Archive for CTA
Apr
30
New York giveth away and Chicago taketh
Posted by: | Comments
Lucky Chicago. They aren’t afraid of change and progress, and now the Windy City is getting what should be ours if it hadn’t been for Sheldon Silver and his crony of cowardly representatives.
When New York decided not to adopt congestion pricing, the City forfeited around $354 million that would have gone toward anti-congestion measures as part of the new National Strategy to Reduce Congestion. Since our wonderful leaders don’t seem too concerned with reducing congestion, the feds instead decided to dole out $153 million to Chicago. That city will implement a bus rapid transit system with dedicated lanes and ramped-up enforcement as well as variable-rate parking meters.
Los Angeles — the king of congestion — will receive over $200 million that will go toward implementing a tolling system designed to encourage car-pooling and other high-occupancy vehicle commuting. I prefer Chicago’s plan, but the one in Los Angeles is not without merit.
Catrin Einhorn of The Times has the story:
In Chicago, officials said Tuesday that they planned to use $153 million for projects like creating the first 10 miles of lanes dedicated to faster buses that make fewer stops and set off sensors that lengthen green traffic lights and shorten red ones. To discourage driving downtown, meters and parking lots there would charge more during peak traffic times.
In Los Angeles, which would receive $213 million, officials said high-occupancy vehicle lanes would be converted to toll lanes. Cars with three or more people would be exempt from paying. The federal money would also finance bus service in the new toll lanes.
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York, through a spokesman, applauded the efforts of both cities.
“While it’s sad that Washington, which most Americans agree is completely dysfunctional, is more willing to try new approaches to long-standing problems than Albany is,” Mr. Bloomberg’s press secretary, Stu Loeser, said, “we’re glad other places aren’t as allergic to innovation.”
Mayor Bloomberg is clearly still smarting from the defeat of his groundbreaking (in the U.S., at least) congestion pricing plan. He’s not the only one. “We’re disappointed that New York didn’t get it,” Tyler D. Duvall, acting under secretary for policy for the Department of Transportation, said to The Times, “but we’re extremely happy to have the opportunity to work with L.A. and Chicago.”
For New York, the blow stings a bit. Chicago, in particular, is adopting measures that New York really needs and should have. At a time when many are noting that our own BRT system may be delayed a few years, Chicago’s gain is New York’s loss.
We could have had BRT money; we could have had funds for traffic reduction programs and public transit expansion. Instead, we have risk-averse politicians who wouldn’t even put the plan up for a floor vote, and we get to sit back at Chicago enjoys the money that could have been ours. That’s some example to set as a global city in 2008.
Mar
26
Chicago facing one ‘L’ of a problem
Posted by: | Comments
A glimpse down the ‘L’ tracks in Chicago. (Courtesy of flickr user sftrajan)
Once upon a time, the New York City subways were a mess. Decades of Robert Moses’ iron-fisted rule of the NYC metropolitan area’s transportation policies had left the subways near bankrupt and in a state of disrepair. Old train cars derailed frequently and otherwise crawled around the city. Service problems numbered in the thousands per year, and no one wanted to ride what was once the bets subway system in the world.
In those days, grime and dirt marred the subways. The cars were covered from floor to ceiling, inside and out, with graffiti, and crime underground transcended a problem. It was an epidemic. Looking at popular NYC culture from the time, movies such as The Taking of Pelham One Two Three show New Yorkers resigned to their fates. Submachine guns on the subway? It’s just another day’s commute.
These were dark days for New York City. Emerging from bankruptcy itself largely brought about by Robert Moses’ reckless spending and the need to maintain his automobile-centric infrastructure, the city was known as a seedy den of sin and social disorder. Times Square meant peep shows and prostitutes, not Disney and The Lion King. in 1984, at arguably the low point in the City’s recent history, one man - Bernard Goetz - took personal vigilantism to a whole new level when he shot four young men he believed to be threatening him.
Whether or not Goetz’s incident was the clear turning point or Rudy Giuliani’s crime prevention measures were the real cause of the New York City turnaround doesn’t matter. Twenty-five years ago, the subways had no money, few riders and a grim future. No politician wanted to invest in them; no one in his or her right mind would want to ride on them. How times have changed for a subway system that will soon see its first new line in decades and may witness record ridership numbers by the end of the decade.
But while we enjoy a subway renaissance, our neighbors 800 miles to the west aren’t so lucky. While social conditions in urban cities in the U.S. has improved since the 1980s and riding the subway isn’t nearly as dangerous as it once was, not all subway systems are maintained with the same devotion and dollars that our expansive highway system enjoys, and now, Chicagoans are starting to pay the price. The ‘L,’ Chicago’s 100-year-old rapid transit system, is breaking down. The money isn’t there to modernize the trains, and a boom times in Chicago are stressing the system to what some are calling its breaking point. The Times has more.
