Streetsblog Los Angeles

Photo: Fire Monkey Fish/Flickr

Last week, the Brookings Institute, one of Washington’s oldest think tanks released, Transit Access and Zero Vehicle Households, a report that looked at transit access for the country’s most dependent populations and ranked each major American metropolitan area on how well they provided bus service to this population.

Los Angeles ranked second in terms of providing access to car free households.  99.1% of car-free Angelenos live in a neighborhood with some access to transit, a higher percentage than New York, San Francisco or any American city east of Honolulu.

This announcement led to some pretty heady headlines such as Los Angeles Tops List of Cities For Carless Residents in LAist, Los Angeles Public Transit Access Top Among Major Metropolitan Areas, Besting Even New York in the Huffington Post, and Car-loving L.A. may actually be a public-transit paradise in the Los Angeles Times.

Sounds great, the only problem is that the Brookings Report doesn’t actually say any of those things.  There’s a reason Saturday’s Bus Riders Union event wasn’t a victory party.  What the report does say is that L.A.’s transit system has service in a lot of different residential communities, more than every major city outside Hawaii.  Here are other important notes from the study. Read more…

Many intersections with red light cameras are marked, but that's not enough to appease drivers intent on breaking the law and getting away with it. Photo: Tampa Tribune

A new study shows that, despite their supposed reputation as government revenue collectors, red light cameras are saving lives.

The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety found that red light cameras prevented 159 deaths between 2004 and 2008 in 14 of the largest cities in the U.S., and that 815 deaths would have been prevented had cameras been operating in all U.S. cities with a population of over 200,000.

Says the IIHS:

The researchers found that in the 14 cities that had cameras during 2004-08, the combined per capita rate of fatal red light running crashes fell 35 percent, compared with 1992-96. The rate also fell in the 48 cities without camera programs in either period, but only by 14 percent.

Based on that comparison, the researchers concluded that the rate of fatal red light running crashes in cities with cameras in 2004-08 was 24 percent lower than it would have been without cameras. That adds up to 74 fewer fatal red light running crashes or, given the average number of fatalities per red light running crash, approximately 83 lives saved.

The study also found that crashes in cities with red light cams declined even at signalized intersections where no cameras were present — leading to a projected total of 159 lives saved — while collisions in cities that used no cameras showed a slight increase.

Read more…

The high-water mark for American parking policy came in the early
1970s, when cities including New York, Boston, and Portland set limits
on off-street parking in their downtowns. They were compelled to do so
by lawsuits brought under the Clean Air Act, which used the lever of
parking policy to curb traffic and reduce pollution from auto
emissions. This level of innovation went unmatched over the ensuing
three-and-a-half decades. Only now are U.S. cities implementing
effective new parking strategies that cut down on traffic.

(Graphic: ITDP)

A report released today by the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy [PDF]
highlights the new wave of parking policy innovation that could pay
huge dividends for sustainable transport and livable streets. If your
city aspires to make streets safe, improve the quality of transit, and
foster bicycling, then your city needs a coherent parking policy.

"There
was a 35-year parking coma during which the federal
government, cities, and environmentalists forgot why parking was
important," said John Kaehny, who co-authored the report with Matthew
Rufo and UPenn professor Rachel Weinberger. "This study shows people
are starting to wake up and understand
that parking is one of the most important influences on how cities work
and
what form of travel people choose to use."

The early 70s
parking limits beat back the cycle of more car storage, wider roadways,
and greater sprawl that decimates urban areas. The underlying idea was
simple: Manage the supply of parking, and you can reduce the demand for
driving. Yet in America this notion has gone largely unheeded, even in
cities.

Instead, the authors note, parking policy is
typically divorced from transportation policy and goals like reducing
congestion or encouraging walking and biking. In most of our urban
areas, planners determine parking volumes using suburban standards,
drawing heavily on ill-suited recommendations in "Parking Generation,"
a manual published by the Institute for Transportation Engineers. The
product is abundant, cheap parking — much of which sits unused most of
the time.

Fully 99 percent of car trips in America end in
free parking, an incentive that crowds out all other modes of
transportation. "Even when the price of parking is free," said
Weinberger, "it’s far from free."

The resulting congestion
impedes the effectiveness of transit. Traffic volumes and
double-parking make bicycling less pleasant and more dangerous.
Walkable environments give way to curb cuts, dead walls, and
land-devouring parking facilities that spread destinations farther
apart. The whole vicious cycle is heavily subsidized, with the cost of
parking absorbed into the price of everything from housing to movie
tickets.

"In a time of economic distress, we can’t afford
to continue these policies,"  said ITDP’s Michael Replogle. "Continuing
to subsidize parking is very costly for all of us."

Read more…

A map of the companies involved in the supply chain for U.S. transit buses. (Image: EDF)

When Vice President Joe Biden visited Minnesota's New Flyer bus company to tout the economic stimulus law's $8.4 billion investment in transit, hopes were high for a boom in cleaner-burning vehicle production -- which made for some bad press when the nationwide transit funding crunch forced New Flyer to lay off 13 percent of its workers.

But the recession hasn't dampened the economic potential of hybrid bus production, as the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) laid out today in a new report [PDF] on the industry. In fact, EDF found, transit bus companies share enough skills and regional foothold with the auto industry -- the map of bus makers pictured above could be mistaken for a map of automakers -- to pave the way for fuel-efficiency advances that would ultimately benefit all vehicles.

After noting that 32 percent of American transit buses do not rely on gas or diesel to run, today's report continues:

The bus industry serves as an important entry point for advanced vehicle technologies, especially in new vehicles that require refueling infrastructure and other major changes. For instance, since transit agencies have a well-defined base of centrally managed fleets, they are ideal for testing and proving plug-in hybrid and all-electric buses — thus leading the way for the passenger car industry.

Read more...

(Editor’s Note: A lot of what’s in this post, available at Streetsblog,  but its findings certainly apply to Los Angeles as well.-DN)

A Hunter College study on cyclist behavior is making the rounds today, getting a long post on City Room.
The data measure the extent to which cyclists take safety precautions
and follow traffic laws. Helpful stuff to know, except that the
findings are presented in a way that feeds into the worst stereotypes
about cyclists and a blame-the-victim mentality toward traffic injuries
and deaths.

In the post, headlined "Study Finds
Cyclists Disobey Traffic Laws," the report authors call for greater
helmet use and adherence to traffic laws. Again, all well and good, but
leaving it at that reinforces the perception that cyclists would be
much safer if only they obeyed the letter of the law. It’s easy to hear
echoes of NYPD’s insistence, in the waning days of the Giuliani
administration, that "cyclist error" was to blame in three quarters of
deadly crashes. A follow-up study conducted by the advocacy group Right
of Way [PDF] found otherwise:

Through
careful reconstruction of crash circumstances, we were able to assign
responsibility in 53 of the 71 fatal bicycle crashes during 1995-1998
for which we obtained police crash reports. We determined that drivers
were highly culpable in 30 cases, partly culpable in 11 cases, and not
culpable in 12 cases. Driver misconduct was thus the principal cause in
57% (30 out of 53) of the cases and a contributory factor in 78% (30
plus 11, or 41, out of 53).

Another
way to view the Hunter College findings is that rates of traffic
violations among cyclists are symptomatic of a system designed mainly
to accommodate cars. In other words, cyclists follow the rules more
when they feel safe. (City Room cites TA’s Wiley Norvell to this
effect, toward the bottom of the post.) This has been borne out on
Ninth Avenue, where according to DOT’s data, the incidence of sidewalk
riding declined from five percent to below one percent after the
protected path was installed.

As Norvell told Streetsblog, "A
lot of the traffic violations we see out there happen on streets that
have absolutely no provision for the safety of the cyclist."

It may seem paradoxical to some, but researchers at the University of South Whales in Australia shows that the more people that bicycle on the roads, the safer cyclists are.  The study included research from cyclists in
Australia, Denmark, the Netherlands, 14 European countries and 68
Californian cities.  Put briefly, the study concludes that the more cyclists there are on the road, the more likely that drivers will recognize them as part of the transportation system and be aware of their presence.

Dr. Julie Hatfield, an injury expert from
UNSW, explains what she calls the "Virtuous Cycle" of more people biking in Science Daily,

"The likelihood that an individual cyclist will be struck
by a motorist falls with increasing rate of bicycling in a community.
And the safer cycling is perceived to be, the more people are prepared
to cycle."

If we accept the researcher’s findings that to improve cyclist safety we need to get more people cycling, it raises questions about the effects of advertising campaigns built around encouraging safe cycling.  Remember the City of Los Angeles’ award winning advertisement that compares cyclists to insects who need to be trained? 

Dr. Chris Rissel, co-author of a 2008 report on cycling safety with Dr. Hatfield, tells Science Daily that these types of advertiesments help keep people off their bikes and make the streets more dangerous.

"We should create a cycling friendly environment and accentuate
cycling’s positives rather than stress negatives with ‘safety
campaigns’ that focus on cyclists without addressing drivers and road
conditions. Reminding people of injury rates and risks, to wear helmets
and reflective visible clothes has the unintended effect of reinforcing
fears of cycling which discourages people from cycling."

Photo:Los Angeles Streetsblog/Flickr

SustainLane, known for its ranking of greenest US cities, is looking for short essays on sustainable urban living. Here are a few ideas from the contest guidelines:  

• Tell us the story about the commuter
  rail that doesn’t exist (voted down yet again). Would it run near your
  neighborhood, if it did?
• Tell us about the successes. Does
  the city leadership have the right idea? Are there projects run by
  nonprofit organizations or businesses worth mentioning?
• Tell us about the champions of sustainability in your city. Who’s already doing it the right way?

Essays should be 500 words. Accepted entries will be rewarded with $100 and publication on a new urban sustainability web site.

Further details and the entry form are here.

A new Pew Research Center study on political preferences includes polling data that show almost three-fourths of Americans favor more spending on public transportation:

Column one indicates responses for all those surveyed. Columns two, three and four show responses among those who identify as Republicans, Democrats and Independents, respectively. The poll was taken last February.

Other polls cited in the study show that Americans favor drilling for oil in the Arctic Wildlife National Refuge (50-43 percent) and believe developing new sources of energy is more important than protecting the environment (60-34 percent) — though 73 percent believe global warming is a very serious or somewhat serious problem.

More questions and responses after the jump. You can download the entire report here.

Read more…