Special Reports
Streetsblog Basics
Koch-Funded Groups: Cut All Federal Funding for Walking, Biking, Transit
You know it's time to fight over the federal transportation bill when the fossil fuel-soaked elements of the conservative movement start agitating to stop funding everything except car infrastructure.
January 29, 2015
Victims’ Families to Electeds: End the Obstruction of Safe Streets on the UWS
Years of frustration with the leadership of Manhattan Community Board 7 boiled over at a traffic safety forum on the Upper West Side last night. Twice during the event, neighborhood residents who lost family members to traffic violence called on elected officials not to reappoint Dan Zweig, who has co-chaired CB 7's transportation committee for at least 15 years and blocked or delayed key street safety proposals.
January 22, 2015
Public Support for NYC Toll Reform Highest in the Suburbs
Since March, Move New York has made the case that its traffic reduction and transit funding plan can succeed in Albany. Proposing to raise car tolls in the transit-rich but congested Manhattan core while lowering them in more distant, car-dependent parts of town, Move NY seeks to avoid the political pitfalls that have sunk road pricing in the state capitol before. So how do the voters feel about this plan?
December 16, 2014
Cheaper Gas and Uber Have Manhattan Gridlock Poised to Get Worse
Traffic gridlock in Manhattan has been on the wane for some time. Newly released 2013 traffic counts from the New York Metropolitan Transportation Council show 747,000 motor vehicles entering the Manhattan Central Business District on a typical weekday. While that still constitutes a crushing load, it’s 5,000 fewer cars each day than in 2012 and a drop of 80,000 daily vehicles from the apparent peak year of 2004. As a result, average CBD traffic speeds are on an upswing, from 8 mph in 2006 to 9-9.5 mph in 2012. (Sorry, no figures available for 2004 or 2013.)
November 24, 2014
GOP Will Control the Senate in 2015 — What Does It Mean for Transportation?
The forecasting models were right: As the polls closed last night it quickly became apparent that Republicans will gain control of the Senate, with at least 52 seats now held by the GOP. The implications for transportation are immense. To understand what they are, first let's look at what last night means for the prospects for a new transportation bill next year. Then we'll get inside the committees for a nitty-gritty look at the leadership shakeup.
November 5, 2014
Fair Tolls: Fixing NYC’s Gridlock and Transit Shortfall in One Fell Swoop
When Governor Nelson Rockefeller merged New York's commuter rail lines, the NYC Transit Authority, and Robert Moses’s Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority to form the Metropolitan Transportation Authority in 1968, he had several motives. The new agency consolidated political power, made more efficient use of regional infrastructure, and devoted surplus bridge and tunnel toll revenues to rescue a faltering transit system.
October 7, 2014
Why the Next Fight Over Bike/Ped Funding Won’t Be Like the Last
When Congress passed a two-year transportation bill in 2012, active transportation advocates had to scrape and claw for every penny of funding for walking and biking programs. When the dust settled, it seemed they would have to repeat the same old battles when the law expired.
September 11, 2014
Cyclists and Pedestrians Now Make Up a Huge Share of Flushing Ave Traffic
Biking has skyrocketed on Flushing Avenue by the Brooklyn Navy Yard since the installation of bike infrastructure in 2010, according to new counts released by the Brooklyn Greenway Initiative. The route is slated for more biking and walking upgrades as the city builds out the Brooklyn Waterfront Greenway.
September 9, 2014
Congress Hits the Snooze Button on Transpo Funding Until May
Someone had to cave and last night, it was the Senate.
August 1, 2014
Unlike Toll Reform, a Sales Tax Really Is a Regressive Way to Fund Transit
The MTA capital program is facing a $12 billion shortfall, according to Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli, and unless that gap is closed, transit riders will end up paying even more to cover the agency's ballooning debt load. There's one clear way to address that problem while cleaning up the traffic mess that ensnares motorists, bus riders, pedestrians, and cyclists alike -- raising revenue by reforming NYC's broken toll system. But a leader of Governor Cuomo's MTA Reinvention Commission appears to favor a regressive option that won't fix the dysfunction on city streets.
July 29, 2014