Transportation Policy

Way back in February Gov. Eliot Spitzer declared his support for a plan to build a $600 million casino in the Catskills. Now opponents of the St. Regis Mohawk tribe project, which would be located at the Monticello Racetrack in Sullivan County, have launched a public-relations campaign highlighting the traffic congestion and sprawl they say would result.

My wife and I were married last month in Brooklyn. For our honeymoon, we wanted to see as many great American cities as we could. In 19 days of travel, we visited Chicago, Seattle, Portland (Ore.), San Francisco, Los Angeles and New Orleans (and also stopped briefly in Cleveland, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, Houston, Atlanta, Washington, Baltimore and Philadelphia).

We'd expect this kind of thing from some people, but not U.S. Secretary of Transportation Mary Peters.  On PBS' "NewsHour with Jim Lehrer" this week, Peters stated that instead of raising taxes on gasoline to renew the nation's sagging infrastructure, Congress should examine its spending priorities -- including investments in bike paths and trails, which, Peters said, "are not transportation."

Sheridan Swap is a new blog covering the Mother of All Livable Streets projects -- the long-running campaign to convert one mile of little-used highway running along the Bronx River into affordable housing, parkland, greenway and economic opportunity for one of the city's most beleaguered neighborhoods. The blog is run by the Southern Bronx River Watershed Alliance. The state, it seems, is getting ready to weigh in on the merits of the project:

Supporters of congestion pricing rallied yesterday in Times Square, urging state lawmakers to act by July 16 on Mayor Bloomberg's initiative or risk losing $500 million in federal funds. "The time is now," said the mayor, according to the New York Post. "We cannot walk away from this opportunity." 

The debate is over, and as of today the Ninth St. bike lanes are swiftly becoming a reality.

A bike-share station in Lyon, France

Back in April, Marcelo Ebrad, the mayor of Mexico City, announced he wanted those who worked in his administration to ride bicycles to work one day a month (at right, Ebrard, center, kicks off the program). Many were shocked at the idea, or simply laughed it off. But this excellent article in the San Diego Union details how the mayor's decree to his employees has meshed with several other initiatives to raise the profile of bicycling as a legitimate form of transportation in the traffic-clogged city:

The Village Voice took a trip down lower Broadway earlier this week to see how smoothly the new bus lanes were flowing. The answer? Despite reports of stepped-up enforcement, change is not coming quickly to the traffic culture of Lower Manhattan -- as you can see from the picture at right, which shows a bus trying to lay claim to a spot in the "buses-only" lane.