“Transportation reform for the US- are Americans ready?”
Thu. Aug. 21, 7 - 8:30 pm
by Gary Toth, Director of Transportation Initiatives for the Project for Public Spaces
@ LivableStreets office space, 100 Sidney Street, Central Square, Cambridge [ map… ]

free and open to the public, donation suggested, beer/sodas provided compliments of Harpoon Brewery!

“The decisions engineers make will affect people’s lives. The street can’t be looked at as just a vessel for cars. It’s a place with many uses. What we want to do is try to help foster sustainable, livable communities,” Toth says.

That’s strong stuff coming from an engineer with 34 years experience inside the highway bureaucracy. And it’s not just a line he throws out to soothe angry citizens’ groups–Gary Toth during his tenure at NJDOT actually changed the way engineers think. In the old days, NJDOT would give most street widenings the green light, but Toth is dedicated to halting this vicious cycle. Instead of funneling all traffic from every residential and commercial property onto the strip, NJDOT is encouraging towns to create networks of streets with mixed-use developments, dispersing traffic over the whole system. The idea is to create livable corridors rather than endless sprawl. Sounds simple enough, but it’s actually a revolutionary change in suburban transportation and land use planning. He notes how Kentucky, Utah, Florida, Vermont and other states are joining New Jersey in seriously studying Context Sensitive Solutions–the discipline’s name for looking at streets and roads as something more than simply a way to move traffic. “It’s becoming a national movement with 20 or 25 states already showing some signs of getting away from the same old myopia.”

Gary has left NJDOT to focus on bigger transportation reform in America. He is an integral member of the T4America Coalition, which is working to shape the content of the next federal transportation bill. He is currently one of the eight instructors for USDOT’s “Training Course on Transportation and Land Use.” He is also a member of the Sustainable Urban Design Working Group of the American Public Transit Association and a member of the Strategic Highway Research Program’s Technical Coordinating Committee for Capacity. He was also part of the Sustainable Transportation Study Team charged with creating a conceptual plan for presentation to the US Congress, which ensures that the surface transportation system will continue to serve the needs of the U.S. throughout the 21st Century. Gary works part time for the Project for Public Spaces as Director of Transportation Initiatives.

Gary was featured in the article, “Rethinking the Urban Speedway,” (pdf) (For decades, highway engineers focused on designing wider, straighter, faster roads. Now, moving traffic quickly is no longer the sole goal), Governing Magazine, October 2005. “The traditional engineering solution to road problems is to make the road wider, straighter and faster,” Toth says. “Well, wider, straighter and faster is not always better.”

This event is sponsored by LivableStreets Alliance

Click here for more information

The fledgling AB-Bikes is having it’s next meeting! If you live in the Allston Brighton area and you ride bikes you should go check these people out. They are just getting started and I am sure they are headed towards greatness.

Got this today.

Our monthly meetings are on the last Tuesday of the month… so here’s
a reminder that we’ll be meeting in the Jackson Mann Community Center
auditorium at 7pm on 7/29/08. If you plan to join us, please mark your
calendar and RSVP (with yes or maybes for a rough head count and
contact information in case there’s a change in plans) to
shredbette@gmail.com

Please share this information and invitation with anyone who may be
interested. For more information about A-B bikes or to participate
online by posting on our blog(s) and/or joining our Google group,
please check us out at our website

All interested in supporting our mission to work to make Allston-
Brighton a more bicycle friendly and safe community are welcome to
join!

Got this in my email today:

5/27/08
7PM
smoken joes barbq
351 washington street, brighton
CONTACT: shredbette@gmail.com

our first meeting is informal…
proposed agenda: introduce ourselves, brainstorm, collect contact info

this meeting will be about 30 minutes, with time afterward to hang out for refreshments/networking/socializing
about bike issues in our community.
(we expect to meet regularly with a more structured agenda in the future)

kinds of activities that have been proposed: local advocacy (racks, signage, lanes), rides (community, mountain, road); resources (information about inexpensive helmets, legal counsel with expertise w/r/t bike accidents and legal issues; other resources that may be helpful to the Allston/Brighton bike community); education (of bike community, business community, drivers, local EMS, fire and police). specific activities/issues/priorities of the group will be decided by those who participate.

Sounds like this could be another really cool local bike group. If you live in the area and ride bikes you should for sure check it out. More info at their website here. (they are also starting a site on BostonBiker!)

According to this (pdf), Boston will be getting:

The Boston Region Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) awarded $142,000 in April to support four transportation demand-management (TDM) projects that will help improve air quality in the region by reducing transportation- related emissions. The largest award, $67,000, went to the City of Cambridge for the launch of a pilot social-marketing campaign
aimed at encouraging Cambridge residents to switch from driving to using other transportation modes. The City of Boston received $40,000 to start a bicycle pool that city employees can
use to reduce driving trips within the city.

Could this mean that not only Mayor Menino but a whole train of city employees will be riding bikes to meetings, riding bikes to events, riding bikes to lunch etc? I sure hope so, the best possible way to clue in city planners to some of the problems facing bikers is to experience them first hand. We can only hope they actually use the bikes.

The PDF is a good read, it also states that T stations in Boston have seen a 79% increase over the last 4 years…

The Boston Region MPO has posted online the results of its most recent inventory of bicycle parking spaces at MBTA facilities, which was conducted in 2005 and 2006. The previous inventory was done in 1999, 2000, and 2002. The MPO staff collected data on the number of MBTA-owned and municipally owned bicycle racks and the number of bicycle parking
spaces being used at 123 rapid transit stations, 124 commuter rail stations, 4 commuter boat terminals, and 3 major bus stops in the region. Since the previous inventory had been done, the number of bicycle parking spaces at MBTA facilities increased by 79 percent and 25 more stations had bicycle racks. The inventory also identified locations of underutilized racks. MPO staff made recommendations for improving bicycle parking at those stations. Both the recommendations and the inventory results can be found at www.bostonmpo.org/bostonmpo/resources/CMS/cmsbpark.htm. This work was conducted as
part of the MPO’s Mobility Management System, a program for collecting data for use in analyzing the performance of the region’s transportation system.

Of course they didn’t really start off with much bike parking (and much of it was poorly lit, in corners easy for thieves, and inconvenient), but an increase is an increase. Hit this link to see the hard numbers.

It’s progress, small progress, but progress none the less.

Everyone knows that bicycles are sweet. They keep you in good shape, allow you to experience nature in a direct way, and they are a great way to reduce our carbon foot print (bikes don’t run on oil). Which is why it is great news that New York City’s Transportation Alternatives and the Chicagoland Bicycle Federation have been selected as the first recipients of REI/Bicycle Friendly Communities Grants of $15,000 each. This new grant fund, administered by the Bikes Belong Foundation and made possible with support from Recreational Equipment Inc. (REI), helps aspiring, committed Bicycle Friendly Communities become great places to ride.

Transportation Alternatives (TA) will use their award to support a comprehensive citywide bike parking initiative designed to increase bike transportation in New York by giving cyclists safe, convenient places to park and store their bicycles. TA will conduct advocacy work for “parking spot swaps” and legislation mandating bicycle access to commercial buildings. The grant will also back a bike-rack design competition organized by the NYC Department of Transportation, TA, and city art museums.

Chicagoland Bicycle Federation will use their funding to produce the first of a series of Sunday Parkways events in Chicago, modeled after Ciclovia in Guadalajara, Mexico, and Bogotá, Columbia. With a goal of “transforming communities by invigorating their lifelines—their streets—every weekend from June through October,” Sunday Parkways promises to dramatically increase ridership in the city of Chicago by creating a car-free community celebration that other U.S. cities can adopt.

(video is of Bogota)

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