Category: Transportation

Can Illinois and Louisiana be compared?

November 10, 2007 / / 0 Comments

Governing magazine’s 2005 report, Grading the States, evaluates all 50 states on Money, People, Infrastructure, and Information. In class we looked up and talked about Illinois and Louisiana. Without any references, I guessed that Illinois would get a higher grade than Louisiana, mainly because I believe it has a more positive perception and we have more people, jobs, capital, and I guessed, a healthier economy.

The report didn’t necessarily take these things into account. It is “Governing” magazine. The researchers looked at more governmentally-based levels of analysis.

Bottom line: Louisiana scored above Illinois, but you wouldn’t get that by reading the summary. The one for Louisiana starts off by mentioning their huge budget shortfall ($596 million) and talking about they hold $3 billion in “backup” trust funds. And they haven’t spent a dime (well, just a paltry $90 million per year) on maintaining state-owned buildings and assets. What Louisiana excels is at performance budgeting: agencies get more when they get more results, are more efficient.

Compared to Illinois in that respect, Louisiana is a decade ahead. Illinois doesn’t require performance data recording but agencies are still required to report quarterly performance data to the Office of Management and Budget. I’m going out on a limb by suggesting that these data aren’t based on universal collection and recording methods, and are subject to some fudging. Another problem for the state of Illinois is funding its employee pension fund.

What is Illinois doing well with? Well, it’s consolidating agency functions like auditing, legal counsel, IT planning, and procurement. Because of this the state is saving tons of money. How much? I don’t know. But the summary did stress again that Illinois has made some strides in eliminating redundant IT systems. Go us.

All states and the entire project can be accessed through a well designed website.

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Davis retains platinum status as bike capital

November 2, 2007 / / 0 Comments

Davis retains platinum status as bike capital:
If Davis is considered a bike friendly city, then larger cities like New York and Chicago are only biking “acquaintance” cities. The two cities only express mere recognition of biking and bikers in their spaces.

Davis has built tunnels and overpasses to easily cross the highways traversing the town. No road will hinder any Davis cyclist. There are many off-street trails as well as bicycle boulevards: streets designed with cyclists taking first priority. Boulevards have lots of signage and lane markings and have very low speed limits for motor vehicles. Also on the boulevards are concrete islands and neckdowns to block vehicles but allow bikers.

Neckdownsdavis
Neckdowns are landscaped fixtures that jut into the street, narrowing it, which essentially causes motorists to slow down. It’s also a beautifying feature.

Davis also installs at many intersections light signaling for bikes.

In Chicago, we have none of this. I think we can start with Milwaukee Ave. because it’s a popular and well-used thoroughfare for commuters riding to downtown. The lakefront path could also use some work to increase average speed and keep out those users which hinder bikers. A north-south road could be converted to a bicycle highway – a street with no on-street car parking and all intersections (except for a handful) are yields in favor of cyclists.

Followup story to NYC’s protected bike lane on Ninth Avenue

October 10, 2007 / / 0 Comments

Cars and drivers never fail to disappoint bicyclists.

Roadways and their accompanying sidewalks should be built for the least-protected user. In all cases, this happens to be the pedestrian; the walker; the person who decided to give their bike or car or motorcycle the day off.

Major cities are beginning to realize this concept (again!) and are taking away space from cars and giving it to people waiting for the bus, cyclists commuting to work and people who just want to cross the street.

StreetsBlog has done a wonderful job announcing and explaining all of the changes the City of New York is bringing forth.

Lately, it’s this bike lane on Ninth Avenue in the Chelsea neighborhood. A week ago, it was the announcement and presentation of design for the remake of Grand Army Plaza. And StreetsBlog has been heavily covering the debate and progress of roadway congestion pricing for lower Manhattan.

ninth avenue bike lane

Already the protected mini bike-highway has been overrun by delivery vehicles.

It’s unknown whether the entrances to the separated bike lane will be guarded by retractable bollards

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NYC building its first physically-separated bike lane

October 6, 2007 / / 0 Comments

New York City has beat out Chicago in building a physically-separated bike lane.

The physically-separated bike lane is touted to be the the road device that will attract new cyclists to the streets and is part of both Chicago’s 2015 Bike Plan and PlaNYC 2030.

The first video of the new lane on 9th Avenue appeared on StreetsBlog. At the beginning of construction, only flexible bollards and lane striping will be present. Eventually, a concrete and landscaped median will fill up the empty, striped space between the bike lane (which abuts the sidewalk on the left side of the street) and the lane for parked cars.

bike lane
From jschumacer.

This shows how bikers are kept away from moving cars. Cyclists are still at risk of left-turning cars, but better road striping and street signs will alert drivers of the changes in this roadway.

The bike lane is also very wide and basically allows the cyclist to temporarily stop having to pay so much attention to road hazards, AKA cars.

Chicago is investigating several physical-separation methods and is planning to implement all kinds for experimentation. I can’t wait.

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Chicagoland transit needs better funding

October 4, 2007 / / 0 Comments

The RTA is Chicago and the suburbs’ authority to distribute funding (and also to coordinate service and expansion efforts) for the CTA, Pace, and Metra. The RTA is funded by sales tax in the six-county metro area. The sales tax formula was created in 1983.

Now, 24 years later, the funding formula has proven itself multiple times to be insufficient. For the past several years, all RTA agencies have been involved in major cost cutting and the CTA has had to transfer funds from a the capital budget to the operations budget, not something it looks forward to doing…ever. When the state legislature devised the funding formulate, they themselves admitted it would not last for more than two years and expected the future legislators to make a new law to fund the RTA.

Recently, to avoid a major service cut on September 16th, 2007, the CTA accepted a band-aid in the form of a cash advance from the state, taken from next year’s state funding. This has only served to delay the CTA’s service cuts to mid-November – but accepted under the guise that it would give the state assembly more time to vote on a new funding plan.

What I just explained is a very commonly misunderstood, and often ignored, element of transit doomsday scenarios. People become vocal about how the CTA is discriminating against a certain group of customers, or that it’s run by morons, or that it might as well be dismantled.

A state audit proved that the CTA is in fact well run, and not corrupt. There are many things that were overlooked, but the new president, Ron Huberman is already showing that he’s committed to making the CTA deservedly respectable.

Any blame for the “doomsday” service cuts should be placed squarely on the shoulders of Illinois’ state senators and representatives. They are the ones who are not agreeing on solutions or taking too long to vote, or not ready to override the governor’s promised veto if sales taxes are to be increased.

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