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Happy birthday Gas Tax, it’s time to retire

October 1, 2013 / / 2 Comments
Descending

Traffic congestion (right) won’t change until we give transit infrastructure (left) a better footing on which to compete.

Today’s apparently the birthday of the Yosemite National Park, NASA, and also the 18.4 cents per gallon federal gas tax.

It’s time to go. Peter Rogoff, the administrator of the Federal Transit Administration said as much yesterday at the American Public Transportation Association annual meeting.

A meeting attendee asked Rogoff, during the Q&A session following his speech, about the insolvency of the Highway Trust Fund, where gas tax revenues go, and from which payments for road, transit, and bike projects are drawn. Rogoff replied,

We see a lot of governors taking this on. Wyoming raised its gas tax 15 cents. And on any given weekend there are more Democrats drinking beer in my backyard than in the entire Wyoming legislature. All options are being considered. Gas tax has diminishing returns. We can’t simultaneously lower independence on foreign oil and fund transportation systems dependent on the consumption of oil.

Here’s why the per-gallon gas tax is unsustainable: it loses purchasing power because of inflation. If it were sales tax based on the total cost of your fillup, this would be a completely different story, by decreasing driving instead of decreasing gas use (and yes, they are different because as cars become more fuel efficient, driving can remain the same or go up while gas use can remain the same or go down).

So “goodbye gas tax, hello mileage tax?”

Cross-posted to the Center for Permaculture and Appropriate Technology.

I think Chicagohenge came early this year

September 16, 2013 / / 0 Comments

This was my bike scare of the week. I was in the Madison Street bike lane between two buses and the sun was staring down at us, blocking our vision.

Or at least my vision. Bus drivers tend to have visors. I had my hand. Adler Planetarium describes it:

This phenomena occurs as the Sun sets right in the middle of Chicago’s East-West streets – which only occurs during the vernal and autumnal equinox. If you are viewing the sunrise or sunset downtown, it will be framed by Chicago’s beautiful architecture along these streets – hence, “Chicagohenge.”

Chicagohenge should occur on September 25, 2013.

Desplaines Street bike lane design facilitates right hooks for bicyclists

September 16, 2013 / / 4 Comments

Photo 1 of 2: At Randolph Street I approach the “mixing zone” and position my bicycle to ride from the bike lane to the left side of the drivers waiting to turn right. 

In some of my social circles where bicycling is frequently discussed (with fellow transportation planners, advocates, or just people who bike commute frequently) we talk about Chicago’s new protected bike lanes, which started appearing in 2011.

The subject of their design is brought forth: they exacerbate turning conflicts between bicyclists going straight and drivers turning right (and to a lesser extent, left). Participants in these discussions usually express appreciation for the protected bike lanes, largely because of their ability to  reduce injuries overall and influence in bringing new people to bicycling, but are hard pressed to ignore this issue.

The issue is created in some instances when bicyclists are removed from sight of drivers because the bike lane is separated from the travel lanes by a vision-blocking lane of parked cars. However, the Chicago Department of Transportation has attempted to mitigate the turning issue by creating “mixing zones” where turning cars are and through-bicycles are mixed into the same, very wide lane prior to the intersection. When there is a green light, drivers typically merge into the mixing zone without much deceleration and then make the turn regardless of the bicyclist’s position.

Allowing turning cars and through-bicycles to go through these movements in the same place at the same time is a situation of incompatible demands.

Photo 2 of 2: I apparently didn’t position myself far enough to the left because the driver of this black Toyota turned right across my path. 

It’s highly unclear where the bicyclist is supposed to go and how they’re supposed to maneuver themselves in the mixing zone. If the bicyclist follows the lane and then the sharrows, they will be stuck behind cars. One of the pavement markings shows a small arrow above a bicycle symbol possible indicating that bicyclists must turn here (even though a sign says bicyclists and buses don’t have to turn from the lane).

The mixing zones on Desplaines Street are the worst at this, possibly because of the street’s nature as one that moves drivers exiting the city onto streets that lead into the Kennedy Expressway. People are gunning for the highway to get home and people bicycling tend to be in the way.

Additionally, the mixing zones on Desplaines Street differ from other protected bike lane installations (like the first one on Kinzie and subsequent ones on Elston, 18th, and Milwaukee) in that they lack the green lanes that CDOT has been using to highlight where car traffic crosses bike lane traffic.

Desplaines Street has another issue that arises when the signal is red and a bicyclist and a driver are both waiting for a green light. The bicyclist is between the car and the curb. The driver then makes a right turn on red (disregard whether or not a sign control makes this illegal) across the path of the stopped bicyclist. No harm done, right? Maybe, but there are a couple possibilities where this could be dangerous: the driver makes this movement as the light turns green and the bicyclist is attempting to move straight. Or there’s the possibility that the bicyclist also wants to turn right and the driver and bicyclist do so simultaneously without accommodating what the other may be doing. Both situations could lead to the dreaded “right hook”.

The driver of this white Hyundai makes a legal right turn from a “mixing zone” to Madison Street. However, what if the bicyclist wanted to also turn right, or the driver made this as the light was turning green?

The solution to the incompatible desire for one group of roadway users to turn and for the other group to go straight is to separate their movements with traffic signals, which CDOT has done on Dearborn Street.

With these situations in mind, it’s not unexpected to see a bicyclist move through the intersection on a red light to avoid a potential incident at the intersection, the site of most bike-car crashes. CDOT has reported that the red light compliance of people bicycling on Dearborn Street – the only street with bike-only signals – “has increased from only 31 percent of cyclists stopping for reds before the lanes and bike-specific traffic signals were installed, to 81 percent afterwards”.

I don’t think there’s not a problem with protected bike lanes but their precarious design in Chicago as well as the variations within Chicago and across the United States.

Department of Road Diets: the carbon tax

September 16, 2013 / / 6 Comments

Grand Avenue over the Kennedy Expressway. Its four lanes look like this – empty – most of the day. But then there are times of the day where people who bike, take the bus, and drive all need to “share the road”. That failed strategy has led to increased road rage, slow transit, and dead bicyclists. Time to put roads like this on a diet. 

My friend Brandon sent me an article about the one-page solution to (mitigating) climate change in the United States that NPR posted this summer.

But Henry Jacoby, an economist at MIT’s business school, says there’s really just one thing you need to do to solve the problem: Tax carbon emissions.

“If you let the economists write the legislation,” Jacoby says, “it could be quite simple.” He says he could fit the whole bill on one page.

Basically, Jacoby would tax fossil fuels in proportion to the amount of carbon they release. That would make coal, oil and natural gas more expensive. That’s it; that’s the whole plan.

This new carbon tax would support different infrastructure construction and expanded government agencies with which to manage it. It would support a Department of Road Diets. Road diets are projects that reduce the number of lanes for cars on a roadway, either by reducing the width of the roadway, or converting the general purpose lanes to new uses, like quickly moving buses or giving bicycles dedicated space.

See, in the carbon taxed future, people will want to drive less and use more efficient modes of transportation like transit and bicycles. And those uses will need their own space because the status quo in our cities (except the ones in the Netherlands) of having each mode compete for the same space isn’t working. It results in frustration, delay, and death.

Enter the Department of Road Diets. We have millions of miles of roadways that will need to go on diets so a department dedicated to such transformation would be useful. The agency would be in charge of finding too-wide roads and systematically putting them on diets, I mean, changing their cross section to less carbon-intensive uses.

What Complete Streets means to DOTs: the case of widening Harrison Street

September 5, 2013 / / 28 Comments

What Harrison Street looks like in 2013, replete with additional lanes and no “bicycle ways”. 

The Chicago and Illinois Departments of Transportation completed a project in 2012 to rebuild the Congress Parkway bridge over the Chicago River and build a new interchange with Lower Wacker Drive. It also rebuilt the intersections of Harrison/Wacker and Harrison/Wells.

Harrison prior to the project had two striped travel lanes (four effective travel lanes) but now has six travel lanes (including two new turn lanes). Bicycle accommodations were not made and people who want to walk across the street at Wacker and Wells must now encounter a variety of pedestrian unfriendly elements:  they must use actuated signals (waiting for a long time), cross long distances or two roadways to reach the other side, avoid drivers in the right-turn channelized lane, and wait in expressway interchange-style islands. Additionally, Wells Street was widened and all corner radii were enlarged to speed automobile traffic and presumably to better accommodate large trucks.

That is how IDOT interprets its “complete streets” law (which took effect on July 1, 2007) and how CDOT interprets its “complete streets” policy (decreed by Mayor Daley in 2006). The full text of the Illinois law, known as Public Act 095-0665, is below:

AN ACT concerning roads.

Be it enacted by the People of the State of Illinois,
represented in the General Assembly:

Section 5. The Illinois Highway Code is amended by adding
Section 4-220 as follows:

(605 ILCS 5/4-220 new)
Sec. 4-220. Bicycle and pedestrian ways.
(a) Bicycle and pedestrian ways shall be given full
consideration in the planning and development of
transportation facilities, including the incorporation of such
ways into State plans and programs.
(b) In or within one mile of an urban area, bicycle and
pedestrian ways shall be established in conjunction with the
construction, reconstruction, or other change of any State
transportation facility except:
(1) in pavement resurfacing projects that do not widen
the existing traveled way or do not provide stabilized
shoulders; or
(2) where approved by the Secretary of Transportation
based upon documented safety issues, excessive cost or
absence of need.
(c) Bicycle and pedestrian ways may be included in pavement
resurfacing projects when local support is evident or bicycling
and walking accommodations can be added within the overall
scope of the original roadwork.
(d) The Department shall establish design and construction
standards for bicycle and pedestrian ways. Beginning July 1,
2007, this Section shall apply to planning and training
purposes only. Beginning July 1, 2008, this Section shall apply
to construction projects.

Section 99. Effective date. This Act takes effect July 1,
2007.

Here is the case: a “bicycle way” should have been incorporated into the Harrison/Congress/Wells modification.

Here is the evidence:

  1. The project location is a transportation facility in the State
  2. The project location is in or within one mile of an urban area.
  3. The project widened an existing traveled way, from 52 feet (two marked travel lanes, four effective travel lanes) to approximately 64 feet (six marked travel lanes).
  4. Local support for bicycle and pedestrian ways is evident; see the “Streets for Cycling Plan 2020” planning process and the addition of a concrete deck (to reduce bicycling slippage) on the sides of the Harrison Street bridge over the Chicago River approaching the project location.
  5. The project was constructed after July 1, 2008.

The missing piece of evidence, though, is whether or not the Secretary of Transportation, based upon documented safety issues, excessive cost or absence of need, made an exception for this project.

The Chicago “complete streets” policy is less specific than the Illinois “complete streets” law, printed below:

The safety and convenience of all users of the transportation system including pedestrians, bicyclists, transit users, freight, and motor vehicle drivers shall be accommodated and balanced in all types of transportation and development projects and through all phases of a project so that even the most vulnerable – children, elderly, and persons with disabilities – can travel safely within the public right of way.

One of the examples CDOT gives on how this policy can be implemented is “Reclaim street space for other uses through the use of ‘road diets’ e.g., convert 4-lane roadway to 3-lane roadway with marked bike lanes” – they accomplished the opposite on Harrison Street.

In a 2010 traffic count, 16,800 cars were counted here, an amount handled by roads with fewer lanes and less than the amount in CDOT’s guidelines for implementing road diets and narrowing a road from 4 lanes to 2, yet in 2012, the agencies increased capacity.

Before: An aerial view from November 7, 2007. Image from Google Earth’s historical imagery feature. These two images represent the same zoom and area so you can compare the land changes from before to after the infrastructure modification. 

After: An aerial view from April 4, 2013. Image from Google Earth. Notice the additional lanes, roadway width, land taken south of Harrison Street, and the widened intersection at Wells with increased curb radius.