Sprawled Out: The Search for Community in the American Suburb

UPDATE: The Party of NO: Thanks to Republican Senator Jim Bunning, We Have NO More Federal Transportation Law, and That’s Bad

 

3/3/10 Update: Sanity prevails - Senate extends Highway Trust Fund; DOT employees back on the job Wednesday

From INFRASTRUCTURIST.

Here’s a rundown of what happened: Late last week, Republican Sen. Jim Bunning filibustered a bill to extend federal unemployment benefits, arguing that the government needed to add a provision stipulating how it would pay the $10 billion tab. As a result, the Transportation Department has announced it’s going to furlough 2,000 employees (though it could be double that) without pay — including people like federal inspectors that keep state construction projects going. The job cuts will come from the Federal Highway Administration, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, and the Research and Innovative Technology Administration.

What else does this all mean? We’ll likely see a total shutdown of federal funding for road, bridge, bike-ped, and transit projects, since a short-term extension of the Highway Trust Fund was attached to the dead bill. The government will also halt the processing of funds for stimulus construction work, which means the remainder of the ARRA money will sit gathering dust. And to top it all off, the federal spigot will be dry for state-based road safety groups such as Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD).

A Driving Problem, Not a Texting Problem?

From: How We Drive, the Blog of Tom Vanderbilt’s Traffic » Blog Archive » A Driving Problem, Not a Texting Problem

I’ve always thought that most people really do not like to drive, or at least drive all that much. Why would they otherwise be so constantly engaged in non-driving activities?

Clive Thompson makes this point in an interesting new column at Wired.

Texting while driving is, in essence, a wake-up call to America. It illustrates our real, and bigger, predicament: The country is currently better suited to cars than to communication. This is completely bonkers.

Thompson has an idea for a technological solution to the problem:

So what can we do? We should change our focus to the other side of the equation and curtail not the texting but the driving. This may sound a bit facetious, but I’m serious. When we worry about driving and texting, we assume that the most important thing the person is doing is piloting the car. But what if the most important thing they’re doing is texting? How do we free them up so they can text without needing to worry about driving?

The answer, of course, is public transit. In many parts of the world where texting has become ingrained in daily life — like Japan and Europe — public transit is so plentiful that there hasn’t been a major texting-while-driving crisis. You don’t endanger anyone’s life while quietly tapping out messages during your train ride to work in Tokyo or Berlin.

I don’t think it’s a stretch at all to say, for the current crop of young drivers, that texting — staying in electronic touch — is far more important than the act of driving. They also protest that they are uniquely well adapted to “handle” such behavior, overlooking the inconvenient fact that all the major studies of texting/cell-phone distraction have been conducted on college students, not at retirement homes.

Braess’s paradox: Close streets to reduce traffic?

Counter-intuitive but effective, it turns out.

How closing streets can actually reduce traffic

As the city of Vancouver prepared to convert a car lane on the busy Burrard Bridge into a bike path last summer, some imagined impending anarchy. At the time, one cabbie, Jatinder Nijjar, predicted, “It is going to be chaos.” In fact, the trial—and the traffic—has run smoothly so far.

Nijjar might have had different expectations had he read “The Price of Anarchy in Transportation Networks,” a paper published in the journal Physical Review Letters in August, 2008. The paper’s authors, two Korean physicists and a researcher at the Santa Fe Institute in New Mexico, showed that closing certain streets in Boston, London, and New York could actually reduce traffic. This counterintuitive result can be explained by Braess’s paradox, a mathematical concept that describes how, when individual drivers make the decision to take the quickest route, they all try to squeeze onto the path they perceive as being fastest in the short term, and everyone’s commute is longer than it has to be. Providing fewer driving options turns out to mean that commuters spread out their commutes more equitably among the routes available, making the average commute shorter for everyone—not to mention creating a more pleasant civic space.

Read the rest at: The GOOD 100: Fewer Streets - The GOOD 100 - GOOD

Coveting an interchange, will a local business pony up the cash?

ABOVE: In a photo taken while Northwestern Mutual's "phase 2" was still under construction (see girders at upper right), the Oak Creek "commitment" to connecting 27th street to a possible Drexel interchange is demonstrated. The road has since been re-paved --- but remains a narrow, near-shoulderless barrier.

Steve Jagler, executive editor of BizTimes in Milwaukee, made some spring predictions via the OnMilwaukee.com site.

While we're on the south side of the county, Oak Creek and Franklin have been unable to come up with the matching local funds that the Wisconsin Department of Transportation would require to build a new freeway interchange on Interstate 94 at Drexel Avenue. Later this year, look for Northwestern Mutual Insurance Co. to pony up and cover the heretofore missing dollars. The Quiet Company is hush about its plans, but sources say Northwestern Mutual needs the exit ramp to serve its sprawling campus on South 27th Street. The company also has acquired several parcels of land surrounding the campus, and a freeway exit at Drexel Avenue would add commercial value to the properties.

This is a fairly fascinating notion. Anyone who has traveled Drexel on the Oak Creek side of 27th Street can't help but notice that the road is very consciously "under-engineered." After all --- the "spirit of Franklin-Oak Creek 27th Street cooperation" notwithstanding --- Oak Creek wants traffic to go EAST to their burgeoning commercial strip on Howell. What do they need with 27th Street?

So a fairly superfluousness interchange may be funded because Northwestern Mutual perceives a 45-second time-savings as a possible boon to property it owns around the 27th Street campus --- most significantly, on the Oak Creek side. Rather than take the Rawson exit, which brings traffic right down 27th Street (and through a commercial district that Oak Creek-Franklin profess interest in cooperatively growing), a Drexel interchange offers drivers a choice of turning west on a narrow, uninviting road (the Franklin side), or right on a meticulously maintained, multi-lane asphalt wonder (the Oak Creek side), which has a huge, vacant Delphi plant waiting for commercial development.

It doesn't take much imagination to see, in the lack of regional cooperation at work here, a moat forming around the island city of Franklin.

I've placed this on the agenda for discussion at the next Franklin Economic Development Commission meeting and that of the Trails Committee; we'll see what sense of urgency is created.

Midwest Intercity Passenger Rail Program AT LAST?

Decades late, but here is what the beginning of a sensible transportation program looks like, via a federal grant.

Awardees : Wisconsin Department of Transportation; Minnesota Department of Transportation

Total Approximate Funding (entire corridor) : $823,000,000

Benefiting States : Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois

Miles of Track : Upgraded - 144 miles, New - 32 miles, Planned - 275 miles (est.), Total - Appx. 441 Miles

The corridor stretching from the Twin Cities to Madison, Milwaukee, and Chicago is an essential segment of the Midwest rail system. However, there is currently no passenger rail service between Milwaukee and Madison, the two largest metropolitan areas in Wisconsin.

Using grants from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), intercity passenger rail service will be established between Milwaukee and Madison with stops in Brookeld, Oconomowoc, and Watertown at speeds of up to 110 mph. Service is expected by 2013.

Improvements between Chicago and Milwaukee will ultimately reduce travel time by more than 30 percent and increase maximum speeds from 79 mph to 110 mph. Eventually, passengers will be able to travel from Chicago to the Twin Cities at a top speed of 110 mph, saving time and energy compared to driving.

Summary of Corridor Investments

Chicago - Milwaukee: Station construction, infrastructure enhancements, and signal and track improvements will increase on-time performance and reliability and create the building blocks for future 110 mph service. The increased speed will eventually reduce travel time between the two cities by more than 30 percent.

Milwaukee - Madison: Implementation of a new service by upgrading infrastructure along 80 miles of track connecting Wisconsin’s two largest cities. This project also includes new and refurbished stations, as well as positive train control. Approximately 76 percent of Wisconsin’s total population lives within 30 miles of the rail stations on this corridor.

Madison - Minneapolis/St. Paul: Planning and environmental work will begin to lay the groundwork for connecting the rail line through Wisconsin to Minnesota at speeds of up to 110 mph. Several route alignments will be considered in the planning process.

Read the rest at: Fact Sheet: High Speed Intercity Passenger Rail Program: Minneapolis/St. Paul - Madison - Milwaukee - Chicago | The White House

Getting closer: Wisconsin lands $800 million for high-speed rail

From the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

Wisconsin will receive more than $800 million to build a high-speed rail line carrying passengers between Milwaukee and Madison at 110 mph and recapture a piece of a regional rail system largely abandoned six decades ago.

The high-speed line could be up and running as early as 2013, the state says.

President Barack Obama mentioned the federal investment in high-speed rail in his State of the Union speech Wednesday night and was expected to announce the specific awards for 13 projects nationally at an event in Florida on Thursday morning.

A fact sheet issued by the White House lists the $810 million for the stations and track improvements necessary for the high-speed line connecting the state's two largest cities, along with improvements to the Amtrak Hiawatha line between Milwaukee and Chicago that will serve as the building blocks for a 110-mph service along that route.

Ridership on that line nearly doubled from 397,518 passengers in 2002 to 766,167 in 2008, then leveled off in 2009. The decrease was blamed on the recession, which decreased travel across various modes of transportation.

The federal funding is part of an $8 billion package of rail grants approved by Congress in the 2009 economic recovery act. It provides money to build up the tracks and start operation of a high-speed rail connection that had been stalled in Wisconsin for decades.

"I am really pleased with President Obama's investment in the future of Wisconsin's economy," Gov. Jim Doyle said late Wednesday. "This is a major job creation project that will provide a long-term boost to our economy.

"Through high-speed rail we will connect the major centers of commerce in Wisconsin and in the region. This was a national competition, and the results clearly demonstrate that Wisconsin had a very strong application."

As it pursued the federal funds, the state last year decided to purchase two 14-car train sets manufactured by the Spanish company Talgo Inc. Those cars are expected to be built in Wisconsin.

The advance work helped put Wisconsin in a favorable position to win the federal stimulus dollars. The effort also benefited from the planning and engineering work done on the tracks that will be used to carry the high-speed trains.

The route is expected to include stops in Brookfield, Oconomowoc and Watertown.

Eventually, the high-speed line could be extended from Madison to the Twin Cities.

Job creation cited

Doyle promoted the Milwaukee-Madison rail link as an initiative to create jobs in Wisconsin and provide a missing element in southern Wisconsin's transportation  options. In earlier lobbying, he said the high-speed line would create nearly 13,000 jobs, reduce auto trips by 7.8 million over 10 years and save millions of gallons of fuel.

Obama also touted the job-creating benefits of rail projects and included the federal grants in the economic stimulus package pushed through Congress last year. Nearly half the states submitted 45 applications for the high-speed rail funding.

The administration promised that the grants would be allocated based on the merits of the individual projects.

The work to upgrade the tracks to accommodate the high-speed trains from downtown Milwaukee to the Dane County Regional Airport is projected to cost roughly $651.8 million. Doyle sought $817 million in federal funds to cover contingencies and inflation.

Advocates and opponents have debated the value of investments in high-speed rail for decades.

Those opposed to the rail project argued that it would waste transportation dollars that the state can't afford to spend, and reduce the amount of money available to maintain and improve freeways.

The high-speed line funded with the federal allocation follows and expands on a rail corridor that existed throughout the early part of the last century, and eventually gave way to I-94.

"There have been discussions along this line for 20 years at least," said Craig Thompson, executive director of the Transportation Development Association of Wisconsin. "It's very expensive, and we've been having trouble finding money to meet existing needs."

The challenge in the future will be to find the money for ongoing operations of the high-speed rail system, Thompson said.

Rick Harnish, executive director of the Midwest High Speed Rail Association, called the award an "exciting first step" in building a system that connects cities in the region and ultimately across the country.

"Currently, people are forced to drive, and that's the most expensive and least productive way to travel," he said. "We have to find more convenient, faster and less-expensive ways to travel in order to have a strong economy."

Patrick Marley and Diana Marrero of the Journal Sentinel staff contributed to this report.

Read the rest at: Wisconsin lands $800 million for high-speed rail - JSOnline

The Business Journal of Milwaukee reports Madison-Milwaukee high-speed rail project on fast track

Came across the headline above after posting this. Still, will that be enough to get my city's administration to take notice?

Read the rest at: High-speed rail project on fast track - The Business Journal of Milwaukee

Suburban conservatives and transit: Getting over the hump

Having tried to bring up transit issues on the Franklin Economic Development Commission - and having been met with snorts of derision at best - I fear my city is woefully unprepared to demonstrate to companies who might consider relocating here that we are capable of leveraging the planned Minneapolis-Madison-Milwaukee-Chicago corridor.

I'm putting together a short "wake-up" presentation for an upcoming EDC meeting, which I'm sure will once again be met with rolling eyes. Perhaps this book will help.