Oklahoma has a radical solution for repairing the state’s busiest highway.

Tear it down. Build a park.

The aging Crosstown Expressway — an elevated 4.5-mile stretch of [...]]]> USA Today recently highlighted another victory in the burgeoning national movement to tear down or relocate urban highways and create vibrant neighborhoods in their place:

Oklahoma has a radical solution for repairing the state’s busiest highway.

Tear it down. Build a park.

The aging Crosstown Expressway — an elevated 4.5-mile stretch of Interstate 40 — will be demolished in 2012. An old-fashioned boulevard and a mile-long park will be constructed in its place.

The article quotes John Norquist of the Congress for the New Urbanism as saying, “Highways don’t belong in cities. Period. Europe didn’t do it. America did. And our cities have paid the price.” Mr. Norquist recently spoke at a TSTC-hosted event about the benefits of replacing the Rt. 34 Connector in New Haven with a restored street grid.

Besides New Haven’s Rt. 34 Connector, other proposed highway removal/relocation projects in the region include I-84 in Hartford, Rt. 29 in Trenton, I-81 in Syracuse, the Buffalo Skyway, and the Sheridan Expressway in the Bronx. The USA Today article mentioned several of these efforts, but the one tri-state area representative quoted, NYSDOT Region 11 (NYC) Director Doug Currey, seemed lukewarm on highway removal:

Doug Currey, regional director of the New York State Department of Transportation, says taking down urban highways is sometimes the right thing to do — and sometimes not.

“No two situations are exactly alike,” says Currey, who oversees highways in the New York City area.

While it would have been nice to hear more enthusiasm from NYSDOT, the neutral response is not surprising given that the agency is still studying whether a Sheridan Expressway tear-down is feasible. NYSDOT data does show that all four alternatives under study (including the two Sheridan tear-down alternatives) would reduce vehicle miles traveled, truck miles traveled, and truck hours traveled in the study area (see MTR # 535). Later on in the article, Mr. Currey cites the 1973 tear-down of Manhattan’s West Side Highway as a success story. Hopefully, Bronx community support can convince NYSDOT that a Sheridan tear-down could be similarly successful.

Image: Oklahoma City’s Crosstown Expressway/USA Today.

Congestion [...]]]> Yesterday we discussed the many policy developments we’re thankful for. Today, we’re stuffed with turkey (and tofurkey) and can barely move, which has given us plenty of time to consider how far the region has to go towards a balanced transportation network. We are definitely still thankful, but we’d be more thankful if…

Congestion pricing opponents looked at the data instead of propagating myths. When asked to back up assertions that congestion pricing will hurt business, or that an alternative plan would do more to reduce traffic, the best congestion pricing opponents can produce are slim, un-footnoted reports premised on bad math and faulty assumptions. These are, by and large, intelligent people who we happen to respectfully disagree with. So why is it that so many of the reports backing up their arguments wouldn’t pass muster in the average college class?

The MTA created a transit village program. MTA representatives have said it’s too early for a transit village program because transit-oriented development in the region is “at an embryonic stage.” What we’ve seen on Long island and in the lower Hudson Valley is plenty of smart projects completed and in planning, and a ton of enthusiasm for smart growth. If that’s embryonic, it’s the most precocious embryo we’ve ever seen.

The MTA enacted variable tolling on its bridges and tunnels. Charging drivers more at peak hours has been proven to reduce peak-hour congestion and is not a new concept. The Port Authority’s doing it. The NJ Turnpike Authority is doing it. So, again… where’s the MTA?

The New York State Legislature stopped holding NYC back. Congestion pricing. The solid waste management plan. Bus lane cameras (and more red light cameras). All three would do wonders for New York City, if only Albany would pass them.

NJ had money for transportation funding beyond 2011. Whoever coined the term “trust fund baby” to refer to the rich, young, and obnoxious must not have heard of New Jersey’s Transportation Trust Fund. In four years the fund, which was designed to be a sustainable source of transportation dollars, will be using all of its dedicated revenue for debt payments. Is Gov. Corzine’s mystery “asset monetization” plan the solution, or just the next chapter in the state’s history of kicking the debt can down the road?

The NJ Turnpike and Garden State Parkway widening projects were collecting dust. A good place for them would be a forgotten shelf in a locked back room in the NJTA’s Woodbridge office. New Jersey needs $8 billion to repair its bridges and is $32 billion in debt. So why is the state still pursuing a $2 billion, nonessential Turnpike project and a GSP widening project that, according to its own data, won’t alleviate congestion?

The Sheridan Expressway was torn down and replaced with residences and parkland. Hopefuly the long delay in the Bruckner-Sheridan Interchange environmental review process is because NYSDOT has been giving hard thought to the unconventional wisdom, as proven in Milwaukee and San Francisco, that tearing down a highway can be a way to improve a community’s quality of life — and won’t exacerbate traffic.

NYC got its parking policy straight. To its credit, NYC replaced car parking with bike parking for the first time in its history. But it also allowed the Yankees to build a stadium with more parking than the old one (despite having less seats and a new Metro-North station), and then tried to get NYSDEP to allow up to 40,000 more parking spaces in the far West Side. And the city would gain a ton of street cred with advocates and the public if it would only reform parking placard abuse.

We plan to hit the ground running on Monday. As this list reminds us, we have a lot of work to do (and plenty of calories to burn).

Congestion pricing is on the table. Around this time last year, the Tri-State Campaign released a poll which found that 73% of New Yorkers believed that congestion pricing would be effective in [...]]]> It’s astonishing to look back at this year in transportation advocacy and realize just how much we have to be thankful for:

Congestion pricing is on the table. Around this time last year, the Tri-State Campaign released a poll which found that 73% of New Yorkers believed that congestion pricing would be effective in reducing traffic in Manhattan’s central business district, though most were unfamiliar with the concept. A Partnership for New York City report revealed that congestion costs the NYC metropolitan region $13 billion a year. Mayor Bloomberg, though, said that congestion pricing was too politically infeasible to pursue. We’re glad he changed his mind.

Improved transparency and public process from the MTA. The MTA’s Nov. 17 “interactive workshop” – which allowed citizens to sit down in small group discussions – was unprecedented, and public feedback from the workshop and hearings helped the agency decide to scale back its planned fare increase. The MTA brought in outside experts to investigate the agency’s failures during the August 8 storm, in what was a far better process than the 2004 flood report which the Straphangers Campaign called a “whitewash.” Small touches like putting a list of broken escalators and elevators online don’t hurt either.

Transit ridership is soaring. NJ Transit announced record ridership on its trains and buses for fiscal year 2007. NYC’s subway system had its best year in more than five decades. Connecticut bus and train ridership continued to rise. Westchester’s Bee-Line Bus is on pace for a historic year after adopting MetroCard. Ridership is even growing on Amtrak!

The funding for big transit projects is there. In previous years, a dearth of major transportation projects had caused some historical revisionists to pine for the days of Robert Moses. But that’s changing. This week, the USDOT announced that it would contribute $1.3 billion towards the construction of the Second Avenue Subway’s first phase, eleven months after committing $2.6 billion for the LIRR East Side Access project. Construction on both projects is underway. In addition, the Port Authority recently announced it would up its contribution to the Trans-Hudson Express/Access to the Region’s Core rail tunnel from $2 billion to $3 billion; New Jersey has committed another $1 billion to ARC.

The beginning of reform in Connecticut. Most of ConnDOT’s budget still goes to building and expanding highways, but mass transit has become a higher priority than during the Rowland era. Gov. Rell’s ConnDOT Reform Commission is charged with moving the agency “beyond highways.” The legislature created “fix-it-first” and transit-oriented development programs, though the former doesn’t do enough to shift ConnDOT away from expansion and towards maintenance, and the latter is worded so broadly it could potentially fund non-TOD projects. But it’s clear where Connecticut wants to go, even if its leaders are still figuring out how to get there.

NYC’s Ninth Avenue bike lane. What it is is the Cadillac of bike lanes. What it represents is an NYCDOT that embraces new ideas, and potentially an entirely new philosophy of apportioning street space.

The Tappan Zee Bridge/I-287 corridor project team finally got an office. Emblematic of the TZB project’s torturously slow pace was the fact that project team leader Michael Anderson had to commute from his office in Poughkeepsie to Albany, New York, and places throughout Westchester and Rockland in order to hold meetings. Now that that’s changed, maybe the pace will, too.

Of course, we can think of some things that would make us more thankful. But more on that tomorrow…