Streetsblog New York City

Tomorrow the default New York City speed limit will drop to 25 miles per hour. This change was a major component of Mayor de Blasio’s Vision Zero Action Plan, and thanks to support from city and state lawmakers, and tireless advocacy on the part of Transportation Alternatives and Families for Safe Streets, streets will be more forgiving for New Yorkers who walk, bike, and drive.

While new signage is at the ready, and the city has worked at getting the word out, all city motorists won’t ease off their accelerators at the stroke of midnight. In this short PSA, Mary Beth Kelly of Families for Safe Streets tells Streetfilms’ Clarence Eckerson what she hopes to see as drivers become accustomed to the new law.

“I’d like to see New Yorkers re-learn how to drive in an urban space,” says Kelly.

I think, like with any change, our neuro-circuitry isn’t prepared, and it’s going to take practice, and time, and people are going to feel like going slower with the new 25 miles per hour is too slow. But that’s only because we’re used to going so much faster, or trying to. So it’s a matter of practice and getting used to that, so that when you go fast you feel uncomfortable, you feel the difference, and you realize, rather it feeling too slow, you’re noticing when it’s feeling too fast.

Since 1995, leaders in the Raleigh-Durham region of North Carolina have dreamed about connecting its major centers via light rail. The results of Tuesday night’s election might finally make it happen.

The light rail plan calls for links between the three downtowns of Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill. Getting three separate areas, and three separate legislative bodies, to commit to light rail has been somewhat tricky, but there’s also been major progress. Voters in Durham and Chapel Hill passed half-cent sales tax increases to support light rail and increase bus service in 2011 and 2012.

But for the last few years there’s been little to no progress in Raleigh — the third leg of the “Research Triangle” and the largest population center in the region. Wake County commissioners have refused to discuss regional transit plans, much less introduce a ballot measure that would put the issue before voters.

Tuesday’s election results, however, sent a clear signal that Raleigh is ready to get moving on transit. Democratic candidates, who campaigned on moving ahead with rail, swept all four available seats on the Wake County Commission, and the party now controls all seven votes. One winner Tuesday night, Sig Hutchinson, was formerly a board member and chair of the regional transit agency, Triangle Transit, which is leading the light rail plans.

Transit expansion was a top-tier issue for the four Democratic candidates. ”For three years, GOP voted to prevent even a discussion of transportation options,” the team wrote on its campaign website, which asserted that the growing region would end up “like Atlanta” without decisive action to expand transportation options.

“We built a campaign of making smart investments in our future, particularly education and public transportation, and the voters told us tonight that they’re ready to move forward,” winning candidate Matt Calabria told the Raleigh News and Observer.

NYC DOT and the MTA have developed three design concepts for Select Bus Service on Woodhaven Boulevard and Cross Bay Boulevard in southeast Queens, and two of them go further than previous SBS routes to keep cars from slowing down buses [PDF]. All of the options include some measures to shorten crossing distances for pedestrians on one of the city’s widest and most dangerous streets.

The Woodhaven SBS project, which covers a 14.4-mile corridor running from the Rockaways to Woodside, is the biggest street redesign effort in NYC right now. All the City Council members along the route have said they want big changes, and the concepts on display last night indicate that DOT and the MTA can deliver.

Agency representatives showed the three designs at an open house in Ozone Park where residents could leave written comments on posterboards. City Council Member Eric Ulrich told me he liked what he saw, and bus riders and transit advocates were especially keen on “Concept 2″ and “Concept 3,” which would create clearer paths for buses. Here’s a rundown of how each option would work.

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Here’s another race for governor with big implications for transportation policy: In Pennsylvania, businessman Tom Wolf handily beat incumbent Tom Corbett.

Though Pennsylvania made some important progress on transportation issues during Corbett’s tenure, Wolf wants to usher in much more meaningful reforms. In its election round-up, Philly-based This Old City points to a post the governor-elect himself wrote for the blog while he was battling it out in the Democratic primary. In the piece, Wolf lays out a vision for a more multi-modal state:

We need to prioritize investments in local public transportation systems. Many of Pennsylvania’s cities have felt the effects of industrial decline over the last fifty years and, as a result, they have struggled to maintain once vibrant neighborhoods and smaller economic corridors. With declining populations and state funding that favors new development over redevelopment, we have neglected our public transportation systems, which put our major cities, like Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, at an economic disadvantage.

While other states and cities have continued to expand and modernize their transit systems, our transit authorities, like the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transit Authority (SEPTA), have struggled to survive. Instead of updating equipment and tackling major improvement projects — like expanding the Broad Street Line to the Navy Yard — SEPTA has had to plan for significant cut-backs in services.

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A driver speeding north on Fourth Avenue in Park Slope this afternoon ran a red light and struck a woman, leaving her seriously injured before speeding away from the scene. Less than six weeks ago, a hit-and-run driver — also speeding north on Fourth Avenue, also running a red — injured a cyclist at the same location before crashing his car and fleeing on foot.

The woman injured today was crossing Fourth Avenue at Union Street at 12:35 p.m. when the northbound driver ran a red light and struck her in the crosswalk. She was transported to Lutheran Hospital in serious condition. According to the Daily News, she suffers from an open skull fracture. Police have not released her identity.

Witnesses interviewed by DNAinfo said the victim, age 46, landed head first on the pavement. The witnesses, who both work as EMTs, assisted the woman before an ambulance arrived. “Her face was covered with blood,” one witness said. “She was unconscious.”

The driver, behind the wheel of a dark Hyundai Elantra, fled the scene and kept going up Fourth Avenue. Police say the car may be the same vehicle that was reported stolen in Borough Park a half-hour after the crash. DNAinfo reports that police are looking for a vehicle with the license plate GRM8448.

On September 28, a similar crash occurred at the same location. A driver going north on Fourth Avenue sped past Union Street before crashing into a parked car one block away at Degraw Street. The driver got out of the car and fled on foot. Although witnesses said the driver had injured someone at Union Street before fleeing, police said the crash involved only property damage.

Two weeks after the crash, Boerum Hill resident David Pauley, 48, contacted Streetsblog to say he was the person injured by the driver at Union Street. According to a police crash report Pauley shared with Streetsblog, the driver was traveling northbound on Fourth Avenue when he ran a red light and struck another vehicle in the intersection. The driver then struck Pauley, who was going west on Union and had just entered the intersection. Like the woman injured today, Pauley landed on his head. He credits his bike helmet, which split in half, for sparing him more serious injury.

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Yesterday’s elections returned some of the nation’s most anti-urban, anti-transit governors to power in races where they were supposed to be vulnerable. Pro-transit candidates were unexpectedly routed in some states, though a few did manage to hang on.

For more background on these races, check out yesterday’s election preview. Here’s what to expect going forward.

Maryland

The biggest upset by far was in Maryland, where Democratic Lt. Gov. Anthony Brown was defeated by suburban real estate magnate Larry Hogan. Just a few weeks prior, Brown had been leading by double digits.

This stunning reversal has ominous consequences for transit in Maryland. Hogan opposes two major rail projects — the Purple Line Metro extension in suburban DC and Baltimore’s Red Line.

Transit advocates have their work cut out to convince Hogan to save both projects. But David Alpert, writing about the Purple Line in Greater Greater Washington, says the new governor has some incentive to let it proceed:

Now, it’s very close to actual construction, and the federal government supports the line. If Hogan kills the project, he’ll be turning down likely federal dollars that won’t go to other Maryland priorities, and he’ll be disappointing many voters in a much more visceral way than under [former Republican Gov. Bob] Ehrlich.

Wisconsin

Governor Scott Walker’s reelection by a six-point margin is certain keep the state mired in a 1950s-era, highways-only approach to transportation. Under Walker’s watch, Wisconsin has plowed billions of dollars into the country’s most pointless highway-building bonanza, while shortchanging transit so much that federal courts recently intervened. Perhaps the best symbol of his “leadership” on transportation is a proposed double-decker highway, a useless boondoggle for any city, let alone slow-growing Milwaukee.

His challenger, Mary Burke, a former executive for Trek Bicycles, likely would have pursued a more balanced approach.

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A senior struck by an allegedly unlicensed motorist in an Upper East Side crosswalk this September has died from her injuries, according to NYPD’s monthly traffic crash report and WNYC’s Mean Streets project. Though the driver was ticketed for failure to yield, he was not charged under the new Vision Zero law that makes it a crime for motorists to harm pedestrians who have the right of way.

At around 9:47 on the morning of September 4, Kristin Rodriguez, 25, drove a minivan into 66-year-old Keiko Ohnishi as she walked with a cane across Madison Avenue at E. 98th Street, near Mount Sinai Hospital, the Daily News reported.

From the Post:

“[The van] hit her and she [flew] up and back down and he kept on going with her under him,” said Tracy Molloy, 39, who was waiting for the bus when she saw the horrific accident.

“He was trying to make the light like every New York City driver,” she said.

“He drove completely over her, over her legs. He must have felt the bump and heard people scream so he stopped,” said another witness Neud Clermont. “Blood was coming out of her ears.

“I walked over and started to pull her dress down, and the driver was panicking. He was like, ‘Oh my god, I didn’t see you!’” said Clermont.

Ohnishi was admitted to Mount Sinai in critical condition. She succumbed to her injuries, NYPD confirmed.

Rodriguez, whose van reportedly had North Carolina plates, was summonsed for failure to yield and charged with third degree aggravated unlicensed operation, according to NYPD and court records. He was not charged under city code Section 19-190, known as the Right of Way Law, which made it a misdemeanor to strike a pedestrian or cyclist who has the right of way. The law was adopted as part of a package of Vision Zero legislation intended to reduce traffic injuries and deaths.

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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.

The Bill

First and foremost, both chambers of Congress will be in GOP hands when the current transportation bill, MAP-21, comes due for renegotiation next spring.

Bicameral Republican control strongly suggests that the door to increased revenues is closed. (It was hardly open under a Democratic Senate, either.)

GOP control could make it challenging to extend the current law as well. Senators had to scrounge for ways to pay for MAP-21, settling for a grab-bag of gimmicks. There isn’t more loose change to be found under the cushions. And no one in Congress, on either side of the aisle, has the appetite for deficit spending.

Other scenarios don’t look much better. Republicans and Democrats could use the lame duck period between now and January to hammer out a revenue deal, for instance. That would benefit the Republicans by raising taxes on the Democrats’ watch (but after the elections, when they don’t have to worry about the Republican base slamming them for not fighting hard enough). With the funds in hand for a multi-year bill, the details of how to spend it would then get hammered out after the GOP takes control of the Senate.

This is unlikely, however. There’s enough that already has to be done during the lame duck, first of all. Second, the reluctance on both sides to raise revenues isn’t all show: Most members of Congress are truly unwilling to increase what they see as a middle-class burden, no matter who’s watching. Besides, House Speaker John Boehner doesn’t have the cohesion within his party to do something so strategic, and the Democrats might not even go along with it.

The other possibility, of course, is that instead of raising revenues to match desired expenditure levels, Congress can limit spending to match gas tax receipts. Former House Transportation Chair John Mica tried that a few years ago and it didn’t go anywhere. Many people think that idea has been tried and discarded, but others think it could easily return, given how few options remain.

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Andrew Cuomo may have won re-election, but New York was no exception to the national Republican wave in yesterday’s elections. The GOP regained control of the State Senate, weakening its bond with the Independent Democratic Conference and keeping mainline Democrats in the minority. With last night’s results, the landscape for transit and livable streets legislation in Albany has shifted.

Republicans now have 32 of 63 seats in the State Senate. They gained control by ousting three upstate Democrats and losing only one seat, in a tight three-way Buffalo-area race. The balance of power no longer rests with the breakaway IDC, which formed a power-sharing agreement with Republicans. Leadership of the Senate could be consolidated next session in Dean Skelos of Long Island, who currently splits control with IDC leader Jeff Klein.

With Republicans in the majority, NYC’s two GOP senators — Martin Golden of Brooklyn and Andrew Lanza of Staten Island, who both won re-election last night – will be key for any street safety legislation affecting the city. Golden initially resisted speed camera legislation earlier this year, though he ultimately voted for the bill. Lanza is best known to Streetsblog readers for refusing to allow flashing lights on Select Bus Service vehicles.

The rest of the statewide political landscape did not change much. The Assembly will remain in the hands of Democrats, led by Speaker Sheldon Silver. Silver and Skelos will return to Albany next year with Comptroller Tom DiNapoli, Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, and Governor Cuomo, who all secured expected victories over Republican challengers.

The most pressing transportation issue facing Cuomo, Silver, and Skelos — the proverbial “three men in a room” — will be closing the $15.2 billion gap in the MTA capital program.

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