A Roundup of recent articles by Joel Epstein on mass transit. Part 1

Most of the articles I post are very specific. It's nice to post articles by a writer who sees the larger issue of buses, train an subways as a system. These are his latest three articles. Tomorrow, I'll post more. Enjoy.

About Joel (from the Huffington Post):

Joel Epstein is a senior-level corporate communications, public affairs
and philanthropic giving professional. A lawyer and public policy
analyst, Joel is also a published author who loves travel and spends his
local free time exploring Los Angeles, where the native New Yorker in
him likes to rely on LA's much maligned but extensive public transit
system. If you want to hire him or just want to learn more about what
else he is capable of, check out his profile at google.com/profiles/joel.epstein,
or contact him directly at joel.epstein@gmail.com.

Article 1

Link: Joel Epstein: A Bronx Tale About Mass Transit: Take Note, Los Angeles

A Bronx Tale About Mass Transit: Take Note, Los Angeles

If you time it just right, New York in the Spring can feel like the greatest place on earth. And that's how it was late last week. Even in the hardscrabble Bronx where I spent much of Friday looking at a bus rapid transit (BRT) project on East Fordham Road and two to-be-rebuilt transit plaza on Fordham Road in the north and 149th Street in the south. On Thursday and Friday I was a contented walker in the city, purposefully studying New York while thinking about mass transit and public space in Los Angeles.

With Los Angeles' 30/10 Initiative to build thirty years of taxpayer-approved mass transit projects within a decade up for review by the Metro board I'd come to New York at the invitation of the Project for Public Spaces. PPS is a three decades' old nonprofit that helps communities rework their streets and public space. They had invited me to attend their Streets as Places training because of the focus of my recent blogging. Given my near obsession with 30/10 it was a hard choice, but I'd committed a month earlier before Metro had set a date to put 30/10 to a vote of its full board. I'm glad I did. If I hadn't I wouldn't have had the chance to meet with Janette Sadik-Khan, the smart, committed and funny Commissioner of the NYC DOT or spend a day walking, talking shop and riding mass transit around the Bronx with Ed Janoff, the DOT's Senior Project Manager for Streetscapes and Public Spaces.

Given the healthy mass transit rivalry between New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago and Portland, it seemed only fair that I give New York a shot at showing up Los Angeles and the others. Sadik-Khan has a lot to say about the city and the changes she has implemented since being appointed to the DOT Commissioner position by Mayor Bloomberg.

After talking some about the city where we both grew up and about L.A., where I live, and Sadik-Khan attended Occidental College, the Commissioner deftly dismissed criticism I'd heard that the DOT was focusing too much on sexy Manhattan projects like the closure of Broadway in Times Square to motorized traffic and Summer Streets, bike-only Sundays on Park Avenue, at the expense of BRT and repaving projects in the outer boroughs. Paraphrasing Sadik-Khan's response,

It's the press. As Commissioner I'm a woman in a mostly man's world and what can I say, that's what the reporters focus on. They don't want to go out to Queens or Brooklyn to report on a newly repaved street or bus route or the over billion dollars DOT has spent repairing roads and bridges throughout the city. They want to talk about Times Square and Summer Streets and the biking.

While we spoke Sadik-Khan looked at her Blackberry and broke out into a big grin after reading an e-mail that a deal for the DOT to purchase an asphalt plant in Queens had gone through. As a dedicated environmentalist who bikes to work near Wall Street from her home in the West Village Sadik-Khan is rightly proud of the fact that the new plant will save the DOT money and let it up the percentage of recycled asphalt (above the 40 percent it currently uses) in road repaving projects. What's more, if you're looking for a pair of concrete shoes you can now turn to Sadik-Khan as well as the traditional vendors. Just don't expect to read about it in the New York Times any time soon as asphalt's just not that sexy.

The other exciting stuff I learned from my meeting with the Commissioner include her plan to launch by October a new BRT line that will run from Houston to 125th Street on First and Second Avenues. With the Second Avenue subway still years away from completion this will be an important transportation achievement for New Yorkers and the Commissioner whose department conducts some 2,000 community meetings a year to explain itself and elicit community input on planned and ongoing projects. Another critical paired street BRT project is planned for busy Bedford and Nostrand Avenues in Brooklyn.

Like a lot of people who meet her I left my meeting with Sadik-Khan impressed by the Commissioner as well as by the BRT news and details of the bold just-announced 34th Street transitway project that will split the congested crosstown Manhattan street in two routing traffic east and west from a pedestrian plaza on the block between 5th and 6th Avenues. As Dan Biederman of the 34th Street Business Improvement District (BID) has said about DOT, "This is not your father's D.O.T. This agency says they do something and they do it."

Nonetheless, given the criticism I'd heard from the bridge and tunnel crowd about the Commissioner's undue focus on Manhattan I needed to get out of the borough to see things for myself.

For this I was hooked up with Ed Janoff a young and intense public space-obsessed DOT employee who knows his stuff. On Friday he greeted me at the transit plaza at East Fordham Road across from Fortress Fordham University in the north Bronx with a ream of print outs about the Bx 12 Bus Rapid Transit line and other surface transit projects that are key to Sadik-Khan and Mayor Bloomberg's plan to permanently remake transportation in New York City. Janoff, who worked for Dan Biederman before coming over to DOT, is a fount of knowledge about surface transit, streetscapes, and DOT's plan to remake the public space it is responsible for in each of the city's community board catchment areas. Between Sadik-Khan, Janoff and the other members of the new generation of DOT staffers I met I felt like I'd walked into a timewarp, perhaps the Kennedy era when the best and the brightest served their country and community through government service. If nothing else this may be Mayor Bloomberg's legacy and it is a proud one.

Of course all is not roses on the streets of the Bronx and throughout the city when it comes to surface transit. Despite the commitment to European- and South American-inspired Bus Rapid Transit and other changes car and truck traffic still reigns in many neighborhoods. If only the reporters who can't seem to leave Manhattan to write about anything other than DOT's signature projects like Times Square, and now the Union Square street closings, the reporters, and the public, would have a better sense of what DOT is up against and the considerable work that still remains to be done.

On Fordham Road, for example, cars and trucks routinely clog the east and west bound bus-only lanes, originally painted red and clearly marked with signage declaring that this is a dedicated bus lane. A plan to put lane enforcement cameras on the front of the buses that would capture and ticket cars and trucks blocking the lane has been twice killed by New York state politics. This, in spite of the fact that the instatickets (or proper traffic enforcement), would have quickly eliminated 90 percent of the grief caused by cars traveling without cause in the bus lane. What's more, in the past merchants and residents were not adequately educated about the planned changes so they tended to resist, fearing they'd lose street parking, rather than benefit from the less congested streets and more rational traffic flow.

But the problem is also one of unrelenting traffic on streets like bustling Fordham Road and, because of opposition to permanent changes to the roadway and politics, tepid design decisions by the DOT. In effect, the Fordham Road bus lane was, and still is, a trial run. On paired DOT planned BRT routes on Nostrand and Bedford Avenues in Brooklyn and on First and Second Avenues, and on 34th Street the changes to the roadway will be made more permanent and aggressive traffic enforcement is planned.

As for the situation at the Bronx transit plazas while Fordham Road's is under par, the 149th Street plaza is downright depressing. Janoff took me to both locales to give me a taste of the before makeover phase. At the Fordham Road plaza an anemic vendor program created to get the illegal tube socks and fake Rolex sellers off of Fordham Road attracts a small fraction of the heavy foot traffic that clogs Fordham Road itself and makes it one of NY's most vibrant shopping areas. The ambitious plan is to remake the plaza with a large Greenmarket like the flagship market at Union Square in Manhattan. A remade plaza would also aim to pull in Fordham University which sits castle-like behind a well guarded fence. To date, it seems as if the university is doing all that it can to insulate its students from the surrounding area rather than integrate them in.

At the 149th Street transit plaza the local partner has entirely dropped the ball in managing the location. Landscaping planted in large planters around the intersection of 149th Street and Third and Willis Avenues has been left for dead and a street closed and another redirected to reduce traffic accidents at the busy intersection look forlorn with no noticeable steps taken to spruce up the locale or undertake community programming. DOT's changes have reduced the incidence of accidents at the intersection and policing in the bustling and still-rough neighborhood is formidable, but if a Manhattan native or visitor to the city landed there they'd quickly realize they're not in Manhattan anymore.

Though I'd come to N.Y. for the Project for Public Spaces training, it was the DOT transit and public space projects and Sadik-Khan's leadership that captured my imagination. Net, PPS is doing important work helping city planners from around the world recharge and rethink their approach to their jobs. Thanks PPS! Shining a light on what communities like the Bronx experience every day is my way of paying it forward.

With so much of New York and L.A. a built environment, rebuilding and remaking the streets and public spaces is a mighty challenge. Thanks to the healthy rivalry between the cities and the high bar Sadik-Khan and the DOT have set I look forward to L.A. giving as good as it gets from its east coast rival. The 30/10 Initiative gives L.A. the chance to bring on line essential and overdue subway, light rail and BRT projects that make the most of the good bones 2010 L.A. inherited from a time years ago when the region was covered with long-limbed trolley lines that stretched from downtown north, south, east and west.

But why not share the expertise? Doesn't it make sense for L.A. to extend an offer to NYC DOT to visit more often? I'm sure they'd say yes as L.A.'s known for the perfect weather that blesses New York just once a year. More information sharing and collaborative thinking about these critical transit and public space challenges behooves us all. But as best I can tell it's not happening much outside of professional conferences and on critical forums like Streetsblog and Streetfilms.

I'd love to see DOT's Sadik-Khan and Janoff sharing their wisdom with L.A. and Move LA's Denny Zane riding the Bx 12 bus on Fordham Road. The lessons offered and learned on both ends would certainly be worth the transit fare.

Article 2

Link: Joel Epstein: A Tea Party for 30/10

A Tea Party for 30/10

With tax day upon us I got to thinking about all of the tea partiers making the pilgrimage to Boston to celebrate their namesakes' stand against a British tax on tea, and the Brits' bailout of a tea importer too big to fail. While tea drinkers seem to think smaller is better and less is more when it comes to government and taxes, they don't seem to get the irony in their taking convenient, publicly-funded mass transit from Logan Airport into downtown Boston. Nor do the party animals driving their GMCs, built by a Detroit company bailed out by the taxpayer, up or down I95, an interstate built by big government for the taxpayer, acknowledge the contradictions inherent in the trip back to their ancestral home.

But enough about that. Onward. And I'm moving beyond the ongoing hostility between the LA Mayor and the City Council over control of the DWP and former Mayor Dick Riordan's recommendation that the city declare bankruptcy sooner rather than later. Instead I'm very upbeat about 30/10's chance to give Angelenos a first class mass transit future. The cause for my enthusiasm is two-fold, really. Part one comes in the form of the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce's full-throated endorsement of 30/10.

Bravo to the Chamber for speaking out so clearly in support of the plan and for encouraging its membership to urge the MTA to back 30/10. The second cause for my enthusiasm is Metro's new PowerPoint on the Westside Subway Extension. If you want to make a mass transit nut like me salivate just show him the deck Metro prepared for its Community Update Meetings.

To save paper though, read the forest-buster on line. I nearly lost a good friend tying up the printer as her deadline loomed and the printer spit out all 47 pages so I could savor every word. And what sweet words they are - Wilshire/La Brea Station, Wilshire/Fairfax, Century City (preferably centrally located at Constellation), Westwood/VA Hospital, Wilshire/Bundy, Wilshire/26th Street, Wilshire/16th, and Wilshire/4th Street. Reading these pages I felt like I'd found a previously undiscovered tome by Steinbeck or Fante.

The Metro community meetings, which began April 12th at LACMA West and run through the 21st, promise to be lively affairs that give the community an opportunity to see what is possible within our lifetime if we can make 30/10 a reality.

Which is why it is so important that we not let the car-addicted turn 30/10 into a barrel of pork to be raided for more lanes on the freeways. Voters approved Measure R for mass transit -- which is spelled S-U-B-W-A-Y, L-I-G-H-T R-A-I-L and B-U-S not 405, 10, 710, and 605. Regrettably that's just what two Metro Board members, Lakewood City Councilwoman Diane DuBois and Santa Monica City Councilwoman Pam O'Connor, have proposed. Though I don't know DuBois and O'Connor, I'm sure they're nice people who understand the importance of mass transit. So what gives? Don't they see that Angelenos have been waiting long enough to go into the promised land of mass transit not to have it pulled out from under them? Let's not let it happen. Hands off the public's mass transit dollars!

Sure, the political process is sausage making at its finest, but can't we just once use voter-approved dollars for the purpose they were intended for? A purpose, as has been demonstrated again and again, that is for the greater public good. If I were MOVE LA or METRO I'd go with a campaign like that irritating but unforgettable ad for the antacid, "How do you spell relief?" I spell it M-E-T-R-O, and you should too.

One last observation before signing off. Kudos to the smart City of Pasadena for its decision to exercise its right of eminent domain to save a derelict Julia Morgan-designed YWCA in downtown Pasadena. It seems the building's owner was seeking to sell the property for twice its market value before the city stepped in and said no. Which begs the question, why the Trust for Public Land felt the need to suck so much money out of donors to unduly enrich the Chicago-based real estate firm threatening to sell new home lots next to the Hollywood sign. It seems that a cash-strapped Los Angeles would be similarly justified in using the eminent domain card to secure at market value a far better-known landmark than the old Pasadena Y. After buying the Hollywood land for its rightful price LA could turn around and resell it at cost to the Trust for Public Land or the non-profit charged with preserving the internationally recognized landmark that defines our city. Maybe it isn't too late!

30/10 is worthy of the widespread support it is receiving and Angelenos deserve the relief the dozen new transit lines it will build will bring. So it's time the City Council, the Mayor, the DWP and car lovers all sat down together to tea. Maybe then they would all agree to get along and focus on the prize. Uniting behind 30/10 will bring much-needed peace to City Hall. Next stop, Metro.

Article 3

Joel Epstein: A New Route to a Better LA

A New Route to a Better LA


It took 100 years and a determined President to get a health care bill through Congress. In this young City of Angels and others it may take a bit longer to find the right mix of ingredients needed to create a transit-friendly environment and a feeling of community.

But lately it does seem as though LA has turned a corner in its quest to leave behind its car-obsessed past and become a city where community matters, residents ride mass transit and more of our neighborhoods develop their own distinctive vibe. Sunday's LA Marathon, in which 25,000 people ran the new route from Dodger Stadium to Ocean Avenue in Santa Monica, gave the effort a good push along. Though I didn't (and probably couldn't) have run the 26 miles, biking with my son from our house to watch the runners was nearly as exciting. Seeing all those blocks of normally traffic-choked city shut down was a beautiful thing. The most distinctive sounds from our vantage point along the route were the rhythm of feet hitting the pavement and enthusiastic Angelenos cheering them on. These are the sorts of sounds we should all here more often throughout LA.

The marathoners were a colorful bunch, duded out in all sorts of running outfits. Just about the only t-shirt I didn't see was the one that the insurance industry folks are wearing on the day after, which reads, "I voted for Obama and all I got was this historic victory on health care."

The Marathon in LA was a chance for many of us to rethink the Sunday routine of a drive to Target, Costco, the Santa Monicas or the Farmer's Market at Third and Fairfax. With too many streets closed off, it wasn't worth it.

It was liberating really, or rather, really liberating. Since many of us couldn't get anywhere anyway we stayed close to home or ventured out on foot or bike.

But even before the marathon LA had achieved some important home-grown pro-community success. If you don't live near it or take it regularly for example you may not be aware of just how good Metro's Orange Line Busway has been for both commuters and bikers and how it has become a bus rapid transit (BRT) model of sorts for the country. If not for the NIMBYs and yesterday's thinking about ridership the Orange Line would have been (and hopefully will still someday be) a seamlessly linked rail line to the Red Line subway at North Hollywood. Nonetheless, the BRT is a win nicely profiled in the year-old but still fresh film from Street Films.

Now, if reason can only triumph, the Orange Line's accompanying bike path will be replicated on the Westside in Expo phase two.

Ah the NIMBYs. With Orange, Blue, Gold and now Expo they just love to bring up safety, that evergreen boogeyman. They ignore the facts and say light rail just isn't safe. And they point repeatedly to the Blue Line, where, over the last 20 years, 51 people have been killed, hit by a train on the tracks. Well, as my high school English teacher would have said, "It is sad, it is too bad, but it is not (in the Greek or Shakespearean sense) a tragedy." Just read Fred Camino's excellent piece, A Pedestrian's View of the Blue Line complete with photos and clips of all the safety barriers and signage Metro has installed to protect the public, and you may agree that there's a less flattering word for anyone killed by a Blue Line train.

That Camino's piece should appear on the same day as David Lazarus' snarky article in the LA Times entitled, L.A. Mass Transit Agencies Make Only a Token Effort to Get People Onboard, underscores the divide in this town between believers and cynics who don't get the challenges Metro, Move LA, and groups like Fixing Angelenos Stuck in Traffic (FAST) still face in trying to change attitudes about mass transit. Granted, Lazarus makes some good points about the need for better integration between Metro and the other neighboring transportation systems. And, it is absurd that riders can't get a transfer to switch from one Metro route to another, or from a bus to a subway. But if he's so right, how come Lazarus' piece grates on me like another Times reporter's recent piece on the snob on the bus?

It's all about the starting line and context -- and let's not forget that this is LA. It wasn't very long ago that many otherwise reasonable Angelenos said, in all seriousness, things like, "We don't want mass transit here. This isn't New York."

Paired with the 30/10 transit/jobs plan, the marathon and programs like CicLAvia, which would periodically convert some of LA's streets to parks, are modifying our ideas about public space and life in the city. All of these changes make Los Angeles a more vibrant and community-oriented place to live.

Mindful of the impact on businesses along the routes and on commuters, the city will need to carefully plan and coordinate CicLAvia events and future marathons. But these are the sorts of things smart planners in coordination with police, fire, risk management and neighborhood associations do every day.

For those who say we can't, I say we can. And for cred my reference is a lecture last week at Occidental College by New York City Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan. In her talk to several hundred public space enthusiasts, the LA-raised commish wowed the audience with a description of efforts by New York to re-purpose its streets. These asphalt/concrete illustrations of what LA might do include the pedestrianization of Times Square and New York's construction of 200 miles of new bike facilities.

Sadik-Khan's at-once bold and commonsense vision has helped New York reimagine its public space, including formerly traffic-clogged Broadway in Times Square decked out with lawn chairs, and bike- and pedestrian-only Summer Streets on Park Avenue on a quiet weekend morning.

The Commissioner also made follow-up LA appearances on KPCC's Airtalk with Larry Mantle and at the 2010 StreetSummit. She used all three occasions to talk about NYC projects big and small, but also to inspire Angelenos to keep working to achieve the same.

Without question, changing LA is a give-and-take with city agencies like LADOT challenged by all sides to make the streets into what each competing constituency wants them to be. These visions are as contradictory as another freeway to downtown (one way on Pico and Olympic Blvds) and a temporary park and bikeway where motorized traffic normally idles (CicLAvia).

Not coincidentally, with the needle moving on mass transit and new ideas about public space in LA gaining ground, the City Planning Commission will vote this Thursday (March 25th) on the Food and Flowers Freedom Act. The straightforward Act would allow "the cultivation of flowers, fruits, nuts or vegetables defined as the product of any tree, vine or plant, and that these products be allowed for use on-site or sale off-site." It would overturn LA's antiquated ban on selling flowers and produce grown in the city. Championed by Urban Farming Advocates and City Council President Eric Garcetti, the Food and Flowers Act will be a test of new thinking about how more and more Angelenos want to live and how some in the city will make a living.

Unless you're a shut-in, 30/10, the new marathon route, the blossoming of LA's bike culture and the explosion in the number of neighborhood farmers markets, gardens, and even urban chickens are changes to LA that reveal how Angelenos are revamping the way they think about their neighborhoods and city at large.

If New York, America's most quarrelsome town, can change, then we too can transform how we get around and use our city's open and public space. In fact we can do it better, given our collegiality, climate, landscape and talent.

With the LA Marathon, CicLAvia and other changes afoot, I hope City departments weakened by the layoffs have the vision, flexibility and commitment to respond. If not then maybe it's time to bring leaders like Sadik-Khan home to LA to help us get it done. That is so long as she'll be riding Metro or biking to work.