don’t own cars, new developments are being proposed that include fewer than the zoning-standard 2 parking space per unit, which lowers construction costs and can help keep rents affordable.

The increased commuter and shopping traffic potentially created by the Harvard and NBL developments – up to tens of thousands of additional daily car trips – has provided leverage for the city and community advocates to demand significant “mitigations” from the larger developers.  In line with New Balance’s intention to create a “health and wellness district,” it’s developer has promised the $10 million Commuter Line train station along with road and intersection improvements intended to both facilitate car traffic and encourage transit, bicycle, and walking.  In contrast, despite the huge increased in Allston/Cambridge traffic it’s expansion will create, Harvard has promised relatively little help on transportation, and it is now seeking to “recalibrate” its other contributions over a longer time-frame if not drop them entirely.  As always, it’s the details that count and there is lots of room for negotiations, both with the current big players and those yet to come.  But no matter what mitigations – physical, policy, and financial – are secured from developers, the city (primarily through the Boston Redevelopment Authority, BRA) will be ultimately in charge of deciding on street designs and will inevitably have to make changes even beyond the negotiated concessions.

From an active transportation perspective, the issues include (a) commuter, event, and shopping trips from outside the area, (b) getting around within the neighborhood, and (c) connections with the immediate surroundings (especially the Charles River roads, paths, and parks).  The foundation requirement for dealing with all three transportation issues is requiring that every new developer and any current commercial property owner seeking to expand implement a very aggressive Transportation Management Demand program, with specific Single-Occupancy Vehicle maximums and challenging transit-bike-walk goals, with actual performance measured for at least the first 4 or 5 years.  Continue reading →

Politics is the art of the possible and getting things pass requires placating a broad variety of often competing interests.  All of which makes it hard to be bold or to even fully address complicated issues.  Small, incremental steps are the usual, and often appropriate, approach.  So it is rather remarkable when an elected executive comes out with a visionary, risky, and courageous proposal that could actually solve several long-standing problems while setting the stage for greater prosperity and increased equity.  Maybe the Governor’s decision to return to the more lucrative private sector has emboldened him, or maybe there is a real turning of the political tide, but even though there are many ways the FY2014 budget proposal and its revenue measures could be improved,  it’s overall thrust – including its focus on education, health, and transportation – is truly praiseworthy.

For transportation, as described in a ten-year plan titled “The Way Forward”, the Administration proposes to finally get us out of the black hole of Big Dig debt, begin paying operating costs out of revenue instead of bond money, and making targeting expansion investments including more transit (train, trolley, bus), bicycling, and walking facilities.  Through another multi-year plan, the Governor proposes to provide more (and better) schooling for our children and relevant skills-training for adults.  And he wants to finally stop the bludgeoning of public health systems, which will reap long-range dividends in family well-being and lower health care costs.

None of this, even in total, will fully restore the nearly $11 billion in cumulative budget cuts and savings over the past four years.  However, it is an increase from last year and will require raising the previous $33 billion dollar state budget by another $1.9 billion.  The cost of doing nothing, particularly for transportation, is much higher.  In addition, the proposed mix of taxes and fees, despite their overall 6.9% increase, will make our regressive tax system slightly less discriminatory against lower-income families — while the income tax will go up by 1%, the sales tax will go down by 1.75%, the personal income tax exemption will double, and a long list of income tax exemptions will be eliminated.  To reduce future shortfalls, turnpike tolls, gas tax rates, and MBTA fares will be indexed to inflation.  As a public health measure the tobacco tax will go up and be extended to all tobacco products and the current subsidy of candy/soda created by their being exempted from sales tax will end.  For environmental, health, and market-fair-play reasons, the bottle-return deposit will be extended to water and sport drinks.

Of course, the devil is always in the details.  Perhaps our escalating climate change crises should have taken a higher priority, with more energy conservation and local resiliency programs paid for with even higher gas taxes or even a carbon tax.  Perhaps some of the railroad extensions to gateway cities should have been shelved in favor of higher-usage initiatives such as the long-delayed Urban Ring or expanding rail along the Connecticut River.  But these are quibbles compared with what is being proposed.  And unless the general package is adopted, there won’t be any details to fight over.

The big question is whether the Legislature will have as much courage as the Governor.  He is not running for re-election, most of them are.  While Massachusetts’ unemployment rate is lower than the national average, there are still a lot of people out of work or in foreclosure.  Over the past years the Legislature has rejected several tax and fee increase proposals.  But times have changed. In the days after the Governor announced his Transportation and Education plans and then his FY2014 Budget with the needed tax and fee increases, top legislators only issued cautious statements.  While agreeing that many of the proposed improvements are needed, they seem to be waiting for the public response.  So far, there hasn’t been a revival of the anti-tax hysteria that killed previous revenue efforts.  Maybe people understand that doing nothing will cost even more – an estimated $11 billion in property damage, injury and loss of life as well as the loss of up to 15,600 jobs!

Six years ago, and then again two years ago, Deval Patrick ran as a progressive and Massachusetts voters elected him.  However, as with President Obama, the fiscal crises and the Tea Party juggernaut severely limited his options.  But maybe, now, we are finally seeing the Governor we thought we were originally electing.  He’s done his job – what happens with his proposals is now partly up to us, the public, and what we say to our legislative representatives.  You can learn more from Transportation for Massachusetts and the Mass Public Health Association.  And when you’ve made up your mind, let your legislative representative know — the state has created a website that allows you to find out your representative’s name, phone, address, and email by entering your own residential address or the representatives first/last name.   Continue reading →

We advocate for something because we believe it is good, needed, an improvement.  We think of ourselves as the good guys eloquently convincing decision-makers to adopt our desired option or, if that fails, mobilizing a righteous grass-roots movement to demand action.   It’s an attractive role, placing you in the middle of a supportive community of interesting people, whether as a job or on a volunteer basis.  So it’s not surprising that people frequently ask me and others how to get more involved.  (The short answer – volunteer, make connections, learn about the issues, and strengthen your communication skills!)

But people often have a distorted view of what Advocacy actually entails.  Yes, it requires idealism, long hours, and a willingness to forgo salary increases.   But there is a lot more to it than public speaking, rabble rousing, or even community organizing.

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Transportation is responsible for 36% of Massachusetts’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. In order to meet the reductions required by our state’s Global Warming Solutions Act, MassDOT has committed itself to significantly improving its internal operational energy efficiency (GreenDOT) and  tripling the share of travel done using transit, bicycle, and foot over the next 18 years.  Mandating higher mile-per-gallon vehicles and less polluting fuels will also help achieve the GHG reduction goals.  However, assuming a reasonable rate of population and economic growth between now and 2030, there will be a corresponding increase in transportation activity.  To reach the Mode Shift goals, MassDOT will have to find ways to channel almost all of it into the target modes rather than Single Occupancy Vehicles (SOV).

Improving and expanding walking and transit facilities must be a crucial part of the Mode Shift program.  In the context of MassDOT’s Mode Shift goals “functional walking” is what counts – the short trips we take every day to do errands, see friends, go out for lunch, and at the start or finish of almost every motorized trip.  In addition to improved sidewalks and intersections, increasing walking requires changing our zoning and mortgage systems to prioritize multi-use density in town centers and urban neighborhoods.  Continue reading →

Is caring about each other, going out of our way to help each other, a tactic or strategy or core mission of human life?  For example:  One of the amazing realities of our streets is that despite the frequent design inadequacy and congested confusion of busy intersections, we almost always find a way to safely and semi-efficiently make room for each other as we wind our own way forward.   What’s amazing is not that there are so many accidents, but that there are so few.

Do we make way for each other as we drive-walk-bike simply because being too aggressive risks causing a time-consuming jam, or even self-injury?  Or because we fear retaliation for misbehavior?  Or do we do it because being courteous, even helpful, to others is a type of enlightened self-interest, perhaps even a value statement about the way we think human interactions ought to occur and the kind of society we wish to inhabit?

At an even deeper level, the question becomes: is life ultimately a “war of all against all” with individual self-interest and self-protection the only valid motivation for human interaction, or are we inherently social beings needing to stand up for ourselves but ultimately so mutually dependent that our own welfare is inescapably tied to the actions not only of family and friends but even of strangers?

We are currently engaged in a national debate over guns and a state debate over taxation.  On the most fundamental level, both debates boil down to how you answer the earlier questions.  If you believe that individualism is primary, then anti-gun control, anti-tax, and anti-government arguments might make sense.  If you believe, as President Obama said at Newtown, that “we’re all in this together” then it might make sense to restrict access to weapons, use government as a pro-active agent, and accept that “taxes are the price we pay for civilization” (Oliver Wendell Holms Jr.).  If so, then the pursuit of happiness may be best conducted by working together to create the friendly village that children need to grow and we adults often describe as own preferred neighborhood.

GUNS:  One of the preconditions of peaceful interaction and livable communities – on the streets and in our homes – is the progressive removal of violence from daily life.  The NRA vision that everyone must be his own policeman leads not to equality but to tyranny, to the empowerment of local bullies and vigilantes whose greater strength, aggressiveness, and willingness to inflict pain gives them a competitive advantage.  Universal gun ownership is not an equalizer but an enabler of domestic violence, protection rackets, and social disintegration: do we really want our communities to resemble Somalia? Restricting the legitimate use of force to authorized bodies, the police and military, does make the unarmed population weaker in relationship to the government — which is why it is so important to keep strengthening democracy and preventing its constant distortion by the rich and powerful, including the hyper-funded NRA.

(Even if you believe, as some right-wing fanatics do, that the US government is or is about to become an irredeemably Stalinist dictatorship, it would be impossible for even an assault-rifle-supplied uprising to beat today’s airborne military without – horrors! – foreign intervention, as the Syrian and Libyan rebels know all too well.)

TAXES & SPENDING:  In Massachusetts, Governor Patrick has once again stuck his neck out and proposed decreasing the regressive sales tax while increasing the progressive family deduction and income tax.  Filers earning less than $37,523 would end up with a net of $100-to-$200 more each year; filers with taxable income over $102,886 would pay a few thousand more each year; the majority of the state’s families, whose taxable income falls between these extremes, would see a net annual of $100-$400 depending on their mixture of revenue sources and spending patterns.  (The Governor also proposes to raise $149 million by eliminating some individual and corporate deductions.)  In other words, those who financially benefit the most from the social stability and economic growth that the state helps create would contribute the most to its continued operation.

On the spending side, the new funds would be primarily used to keep our transportation system from collapsing and to expand educational opportunities – both of which are investments that will bring long-term benefits far in excess of the initial cost.  While the operations of MassDOT can always be improved, there is little question that simply maintaining our current transportation system, much less expanding and redesigning it to meet the demands of the 21^st century, require much much more than can be found through internal savings.  We either raise the money or accept economic stagnation.

And anyone who thinks that increasing the skills of our future workforce isn’t a vital step for more general economic well-being – including their own – is simply stupid.

READ AND WRITE:  But don’t take it from me.  I urge readers to learn more about the Governor’s Transportation and Revenue Plans.  Then let your state Legislators know what you think (look them up here) as well as House Speaker Robert DeLeo and Senate President Therese Murray.

And as you read, think, and express your opinion, remember that unless you are Robinson Crusoe living in isolated self-sufficiency (although even he wished to be rescued!), then the real cost of avoiding one of Benjamin Franklin’s two inevitabilities, taxes, is to become exposed to lots more of the second, death.

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Related Previous Posts:

> HEALTHY PEOPLE, SAFE TRAVEL, GOOD BUSINESS, PERSONAL CHOICE: Framing Mode Shift

> CRISIS AND OPPORTUNITY AT MASSDOT: Money, Internal Operations, and Political Support for Change.

> REFRAMING ISSUES TO UNITE US: A Transportation Platform for Local Use

> ROAD RAGE, GUNS, & DEMOCRACY: Why Road Safety is About More Than Traffic Lights

The implementation of Boston’s Complete Streets Policy and the Bike Network Plan will radically improve the safety and comfort of walking and cycling in the city.  But full implementation will require many different kinds of changes to many roads all around the city.  The best way to lower the inevitable anxiety about change is to have lots of examples already in place, demonstrating (as the passage of same-sex marriage did in its own sphere) that it won’t precipitate the end of the world or even disrupt our everyday lives.

One of the things that Boston will need to create are Bicycle Boulevards (sometimes called Slow Zones or Bike/Ped Priority Streets) – multi-block stretches of road that keep traffic volume and speed low while prioritizing bicycle and pedestrian movement through structural traffic-calming methods (such as speed bumps and  corner extensions) as well as new intersection signalization (such as bike-specific signals).  To further encourage non-expert use, City’s often keep Bicycle Boulevard pavements particularly well-maintained, smooth and clear (e.g. after snow storms).  Cars are typically only allowed to travel in one direction while bicycles are sometimes allowed to go both ways.

(More terminology:  Bicycle Boulevards are permanent changes while a Cyclovia is typically a temporary although also multi-block event.  Boston is beginning to use the term “Neighborway” as part of its Bicycle Network Plan to describe shorter stretches of permanently traffic-controlled street.  A temporary banning of traffic on a particularly block can be the basis of a one-time Block Party or, if repeated regularly to allow children to safely use the pavement for play, a seasonal Play Street.)

Whatever it’s called, and no matter how many blocks long it runs, it seems to me that at least the inbound (“east-bound) side road paralleling Boston’s stretch of Commonwealth Avenue from Chestnut Hill Avenue to Harvard Street, or even all the way to Packards Corner (where North Beacon forks off), would be a wonderful place to create a pilot Bicycle Boulevard – if only because the road is already used in that way and finishing the job, at least on a trial basis, would require nothing more expensive than paint and perhaps some planters.  (This wouldn’t address the issues that led to Christopher Weigl’s death on the BU stretch below Packard’s Corner, but it might help make things safer further up the road.)  Of course, there are probably even better places to conduct this type of pilot than along the CommAve side road…Suggestions?

There are side roads on both flanks of Commonwealth, mostly used for car parking – and bicycling.  While the out-bound service road is both incomplete and steep, the in-bound side is continuous for the entire way.   However, both of the side roads are already being used almost as if they were a Bicycle Boulevard – cars move slowly (usually below 15 mph), pedestrians walk across wherever they want, people play in the space, bicyclists ride down the middle of the lane often in both directions.  The continuing car-dominance of operations of the major intersection will need to be rectified, and the city will need to find ways to create public awareness of the new Bicycle Boulevard nature of the route.  But those issues can be addressed.

Explanatory signs and 15 mph Advisory Speed suggestions would be put up at various points.  One way to dramatize the new status would be to change the current areas of dangerous “head-in angle parking” (requiring drivers to blindly back out into an unseen road) into safer “head-out angle” parking (placing the driver facing outward towards on-coming movement).   It might also be possible to add temporary (rubber) speed bumps in a of couple spots.  Maybe a bike rack or Hubway station might be installed.  That’s it.  Cars would still be allowed.  No parking spots (there are thousands!) would be removed.

Of course, it would be better to do more – corner bulb-outs, retiming of all the traffic lights, etc.  And differing treatments would be needed on the major and minor intersections.  But much of this could be done with low-cost tools….Then all that would be needed is the press release saying that this is a pilot effort to test an exciting new approach to making our city safer for everyone – without disrupting anyone’s ability to get around in the method of their choice.  Maybe the PR should occur during late August as part of outreach to entering students reminding them to obey traffic rules, turn on lights at night, wear helmets and give way to pedestrians – especially the elderly and the baby-carriage pushing new parents who seem to make up such a large percentage of the population along upper Commonwealth.

Any thoughts about other relatively quick-easy-and-low-cost places to start?

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Previous related posts:

> SIGNS, PAINT, AND FLEXIBILITY: Creative No-Cost Ways To Improve Road Intelligibility

> OPEN STREETS & CYCLOVIAS: Creating Space For Urban Transformation

> QUICK, VISIBLE, REMOVABLE: Improving City Life By Unleashing Citizen Creativity Through Government Initiative

> CONTRA-FLOW LANES: Fear and Comfort on Your Own Block

In response to the state’s 2008 Global Warming Solutions Act, which sets deadlines for reducing Green House Gas emissions, MassDOT has recently announced plans to triple the share of travel done using transit, bicycle, and foot by 2030 — 18 years from now.  (The Act was also the impetus for MassDOT’s exemplary GreenDOT program.) Since both our population and economy are likely to grow over that time, in order to reach that mode share goal almost none of the inevitable increase in transportation activity can happen in Single Occupancy Vehicles (SOVs).  The entire rise in travel will have to use train, trolley, bus, multi-person cars, bikes, or feet.

It’s an incredibly ambitious goal, no matter what numbers are used as the baseline or exactly how the mode shares are measured (more on those issues in subsequent posts).    The payoff is equally huge – the creation of a transportation system that not only does less damage to our environment (and storm-battered weather) but that is also less costly to run, not only facilitates better health (through less pollution and more physical activity) but also promotes local business activity, not only makes travel safer but also gives people more residential choices.  And it will even reduce congestion for those who have to drive.   Success will help maintain Massachusetts’ standing as a great place to go to school, live, work, play, and raise a family.  The entire citizenry has a stake in its success!

Obviously, people can’t stop using their cars if there is no other way to get where they need to go.  So the core of the effort has to be a vast expansion of our mass transit facilities not only in the Boston area but around the state through increased funding to the Regional Transportation Agencies (RTAs):  rail, trolley, bus, and “last mile” solutions such as shuttle buses, shared-car-ride programs, and shared bike systems (e.g. Hubway).  Success also requires a vast expansion of our bicycle facilities: networks of regional “Green Routes” corridors using off-road paths or traffic-separated protected lanes for commuting (and recreational) use as well as municipal bike networks for cross-town and intra-neighborhood trips.  And all of this, as well as the maintenance of our current roads, require the development of a sustainable, equitable, and adequate revenue stream capable of dealing not only with people but freight.

However, changing people’s transportation behavior requires more than infrastructure.  The decision-making context has to also change.   The decision not to use a car needs to be made easier and more socially encouraged.  The alternatives have to be more convenient and incentivized.  Fortunately, there are ways to do this including revising bus routes, improving car-to-transit transitions, making roads safer for vulnerable users, ending parking’s free ride, getting employers involved, and the biggest of all – becoming smarter about land-use.   Some of these are challenging, many simply require leadership.

The good news is that the Patrick Administration seems to understand that reducing Green House Gas emissions via Mode Shift and other strategies requires multi-agency coordination – Transportation, Energy and Environment, Health and Human Services, Community and Economic Development, and more.  But Advocates need to internalize the same message – we need to create coalitions that bring together groups from an equally broad set of issues and we have to develop joint campaigns that integrate our various perspectives and goals into a unified whole.

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FACILITATING TRANSIT

One reason that more people don’t use public transportation is that they simply haven’t tried it. An MIT-based pilot study found that 25 percent of long-term car commuters stayed with public transportation after being induced to simply try it by being allowed free rides for a brief period.

Negative market-based incentives also work.   Placing toll booths (EZ Pass compatible, of course) on I-93 would force north-south commuters to share the burden now totally bourn by east-west Mass Pike drivers.  Stockholm highway traffic dropped by 20% after a fee, was imposed, virtually eliminating congestion, with both those who decided to leave their cars behind and those continuing to drive surprised and pleased with their new travel situation.  As a result, the policy’s 70% disapproval rating flipped to a 70% approval rating and the congestion fee system was made permanent.

But it’s better to be positive.  Bus routes need to be designed to more directly connect people with our region’s dispersed job locations.  The “T” already does this to some extent, but its routes are often too circuitous and slow with too many stops.  We need more Express services on more frequent schedules, starting in a greater number of locations, with lower fees.  Whether going in or out between the city and suburbs, or around from one suburb to another, it should be faster, easier, and less expensive to take the bus or train than to drive a car, particularly for the daily commute.  Where traffic congestion slows things down, the buses need to be given reserved lanes.  (On city streets, these lanes can be shared with bicyclists.  On highways they can be shared with true HOV vehicles – holding 3 or more people.)

Regular bus service is inherently limited to high-ridership routes.  So it needs to be augmented by a vast number of public and private shuttle services, perhaps run by the Regional Transportation Agencies or Transportation Management Associations (TMAs) such as the Easy Ride service in Cambridge.

TRANSITIONS:  When moving from car to bus, train, or subway, MassDOT needs to make the entire transition smooth and fast.  This may require expanding parking or even roads.  At Alewife, for example, commuters not that congested approachways sometimes makes it take almost as long getting from Route 2 or Route 16 to the station as it does getting from the suburbs to the traffic circle.

TRANSPORTATION DEMAND MANAGEMENT:  Most important would be creating both carrot and stick incentives for employers in every part of the state (or at least all employers of more than 25 or 50 people) to set up Parking and Transportation Demand Management (PTDM) programs.   Originally required by a consent order with the EPA to begin controlling air pollution, Cambridge has been running a PTDM program for nearly 13 years, with the most recent success being in Kendall Square where a building boom has caused a 40% increase in office space, occupied by thousands of newcomers while the number of cars on major streets has actually dropped by as much as 14% at some intersections.   (See the table below for Cambridge’s list of suggested PTDM measures from which employers are able to choose a set of “robust, moderate, and weaker” actions.)  The state could make eligibility for certain programs or tax breaks dependent on having a PTDM plan that meets certain criteria, or allow tax deductions of some magnitude for PTDM expenses, or prohibit any firm without a PTDM program from bidding on government contracts, or something else.

PARKING:  The ease and cost of a parking spot has a significant impact on people’s decision whether or not to use a car for a short trip.  Estimates are that up to 40% of the car traffic in certain areas is caused by people circling the block looking for a free spot.   But on-street parking is basically low-cost or free storage of personal belongings on public land.  So municipalities should be encouraged to restructure their down-town parking policies so they charge something closer to “market rate” for the busiest locations at the busiest times (probably best if combined with methods for finding open spots), thereby making it smarter for long-term parkers to leave their vehicles further out and freeing up spots for quicker-turn-over business customers.

And while parking at transit transfer points should remain enticingly low-cost (along with the addition of more weather-protected bicycle parking and improved walking routes from nearby homes), we need to balance this “carrot” with a “stick” – a local-option law allowing municipalities to levy a fee on the owners of large surface-area parking lots in out-of-downtown shopping malls or strip malls.  One idea is to do this as part of the creation of a municipal “stormwater utility” derived from those already set up in Newton, Reading, and Chicopee funded by a locally-set “rain tax.”   This water and air remediation fee could help recover the previously “externalized” costs of upgrading sewer systems and sewerage process plants to handle polluted storm-water run-off, of dealing with the reduced replenishment of regional aquifers, to off-set the increased health insurance and disability costs of the people who will develop pollution-aggravated asthma, and more.  Hopefully, the parking lot owner will begin passing on the levy to their customers by beginning to charge for parking, thereby encouraging them to consider other transportation methods.

RECLAIMING STREET SPACE

Streets, the public right of way, constitute the largest and most valuable physical asset owned by most municipalities.  We can do better than simply turn them over for the exclusive and subsidized use of cars.   If we want people to feel more favorably about using other options, at a minimum we need to make the presence of motorized traffic less threatening to everyone else. The default state speed limit for densely populated and commercial areas should be lowered to 20 mph (as a bill proposed by state Senator Denise Provost would do) or even to 15 mph.   Traffic calming, using a variety of techniques to make it feel uncomfortable to drive faster than a set speed (regardless of the “official” speed limit) on a particular stretch of road, should be required in any road project that uses Chapter 90 money – the major source of state transportation funds used by local municipalities.

SAFETY ZONES & VULNERABLE USERS: The state should authorize every municipality to create “Safety Zones” with 15mph (or 20 mph) limits, reinforced by traffic calming measures, not only around schools but also around parks, playgroups, public swimming pools, senior centers and housing, hospitals and health centers.  And a new Vulnerable Road Users Protection law should create a “rebuttable assumption” that the operator of any vehicle that hits or dangerously crowds a “vulnerable road user” is by default primarily responsible for the incident and any negative effects, establishing (as Oregon and other state have already done) “enhanced penalties for careless drivers who hurt vulnerable users.”

FOCUSING LAND USE

In the long run, land-use patterns shape transportation usage, the state has coordinated many of its programs and policies to encourage Transportation Oriented Development (TOD), focusing new housing construction around transit stations or along bus lines.  Governor Patrick also announced the Compact Neighborhood Initiative which provides incentives for residential development near transit and town centers with the goal of creating 10,000 additional multi-family buildings each year.  These are important programs, although TOD housing programs seldom adequately deal with the fact that it is the relationship of where people live to where they work, along with the availability of nearby food and entertain sources, that determines their actual transportation activity.

ZONING: The state is also hoping promote Smart Growth by encouraging communities to use the type of entry-level Master Planning recently conducted along the proposed South Coast Rail Line to designate general areas in which to focus development or to conserve.  This is good, but not enough.  Unfortunately, real zoning reform remains bottled up in the State Legislature despite over a decade of effort.  Current zoning regulations, which are created at the local level based on guidelines set at the state level, simply don’t give municipalities the tools they need to encourage growth while avoiding car-dependent sprawl, to expand their tax base while protecting the environment, to facilitate mixed-use construction while requiring inclusionary opportunities for all.   A broad coalition is working with legislators to devise a less ambitious, “first step” reform package for the next session, but given the desperate need to get transportation funding reform passed this year, it’s not clear how much time and energy the Administration will have left to expend on zoning.

But progress can still be made on the local level.  One zoning idea is to set parking maximums rather than minimums on new development, especially on developments in urban areas or suburban centers.  Boston, and perhaps the other biggest cities, may even decide to allow different areas to regulate parking in a site-specific manner.  The idea is not to isolate people — if bus or transit service isn’t available, municipalities can require that developers include car rental or taxi services.

THE BOTTOM LINE

Meeting the state’s Climate Protection goals will require significant changes in many areas of activity.  In transportation, it will require shifting to cleaner and more fuel-efficient vehicles as well as a huge increase in the number and percentage of people who walk, bike, share a vehicle, or take a bus and train rather than jump in their car.  Achieving that goal will require not only require additional facilities but a change in the decision-making context so that the default choice no long involves looking for your car keys.  The first step is to analyze the options, identify those with the biggest potential for influencing transportation choices – taking into account different time frames and differences in urban-suburban-rural situations – and then making them happen.

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Thanks to Stephanie Groll and the Cambridge Community Development Department for the PTDM table.

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Related Previous Postings:

> ZONING REFORM: Unlocking Investment in Transportation, Health, and Livable Communities

> HEALTHY PEOPLE, SAFE TRAVEL, GOOD BUSINESS, PERSONAL CHOICE: Framing Mode Shift

> IMPROVING LIVABILITY, CONTROLING DISPLACEMENT: Can You Upgrade a Neighborhood Without Destroying it’s Community?

> CRISIS AND OPPORTUNITY AT MASSDOT: Money, Internal Operations, and Political Support for Change.

> TRANSPORTATION FINANCES: Why Saving Public Transportation Requires Helping Car Drivers

It’s important to know that the huge increase in bicycling in Boston has been accompanied by a much small increase in bike-car collisions, meaning that the accident rate has gone down.  It’s yet another validation of the “Safety In Numbers” principle.  It’s not that the new cyclists are more skilled than the previous ones, or that a higher percentage of them are wearing helmets. It’s simply that the more people on bikes the more that drivers become aware and accepting of their presence, leading to a lower rate of collisions and injuries.

But that doesn’t make it any less upsetting to learn that yet another bicyclist has been killed by a motor vehicle.  The fifth this year.   Yet another ghost haunting our streets.

The police haven’t issued a final report on this latest tragedy, so the following is based on what has been available in the newspapers and on-line.  But here is my best guess of what happened, and some suggestions about how to make it less likely to happen again.

Continue reading →

MassDOT has announced a goal of tripling the mode share of transit, walking, and bicycling over the next 18 years while also making the roads safer and more efficient for car travel.  No matter how it is eventually measured (trips, vehicle or person miles traveled, or some combination), the Mode Shift policy is visionary and ambitious.  If implemented, it will transform both the state’s transportation system and the Transportation Department.   It will make Massachusetts a national leader in environmental and climate protection, in primary prevention and public health, in “main street” business revival and sustainable economic development, and much more.  The real issue is not if a more sustainable transportation system is needed, the one we have is increasingly dysfunctional as well as unaffordable, but if such a transformative goal will be fully adopted and implemented.

One part of the problem is that cyclists are a visible and prominent part of the coalitions fighting for a better, safer, healthier transportation system.  In fact, many car drivers see the entire new agenda as primarily about serving the needs of the 1% or 2% of the population who bikes.  And that’s a not good:  bicycling, and walking, are not how the majority of people get around.  State leaders need to support and integrate bicyclists demands for better facilities, in both urban and suburban-town-center areas as well as along the regional Rail-Trail networks.  But expanding bicycle facilities can’t be presented as the core reason for the new programs.

As with so many other proposals to create a stronger foundation for future growth – dealing with public health, environmental protection, and the built environment, among others – advocates and state leaders needs to find ways to frame the discussion so that a majority of citizens see how the costs and potential short-term disruption will relatively quickly lead to benefits for themselves and their communities

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THE FIRST CHALLENGE

Implementation of the state’s mode shift policy will be complicated and lengthy, requiring enormous creativity, persistence, and multi-agency collaboration at every level of government.  However, the initial challenge is not implementation: it’s making sure that the vision and goal gains enough enduring public (and political) support to get fully adopted in the first place.

It’s clear that Transportation Secretary Rich Davey is serious about the need for change, to turn MassDOT into a true, all-modes transportation agency rather than a glorified highway department with a transit appendage.  And he knows that getting MassDOT’s staff fully on-board will require cultivating internal champions as well as some organizational restructuring.

Fortunately, money is not the biggest challenge – there is plenty available in the “highway” budget to cover needed non-car improvements if there is political will to use them that way.  (Getting enough funds for T and rail improvements is another matter.)

The biggest challenge comes from the fact that most Massachusetts residents (most Americans!) use their car(s) every day; for almost every trip; which takes them longer and longer because of both growing home-work distance and greater congestion.  Looking at the world through the frame of their car windshields the idea of narrowing travel lanes and intersections, installing raised intersections or speed bumps, reducing the speed limit, or eliminating parking in order to make room for bike lanes and wider sidewalks is both stupid and insulting.  Particularly the bike lanes – which seem like a taking of valuable road space from the majority of working adults and reserving it for seasonal use by a tiny number of teens and twenty-somethings.  (Even raising fees or taxes to pay for transit – the T and rail and bus – can feel like forcing people across the state to pay for services that are only used by a few in metro-Boston.)

AN ALTERNATIVE FRAME

It’s not like the Patrick Administration is trying to justify mode shift because it will increase the number of cyclists and pedestrians.  (And what exactly is a “mode” anyway?)  But MassDOT hasn’t come up with a compelling alternative framing either.  The policy’s legal driver is the 2008 state Global Warming Solutions Act, which requires significant reductions in Green House Gas (GHG) emissions by 2020 and was also the impetus for MassDOT’s exemplary GreenDOT program.  But gas is a rather fuzzy, impersonal, and invisible symbol for the scale of change that Mode Shift implies.  From a public acceptance/marketing perspective, it’s simply not personalized and compelling enough

What is needed is a way to frame the upgrading of our transportation system as something that will improve everyone’s lives no matter how they choose to get around or what they are doing or where they live.  reducing Single-Occupancy Vehicle (SOV) trips will only happen if people feel there are better (affordable, convenient, efficient, safe) choices AND that things will be better when they do drive.

Everyone has a personal interest in not getting into a car accident on the way to work or school.  Everyone understands the value of getting more healthy exercise, preferably as part of their daily routines rather than as after-work gym time.  No one wants to be exposed to polluted air, water, and food.  Everyone wants to have lots of convenient nearby shopping, with vibrant stores that provide both goods and jobs while supporting the local tax base.  We want increased economic growth, but we don’t want to spend more time sitting in traffic jams.  We want to have options and choices rather than be forced – by law or economics – to fit someone else’s mold.

Equity – or at least fairness – must also be a central theme:  fairness for those outside Boston, fairness for the 1-in-8 state residents who don’t have access to a personal car (35% of Boston households!), fairness to those with lower incomes and wealth, fairness to those driving into Boston from the west in comparison to those coming from the North and South.  Everyone needs to give and get a fair share of the costs and the benefits.

ACCENTUATING THE PERSONAL STAKE

Health, safety, prosperity, and choice.  This can’t be a verbal window dressing; it has to be true. And when the policies are being discussed, it’s not enough for these ideas to be merely mentioned in the third paragraph.  Both advocates and Administration leaders have to make them the starting point of their announcements and explanations.

In the long run, even more powerful than the barrel of Mao’s gun is getting others to see the world in ways compatible to our own.  Every year over $400 billion is spent on advertising in the US.  The businesses putting up the money aren’t stupid – advertising works: not merely by letting potential consumers know about the product but also by associating it with powerful needs and desires.  Marketeers know that repetitive exposure to something breeds familiarity and then acceptance – even positive feelings!  I think the title of this blog would make an excellent tag line:  “Healthy People, Safe Travel, Good Business, Personal Choice.”  But we need a good program title.  Here are some starters:  “Transportation Choice” or “Travel Options” or (you knew this had to be part of the list) “Livable Streets.”

Ok….help!  There’s got to be better ideas!  Maybe MassDOT should hire a marketing consultant – or sponsor a public contest!   In the meantime:  any suggestions?

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Related previous blogs:

> CRISIS AND OPPORTUNITY AT MASSDOT: Money, Internal Operations, and Political Support for Change.

> TRANSPORTATION FINANCES: Why Saving Public Transportation Requires Helping Car Drivers

> COMPLETE STREETS: Design Elements, New Priorities, Means To An End

> REFRAMING ISSUES TO UNITE US: A Transportation Platform for Local Use

> FROM SLOGANS TO STREET DESIGN: MassDOT Needs To Move

> DESIGNING EFFECTIVE PROGRAMS: Mobilizing Constituencies, Developing Expertise, Sustaining Action

> LIVABLE STREETS – From Theory to Practice

A new effort has begun to bring improved transit and bicycle facilities to Roxbury, the base of Boston’s African-American community. (Full disclosure: On behalf of LivableStreets Alliance, I’m involved.) While most local people welcome the idea of more efficient bus routes, more comfortable bus stops, and protected bike lanes there has also been some opposition based on the fear that this invites gentrification.  It is similar to concerns about the larger impact of any improvement in a low-income area, from better parks to better food in local stores to better schools.

It feels like a no-win situation.  Public sector, taxpayer-funded investment is an essential foundation for livability in every neighborhood.  As much as anyone else, low-income people deserve good parks, lighting, schools, transit, roads, sidewalks, bicycle accommodations, and other public amenities.  But any significant improvements in a low-income neighborhood’s facilities, or investment in Smart Growth initiatives and Transit Oriented Design development, make the place more attractive to higher-income “pioneers” and then even higher-income “settlers.”  Rents and home prices increase.  The retail mix gets hipper and moves up-scale.  Even before any facility upgrading, the process may start with an influx of “transitional populations” – students, artists, gays – but it’s the public investment that preps the area for sale.  And then gentrification pushes out long-time families: think Jamaica Plain, Davis Square, Cambridge’s Area IV.

No wonder communities sometimes sound paranoid in opposing things that seem like no-brainers. While race and racism are always compounding factors, fear of displacement or simply of demographic change is not restricted to low-income or African-American communities – it underlies some of the nervousness about transit and bicycle improvements in middle-class white areas of Charlestown, Medford, and Arlington as well.

But it doesn’t have to be that way.  Improvements to the built and service environment can be balanced by policies and programs that preserve affordable and stable residential patterns.  It’s not that change won’t happen, but it can be tempered and guided in productive ways.  LARGER FORCES DOMINATE

In previous decades, urban power brokers sought to rejuvenate working class and low-income neighborhoods with blanket bombing actions like highway construction, urban renewal (often part of a larger strategy of what used to be described as “Negro Removal”), and other drastic interventions.  Citizen push-back has made those kinds of weapons of mass destruction harder to deploy these days, at least domestically.

A few neighborhoods are so poor and run down or isolated that they remain undesirable and avoid gentrification no matter what is done to them.  More typically, there is a complicated interaction between government action and deeper forces:  demographic, economic, and cultural dynamics.  Housing and real estate markets are constantly churning as people and businesses seek to adjust living conditions or maximize gain.  Cultural patterns, such as the return of empty nesters to the downtown and the preference of Millennials and young professionals for urban life, bring people into previously scorned areas.  Warehouse districts that offer artists large studio space at low-rents evolve into expensively chic addresses.  Down-trodden commercial areas that incubate successful start-up businesses soon attract deeper-pocket tenants or more established firms.  Local stores turn into bank branches.  Through it all, neighborhoods constantly change, and so do their inhabitants.

Public action can trigger neighborhood transformation, even if only by focusing attention on an area, but only if those larger forces are poised to move. In fact, public sector action often simply confirms and consolidates the changes that have already begun.  Still, government interventions of various kinds do play a role and, as public actions, are subject to some level of public debate and decision-making – should they be encouraged or not?

CHANGE IS DISRUPTIVE, BUT NOT ALWAYS BAD

To some extent, demographic succession, like the ecological succession that transforms meadows into forests, is inevitable, necessary, and can be good for the overall society – even for a meaningful percentage of the original residents.  Because of the extremely low level of redistributive regulation of our market economy, the benefits of this process are regressively distributed in proportion to wealth and influence.  At the same time, the reality is that poor neighborhoods desperately need physical and service improvements, whose maintenance and upgrading have been typically neglected for decades both as a result and then as a reinforcement of the area’s poverty and powerlessness.

And despite the disruption, changing from a low-income lost island to a mixed income community is not a totally bad thing.  Communities are more than a location.  The essence of community is social connection.  There are some circumstances where shared extreme poverty brings people together.  But long-term deprivation is more likely to lead to survival-focused desperation, social isolation, civic disorganization, and political powerlessness – which lead to further environmental and economic disparities.  A more diverse population and a more active economy can be a real improvement for everyone. Science magazine recently published a study following over 4,000 poverty-level families (average income below $20,000) in five cities.  Those who were able to use a federal program to move into higher-income areas tremendously improved their overall wellbeing, including their physical and mental health, raising their perceived life happiness to a level equivalent to that of people with incomes nearly $13,000 higher – even though their own incomes did not increase.

Making a community more livable, healthier, attractive, and clean is good – as is demographic diversity.  (Which also means that inclusionary zoning and other policies should be as strongly enforced in wealthy communities as upgrading is done in less affluent areas!) So perhaps the problem in working class and low-income neighborhoods is not that change starts, but that it goes too far and results in too many people being priced out of the area.  Maybe the trick is to begin transformation, but find ways to protect significant numbers of original residents from suffering the effects of real estate (and other) market changes.  It isn’t the bus stop or T station or bike lanes (or cycle tracks!) that drive out people; it’s the cost of living there.  The problem isn’t the public improvements but the pervasive private efforts to capture the value of those improvements for personal (or corporate) gain through increased prices and profits.

This means that public investment in poor neighborhoods should remain – or become – a high priority for city leaders.  And while parallel private investment should be encouraged it should be controlled and tempered with programs to counter the damaging impact of unregulated markets on local housing and commerce.

NON-MOTORIZED TRANSPORTATION

Of all the transportation-related improvements government can do, pedestrian and bicycling facilities may be a special case.  Making it easier and safer for children and adults to walk or cycle around an area provides significant improvements in the quality of life, but are seldom enough to precipitate demographic change.   In particular, bicycles provide a low-cost and health-promoting transportation option that is of particular value to low-income communities, and because of its extremely low mode share is unlikely to significantly influence demographic patterns.  In addition, despite the attitude among some African-Americans that “bikes are a white thing,” national surveys show whites and blacks with the same percentage of trips taken by bike; Hispanics have an even higher cycling mode share! The perceived difference  may result from the greater level of organized activity within the white cycling community, as well as their willingness to wear funny clothes.  In addition, most cycling in African-American communities is done by kids, which renders it less visible to community leaders (the opposite of what’s happening in white communities where the number of child-age cyclists continues to decline in proportion to adult riders).  So improving bicycling facilities in non-white communities through protected bike lanes and cycle tracks is primarily a way of protecting kids from harm.

COMMUNITY PRESERVATION IN CHANGING MARKETS

Preserving communities does not mean freezing them in their current configuration.  It does mean ensuring that current residents have the opportunity to either affordably stay or to move on to places that better meet their aspirations and needs.  The most important neighborhood-stabilization strategy is to provide non-market rate home ownership to current low-income and mid-income residents using methods to lock-in long-term affordability.  The sub-prime loan disaster shows how NOT to do this, but there are many successful and sustainable models such as mixed-income non-profit Community Development Corporations (CDC) using a limited equity or land trust structure.  (Long-term, income-based property tax relief is another essential component of this approach.)  For those unable to afford homes, family-appropriate scattered site public housing programs can also work if well designed and well run even though the failure of old-style mega-sized public housing and the conservative hatred of safety net programs has made it difficult to rationally discuss this approach.  Rent subsidy programs, Section 8 and others, are the next tier of support.   And, for those who can’t or choose not to stay, regional affordable housing inclusion regulations and non-discrimination laws have to be strengthened and enforced.

Housing is not the only area needing attention, although stable living arrangements are the foundation for a range of next steps.  .  Food and social services, cultural and social activity, safety and transportation are also important.  But in all these areas, success at welcoming needed improvements while avoiding total gentrification is ultimately based on community organization and political mobilization.  If newcomers and long-term residents can unite around a common vision of a vibrant, diverse, and safe neighborhood, the programs needed to influence the housing and retail market can be implemented.  It is a long-term and evolving effort – equity is a more of a process than an outcome.

Still, the reality is that the more powerful the larger forces shaping a neighborhood’s demographics the more difficult they are to resist.  Some neighborhoods will evolve slowly and gracefully.  But others will experience disruption and general displacement.  Change is always risky; but stagnation is worse – both for eco-systems and neighborhoods.

So bring on the bike and bus lanes, the playground lighting and the cleaned-up parks, new stores and school buildings.  And, at the same time, bring on the local community organizing that is the key to protecting people from destructive profiteering.  It is possible – as well as desirable – to both improve the neighborhood and preserve community.

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Thanks to Pete Stidman, of the Boston Cyclist Union, for his feedback to an earlier draft of this posting!

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Related previous postings:

> AVOIDING “NIMBY” – Navigating Between Fear and Greed

> ZONING REFORM: Unlocking Investment in Transportation, Health, and Livable Communities

> OPEN STREETS & CYCLOVIAS: Creating Space For Urban Transformation

> OUR NEW EXTENDED FAMILIES: How the Built Environment and Public Services Shape Social Relationships and Democratic Government

> REFRAMING ISSUES TO UNITE US: A Transportation Platform for Local Use

As a regular back-packer, my original perception of cross country Mountain Bikers was of arrogant punks who wrecked both the silence and the trail.  And the Down Hill bikers were even crazier – they get driven to the top and then fly down cliffs wearing bizarre armor.  To me, they were in the same category as the hot-dog skiers who jump off cliffs — who strike me as slightly insane no matter how amazing the photography.

Yes, I’m a bicycling advocate and an avid cyclist.  I restarted bicycling about 15 years ago as a form of exercise after my back and knees made running too problematic.  And then I discovered the usefulness of bike commuting and the joy of multi-day touring. But it was all about the roads – and thin tires.

So last month I was a bit nervous when former Boston Bike czarina, Nicole Freedman, invited a few of us up for some trail cycling in the amazingly beautiful Western Maine region around the Bigelow Mountains and Flagstaff Lake near the Sugarloaf ski area.  (Nicole now directors the growing Maine Huts and Trails program that is creating an amazing 160-mile, hut-to-hut skiing and camping route from the Mahoosuc Range to Moosehead Lake.  They’re about to open their fourth hyper-energy efficient hut and beginning to support bicycling trips as well – hence our invitation.)

My concerns were unwarranted:  mountain biking turned out to be fabulously fun!  And a lot more work than I expected.  A lot!  On the road, every turn of the pedal brings a bonus of many feet of additional coasting.  In the woods, every foot of travel takes effort to keep your balance while you power those fat tires over the bumps and roots and fallen branches and rocks, or through the mud or bogs and piles of fallen leaves and brush.  Going downhill, even on modest inclines, is almost as strenuous as going up, with a greater chance of caroming over the handlebars.

But it was wonderful!  Being outdoors is its own pleasure.  The air is forest fresh.  The fall foliage was at its peak, so the trail was blanketed with shining yellow and orange leaves that make everything feel bright even when the clouds covered the sun.   We saw tracks, but no moose.  The constantly threatened rain only arrived once as we rode back to the hut late one afternoon – giving me a renewed appreciation for the difference between water resistant and water proof.

Equally important was the advice I got that “it’s never embarrassing to walk when mountain biking.”  There were a couple of hills that I simply couldn’t get up; a couple of puddles that I couldn’t push through; and a couple of level areas that had those hidden holes where my front wheel suddenly dropped and I had a hard landing on a vulnerable part of my body against the bike frame.     But once I figured out how to keep my balance the sport became a total pleasure. Gearing down even below “Granny” level is part of the trick – there were stretches where we moved at about walking speed.  However, the overall experience isn’t slow:  the cycling combines the intensity of a pogo stick with the air-borne joy of diving into a pool.  I loved it.

Unfortunately, I didn’t lose any weight from all that exercise.  The Main Huts-and-Trail staff prepares enormous amounts of absolutely delicious food, and the more active we got the more we ate.  It’s an unfair dynamic!

Now, I’m looking forward to returning for a cross-country skiing adventure this winter.  But on bike or skis, I’m still not willing to jump off any cliffs.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING TO ALL!

I am old enough to remember the “Whites Only” signs on the water fountains and bathrooms in the American South, the place from which South Africa learned about Apartheid.  I remember the anguish my brother went through when he came out, and the contempt of Ronald Reagan and so many others about the ravages of AIDS to which my brother eventually succumbed.  I remember the fear that we felt when friends had to suffer through dangerously illegal abortions, and the shock of later learning that so many women in several generations of my extended family had gone through that horrible experience to protect their families or themselves.

So, for the second time I have ended election night in tears, amazed and thrilled that the segregated, gay-bashing, female-stereotyping, culturally repressive society I grew up in had put an African-American man into the Presidency who openly called for the end of those patterns; a BLACK man and family in the White House!

Don’t let anyone tell you that nothing has changed. We’ve come a very long way.  Still, the two elections were very different.  In 2008 I was filled with hope, even if tinged with concern.  In 2012 I mostly felt relief, with a twinge of hope.

In 2008 I hoped that the grass-roots movements that had energized the Obama campaign – the anti-war, civil rights, women’s liberation, gay rights, youth culture, and environmental-climate protection movements – would enter power along with the new President.  I was concerned because I already feared that Obama’s adoption of pro-Wall Street economic advisors meant he wouldn’t use the crisis-created opportunity of implementing a New Deal-type restructuring and re-regulating of the out-of-control financial industry.  I feared, unfortunately correctly, that bailing out the speculators would embolden the free-market fundamentalists and thereby create political space for the entire spectrum of right-wing crazies.

In 2012, I feel that we’ve narrowly missed a tsunami of bigotry, religious intolerance, repressive laws, international disasters, and the collapse of what little social safety nets and control over profit-seeking greed that still remains. I feel relieved that the country rejected those who would return us to the pre-Twentieth Century jungle of unregulated markets and the brutality of everyone-for-themselves individualism.  I am hopeful that the breath of the Democratic victory will inspire the new Administration to follow George W. Bush’s strategy – ignore the thinness of the margin and take full advantage of every ounce of available power.

However, by now we should know better than to wait for Obama to do things for us. Continue reading →

It’s the season for debates.  Right now it’s the candidates.  But soon enough the topics will include all the issues that elected leaders will have to deal with, from transportation to health care.  Debates can be great reality TV:  live, dramatic, with mythic overtones.  And we seem to have a special reverence for debate.  We believe that the clash of opposing sides raises the likelihood of finding truth.  Our entire judicial system is based on this principle.

Of course, it’s not always true:  as our grandmother’s correctly pointed out years ago, we are most influenced by the opinions of the people around us – our friends and co-workers.  Psychologists now say that most people are committed to their own framework of values and assumptions and actually become more entrenched in their positions when confronted with countering facts. Even beyond all that, as every High School debate team and lawyer and political media consultant knows, presentation is often even more important than content; the side that dominates the interaction wins the argument.

This depressing truth has been powerfully displayed in this year’s political campaigns.  Elections have always been full of distortions and insults. However, as political strategists increasingly incorporate lessons from advertising and media, their messaging becomes ever more sophisticatedly and powerfully manipulative.  Our only defense, other than strict controls over campaign financing and hate speech, is to know the ways we are being tricked.  Being angry is not enough – we need to find ways to fight back. Continue reading →

In transportation, requiring potential damage-causers to be careful translates into policies that, at least in several European countries, assume that the operator of any vehicle that hits or dangerously crowds a “vulnerable road user” is by default primarily responsible for the incident and any negative effects.  While this “strict liability” formulation would probably run afoul of the USA’s constitutional right of being innocent until proven guilty, Oregon has created “enhanced penalties for careless drivers who hurt vulnerable users.”  And other activists are pushing to establish a “rebuttable assumption” of vehicle-operator responsibility in similar situations.

Of course, no matter what the law or who has what rights, defensive driving in both cars and on bikes is the ultimate defense against harm on the road.  As the slogan correctly puts it, “You may be dead right; but you will still be dead.”  Still, adoption of Vulnerable Road User laws can clarify the criminal burden of responsibility for street incidents and simplify some insurance claims.  It is possible that they will also change the context for cyclist behavior and even begin to address the inequality of road conditions in low-income versus better-off areas

Vulnerable Road User laws won’t solve every safety problem.  But they will certainly move us in the right direction.

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BEYOND “ACCIDENTS”

Some of the eight states that currently have Vulnerable Road Users (VRU) laws focus on the physical injuries caused by a collision. Some try to exclude “true” accidents by limiting culpability to careless, inattentive, reckless, or negligent drivers who (in New York’s words) “operate a vehicle in a careless or imprudent manner or without due regard for road, weather and traffic conditions then existing…[or] fails to give full time and attention…or fails to maintain a proper lookout.”

Who is included as a Vulnerable Road User seems to reflect a combination of technical and political concerns.  The more groups included the broader the potential coalition that can be organized to support passing the new law.  However, getting too broad risks internal conflicts since some of the groups may not feel comfortable with each other.  The definitions always contain pedestrians and bicycles and then can expand, as does the model language proposed by the League Of American Bicyclist’s new Legal Affairs Committee, to include people using wheelchairs, farm tractors, skateboards, in-line and roller-skates, horse-drawn carriages, and even motorcyclists, scooters, and mopeds.  Oregon, whose 2007 law was the nation’s first, includes farm animals being tended by a keeper.  (No one yet seems to have specified electric-assist bikes, or used locational definitions such as “anyone in a school zone,” or other kind of safety zone around playgrounds, public pools, elderly residences, medical facilities, etc.).

RELATED LAWS

There is some overlap between Vulnerable Road User laws and new cell-phone inspired laws penalizing “distracted driving,” as well as laws requiring that cars keep a certain distance away from bicyclists when passing (something that might be more complicated on narrow urban streets).  This is also a relationship between VRU protection and anti-harassment policies such as the one recently passed in Los Angeles that prohibits “physical assault or attempted physical assault, threats of physical injury, intentional distraction and forceful removal from street, among others.”

Most of the VRU laws prescribe penalties including suspension of the operator’s license for some time, fines, jail time, community service, and taking driver training classes – with completion of the last two often allowing the dropping of the first three.  Several of the laws require at least one court appearance to increase the gravity of the process rather than letting the motorist simply pay the fine by mail.  A major issue is the additional burden on often already over-loaded state agencies of supervising the community service, verifying the training class attendance, or dealing with the court appearances without additional funds for staff time.

BENEFITS

There are two usually unremarked aspects of these laws.  First, they all use the word “vehicle” when describing the potentially responsible operator.  In all states, bicycles are legally considered vehicles (as are motorcycles, scooters, and bigger mopeds) whose drivers have the same rights and responsibilities as motorists.  So the prohibition on careless, inattentive, or illegal behavior would seemingly also apply to cyclists who run into any other of the named Vulnerable Road Users – most importantly pedestrians but the others as well.  This means that cyclists who fly through busy intersections regardless of crossing traffic or traffic lights would be liable for any consequence of their actions.

Changing cyclist behavior will require more than new laws.  But this kind of law is much more likely to be noticed and enforced than current traffic signal regulations, if only because of the physical harm that results from its violation.  The combination of guilt and punishment is likely to have an effect!  At a minimum, it will generate a lot of nervous conversations and, as a recent Boston Globe article pointed out, “To really change how a group of people thinks and behaves, it turns out, you don’t need to change what’s inside of them, or appeal to their inner sense of virtue. You just have to convince them that everybody else is doing it.”

In addition to reducing injuries, Vulnerable Road User laws might also begin redressing some of the enormous inequalities of our transportation system.  A recent study pointed out that low income neighborhoods are likely to have bigger roads, busier intersections, and up to two-and-a-half times more traffic than wealthier areas.  At the same time, low-income families are more likely to have to rely on walking or transit to get around, resulting in a moving-car injury rate nearly six times higher than in high income areas.  The best solutions are reducing traffic volume and slowing speeds through traffic calming. But changing driver behavior would also significantly help.

MASSACHUSETTS

In Massachusetts, MassBike took the lead in submitting a VRU bill in 2011.  Commonwealth law already provides a wider range of penalties for dangerous driving than in most other states, including license suspension, fines, and jail time.  However, there was little application of these laws when bicyclists or pedestrians were the victims.  This was partly caused by the law enforcement system’s ignorance of their applicability but mostly because police usually felt these incidents were “accidents” and didn’t want to charge drivers with violations that could lead to imprisonment.

To both raise awareness and increase flexibility the proposed bill would have explicitly defined “vulnerable road users” to include bicyclists and pedestrians.  It would also allow community service and/or education as a flexible middle-ground penalty between a mere traffic ticket and jail.  In anticipation of resubmitting the bill in 2012, MassBike is exploring adding other groups to the list of vulnerable road users such as people on wheel chairs, road repair workers, and others.  The past year’s effort made it clear success requires activating a broad coalition to begin talking to legislators from the very start of the session.   And it’s best to enter the sausage-making legislative process with a larger package of bills in order to make sure something gets through the inevitable give-and-take negotiations.

Vulnerable Road User laws do not substitute for better infrastructure or improved driver education.  And punishing people is not always the best way to teach a lesson.  But these laws can at least prevent victims from being doubly abused by both injury and blame.

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STATE’S WITH VULNERABLE ROAD USER LAWS

(thanks to Matt Wempe at the League of American Bicylcists for the links…)

DL., IL, MD, NV, NY, OR, TN, WA.

Others include CT (pending), VT (in process), and TX (passed by Legislature, vetoed by Governor).

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Related Previous Postings:

> BOSTON BICYCLING: Five Changes To Move From Better To World Class

> SAFETY AND THE LAW: When Are Higher Penalties The Right Tool For Changing Behaviors

> CHANGING BEHAVIORS:  What Transportation And Public Health Can Learn From Each Other

> PRIVACY ON THE STREET: Fighting the Wrong Enemy

Because government is the arena where so many of society’s conflicting interests fight for influence, and because nearly every decision and action can end up in court, the public sector is more rule-bound than most organizations.  The biggest political sin for administrators is making a visible mistake.  So public agencies typically evolve very incrementally, and if something isn’t noticeably broken there is seldom any political advantage in fixing it – or even in improving its internal operations.  Which is what gives extra credence to the cliché that the Chinese character for “crisis” also means “opportunity.”

Fortunately, and unfortunately, Massachusetts’ Department of Transportation (MassDOT) is in the middle of an accelerating crisis.  The most visible aspect is the MBTA’s growing revenue shortfall, a “fiscal cliff” that the state managed to avoid last year by using up most of the one-time fixes.   But it’s not just the MBTA budget that’s falling apart.  The fiscal health of the entire road system is dependent on a diminishing, inflation-unadjusted gas tax.  As both transportation needs and maintenance costs increase, the state has been forced to pay for an increasing amount of operational expenses – planning, maintenance, and even administrative work – using bond-financed capital funds.  It’s a time-bomb – taxpayers will end up paying for both the project and the interest for decades to come, making future revenues unavailable for future projects and putting the transportation system even deeper into the pothole.  Continue reading →

In recent weeks, three Boston-areas bicyclists have been killed by cars or trucks, and the number of cyclist injuries has slightly increased from previous years.  As a recent Boston Globe editorial pointed out, increasing bicyclist safety is a pressing issue – although it is probably just as pressing for other road users as well:  people walking, in cars, using wheelchairs, getting on or off buses.

It’s not just acute physical safety that is at stake.  The overall health benefits of bicycling are so strong that even under today’s less-than-ideal conditions studies show that the positives heavily outweigh the negatives, statistically adding about an extra year of life to those who regular get on their two-wheelers.

The editorial is a welcome contribution to the city’s discussion of how to make our evolving transportation system  safe for all users, no matter how they are moving.  Although bicycles may seem like a newcomer to the street scene, they have a long history (especially in Boston, which was the nation’s original cycling center) and there is much we can learn from research done in other cities across the US and abroad where bicycling has already taken off.   Continue reading →

Put more money into bicycling and pedestrian and railroad infrastructure, or less.  Move forward from the current small steps towards sustainability (energy development, resource-focused, climate protective, land-use, and economic), or not.  Build on the current stutter-steps towards rationalizing our wasteful healthcare system and providing universal access, or not.  Increase controls over speculative financial markets, or not.  Move cautiously on foreign interventions, or the opposite.

The coming elections provide as stark a choice as any in recent memory.

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Contribute money for an Advocacy group while enjoying the pleasures of a bike ride and picnic:  Why not?  The Talmudic Rabbis taught that while we are not required to solve the problems of human life, neither are we allowed to ignore them.  Advocacy steps beyond charity to systemic change – improving the public policies and institutional practices that shape life possibilities for the benefit of all, ourselves as well as those most in need.  Contribute!  Come!  Learn!  Join!

CHARITY

There is a moment in Fiddler on the Roof where the village beggar sticks his cup in front of the rich businessman who says, “No.  I had a bad day today” to which the beggar replies, “So?  Just because you had a bad day, why should I suffer?”

It’s a good line; everyone laughs.  But it contains an essential truth.  According to Jewish law, our obligation to relieve suffering does not depend on our own level of well-being.  Helping others is a moral obligation of everyone at all times – the rich man as well as the beggar. We are not expected to be saints, to give away everything in order to share starvation with the starving.  But we can be called on to do what we can, from each according to his/her means – which is the ethical basis for the progressive taxation that libertarians and right-wingers hate so much.

Charity is a good thing.  At its best, it is an expression of our inherent empathy and care-giving impulses, which we elevate into folk wisdom like “you get what you give” and the Golden Rule of “do unto others that which you want others to do unto you.”  At its best, it is about sharing ourselves, personally connecting with someone else, rather than simply tithing our wallets.  On the other hand, personal philanthropy is often distorted by ego and status issues, which is why the old Rabbis said that anonymous giving to unknown recipients was the purist form of charity.  And depersonalization is also a positive aspect of societal-level charity – the tax-supported programs that provide a more humane life for the elderly, the developmentally injured, the chronically or mentally ill, children, and even prisoners.  Creating a strong safety net is not just a shared-risk insurance scheme to protect ourselves if we should trip into misfortune’s holes.  It’s also the right thing to do:  as the bumper sticker says, “the test of a civilization is the way that it cares for its helpless members.”

EMPOWERMENT

But charity, whether personal or organized, can also be a trap.

We’ve all heard about the difference between giving someone a meal and teaching her to fish.  Instead of carrying someone across the goal line, you help them be able to run.  Conservatives prattle endlessly about the danger of government programs that create dependency (although they don’t seem to like government programs that promote empowerment either).  In reality, few people enjoy the subordination or the humiliation of dependency and most people will do their best to stay or become more self-governing?  Empowerment is like compound interest – it feeds its own escalating growth.

However, individual betterment can be its own dead end.  Being able to run is better than crawling, but what if the playing field is discriminatorily tilted?  And what if the tilt isn’t focused on any particular individual but on an entire category of players, creating extraordinary difficulty for everyone coming from a particular direction?  Not tilted so much that it prevents an occasional exception, but enough that the overwhelming majority of particular groups don’t make it.  No one expects utopian equality: some people will always be relatively less well-off than others and the rich and powerful will generally do whatever they can to institutionalize their status in accordance with the other Golden Rule: he who has the gold makes the rules!  But when the tilt gets really bad a country ends up with a small group of super-rich, a huge percentage of people struggling on the brink of failure, limited and decreasing upward mobility, a culture that distracts from the real issues, and the weakening of the democratic feed-back mechanisms that could be used to rectify the problem.  We used to think of these phrases as describing Latin America; now we realize it’s true in the USA as well – no wonder the Tea Party has attracted a populist wing vocal enough to make the GOP’s dominant corporate leaders nervous enough to try placating the rebels with anti-outsider rhetoric and policies.

POWER

Empowerment at its best also deals with the societal balance of power.  It addresses not only what is needed by individuals but the factors that shape the societal context and determine the population-level odds we face based on the demographic accidents of our birth:  the institutional patterns that privilege the attributes of one group over those of another, the unequal access to resources and opportunities, the disparities in family health and wealth and connections, the compounding effect of passing past inequities on to future generations, and more.   Empowerment requires understanding that while we all create our own lives we have to do it with the materials, tools, training, and connections that we are given – and very few people are able to significantly transcend the limitations of those opportunity-defining inputs.

It’s all very overwhelming.  If you think too much about the difficulties of making things better you’re likely, like most of us most of the time, to decide it’s better to go about your own business and simply be nice to your family and friends.  Being a good person is a difficult enough challenge: most of us repeatedly violate our good intentions in order to serve our self-interests, rationalizing every step of the way.

ADVOCACY

But there are some times when we get involved.  We become advocates not just for ourselves or the individuals around us but for broader change.  Advocacy, like other forms of public engagement, is important because the fact that a tree is rotten doesn’t mean that it will fall, someone (or some group of people) has to push.  Just because something is unfair or inefficient or just stupid doesn’t mean that it will change on its own.  Someone (or some group of people) has to make it happen.  On the other hand, pushing is a useless gesture unless the tree is ready to fall; nothing will change unless conditions – both inside the tree and in the surrounding environment – are ready.  And, no matter how much analysis gets done, there is no way to really know if conditions are ripe unless someone acts to test it.  Advocates are actors.

Organized Advocacy seems, for now, to occupy a relatively sweet spot in our culture.  It’s more issue-oriented and less unsavory than the world of politics, whose perceived ugliness extends from the nasty pettiness of “office politics” to the corruption and hypocrisy of electoral politics and corporate lobbying.   And it’s less pretentious than the moral purity of evangelistic true believers who proselytize their fundamentalism as a justification for controlling other people’s lives.

At the same time, Advocacy, at its best, shares aspects of both moral idealism and political realism.  Unlike self-serving “interest groups,” Advocates are seen as being (and mostly are) primarily motivated by outrage at injustice and inspired by a vision of how things could be better.  And they are seen as (and mostly are) system-savvy, able to “get things done.”

MOVEMENT

At its best, Advocacy sparks and mobilizes Movements, in which large numbers of people take action to further a cause.  Sustaining democracy requires periodic re-invigoration and flushing of the channels of bottom-up communication that inevitable harden as elites seek their own security.   Turning the gears of social change, knocking down rotten trees and building something solid to replace them, requires putting a whole lot of shoulders to the wheel.  Strengthening the social safety net to provide a softer landing for those who have tripped or (better yet) leveling the playing fields requires having appropriate elite allies and a lot of luck.  But the starting point is creating a constituency, learning how to exert pressure against the current trends of business as usual – building a Movement.  Advocacy is not sufficient, but it certainly helps.

(Self-Interested Disclosure: I was a co-founder of LivableStreets Alliance and still sit on its Board, although the cash flow of my connection is from my checking account to the organization rather than the other way around.)

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Related Previous Posts:

> THE OCCUPY MOVEMENT AND ADVOCACY: Movement Building (Part I)

> THE OCCUPY MOVEMENT AND ADVOCACY: Institutional Reform, and Organizational Development (Part II)

> SUCCESSFUL ADVOCACY: Lessons of the BU Bridge Campaign

> THE AGONY AND THE ACTIVISM: Looking Back at the Big Dig

> QUICK, VISIBLE, REMOVABLE: Improving City Life By Unleashing Citizen Creativity Through Government Initiative

> Boston Bicycling: Five Changes To Move From Better To World Class

> MOVING URBAN INNOVATION BACK TO THE FUTURE: Reclaiming the Village and the Street

Speeding, distraction, drinking, poorly designed intersections – a lot of things cause road accidents, injuries, and fatalities.  But some of them have nothing to do with driving.  Like guns.  In a recent NY Times Opinionator piece, Mark Bittman drew on his old community organizing background and wrote, “Back in the administration of W., we looked for the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. That was the wrong place; they’re here at home.”  And on our streets, where incidents of gun-involved road rage are on the rise.

The recent murders of Sikhs in Wisconsin and of “liberals” in Arizona have sparked another round of discussion about the danger of unregulated access to weapons.  Given the current Supreme Court, it is unlikely that any limits will be imposed.  But the way that groups like Mothers Against Drunk Driving have changed cultural attitudes about buzzing around with a few under your belt suggests that we may be able to de-escalate road rage through similar methods.   We need to make it as unacceptable to have a loaded gun in a car as it is to have an open bottle of alcohol.

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Causeway Street sits on top of the colonial era Mill Pond Dam, which harnessed tidal flows to generate power — which is why it’s called a “causeway.”  For its time and location, the Dam was an audacious and creative effort.  Unfortunately, the current plans to restructure today’s Causeway Street into a truly multi-modal and multi-functional space exhibits neither.

Causeway Street and the adjoining misshapen intersections from Lowell Square to Keany Square is a complicated place.  It’s got North Station generating commuter crowds twice every day, and Boston Garden releasing post-event human flash floods nearly every third day.  It’s the passageway between the Kennedy Greenway and the Charles River parklands as well as between downtown and Charlestown’s expressway on-ramps and the new Rutherford Ave cycle tracks. It’s got family residences (including a huge future development on the Boston Garden property) and businesses.  It’s got social service agencies and state offices.  Meeting every need of every one of those constituencies is probably impossible.

MassDOT, BRA, and their consulting traffic engineering firms have tried.  For nearly six years they’ve been meeting with people, collecting data, modeling future traffic flows, and making plans.  They’ve discovered some interesting facts – for example, there are more people walking than vehicles driving through that area!  And they’ve had to adjust to major changes in transportation priorities – six years ago bicycles weren’t considered as important, now the Hubway (shared bike) Station in that area is the busiest in the entire city!  — Pedestrians were a problem to be controlled; now they are a priority to be safeguarded.  Transit was secondary; now it is supposed to be a major way for people to get into (and around) the city.  And traffic was simply assumed to keep growing; while we now know that overall vehicle trips are steadily falling.

The 25% design plans unveiled at a public meeting last week incorporate many useful attempts to adjust to the new realities such as wider sidewalks and shorter intersection crossings, narrower lanes and raised “intersection tables,” some sections of bike lanes, and the straightening and signalization of Endicott Street.  The street is being done under the banner of the “Cross Roads” program dealing with the Big Dig surface connections and, technically, it will be a “complete street.”  But that merely shows how inadequate such a label can be – the proposed design is insultingly inadequate.  In particular, neither pedestrian nor bicycle movement is fully enabled or protected. The current proposals use standard, off-the-shelf ideas in a situation that needs imaginative boldness and out-of-the-box creativity.   The design team seems unaware of many exciting, safety-improving and mobility-enhancing designs already proven to work in other parts of this country and the world.  Perhaps, part of the problem is that this project has been going on for such a long time that the official “purpose” no longer represents current transportation priorities.  But the designers don’t seem to have incorporated enough of the suggestions they received (from LivableStreets Alliance as well as others) after previously presenting roughly similar plans two years ago. The current proposals are better than what exists, but not good enough; Boston needs better.

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As part of the Accelerated Bridge Program’s (ABP) upgrading of the Charles River bridges, it is important that every intersection along the Dr. Paul Dudley White Bike Path – the route from the Esplanade to Watertown – be made as safe as possible for pedestrians, runners, and bicyclists.  Whether going across the river or along the shore, no matter in which direction, the intersections should feel comfortable for non-motorized use by people of all abilities – in wheelchairs, by foot, on bike, or on skates.

But the surface intersections aren’t the only issue.  It would be possible to create a 7-mile long, traffic-free path if every one of the bridges had an underpass – similar to but better designed and constructed than the existing ones under the Eliot Bridge (which crosses from Harvard’s fields to BB&N).

For several years, a broad coalition of organizations and individuals have pushed MassDOT to include the underpasses in their ABP plans.   Charles River Conservancy has played a leadership role, supported by LivableStreets Alliance and other groups, demanding that the state both create a “tunnel” of some kind within the structure of each bridge, and connect the tunnel to the existing route with entry/exit “approach paths.”

MassDOT has consistently refused.  Their analysis finds that creating the tunnels is do-able, although it would be technically challenging and require some additional costs.  However, going through the multiple agency processes required to secure the permits to create the connecting approach paths would be very complex and take much longer than the Accelerated Bridge Program (ABP) schedule allows.  As a compromise, the MassDOT team working on the bridges did commit to rebuilding the bridges in a way that does not preclude the future creation of the underpasses – although they acknowledge that coming back to build the tunnels at a later date will require complicated, large-scale, and expensive work.

In other words – no underpasses for now.   Which probably means no future underpasses either – it will be very difficult to convince the Legislature to commit the huge sums needed to restructure totally safe bridges that have been so recently repaired, especially when so many dangerous bridges still await attention.  So its now or never.

While the stalemate continues, work on the BU bridge has nearly finished and work on the Anderson (coming out of Harvard Square) has already begun.  But work on the Western Avenue and River Street bridges is still in the early stages.  Since protecting cross-river traffic flow requires that work on them cannot begin until work on the Anderson is nearly complete there is still some time available for design development, at least on the Boston side where underpasses are most technically feasible.

Fortunately, MassDOT’s own analysis suggests a way forward.  If permitting the approach paths is too complicated and time consuming, don’t do them.  Instead, just build the tunnels, at least on the more technically feasible Boston side of the Western Ave and River St bridges.  MassDOT’s own analysis points out that minimal additional permits are needed for the tunnel component.  And, as taxpayers, we note that it will be both simpler and cheaper to build the tunnels as part of the on-going general repairs than to initiate a whole new process sometime in the future.

MassDOT can then spend as long as needed to get the permits and develop designs for the approach paths.  If MassDOT is concerned that leaving the tunnels open will create safety or other hazards, the openings can be temporarily closed off cheaply with plywood or more aesthetically with brick or some other material.  When the time is right, when the approaches are made, the tunnels will be waiting.

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Related previous posts:

> GREEN ROUTES TO THE FUTURE: Combining Regional Vision and Local Initiative to Revitalize Urban Transportation and Well-Being

> BRIDGES, ROADS & HISTORIC PRESERVATION: Combining Respect for the Past with Preparation for the Future in Transportation

> PARKS, GREENWAYS, AND TRANSPORTATION: Increasing Usefulness By Combining Visions

> Fixing the Bridges Won’t Solve Traffic Congestion

There is little question that if you have a bicycle accident, and if your head gets banged, and if it isn’t so severe that you’re dead anyway, then your injuries are likely to be significantly less severe if you are wearing a helmet.  I once had a dent in an old helmet that proved the point to my own satisfaction.

And I’m amazed at how often anti-bicycle people use a cyclist’s uncovered head  as “proof” of the rider’s immaturity and irresponsibility – thereby justifying the critic’s condemnation of everyone who bikes.

But how to convince people to put the helmet on?

Research says that the most common non-compliance reasons are that the person doesn’t own a helmet, that it feels too hot, that they don’t like the way a helmet makes them look, or that it shouldn’t be needed for short trips. Boston is using several strategies to provide high quality helmets at little or no cost, with the Boston Cyclist’s Union playing a major role.  Hubway is working with an MIT team to create helmet vending machines to place next to their stations although there are lots of technical deployment issues still to solve.

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Walking and bicycling are part of the solution to problems from traffic congestion to public health, from pollution to economic development.  Creating a seamless network of safe, family-friendly, aesthetically inviting walking and bicycling facilities is key to convincing a meaningful proportion of the population that they don’t need a car to get to work, run errands, visit friends, or have fun.  To have this impact, the network needs to be composed of overlapping “lines and loops” within and between neighborhoods and cities, suitable for both functional travel and recreational pleasure.  It needs to feel comfortable for all users: slow walkers and fast cyclists, slow baby-carriage pushers and fast runners.  And it should foster the expansion of our green spaces – parks, greenways, river banks, gardens, open space, and tree-lined boulevards.

Eastern Massachusetts needs this as much as anyplace.  Creating a Green Routes system requires connecting two currently separate strategies:  Adding better sidewalks and bike facilities to our streets and turning old railroad beds into off-road rail-trails.  To be successful, the two approaches need to be united within an “Emerald Network” vision of off-road paths, tree-lined streets, and clearly signed connections – a re-invigoration of the historic Olmsted-Eliot vision of regional parks and innovative parkways along our rivers and between our hills.

As a recent Boston Globe article illustrates, the Boston region has much to build on: off-road trails, city bike lanes, state parkways.  But connecting the existing segments, filling the missing links, requires both high-level commitment and local initiative.  Elected leaders as well as state and regional agencies need to incorporate this vision into their policies and funding priorities.  Municipalities need to include non-motorized facilities as a core part of their transportation and economic development planning.  Regional and local advocacy groups need to work together in a broad coalition dealing with transportation, environmental protection, smart growth, and public health.

The Green Routes Network will be an evolving system, completed segment by segment in ways that serve local needs while extending the regional web, with priority given to projects that maximally leverage existing segments or that serve currently underserved areas.  Each new addition will increase the value of everything that connects to it.

It can be done.  And the time to start is now!

(If you or your organization are interested in being part of the new Green Routes Coalition, please get in touch – Steve@LivableStreets.info)

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Come to Boston’s first Open Streets festivals – called Circle The City – on July 15 (closing streets between Jamaica Pond and Franklin Park) and August 15 (closing parts of the Kennedy Greenway and nearby streets).  Next: what about opening Storrow Drive’s outbound side every Sunday from 7am to 10am – nine miles of uninterrupted and totally safe room for bicycling, roller blading, walking, and family fun!  And then Dot Ave!

The streets may belong to the people – in most cities comprising the single largest physical asset the public owns – but they’re functional dominated by cars.  And the more traffic the less we are likely to use the roads, and the space around them, for anything else – and the less livable our neighborhoods become.

There are lots of ways to reclaim the public right of way, the space between buildings, for purposes other than car traffic.  Street fairs, Farmers’ Markets, and Concerts do it periodically.  Pedestrian malls do it permanently, drawing crowds to re-invigorate downtown business areas.  But wonderful as these events are, they tend to be prescriptive, consumption-oriented, and constrained – mostly organized around vendors or businesses, with the public’s role limited to buying things, and physically bounded within a relatively small area.

Open Streets have a different vision and goal.  While they are a boost to local business, their mission is to facilitate physical activity, social connection, and public self-mobilization.  They have the typical crafts/food/information booths, but these are outnumbered by activity centers – dancing, exercise, yoga, street games, and sometimes just a pile of equipment waiting to be used.  Beyond these spot offerings, the best Open Streets stretch for miles along one side of a divided boulevard (with cars restricted to the other side) or on a fully car-free road – allowing families and individuals to move themselves by bike, or skateboard, or roller blade, or foot, or anything else that doesn’t make noise, pollute, or use any fuel other than human effort.

Open Streets are a parade where the performers stay still and the crowd moves along — longer than a walk, but within a safe and manageable bike-riding distance.  Because of their open-ended nature, Open Streets imply new visions about how urban areas can deal with key issues like transportation, recreation, public health, and even community relations.  In New York, the “Play Streets” initiative allows the Parks and Police Departments to work with community groups – usually in low-income areas with few playgrounds or open space – to create a block-long and safely car-free “front yard” at regularly scheduled times during the summer. San Francisco’s Sunday Streets rotate their open streets events to different neighborhoods, bringing thousands of people outside and showing that it’s possible to maintain business activity without traffic.  (As usual, many local stores initially opposed the program fearing that the loss of car access and parking would reduce sales – and, as usual, just the opposite occurred: more people came and sales went up.)  Over 70 US cities now host Open Streets events, with most having started in the past five years. The national Alliance for Biking and Walking’s Open Streets Project and the Project for Public Places provide advice and facilitate idea sharing.

Open Streets can also change the way families think about, and use, their recreational time.  Every parent sincerely wants the best for her child, but not everyone has the time and resources to go together to safe and beautiful places to play.  As Bogota and other cities have shown, Open Streets brings the needed parks and playgrounds into the neighborhoods, and the public responds – with families pouring out of their small, hot houses into the welcoming streets.  Open Streets are a Health Fair and Play Day wrapped into one.

A CHANCE FOR TRANSFORMATION

Open Streets are a chance for the public to create, even if temporarily, the kind of culture and society we usually only dream about.  We know it works because even small feints at Open Street type events triggers spontaneous outpourings of public creativity.  Last Friday evening, just as rush hour and summer weekend traffic was at its height, Cambridge opened up Mass Ave in Central Square for the annual City Dance Party.  There was no alcohol or food, other than what picnickers brought with them as they sat on the City Hall lawn.  And there were no cars.  But the music was loud and the street was packed: mostly 20- and 30-somethings with a sprinkling of (slightly) elders including Mayor Henrietta Davis.  It was one of the most racially integrated crowds I’ve ever seen in the Boston area.  And everyone was dancing – spontaneously forming into lines then clustering around some fancy break dancer or jumping up and down waving their hands in unison across the area then dividing into small groups of friends or couples or just individuals feeling good.

When it comes to stretching the Open Streets concept to its full mileage, the US is behind many other parts of the world.  In Bogota, Columbia, birthplace of the Open Streets movement, over 100 miles of roads are closed every weekend to create temporary ciclovia’s, drawing nearly a third of the city’s entire population to get out and play.   And sometimes the temporary is made permanent, with the city now boasting a huge network of designated bikeways or ciclorutas.

BOSTON OPPORTUNITY

In the Boston area, Memorial Drive is already closed every Sunday from Western Avenue to the Eliot Bridge after 11am from April through November, temporarily creating Riverbend Park.  Kids learn to bike.  Families stroll.  Roller Bladers show off.  Couples picnic.  Food trucks sell.  Traffic is detoured across the river. It’s fabulous.

But rivers have two sides.  Hub On Wheels already runs up and back down the Boston side of the river on Storrow Drive, bringing giggles and grins to nearly every participating cyclist – there is something transgressively delightful about doing something that is always within reach but usually forbidden!  But Hub On Wheels only opens Storrow for about two hours once a year.  What if the 9 miles of protected road on the out-bound side of Storrow were closed one Sunday a month (or every Sunday all summer!) from Leverete Circle to the Eliot Bridge from 7am to about 10am.  Ambulances or other vehicles heading in-bound towards the medical area wouldn’t be affected.  The low-volume of early AM outbound traffic could be easily diverted to Memorial Drive on the Cambridge side.  There’s been a lot of discussion in recent years whether or not regional parkways – including the Charles River basin roads – should remain under the control of the Department of Conservation and Recreation (DCR) or be transferred (as the bridges have already been) to the Transportation Department (MassDOT).  Wouldn’t such an Open Streets initiative help DCR illustrate that there really is a difference between a Parkway and a Highway?

And what about the more in-land streets?  How about learning from San Francisco and successively opening bike-appropriate stretches of roads around each of Boston’s neighborhood Main Streets business districts.   It could be a circulating celebration of each neighborhood’s history, ethnic communities, local stores, and social/civic groups!  Each Sunday a different part of the city from Spring through Fall.  A way to get to know, appreciate, and enjoy each other.

What if we go New York City’s Summer Streets a step better – we use our Open Streets as a stepping stone towards a larger transformation of our entire roadway system:  from car tunnels to Complete Streets, from polluting danger to bike-friendly and pedestrian-friendly boulevards, from isolate corners to transit-accessible entry-ways.

A few weeks ago, I was in Austin, Texas and just happened to stumble into their first “Viva! Streets, Austin” festival that opened two miles of downtown road for an afternoon family events and non-motorized fun.  There were organized activities and vendors at a few spots along the route, but most of the distance was used by families and kids bicycling, roller skating, skate boarding, pushing strollers, and just walking.  Yes, Austin is weird, but if oil-industry dominated Texas can support something this non-car oriented then is there any excuse for Boston?

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Related previous posts:

>QUICK, VISIBLE, REMOVABLE: Improving City Life By Unleashing Citizen Creativity Through Government Initiative

>TOWARDS A NEW HIERARCHY OF ROAD DESIGNS: From Traffic Volume To Human Function

>BOSTON BICYCLING: Five Changes To Move From Better To World Class

>MOVING URBAN INNOVATION BACK TO THE FUTURE: Reclaiming the Village and the Street

>AVOIDING “NIMBY” – Navigating Between Fear and Greed

Come to Boston’s first Open Streets festivals – called Circle The City – on July 15 (closing streets between Jamaica Pond and Franklin Park) and August 15 (closing parts of the Kennedy Greenway and nearby streets).  Next: what about opening Storrow Drive’s outbound side every Sunday from 7am to 10am – nine miles of uninterrupted and totally safe room for bicycling, roller blading, walking, and family fun!  And then Dot Ave!

The streets may belong to the people – in most cities comprising the single largest physical asset the public owns – but they’re functional dominated by cars.  And the more traffic the less we are likely to use the roads, and the space around them, for anything else – and the less livable our neighborhoods become.

There are lots of ways to reclaim the public right of way, the space between buildings, for purposes other than car traffic.  Street fairs, Farmers’ Markets, and Concerts do it periodically.  Pedestrian malls do it permanently, drawing crowds to re-invigorate downtown business areas.  But wonderful as these events are, they tend to be prescriptive, consumption-oriented, and constrained – mostly organized around vendors or businesses, with the public’s role limited to buying things, and physically bounded within a relatively small area.

Open Streets have a different vision and goal.  While they are a boost to local business, their mission is to facilitate physical activity, social connection, and public self-mobilization.  They have the typical crafts/food/information booths, but these are outnumbered by activity centers – dancing, exercise, yoga, street games, and sometimes just a pile of equipment waiting to be used.  Beyond these spot offerings, the best Open Streets stretch for miles along one side of a divided boulevard (with cars restricted to the other side) or on a fully car-free road – allowing families and individuals to move themselves by bike, or skateboard, or roller blade, or foot, or anything else that doesn’t make noise, pollute, or use any fuel other than human effort.

Open Streets are a parade where the performers stay still and the crowd moves along — longer than a walk, but within a safe and manageable bike-riding distance.  Because of their open-ended nature, Open Streets imply new visions about how urban areas can deal with key issues like transportation, recreation, public health, and even community relations.  In New York, the “Play Streets” initiative allows the Parks and Police Departments to work with community groups – usually in low-income areas with few playgrounds or open space – to create a block-long and safely car-free “front yard” at regularly scheduled times during the summer. San Francisco’s Sunday Streets rotate their open streets events to different neighborhoods, bringing thousands of people outside and showing that it’s possible to maintain business activity without traffic.  (As usual, many local stores initially opposed the program fearing that the loss of car access and parking would reduce sales – and, as usual, just the opposite occurred: more people came and sales went up.)  Over 70 US cities now host Open Streets events, with most having started in the past five years. The national Alliance for Biking and Walking’s Open Streets Project and the Project for Public Places provide advice and facilitate idea sharing.

Open Streets can also change the way families think about, and use, their recreational time.  Every parent sincerely wants the best for her child, but not everyone has the time and resources to go together to safe and beautiful places to play.  As Bogota and other cities have shown, Open Streets brings the needed parks and playgrounds into the neighborhoods, and the public responds – with families pouring out of their small, hot houses into the welcoming streets.  Open Streets are a Health Fair and Play Day wrapped into one.

A CHANCE FOR TRANSFORMATION

Open Streets are a chance for the public to create, even if temporarily, the kind of culture and society we usually only dream about.  We know it works because even small feints at Open Street type events triggers spontaneous outpourings of public creativity.  Last Friday evening, just as rush hour and summer weekend traffic was at its height, Cambridge opened up Mass Ave in Central Square for the annual City Dance Party.  There was no alcohol or food, other than what picnickers brought with them as they sat on the City Hall lawn.  And there were no cars.  But the music was loud and the street was packed: mostly 20- and 30-somethings with a sprinkling of (slightly) elders including Mayor Henrietta Davis.  It was one of the most racially integrated crowds I’ve ever seen in the Boston area.  And everyone was dancing – spontaneously forming into lines then clustering around some fancy break dancer or jumping up and down waving their hands in unison across the area then dividing into small groups of friends or couples or just individuals feeling good.

When it comes to stretching the Open Streets concept to its full mileage, the US is behind many other parts of the world.  In Bogota, Columbia, birthplace of the Open Streets movement, over 100 miles of roads are closed every weekend to create temporary ciclovia’s, drawing nearly a third of the city’s entire population to get out and play.   And sometimes the temporary is made permanent, with the city now boasting a huge network of designated bikeways or ciclorutas.

BOSTON OPPORTUNITY

In the Boston area, Memorial Drive is already closed every Sunday from Western Avenue to the Eliot Bridge after 11am from April through November, temporarily creating Riverbend Park.  Kids learn to bike.  Families stroll.  Roller Bladers show off.  Couples picnic.  Food trucks sell.  Traffic is detoured across the river. It’s fabulous.

But rivers have two sides.  Hub On Wheels already runs up and back down the Boston side of the river on Storrow Drive, bringing giggles and grins to nearly every participating cyclist – there is something transgressively delightful about doing something that is always within reach but usually forbidden!  But Hub On Wheels only opens Storrow for about two hours once a year.  What if the 9 miles of protected road on the out-bound side of Storrow were closed one Sunday a month (or every Sunday all summer!) from Leverete Circle to the Eliot Bridge from 7am to about 10am.  Ambulances or other vehicles heading in-bound towards the medical area wouldn’t be affected.  The low-volume of early AM outbound traffic could be easily diverted to Memorial Drive on the Cambridge side.  There’s been a lot of discussion in recent years whether or not regional parkways – including the Charles River basin roads – should remain under the control of the Department of Conservation and Recreation (DCR) or be transferred (as the bridges have already been) to the Transportation Department (MassDOT).  Wouldn’t such an Open Streets initiative help DCR illustrate that there really is a difference between a Parkway and a Highway?

And what about the more in-land streets?  How about learning from San Francisco and successively opening bike-appropriate stretches of roads around each of Boston’s neighborhood Main Streets business districts.   It could be a circulating celebration of each neighborhood’s history, ethnic communities, local stores, and social/civic groups!  Each Sunday a different part of the city from Spring through Fall.  A way to get to know, appreciate, and enjoy each other.

What if we go New York City’s Summer Streets a step better – we use our Open Streets as a stepping stone towards a larger transformation of our entire roadway system:  from car tunnels to Complete Streets, from polluting danger to bike-friendly and pedestrian-friendly boulevards, from isolate corners to transit-accessible entry-ways.

A few weeks ago, I was in Austin, Texas and just happened to stumble into their first “Viva! Streets, Austin” festival that opened two miles of downtown road for an afternoon family events and non-motorized fun.  There were organized activities and vendors at a few spots along the route, but most of the distance was used by families and kids bicycling, roller skating, skate boarding, pushing strollers, and just walking.  Yes, Austin is weird, but if oil-industry dominated Texas can support something this non-car oriented then is there any excuse for Boston?

—————

Related previous posts:

>QUICK, VISIBLE, REMOVABLE: Improving City Life By Unleashing Citizen Creativity Through Government Initiative

>TOWARDS A NEW HIERARCHY OF ROAD DESIGNS: From Traffic Volume To Human Function

>BOSTON BICYCLING: Five Changes To Move From Better To World Class

>MOVING URBAN INNOVATION BACK TO THE FUTURE: Reclaiming the Village and the Street

>AVOIDING “NIMBY” – Navigating Between Fear and Greed

In addition to opposing the destructive imposition of highways and other mega projects serving regional needs into urban neighborhoods, Jane Jacobs also advocated for urban revitalization through small-scale citizen initiatives such as the housing program she helped start in New York’s Greenwich Village.   But it’s always easier to say “no” than to find a better solution; her program had only limited success.

Still, there is a lot of creative energy floating around in citizenland.  Unleashing that volunteer labor could lead to important, even if usually small, improvements not only in our built environment but also in our social connections.  Action creates its own tailwind – neighbors emerge from the caves of their private lives when given the opportunity to work together on something of self-evident local value.

A recent publication describes this approach as “Tactical Urbanism” and praises its local basis, modest scale, quick turn-around, inspirational ripple effect, and development of social capital.  Some of the tactics are unofficial guerilla actions, perhaps even illegal.  Some are top-down, government programs that create possibilities for public activities.  But the most important are those that grow through an interaction between citizen initiative and government facilitation – empowering democratic creativity and bureaucratic reform while also making concrete improvements in daily life.

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BOTTOM-UP; TOP-DOWN

Some actions grow like wild seeds wind-blown across a field.  “Park(ing) Day” demonstrations have spread across the world, a bit of street theater that forces people to think about what else could be done with all that paved space currently dedicated to cars.  Somerville has a “depaving” movement where homeowners remove some of the previous generation’s concrete lawns.  A Seattle neighborhood painted a mural on their intersection to both beautify the area and encourage car drivers to slow down.   There is anarchist delightfulness to these kinds of grass-roots projects.  They seem to “just happen” – a group of advocates, activists, or friends sees a need and does something without permission or even in violation of “the rules.”  (In reality, nothing is really spontaneous – behind every action there is someone who spent time and energy and had the knowledge and experience to make it happen.  Just because something is unofficial doesn’t mean that it doesn’t have a history.)  Of course, there is the danger that one group’s improvement is another group’s obstruction and that amateur efforts end up with construction disasters!  But these actions are celebrations of direct democracy!

Some actions are unleashed from above.    New York City is huge, but it has found ways to hang quick-action programs off the side of its very large bureaucracy.  Creating “instant plazas” by shutting down lanes or roads opens space that the public quickly flows into and makes its own. Calling something “temporary” or “pilot” or “a test” or “an experiment” allows innovative cities to evaluate ideas using low-cost, small-scale, and non-standard processes and materials – and then claim credit for brilliance if it works or quietly shut it down if it doesn’t.  Of course, cities are deep-pocket liability targets should anything go wrong, and it is hard for big agencies to allow for “exceptions” without undermining their ability to manage the chaos of urban life.

THE BACK & FORTH OF MUTUAL ENABLING

But the most important efforts are not those that come exclusively from the bottom-up or from the top-down, but those that come to life through the interaction of the two.  The most significant strategies are those that create a mutually-reinforcing interaction between citizen actions and government programs, that foster citizen initiative in a way that improves public sector performance.  In Seattle, after opposing the unauthorized intersection murals, city government swung around and created a program allowing other neighborhoods to apply to do the same thing and then providing the supplies.  In New York the expanding “Play Street” program lets community-patrolling police work with civic groups to create temporary playgrounds.

It’s easy to make citizen activism scarce.  The Soviet system embodied the enervating idea that the state was the only legitimate embodiment of public will, so any action outside official channels was automatically repressed.  However, the kind of all-against-all profit-seeking society championed by market fundamentalists and Ann Rynd libertarians is equally unlikely to encourage anyone to move very far beyond the pursuit of personal (or perhaps family) advantage, despite the innate human capacity for empathy that spawns hope and help even in the most brutal economies.  (For a glimpse of what a real free-market society looks like, see the documentary book Behind The Beautiful Forevers.)

A society capable of realizing values other than self-aggrandizement requires institutions built around the reality that we’re all in this together, whose mission reflects our highest democratic and humanitarian ideals, and whose operations foster cooperation, communication, respect, and community.  Government is one of the few institutions based in democratic values and at least potentially able to be held at least partially responsible for the well-being of the worst-off as well as the privileged.  Government is an essential focus for and facilitator of citizen empowerment, which requires (at least) four types of activity.

PUBLIC AND THE PUBLIC

First, government needs to create a climate that welcomes new ideas and local efforts.  This requires public acceptance that along with all the good ideas will come some really bad ones; and that those failures can be dealt with.

Second, government needs to provide support for citizen projects – but not too much!  It is important that neighbors be able to develop their own ideas without being told that it won’t work or requires three dozen impossible-to-get permits.  On the other hand, just as Venture Capitalists now sponsor Enterprise Forums where would-be entrepreneur pitch their ideas to investors, and set up new business incubators where start-ups get helped with technical details, cities can set up occasional “citizen initiative forums’ where neighborhoods can pitch ideas to city agencies, or “innovation charrettes” where local groups can get technical assistance – and perhaps even a small budget – for implementing an idea.  But the idea, and the risk, has to remain with the proposers rather than the city so that elected officials can still have plausible deniability.

Third, cities need to monitor these experiments and adopt the best for city-wide implementation.  Just as states (and cities) are the laboratories of democracy for the national government, citizen initiatives can be seen as a testing ground of ideas for city (and town) government.   However, the best strategy is not simply to take an idea and repeat it – the best approach is to spread the idea and offer to support other neighborhoods or groups that wish to adopt (and adapt) it as their own.

Finally, cities need to build experimentation into their regular programs, reserving some percentage of every budget for tests, trials, pilots, and other temporary projects – the best of which create some kind of physical, political or cultural space for the public to use for its own purposes.   New ideas provoke a greater fear of the unknown than a small scale physical reality, so these temporary installations are a good way to work through the NIMBY horrors – although it still doesn’t solve the “great idea, but not here” problem.

FROM SMALL TO BIG

Small scale experimentalism – cheap, quick, visible, removable – is a powerful strategy for both community and government revitalization.   Its strength is that it is incremental, evolutionary, and flexible.  But it is not the answer to every problem.  Small may be beautiful, but it is not enough.  Sustaining our cities requires upgrading our infrastructure with better transit, water/sewer systems, mixed-use housing/business developments.  And most people recognize that these won’t happen without collective, meaning government, action of various kinds.  (The Big Dig illustrates the folly of entrusting oversight of major projects to firms whose only interest is self-benefit and profit.)  As Jane Jacobs’ critics point out, it is easier and more common for citizens to unite against a big project than in favor of a better one.  Still, we’re going to have to make that leap if we are to deal with the destructiveness of rising sea levels, the difficulty of driving around our increasingly congested roads, or the complications of creating housing markets compatible with our income-differentiated workforce.

The right wing has spent several decades persuading people, and creating the conditions that make their predictions come true, that “government is the problem.”  But the destruction of our only common ground, the only institutional structure that we (potentially) control and whose mission is our collective wellbeing, leads to disaster.  Perhaps small scale democratic action is a way to begin rebuilding our future.

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Other relevant posts:

>MODELING POSITIVE CITY-CONSTITUENCY RELATIONS: How Boston’s Transportation Department is Working with the Bicycling Community – and Creating Better Roads

> THE OCCUPY MOVEMENT AND ADVOCACY: Movement Building, Institutional Reform, and Organizational Development (Part I)

> AVOIDING “NIMBY” – Navigating Between Fear and Greed

In addition to opposing the destructive imposition of highways and other mega projects serving regional needs into urban neighborhoods, Jane Jacobs also advocated for urban revitalization through small-scale citizen initiatives such as the housing program she helped start in New York’s Greenwich Village.   But it’s always easier to say “no” than to find a better solution; her program had only limited success.

Still, there is a lot of creative energy floating around in citizenland.  Unleashing that volunteer labor could lead to important, even if usually small, improvements not only in our built environment but also in our social connections.  Action creates its own tailwind – neighbors emerge from the caves of their private lives when given the opportunity to work together on something of self-evident local value.

A recent publication describes this approach as “Tactical Urbanism” and praises its local basis, modest scale, quick turn-around, inspirational ripple effect, and development of social capital.  Some of the tactics are unofficial guerilla actions, perhaps even illegal.  Some are top-down, government programs that create possibilities for public activities.  But the most important are those that grow through an interaction between citizen initiative and government facilitation – empowering democratic creativity and bureaucratic reform while also making concrete improvements in daily life.

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BOTTOM-UP; TOP-DOWN

Some actions grow like wild seeds wind-blown across a field.  “Park(ing) Day” demonstrations have spread across the world, a bit of street theater that forces people to think about what else could be done with all that paved space currently dedicated to cars.  Somerville has a “depaving” movement where homeowners remove some of the previous generation’s concrete lawns.  A Seattle neighborhood painted a mural on their intersection to both beautify the area and encourage car drivers to slow down.   There is anarchist delightfulness to these kinds of grass-roots projects.  They seem to “just happen” – a group of advocates, activists, or friends sees a need and does something without permission or even in violation of “the rules.”  (In reality, nothing is really spontaneous – behind every action there is someone who spent time and energy and had the knowledge and experience to make it happen.  Just because something is unofficial doesn’t mean that it doesn’t have a history.)  Of course, there is the danger that one group’s improvement is another group’s obstruction and that amateur efforts end up with construction disasters!  But these actions are celebrations of direct democracy!

Some actions are unleashed from above.    New York City is huge, but it has found ways to hang quick-action programs off the side of its very large bureaucracy.  Creating “instant plazas” by shutting down lanes or roads opens space that the public quickly flows into and makes its own. Calling something “temporary” or “pilot” or “a test” or “an experiment” allows innovative cities to evaluate ideas using low-cost, small-scale, and non-standard processes and materials – and then claim credit for brilliance if it works or quietly shut it down if it doesn’t.  Of course, cities are deep-pocket liability targets should anything go wrong, and it is hard for big agencies to allow for “exceptions” without undermining their ability to manage the chaos of urban life.

THE BACK & FORTH OF MUTUAL ENABLING

But the most important efforts are not those that come exclusively from the bottom-up or from the top-down, but those that come to life through the interaction of the two.  The most significant strategies are those that create a mutually-reinforcing interaction between citizen actions and government programs, that foster citizen initiative in a way that improves public sector performance.  In Seattle, after opposing the unauthorized intersection murals, city government swung around and created a program allowing other neighborhoods to apply to do the same thing and then providing the supplies.  In New York the expanding “Play Street” program lets community-patrolling police work with civic groups to create temporary playgrounds.

It’s easy to make citizen activism scarce.  The Soviet system embodied the enervating idea that the state was the only legitimate embodiment of public will, so any action outside official channels was automatically repressed.  However, the kind of all-against-all profit-seeking society championed by market fundamentalists and Ann Rynd libertarians is equally unlikely to encourage anyone to move very far beyond the pursuit of personal (or perhaps family) advantage, despite the innate human capacity for empathy that spawns hope and help even in the most brutal economies.  (For a glimpse of what a real free-market society looks like, see the documentary book Behind The Beautiful Forevers.)

A society capable of realizing values other than self-aggrandizement requires institutions built around the reality that we’re all in this together, whose mission reflects our highest democratic and humanitarian ideals, and whose operations foster cooperation, communication, respect, and community.  Government is one of the few institutions based in democratic values and at least potentially able to be held at least partially responsible for the well-being of the worst-off as well as the privileged.  Government is an essential focus for and facilitator of citizen empowerment, which requires (at least) four types of activity.

PUBLIC AND THE PUBLIC

First, government needs to create a climate that welcomes new ideas and local efforts.  This requires public acceptance that along with all the good ideas will come some really bad ones; and that those failures can be dealt with.

Second, government needs to provide support for citizen projects – but not too much!  It is important that neighbors be able to develop their own ideas without being told that it won’t work or requires three dozen impossible-to-get permits.  On the other hand, just as Venture Capitalists now sponsor Enterprise Forums where would-be entrepreneur pitch their ideas to investors, and set up new business incubators where start-ups get helped with technical details, cities can set up occasional “citizen initiative forums’ where neighborhoods can pitch ideas to city agencies, or “innovation charrettes” where local groups can get technical assistance – and perhaps even a small budget – for implementing an idea.  But the idea, and the risk, has to remain with the proposers rather than the city so that elected officials can still have plausible deniability.

Third, cities need to monitor these experiments and adopt the best for city-wide implementation.  Just as states (and cities) are the laboratories of democracy for the national government, citizen initiatives can be seen as a testing ground of ideas for city (and town) government.   However, the best strategy is not simply to take an idea and repeat it – the best approach is to spread the idea and offer to support other neighborhoods or groups that wish to adopt (and adapt) it as their own.

Finally, cities need to build experimentation into their regular programs, reserving some percentage of every budget for tests, trials, pilots, and other temporary projects – the best of which create some kind of physical, political or cultural space for the public to use for its own purposes.   New ideas provoke a greater fear of the unknown than a small scale physical reality, so these temporary installations are a good way to work through the NIMBY horrors – although it still doesn’t solve the “great idea, but not here” problem.

FROM SMALL TO BIG

Small scale experimentalism – cheap, quick, visible, removable – is a powerful strategy for both community and government revitalization.   Its strength is that it is incremental, evolutionary, and flexible.  But it is not the answer to every problem.  Small may be beautiful, but it is not enough.  Sustaining our cities requires upgrading our infrastructure with better transit, water/sewer systems, mixed-use housing/business developments.  And most people recognize that these won’t happen without collective, meaning government, action of various kinds.  (The Big Dig illustrates the folly of entrusting oversight of major projects to firms whose only interest is self-benefit and profit.)  As Jane Jacobs’ critics point out, it is easier and more common for citizens to unite against a big project than in favor of a better one.  Still, we’re going to have to make that leap if we are to deal with the destructiveness of rising sea levels, the difficulty of driving around our increasingly congested roads, or the complications of creating housing markets compatible with our income-differentiated workforce.

The right wing has spent several decades persuading people, and creating the conditions that make their predictions come true, that “government is the problem.”  But the destruction of our only common ground, the only institutional structure that we (potentially) control and whose mission is our collective wellbeing, leads to disaster.  Perhaps small scale democratic action is a way to begin rebuilding our future.

————————

Other relevant posts:

>MODELING POSITIVE CITY-CONSTITUENCY RELATIONS: How Boston’s Transportation Department is Working with the Bicycling Community – and Creating Better Roads

> THE OCCUPY MOVEMENT AND ADVOCACY: Movement Building, Institutional Reform, and Organizational Development (Part I)

> AVOIDING “NIMBY” – Navigating Between Fear and Greed