The Streetsies Have Landed: Cast Your Vote for the Best and Worst of 2014
You’ve been waiting for it all year: your chance to sit in judgment of everyone who’s been making our transportation system what it is today, from the advocacy heroes to the DOT bureaucrats to the drunk drivers. And you’ll be glad to know that this year’s batch of Streetsie polls are almost completely devoid of any Washington references to legislation and trust funds, because you know what? The bozos in Congress are going to have to actually do something one of these days to make it into the Streetsies. You don’t get this honor for free.
You have one week to vote (and to tweet about it and cajole your friends and family members into voting too). Polls close at midnight Sunday, December 28. We’ll post the results after the New Year.
See you on the flip side, friends!
May Every City Follow This Unlikely City’s Lead in 2015
- Lakewood, Ohio, the city where every kid can walk to school (50%, 156 Votes)
- Pittsburgh, whose mayor gets competitive about rolling out new bike lanes faster than most cities can even think of them (27%, 85 Votes)
- Houston, which just did a top-to-bottom redesign of its bus system to maximize efficiency and is making bike interstates out of its utility network (22%, 67 Votes)
- Louisville, which saw crime fall when one-way streets were converted to two-way and has 100 miles of bike boulevards are in the works (10%, 32 Votes)
Total Voters: 310
Proof That the All-Powerful Bike Lobby and Livability Mafia Have Infiltrated All Levels of Government
- California ditches Level of Service as part of its environmental law (47%, 85 Votes)
- U.S. DOT Secretary Anthony Foxx makes bike/ped safety his signature initiative, calling it "critical to the future of the country" (23%, 41 Votes)
- U.S. DOT publishes its own manuals on protected bike lanes and road diets (19%, 34 Votes)
- Bike signals and contraflow lanes finally get green light from engineering establishment (15%, 27 Votes)
Total Voters: 181
Hell on Wheels
- Driver who sued dead teen’s parents over her own ”great pain and suffering” (44%, 74 Votes)
- Sidewalk-jumping driver who claimed the children he hurt (and their family) were “reckless” (29%, 48 Votes)
- Drunk driver who drove straight into a marathon for -- wait for it -- alcohol abuse awareness (11%, 19 Votes)
- Drunk driver in a stolen car who killed two, injured 23, when he crashed through barricades into SXSW arts festival crowd and then tried to run away (11%, 19 Votes)
- YouTube star who got famous for threatening bicyclists and cackling about it (7%, 11 Votes)
Total Voters: 167
Best Outcome of Election 2014
- Four years after losing all transit service, Clayton County, Georgia, votes to tax itself and join regional transit authority (36%, 61 Votes)
- Aggressively pro-bike, pro-transit Peter DeFazio becomes top Democrat on House Transportation Committee (27%, 45 Votes)
- Raleigh votes in pro-light-rail county commissioners, clearing the way, finally, for Research Triangle transit system (21%, 36 Votes)
- Pennsylvania elects Tom Wolf governor, who intends to prioritize transit investment (15%, 26 Votes)
Total Voters: 168
Worst Highway Boondoggle
- Seattle’s tunnel replacing the Alaskan Way Viaduct, which was a colossally bad idea even before Bertha got stuck underground (57%, 103 Votes)
- Milwaukee’s hare-brained plan to double-deck and widen I-94 despite its exhorbitant cost, transit’s greater needs, and declining traffic (19%, 34 Votes)
- The Trinity Parkway, which would rob Dallas of the revitalization it craves and instead give it a six-lane urban highway justified by outdated traffic projections (17%, 31 Votes)
- The Illiana Expressway in Illinois and Indiana, unlikely to attract the truckers it’s being built for and could soak taxpayers, despite being ostensibly private (10%, 18 Votes)
- Despite stagnant VMT and a stated fix-it-first policy, Cleveland marches ahead with its destructive Opportunity Corridor (7%, 13 Votes)
Total Voters: 180
This Must Happen in 2015
- Building Vision Zero into a national movement, not just a collection of localized campaigns (29%, 50 Votes)
- Funding the Gateway Tunnel between New York and New Jersey before current tunnel deteriorates into oblivion, cutting off transit servic (27%, 47 Votes)
- Adopting UN “high shift” scenario for reducing carbon emissions (and saving $100 trillion) by dramatically improving transit and active (19%, 33 Votes)
- Focusing on bike-friendly intersections as the next frontier for safe streets (13%, 22 Votes)
- Rolling out more temporary, pop-up protected bike lanes to show people what they’re like (10%, 18 Votes)
- Making bike-share kid-friendly (and not getting sued for it) (3%, 5 Votes)
Total Voters: 175
Biggest Attitude Shift
- Uber's image somehow transformed from a shared-mobility revolution into an “asshole” hive of anti-public interest lobbying, sexual assault, and privacy violations (41%, 68 Votes)
- Painted bike lanes don’t impress like they used to -- even when they’re green -- if they’re not protected and safe enough for Isabella to ride (30%, 50 Votes)
- The polar vortex of 2014 gave rise to the “sneckdown” -- a way of seeing snow remaining on streets as areas that can be ceded back to pedestrians (23%, 37 Votes)
- TransitCenter and Frontier Group made lobbying for parity in commuter benefits seem a lot less useful than just getting rid of them altogether (5%, 9 Votes)
Total Voters: 164
If you haven’t voted yet for the Best Street Transformation of 2014, which has been in progress since last week, here’s your chance. We’ll close it out with the others on December 28.
Best Urban Street Transformation of 2014
- E Street, San Bernardino, CA (48%, 848 Votes)
- Western Avenue, Cambridge, MA (24%, 429 Votes)
- Washington Avenue, Minneapolis (16%, 292 Votes)
- Broadway, Seattle (7%, 131 Votes)
- Penn Avenue, Pittsburgh (4%, 77 Votes)
Total Voters: 1,774
I would like to see Public Transportation Boondoggle next year. My vote this year was Nashville’s short term delay of the AMP. The primary opponent was a car salesman who has a 19 acre car lot on the route of the proposed High Speed Bus line.
Nashville is on the verge of becoming a sprawling mess like Atlanta if it does not agressively embrace a sustainable transport plan.
sbX, the First High-Quality Transit System to Be Built in Southern California’s Inland Empire in More than 50 Years
Nighttime View of sbX Station at Court Street in San Bernardino
Marshall Boulevard sbX Station in San Bernardino
Free WiFi and A.C. Outlets aboard the sbX System in San Bernardino
Southbound sbX Vehicle Departing Court Street Station in San Bernardino
Platform-Level Boarding and Four Interior Bike Racks aboard Each sbX Vehicle
Southbound sbX Vehicle Arriving at Carnegie Park Station in San Bernardino
sbX Stations Customized with Public Art Reflecting the Culture and Nature of the Surrounding Districts and Neighborhoods in San Bernardino
sbX Station Entrance and Pedestrian Refuge with New Pedestrian-Friendly Street Geometries in San Bernardino
sbX System with Departures Every Ten Minutes
sbX System in San Bernardino with Center-Running Dedicated Guideways and Traffic-Signal Prioritization in San Bernardino
Multimodal Terminal (Metrolink Regional Rail; sbX; Light Rail to the University of Redlands and San Bernardino International Airport; Freeway-Running Express Shuttles; Etc.) as Optional Station Location in San Bernardino for California High-Speed Rail to Los Angeles in 30 Minutes, to San Diego in 50, and to Ontario International Airport in 10
Conceptual Block Study of New Multimodal Terminal (Now under Construction) and Optional High-Speed Rail Station along E Street in San Bernardino
The City of San Bernardino’s Transit-Oriented Development (T.O.D.) Overlay District with Regulatory Architectural Standards, Reduced Car-Parking Requirements, and New Bicycle-Parking Requirements in the Mile-Wide Areas around the sbX and Future Light-Rail Stations
For “Best Outcome of Election 2014” you missed the Measure BB win in California’s Alameda County, which increased an existing 1/2 cent transportation sales tax to a full cent for the next 30 years, with the lion’s share going to transit/bike/walk projects and programs. For biking alone, this will amount to around $1B over the next three decades.
It is especially impressive considering that it needed a 2/3rds supermajority to win, and ended up with over 70% of the vote in favor.
https://bikeeastbay.org/campaigns/yesonBB
sbX Station at Carnegie Park in San Bernardino
Or how about the Boondoggle award goes to transit lines that serve no one. In Cincinnati the city for the last 20 years has promoted turning the Osais line into commuter rail. But the line itself serves no major center of population or employment for the entirety of it’s route.