The Three Legs of Transportation Reform: And Why MassDOT Has To Start Standing On At Least Two Of Them
The debates leading up to the passage of the 2009 Transportation Restructuring Act had three themes:
- Organizational & Operational Reform:
- Creating a unified transportation authority that took a systemic approach and ended the infantile (and wasteful) feuding among the Turnpike, Highway Department, MBTA, Regional Transit Authorities, Mystic Bridge, and other transportation agencies.
- Systemic Transformation:
- Begin transforming our car-centric, imported fossil-fuel dependent, polluting, obesity-enabling, and increasingly dysfunctional transportation system into something better able to help Massachusetts meet the challenges of the current century.
- Financial Stability:
- Ending the funding shortfalls that have left every part of our transportation system unable to maintain current infrastructure, provide appropriate customer service, or meet growing demand.
Five Steps To Make GreenDOT Real: From Promise to Impact on Transportation and Climate
With GreenDot, Massachusetts has placed itself among the national leaders on climate-protecting, sustainable, healthy transportation. And the challenges MassDOT has to deal with as it moves from general policies to effective action under fiscal constraint will create a path that other state’s will need to follow.
Read moreShort Takes II: Improving Intersection Safety; Defining Lanes; Bus Prioritization
Some more thoughts about how to make it safer for cyclists to get through intersections, how we walk/ride on paths, and how to speed bus traffic through congested streets.
IMPROVING INTERSECTION SAFETY — Let Bikes Go When an Early Walk Signal Flashes
GETTING PEOPLE OFF CENTER — Paint Center Lines in Multi-use Paths
THE VEHICLES OF CHOICE – Why Buses and Bikes Are the Only Modes That Will Solve Urban Transportation Problems.
SPEEDING UP THE BUS: Prioritization
Read moreShort Takes: Baby Strollers & Bikes on the T; Helmets & Impact; Walk Signals; Car Lights
- BABY STROLLERS and BIKES on the T
The MBTA has come a long way in allowing bikes on the subway, commuter trains, and busses. But there are still limits, especially during rush hour. Which is why, when I got on the T the other day during commuting time, my attention was caught by the presence of several baby strollers.
These are no longer the compact, umbrella strollers they were when I was pushing infants around. Today, they are more like mini-SUVs with enough space to carry an entire closet worth of paraphernalia on top of wheels about as big as the one on my wheelbarrow. Some of them hold two or even three kids, often way past the toddler stage. In other words, they’re big. And there were three of them on the train. No one complained, in fact, people happily moved out of the way and did the typical smile-at-the-baby routine as they moved. I was particularly happy to see that it was mostly fathers who had picked up the kids at daycare and were taking them home.
But I couldn’t help wondering. What is the difference between one of these strollers and a bike with an attached child seat? And if it’s ok to bring these 5-foot-long-by-3-foot-wide devices on to the T without restrictions, why not bicycles? And would it make a difference if some of the cyclists were willing to say “goo, goo?”
Read moreFixing the Bridges Won’t Solve Traffic Congestion
One of the core insights of political strategic is the need to set expectations. Right now, the state is spending hundreds of millions of dollars to keep the Charles River bridges from falling into the river and (after being pressured by advocates) to re-align the surface layout to provide greater access and safety for pedestrians and cyclists. Traffic on all the bridges has been congested for years, from long before the repair work began. Actually, the problem is mostly caused by the crazy intersections and rotaries at the entrances and exits to the bridges, rather than on the bridge span itself – although we tend not to think of it in this way.
Read moreYou Can’t Plan A Route Unless You Know Where You Are Going: Comments on MassDOT’s 2010-2015 Capital Investment Plan
One of the hidden gems in the 2009 reform law creating Massachusetts new Department of Transportation is the requirement for a five year Capital Investment Plan (CIP). The state spends billions of dollars a year on our transportation system; creating a plan that maps out what is needed to meet our mobility, prioritizes spending, and reveals remaining funding and project gaps is a no-brainer. In fact, MassDOT is required to create “a comprehensive state transportation plan… [to] ensure a safe, sound, and efficient public highway, road, and bridge system, to relieve congestion, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and improve the quality of life in the Commonwealth by promoting economic development and employment…[and] cost-effectively meet the transportation needs of all residents.”
Read moreIs State Violating Bridge Repair Law?
How Can We Avoid Ending Up With Bridges That Are Structurally Sound But Functionally Obsolete?
State Highway Division officials say that the Accelerated Bridge Program legislation requires that they focus on fixing structural deficiencies. Their mantra is “no scope creep, no schedule creep, on time and within budget” meaning that roadways around the bridges are not to be dealt with and bicycle or pedestrian facilities only added if extra funds allow. Advocates say that the ABP legislation has significant flexibility and that subsequent passage of the state’s transportation restructuring act totally changes the context for bridge and road work – making improved mobility for all the core value and therefore requiring that bicycling and walking be given equal consideration as car traffic from conceptual design to construction.
Who is right? Give the speed at which the bridge work is supposed to occur, the decision will have to come from the new MassDOT Board or from Secretary Mullan. But the Board tends to see itself as a fiscal watchdog rather than a policy-making body – so the ball is in the Secretary’s court!
Read moreImproving MassDOT’s Bike/Ped Advisory Process
It’s good that road designers are professionally conservative – you don’t want bridges falling down because someone just thought it would be fun to try an off-beat idea. But the world is changing, even though some traffic engineers aren’t always comfortable letting go of the car-centric, suburbs-oriented, Interstate-model of transportation they were trained to create.
Massachusetts’ Secretary of Transportation, Jeff Mullan, has said that he wants to create a new MassDOT that fully implements the Healthy Transportation Compact aspects of the act creating the unified agency. The restructuring act requires MassDOT to “…encourage the construction of complete streets, designed and operated to enable safe access for pedestrians, bicyclists, motorists and bus riders of all ages to safely move along and across roadways in urban and suburban areas…[and to] increase bicycle and pedestrian travel…”
Read moreWill Our River Crossings Be Bridges or Barriers?
The Charles River is one of the defining features of our region. From the time humans first arrived, we have used it for sustenance, pleasure, and travel. While the basin feels like a refuge of nature in the midst of our urban lives, nearly every inch of the river – from the shore to the deepest channel – has been shaped by human activity. The river and the structures around it need to be managed to preserve their value to the life cycle while maximizing their human functionality.
In particular, the bridges over the river can help connect our communities, provide access to the riverbank, and be an aesthetic asset. Or they can make travel difficult, even dangerous, block us off from the river, and serve as walls preventing movement on or beside the water. As the state begins a once-in-a-lifetime process of repairing and improving almost every bridge along the Charles, we need to make sure that it’s done right.
Read moreWhen Budgets Shrink, Mission’s Must Converge
Or…How to Improve Our Quality of Life and Get Maximum Leverage from Limited Public Resources by Integrating Complementary Aspects of Policy & Programs in Transportation, Health, Development, Environment, Energy – and everything else!
I was once one of those people who joined in the American chorus of contempt about the inefficiency and incompetence of public programs. Until I began working in the private sector. I quickly learned that the dearth of really good managers, the culture of petty bickering and buck-passing, the incredible lack of inter-departmental coordination and inter-subsidiary synergy was just as common in business as it was in government – if not worse because it was hidden from public view behind the narrow window of bottom line results. So long as the ink was black, internal corporate operations could get away with utterly amazing amounts of wastefulness, nastiness, short-sightedness, and bungling – often because the competition was doing the same!
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