Worthless

Consider this equation:

a - b = c

where a = disgraced Maine Turnpork Authority director Paul Violette's putative net worth, b = the value of his fraudulent hoardings from highway contractors and tollpayers during his tenure at the Maine Turnpork Authority, which hoardings he will be required to return to the public in a recent court settlement.

It follows that the variable c equals Paul Violette's honest net worth.

Now, according to today's newspaper, a, Violette's current wealth, equals $430,000. And b, Violette's fraud, also equals $430,000.

Therefore, the value of c - the honest net worth of Paul Violette, is a big fat Zero. Quod erat demonstratum.

Regional Commuter Buses Could Come Next Year - If Transit Advocates Speak Up on Tuesday

LD 673, An Act To Expand Fiscally Responsible Transportation through Increased ZOOM Bus Service, is a bill that would establish new express commuter bus services to serve downtown areas along the Maine Turnpike corridor - an important step towards building more sustainable communities, reducing transportation costs for governments and households alike, and reducing Maine's reliance on oil.

This bill would, for the first time, shift the Maine Turnpike Authority's spending away from expensive highway widenings, and towards cost-effective transit - saving Maine millions of dollars in tolls and gasoline costs every year.

I've been working on this bill with the Maine Alliance for Sustainable Transportation for several months now. I'm very pleased to say that its chances look good: we have enlightened new management at the Turnpike Authority in Peter Mills, and a long list of sponsors from both political parties.

Still, many of the staff of the old "Turnpork Authority" still have their jobs and still want to keep Maine dependent on oil and pavement. They're still spending lots of money on lobbyists to maintain the status quo as much as possible.

LD 673 has a public hearing tomorrow in the State House, in Augusta. We want to pack the room with transit supporters. You should come.

We'll be arranging carpools - RSVP on Facebook if you'd like a ride from Portland or Lewiston. Come tell our lawmakers that Maine needs this bill to pass this year!

A Daily Paper Double

Today's Portland Press Herald editorial page goes to bat twice in favor of transportation policy reform:

Our View: Work needed for walkers, bikes and cars to share city's streets

Portland is one of the rare urban centers where people can get around almost as well without a car as with one...

But that doesn't mean that the city has it all worked out. There are gaps in the system, where sidewalks and bike lanes suddenly disappear, leaving pedestrians and cyclists dangerously exposed. There are also gaps in the behavior of people, both on the street and behind the wheel, who break the rules of the road, creating unnecessary danger...

Everyone in the city has an interest in making this work. Walkers and cyclists reduce congestion, demand for parking and air pollution. Good facilities help people save money and promote healthy living.

But as gas prices climb, more people will leave their cars at home, so it's important to fill these gaps now.

This is in reference to Portland's new Complete Streets resolution, which the City Council passed earlier this week. Under guidance from Bruce Hyman, our Bicycle and Pedestrian coordinator, the city is set to get to work to create an official Complete Streets policy, which will ensure that bikes and pedestrians are accommodated and made welcome in all of the City's future construction projects. This is a big deal, and I'll be writing more about this soon.

The second editorial deals with the disgraced Maine Turnpork Authority:

Our View: MTA needs more than a board shakeup

The resignation of longtime Maine Turnpike Authority Executive Director Paul Violette has led to some fast-paced scrambling by the agency's board of directors...

In the end, public anger and calls for legislative action were not just about gift cards, but about what those expenditures represent, which is a political organization that has been allowed to exist outside the checks and balances of government.

Violette used to refer to his organization as a business, which it resembled when it borrowed money on Wall Street to finance projects. But at the same time, the Maine Turnpike provides an essential public service and manages a resource, in the form of tolls collected from tourists and trucking companies, in which the entire state has an interest.

Reshuffling the responsibilities of a board that meets one day a month for less than two hours at a time is not enough oversight for an organization that collects $99 million in toll revenue each year.

The fact that its revenue does not come directly from the taxpayers does not make the Maine Turnpike a private business. If the board has been lax in its oversight of staff expenditures, the same can be said of past Legislatures, which have not adequately asserted their duty to raise questions about how the MTA is run and how it fits with other state priorities.

Republican lawmakers have called for a top-to-bottom review of the MTA and raised fundamental questions about the management structure of the Maine Turnpike Authority and its recent inability to turn over any operating surplus to the state to defray other transportation costs.

The MTA board's scrambling is understandable and probably overdue. But it is not a substitute for a serious legislative inquiry.

The Maine Alliance for Sustainable Transportation (of which I'm a part) is working on promising legislation that would address a number of these issues, by requiring the Turnpike Authority to provide a regional commuter bus system and to help fund basic road maintenance and repair throughout the rest of the state, before it takes on any of its more expensive widening projects.

It's called LD 673, "An Act To Expand Fiscally Responsible Transportation through Increased ZOOM Bus Service," and here's how you can help get it passed. More on this, too, in a future blog post.

Maine's Turnpork Authority bids adieu

Image and caption from Mainebiz.

Maine's Republican party announced over the weekend that Paul Violette, the buck-stops-here Authority in charge of Maine's Turnpork highway spending, has cleaned out his desk and resigned:

Word is coming out of the State House today that Paul Violette will step down next week. Violette was grilled recently by the OPEGA committee about his seemingly indiscriminate distribution of over $150,000 in gift certificates, including over $100,000 in gift cards to luxury hotel chains. Violette claimed he had no record of who the gift cards went to, and claimed that the use of turnpike funds for luxury gifts was an acceptable practice.

"Maine Republicans have been trying to get to the bottom of this kind of nonsense for years," said Maine GOP Chair Charlie Webster. "Now that we're in control of state government, we're finally seeing some results. We can't rebuild our economy without weeding out the cronyism and waste that has become pervasive throughout state government. Quite simply, we need to drain the swamp in Augusta.

This is good news. Regime change is just what we needed to turn the Maine Turnpork Authority into something more respectable - an agency that takes responsibility for moving Maine's people and goods efficiently and cost-effectively, instead of lining its own pockets.

There's still a lot of bureaucratic inertia and cronyism from the old regime. But there's also a clear mandate to do things better, and the remaining staff deserve a chance to live up to our higher expectations.

Kudos to the Republicans who kept the pressure on. Now that we've cleaned out the rot, it's time to work on productive solutions, including new transit services.

Q: How do you deal with a corrupt highway bureaucracy?

The Maine Turnpork Authority is getting lots of ink in Maine's newspapers lately:

• A recent audit by a state watchdog agency discovered that the Turnpork Authority's management burned through a $1.1 food and entertainment tab over a five-year period to 2009. Expenses included limo rides, alcoholic beverages, an "in-room movies" at hotels (and it shouldn't take too much imagination to intuit what a lonely highway engineers are ordering from the Pay Per View channel). Source: Susan Cover of MaineToday Media.
  
  
• The same audit revealed a disconcerting conflict of interest between the Authority and HNTB, the massive engineering firm it pays to "represent bondholder interests." The only problem is, HNTB and its employees also benefit from millions of dollars' worth of Turnpike contracts. Having HNTB represent "bondholder interest" - the interests of people who lend money to the Turnpike - is like asking a compulsive gambler to manage your household finances. Source: Maine Office of Program Effectiveness and Government Oversight.
  
  
• And today, conservative watchdogs at the Maine Heritage Policy Center are raising the alarm that "Total payroll for the agency’s 470 employees grew from $16.8 million in 1998 to $28.8 million in 2010," a 72 percent increase. Mere mortals working in the private sector received payroll increases of 46% over the same time period. Your toll dollars at work! [sources: Bangor Daily News, MPBN]
  
  
• And industry booster Toll Roads News is calling the Turnpork Authority's plan to build a new $50 million tollbooth "improbable" and "by now almost certainly a non-starter." Ouch!

So: how do you deal with a corrupt highway bureaucracy?

You take away their money and reallocate it to efficient, smart growth-oriented commuter transit services. A bill making its way through the State House right now would do that - and it's got bipartisan support, thanks to the bill's strong merits in fiscal responsibility. Both parties can agree that its better to spend $10 million on a regionwide bus service than to spend $100 million on highway widenings we don't really need.

Call your legislators in the State House Transportation Committee and ask them to support the ZOOM bill, as well as a more accountable Maine Turnpike Authority.

Action-packed agenda for tonight's City Council Transportation Committee meeting

UPDATE: due to the snowstorm, this meeting has been cancelled.

The agenda items will be discussed in the February 15th meeting instead - save the date.

Tonight's City Council Transportation Committee meeting - this afternoon at 5:30 PM in City Hall - is going to be packed with things you'll be interested in.

• Bruce Hyman and the Public Services Dept. will be proposing a workplan for an update to the city's Technical and Design standards to incorporate a "Complete Streets" policy for city streets by 2012;
• Agents from the Maine Turnpike Authority will be there to talk about why they want to spend tens of millions of dollars on widening the freeway along the western edge of Portland (you might consider coming to ask them to provide better regional bus and commuter rail service instead for a fraction of the price)
• Folks from the Amtrak Downeaster will discuss plans for future rail service downtown, including a possible downtown train station.

You can find more details on each of these agenda items on the Committee's webpage. Should be interesting - I'm hoping to be there, and hope I'll have some company.

Double Whammy for the Maine Turnpork Authority

Read the op-ed pages of today's Portland Press Herald and the Bangor Daily News for more reasons why we'll be working in the State House this winter to get the Maine Turnpork Authority to share some of its toll revenues on better transit services for the entire state.

A Turnpike for the 21st Century

As you may already be aware, the Maine Alliance for Sustainable Transportation will be holding a small press conference tomorrow morning, 10 a.m., at Portland's City Hall to announce a plan that would re-allocate a small portion of Maine Turnpike toll revenues towards better transit service along the Turnpike corridor, as an alternative to the Turnpike Authority's preferred plan for new highway widenings in Portland.

This plan isn't just about providing more transit options - although that's an important goal and we expect that it will reduce the region's parking subsidies, congestion costs, gasoline expenditures, and road maintenance bills considerably.

It's more about holding the Maine Turnpike Authority more accountable to our state's energy and fiscal responsibilities. That agency, which operates largely outside of the oversight of Maine's elected officials, plans to take out over $100 million in debt to finance a 9-mile widening in west Portland, on a stretch of road where traffic levels have been flat for the past decade.

As an alternative, we're proposing that the Turnpike spend less than one tenth of that amount to expand the successful ZOOM commuter bus service - which operates without any subsidies from state or local governments - to serve more communities with more frequent service, and move more commuters on the infrastructure we already have.

By buying relatively inexpensive buses, instead of costly new pavement, Maine's tollpayers could collectively save tens of millions of dollars every year. That savings could be spent on toll reductions or help contribute to regional road maintenance, instead of on debt service and upkeep on new pavement.

And commuters' savings in gasoline and parking costs could be spent on goods and services in Maine's economy, generating new income and sales tax revenue for the state, instead of being sent away to Texas oil companies.

No matter what happens in November, Maine's legislators and municipal leaders will be searching for ways to repair and maintain Maine's roads for less money. We're pitching this plan now because it makes so much sense in our age of fiscal austerity. Because commuter buses can postpone the need for a nine-figure highway widening, it's a way to expand transit and reduce our energy expenditures while also reducing the cost of government overall.

We hope that you'll consider the idea, and that its merits will eventually earn your support. If you'd like to learn more, please join us tomorrow at City Hall at 10 a.m. as we announce the "Turnpike for the 21st Century" plan to the press. Come join us for your morning coffee break - we'd love to see you there.

Maine Turnpork Authority Gets Audited

The Maine Turnpork Authority, the high-rolling, quasi-private corporation that owns a lucrative monopoly on virtually all of Maine's interstate commerce, is being audited by a state oversight agency following its controversial plans to spend $50 million on a new tollbooth. From seacoastonline.com:

AUGUSTA — A government oversight office that scrutinizes the accountability and performance of state government agencies has begun a significant probe of the Maine Turnpike Authority...

Among the key concerns detailed in the preliminary report, OPEGA [the Office of Program Evaluation and Government Accountability] determined the MTA has not provided any revenue to the state since the mid-1990s. Under the terms of the Sensible Transportation Act, which Ashcroft said was passed at that time, the MTA is to transfer to the Maine Department of Transportation annually any "operating surplus."

"There is a lack of clarity about why MTA no longer transfers any funds to MDOT annually despite the statutory requirement and whether the state even still expects to receive any surplus," the OPEGA staff wrote in the preliminary report.

The fact that the Turnpork Authority has been hoarding funds to capitalize new tollbooths in the midst of multi-billion dollar shortfalls in state government should raise serious concerns for legislators.

What's more important, schools or fast food service plazas?

It's Not A "Jobs Bond," It's A Highway Builders' Bailout

Yesterday, Augusta Democrats proposed a $100 million borrowing package, the lion's share of which would pay for the Maine Department of Transportation's completely unsustainable highway-building agenda. Here's the breakdown:

• Highway Construction
  $ 47,500,000
• Railroad preservation:, Aroostook & Androscoggin Counties
  $ 25,000,000
• K-12 School and Higher Education Energy Improvements
  $ 20,000,000
• Drinking Water and Waste Water State Revolving Loan Funds
  $5,170,000
• Overboard Discharge, Underground Oil Tanks & Culvert Replacement
  $1,500,000
• TOTAL
  $99,170,000

They're euphemistically calling it a "jobs bond." But if the Legislature is really interested in growing jobs, why waste so much money on highway construction? The same amount of money invested in Maine's research and development programs would generate thousands of more jobs, which would actually last beyond one construction season and generate real value for the state's economy in the longer term.

Do our lawmakers really think that moving around sand and gravel is the future of the Maine economy? Of course they don't. Calling this a "jobs bond" is pure political spin. In reality, it's a bailout for the state's mismanaged and broke Department of Transportation. Legislative Democrats want to give one of the worst-managed agencies in state government another $47.5 million so that they can keep their completely unsustainable highway-building programs on life support for one more year.

But by spending scarce public funds on this - instead of more proven and successful economic development programs - the Democrats are actually destroying a real opportunity for Maine to create new jobs and businesses. No funding for the Maine Technology Institute, the state's high-tech research and development investment fund, means that hundreds of potential jobs in Maine's biotechnology, environmental technology, and other high-tech sectors won't have a chance. No funding for the Communities for Maine's Future program means that numerous Main Street small businesses and landlords will have to wait a little bit longer to implement their growth plans.

It's as though we're spending $47.5 million to keep a decrepit typewriter factory open, while giving the cold shoulder to the mobile application programmers headquartered down the street, simply because the typewriter factory has better lobbyists.

The irony is that the Legislature is also proposing to spend another big chunk of money on energy efficiency grants in Maine school buildings. So we're going to spend $20 million to reduce oil-dependency on one hand, and simultaneously spend $47.5 million to maintain Maine's much larger oil-dependency problems in the transportation sector.

Another irony: $25 million would go to maintain the state's moribund railroad lines, which are at the breaking point after decades of impossible competition from the state's subsidized highways. After decades of pavement expenditures measured in the hundreds of billions of dollars, this is way too little, too late. Even I, a rail supporter and advocate, have my doubts about whether the state can afford to buy a railroad in Aroostook County.

Luckily, the bonding proposal is still just a rough draft at this point. I know there are plenty of Augusta Democrats who have better sense than this, and the highway funding is probably just a bone they're trying to throw to rural lawmakers.

Let's hope better sense prevails, and better investments replace the highway fund bailout.

CLEAN-TEA will revolutionize federal transportation policy

Later this year, Congress is expected to pass a new transportation bill, which will set the country's transportation and infrastructure priorities. It's long been expected that the new federal transportation policy would address climate change, since automobiles and light trucks generate over 20% of the nation's greenhouse gases.

Last week, a formal bill was introduced. It still has a long way to go, with countless revisions and amendments in the works. But the broad outlines look to be positively revolutionary. Quoting from a March 12 press release from Rep. Earl Blumenauer's (D-OR) office [emphases are mine]:

Washington, DC – Yesterday, Sens. Thomas Carper (D-Del.) and Arlen Specter (R-Penn.) and Reps. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.), Ellen Tauscher (D-Calif.), Steven La Tourette (R-Ohio), Melissa Bean (D-Ill.), and Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) introduced The Clean Low-Emissions Affordable New Transportation Equity Act or CLEAN TEA.  The bill is predicated upon passage of a comprehensive climate change bill, such as the one considered by the Senate earlier this year, which would generate revenue for the Federal government. Under CLEAN TEA, ten percent of the revenue would be used to create a more efficient transportation system and lower greenhouse gas emissions through strategies including funding new or expanded transit or passenger rail; supporting development around transit stops; and making neighborhoods safer for bikes and pedestrians...

Sen. Tom Carper said: “Today, we fund our transportation system through a gas tax, meaning we pay for roads and transit by burning gasoline. When people drive less, our transportation budgets dry up. This means states and localities that reduce oil use, lower greenhouse emissions and save their constituents money end up getting their budgets cut. But CLEAN TEA reverses this negative funding policy by sending money to states and localities based on how much they reduce emissions. Now, we in the Congress have the great opportunity to address many national problems at once – finding additional funding for transportation infrastructure, building money-saving transportation alternatives and lowering greenhouse gas emissions from the transportation sector.”

“Reducing emissions from the transportation sector will not only help us achieve our global warming goals, but will provide additional benefits to the environment, public health, the economy, and quality of life,” said Rep. Earl Blumenauer.  This legislation will help finance our shift to a low-carbon transportation system that provides transportation choices, creates safe and healthy communities, and saves consumers money. I look forward to working with my colleagues to ensure that any climate legislation we advance in the House recognizes the opportunities provided by the transportation sector.”

This arrangement could very well benefit Maine: our current greenhouse gas emissions are high, but Mainers have a high propensity to use transit and rail services where they're available (witness the success of the privately-run Concord Coach intercity bus service, or the Downeaster). A few new transit routes along key corridors - Portland to Lewiston/Auburn, Bangor to Ellsworth, Biddeford/Saco to Portsmouth - could reduce Maine's greenhouse gas emissions considerably, and put our state at the front of the line for these new federal investments.

But it can only happen if our state and regional transportation agencies stop wasting their time and our money with zombie highway expansion plans from the 20th century. A $40 million tollbooth on the Maine Turnpike, for instance, won't do squat to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions: legacy highway projects like these are a waste of precious money that would be better spent on better bus service.

The takeaway for Maine is this: if our state wants to receive federal support for infrastructure in the future, we need to start planning smaller highways and expanded transit services today yesterday.

2008: The Year in Review

This may be a week late, but I thought it would be a good idea to take stock of everything that Portland-area transportation activists have accomplished in the past year. It's a pretty impressive list, and I think it demonstrates pretty clearly what a few committed activists can do. Let's keep this momentum going for an even better 2009!

The year in human-powered transportation:
In February, Portland passed its first bike parking ordinance, which will require conveniently-located bike racks in every new development for the city. Soon afterwards, the city installed a quiver of new bike hitches along Congress Street, and more are on their way: a new bike hitch purchase program allows businesses and building managers to buy their own hitches at a subsidized price and have city staff install them.

Shared "white bikes" appeared and quickly disappeared in Portland.

Over the summer, the City and the University of Maine undertook a number of landmark street-improvement projects that improved walkability, bikeability, and neighborhood vitality. Marginal Way slimmed down and gained some improved sidewalks and crosswalks, and Commercial Street gained a stretch of bike lanes. But in my personal opinion, the most striking improvement was to Bedford Street through the new USM campus:

And a more livable, humane Franklin Street moved closer to reality, as planners cobbled together enough funding for an official redesign study. That project's citizen advisory committee began work earlier this winter. And planning is getting underway for a replacement Veterans Bridge, which connects the West End to the Maine Mall area. Sometime in 2010, cyclists will be able to take a leisurely, 20 minute ride from downtown Portland to the Maine Mall on bike lanes and off-street paths (and pedestrians will be able to make the same trip on sidewalks, improved crosswalks, and trails, in about an hour's walk).

There were some setbacks, too: over the summer, with MDOT dipshits at the helm, South Portland's Exit 3 was rebuilt with practically no regard for pedestrians or cyclists. As a result, it's virtually impossible for most South Portland residents (who live in neighborhoods east of I-295) to walk or bicycle the short distance to the jobs and services of the Maine Mall area, at least until next year's Veterans Bridge replacement project builds a new bike/ped connection across Long Creek.

We can take heart, though, that this kind of boner won't be repeated, thanks to...

The year in sabotaging idiotic highway plans
It's hard to believe, but just one year ago, MDOT was talking about widening I-295 through Portland into a six-lane freeway, and PACTS, the regional metro planning group, had drawn up a list of ten "high-priority" projects, eight of which involved highway expansions.

Last January, I got some attention (and this blog found some new readers) by proposing to do away with I-295 altogether - why does Portland need a freeway that cuts through the middle of our city? Is it really so important that people in Falmouth Foreside can get to the Mall three minutes faster? We'll be discussing these questions some more in the year ahead.

But the bigger impact came in a pair of public meetings on the 295 widening plan and the PACTS high-priority projects list. Despite the highway engineers' best efforts to make people leave early with their skull-numbing Powerpoint slides on "level of service" and "ramp geometry," over a hundred people spoke out at City Hall to reject Augusta's expensive plans to ruin Portland with more traffic.

That meeting got some attention, and the PPH editorial board chimed in with some MDOT criticism of its own. Then, in February, PACTS held a public meeting on its highway-heavy "high priority projects" list, and was overwhelmed when hundreds of people turned out to reject the new pavement proposals. Thanks to excellent organizing from the League of Young Voters, it was, by far, the most well-attended public meeting in PACTS history.

Even though PACTS tried to game the outcome, by holding additional meetings in the suburbs (with single-digit attendance) and even paying for an expensive public-opinion poll (which largely confirmed what we'd been saying in the first place), the turnout had a huge impact. PACTS ultimately approved a short list of "green high priority projects": new transit vehicles and a ferry, plus expanded train service north of Portland and a bike/ped-accessible replacement for Veterans Bridge.

We didn't just sink a lousy idea; we made better ideas more likely to be funded in the future. And you'd better believe that MDOT and PACTS will have to be a lot more careful with what they propose in the future: Portland now has a well-organized, intelligent community watching MDOT's ideologues to ensure that they won't pave over our vibrant economy or our quality of life.

The year in better neighborhoods
Augusta passed new incentives for historic preservation projects, and a new statewide building code, which will make future downtown redevelopment and construction projects easier to get done.

In February, big urban redevelopment schemes were proposed in Bayside. An office building/parking garage combo from the recession-proof health care industry even managed to survive the credit crunch, and looks likely to begin construction next spring. A redevelopment scheme was also proposed for Munjoy Hill's Adams School, but the proposal included too much "open space" and not enough housing, and was sent back to the drawing board to be reworked.

Marginal Way's slimmer look and new sidewalks matched the new urban-scaled buildings that finished construction this past fall, and active street-level uses made it possible to imagine Marginal Way as Bayside's Main Street. Too bad the front, sidewalk-facing door to the AAA building is always locked, forcing neighborhood walkers to bushwhack around the building to the back, parking-lot facing lobby. I guess it's only appropriate that an Automobile Association would want to give the middle finger to pedestrians.

The Eastern Waterfront was supposed to be a high-density urban neighborhood full of mid-rise condos by now, but thanks to the city's tortured permitting process and the subprime crisis, the only thing that's been built is a hulking parking garage. At least the residents of the townhouses up the hill, who protested and sank a complex of taller residential buildings next door on the Village Cafe site, have a nice potholed lot and a huge cinder-block wall to look at. The Maine State Pier languished in its very own circle of political hell.

But, on a more positive note, Bayside gained a pair of handsome new additions with the mixed-income Pearl Place apartments and the Bayside East senior housing complex on Oxford Street. And Munjoy Hill sprouted a handful of neat infill projects, the biggest of which was the 21-unit 135 Sheridan building (the latter project also contributed to the construction of a handsome trail connection between Sheridan Street and Fort Sumner Park).

And, in October, Portland took a huge step towards making high-quality urban development more feasible in our city, by loosening our 1960s-era parking requirements and adding more flexibility for developers to work around the new one-space-per-unit guideline. The previous zoning, which had required two parking spaces for every housing unit and apartment in Portland, effectively prohibited affordable housing because building parking lots and garages has become more expensive than building kitchens and bedrooms. The new requirement is still pretty restrictive, but it's also a huge step in the right direction.

The year in driving less
Record-high gas prices over the spring and summer prompted hordes of Mainers to leave their cars in the driveway, and for the first time in its history, the Maine Turnpike witnessed an annual decline in traffic. In response, Maine Turnpork Authority bureaucrats rolled out a plan to raise tolls 30% - a measure that will surely drive more people onto busses and trains. The Turnpork Authority also thinks it would be a good idea to spend $40 million on a tollbooth right about now. In September, the credit crunch forced Augusta to postpone a highway bond sale.

Meanwhile, bike shops recorded record-breaking business, even as car dealerships foreshadowed the bailout begathon. Portland-area journalists also tried two wheels this summer.

Carsharing came to Maine to help cure the auto-age hangover: first, Zipcar came to college campuses in Biddeford, Brunswick, and Lewiston. At the end of the year, U Car Share, a subsidiary of UHaul, announced that it would provide Portland's first carsharing service (beginning any day now).

The state legislature approved a funding mechanism to expand Downeaster service to Freeport and Brunswick by July 2010. The Downeaster also added wi-fi connections on its trains, making it possible for riders to use the train as a mobile office. GoMaine added new vanpool routes. And Portland wrapped up a landmark new Transit Study, which targeted socialized parking downtown and drew up plans for how we can provide much better public transit services and safer streets for not much money.

What's next in 2009
Grassroots advocates in Portland have powerful new allies in the Obama administration and newly-powerful, bike/ped/transit-savvy committee chairpersons in Congress. With top-down mandates from Washington, worsening fiscal conditions, and continued grassroots pressure from the people, Augusta's ultra-conservative traffic engineers will find themselves in an increasingly helpless position. Let's keep it up!

An anticipated federal stimulus package in Washington could send Maine millions of dollars for sidewalks, bike routes, transit vehicles, and railway rehabilitations, and fast-track projects like the Bayside Promenade and the expansion of the Downeaster. We'll have to keep a close eye on Collins and Snowe, our swing votes in the Senate, to make sure that the package doesn't turn into a barrel of pork for the troglodyte sand/gravel/oil industries.

On the local level, getting the Transit Study's recommendations implemented will be the top priority. Getting the city to charge more for parking might be politically difficult, but with increasingly dire budget outlooks and increasing demand for transit, it shouldn't be too difficult to convince the city that socialist prices for on-street parking is a luxury we can no longer afford. Parking revenues should be plowed into improved bus service; in fact, in an ideal world, the city's parking division will be rolled under the authority of Metro and managed as another transportation resource, like the city's buses.

Livable streets advocates will focus on Exit 6 in Portland, the cloverleaf interchange that divides Bayside from Deering Oaks and the USM campus. The Transit Study calls for transforming this intersection into a more compact and pedestrian-friendly diamond interchange. MDOT is already resisting, even in their weakened state, but this one should be a slam dunk. And we should have solid plans in hand for Franklin Street by the end of this year; soon it will be time to think about how to turn the plans into reality.

As the state fiscal crisis continues, it will get even harder for the Maine Turnpork Authority to justify its extravagant expansion plans. Stay tuned for State House legislation that will force the MTA to spend a portion of its money on frequent, 14-hour-a-day commuter bus services from Augusta to York County.

Here's to a great year ahead!

Highway to Irrelevance: The Decline and Fall of the Maine Turnpike Authority, Part 3

Suppose you run a business, but your operating costs are increasing and people aren't buying what you're selling like they used to.

If you operate in the free market, you'd better cut back, reduce overhead, and either lower your prices or make big improvements in your product to bring your customers back.

If you're a dinosaur bureaucracy like the Maine Turnpike Authority, on the other hand, you keep on offering the same product, raise your prices 30%, and keep on planning a $200 million expansion based on chimerical growth projections.

It's sad but true. The Maine Turnpike witnessed a 2% decline in traffic this past year - the first decline in traffic in the toll road's 61 year history. At the same time, basic freeway maintenance costs are up nearly 40% since 2005.

Maine drivers and shippers are desperate for alternatives to the Maine Turnpike's 1950s-era transportation "solution." Their product sucks: why would anyone choose to pay more to spend unproductive time behind a steering wheel, when one could take the wi-fi-enabled Downeaster instead? Or enjoy the guilty pleasure of a mediocre movie on one of Concord Coach's hourly buses?

But instead of improving their product (say, by offering their own wi-fi-enabled commuter buses) the Turnpike Authority has decided to keep their crappy thing going, only at higher prices. Beginning February 1st, tolls on the Turnpike will be 30% higher.

The Turnpike Authority is obviously unfamiliar with basic economic theory, which maintains that an increase in your prices will generate a decrease in sales (or tolls, in this case). A meta-analysis of 101 studies on gasoline price elasticity by economist Molly Espey found that the short-run price elasticity of demand for gasoline is -0.26, and the long-term price elasticity is -0.58.

In other words, a 10% increase in this particular cost of driving will result, on average, in a 2.6% decline in driving in the short term, and a 5.8% decline in the long term.

Here's the takeaway: if you're talking about a 30% increase in tolls, as the Turnpike proposes, then we can expect a lot more people to try carpooling, or the bus, or the train, or staying at home. So once again, alternative transportation advocates can take heart in the Turnpike Authority's head-in-the-sand management: tolls go up, fewer people drive, and we get cleaner air and safer streets. Thanks, Maine Turnpike Authority!

Wi-Fi on the Downeaster

This item on the Downeaster Riders' Blog reports that our Portland-to-Boston passenger train service now (as of June 1st) includes wireless internet access in all cars:

"Finally, Wi-Fi should be up and running in all cars by June 1st. Each Sprint unit, attached to a window in each car, can handle 16 users simultaneously which means 80 riders can be on the Internet as they merrily ride the rails to Boston and return home. NNEPRA is providing this server FREE to Downeaster riders…"

The train takes 30 minutes longer than driving (or taking the bus) from Portland to Boston, which has been a factor in some peoples' decision to drive or take Concord Trailways instead.

But wi-fi service makes that difference irrelevant, by transforming travel time into productive working time - especially for workers in the new economy. It also offers up unlimited entertainment options (I appreciate the movies on Concord Trailways, but I'd much rather watch some of the internet's free television shows or listen to Pandora than watch a mediocre movie chosen by my bus driver).

The same Downeaster Riders blog entry reveals that April's train ridership was up 48.3% over last April, and for the fiscal year to date, ridership is up over 25% compared to the same period last year. Some of the gains seem to be coming from the Maine Turnpike, where weekend holiday traffic was down 4% since last year.

With this new wireless service, and the working and entertainment options it brings with it, I expect that ridership will begin to accelerate even more quickly.

For those of you who continue driving - you might be losing four hours of your life, but at least you've got the radio.

Let's think again.

The Turnpork Authority isn't just upsetting its customers with its persistent refusal and failure to pay for more affordable transportation choices, like commuter buses and the Downeaster. It's also stirred up a bees nest of controversy with its proposal to pave about twelve acres of rural York countryside in order to build a new toll plaza. Here's the website for the grassroots opposition group, which calls itself "Think Again."

Here's my question, though: do we need a York toll plaza at all?

Why can't we consolidate the Maine Turnpike's toll booth in Wells with the New Hampshire toll booth in Hampton, with a joint operating and revenue-sharing agreement? Instead of having motorists stop twice to pay $1.50 in NH, then another $1.75 fifteen miles away in York, have them stop only once to pay a single $3.25 toll in Hampton, and have the two agencies split the revenue as though they'd each collected it separately.

Get rid of the summer weekend traffic jams in York County altogether. Pay for half as many toll-collectors and half the maintenance costs of a toll plaza. Satisfy the neighbors in York County AND satisfy your customers with fewer toll stops AND save money on reduced operations costs.

As far as I can tell the only reasons that the Turnpork Authority wouldn't like this idea are

• a) because it came from a blogger who refers to their ridiculously out-of-touch bureaucracy as the "Turnpork Authority," and


• b) because upgrading the Hampton tolls instead of building a new plaza in York would prevent the Authority from slinging their pork around to their buddies in Maine's highway contracting businesses.

But these reasons seem even more petty when you compare them with the alternatives, which involve eminent domain, a lot of ill will, and higher transportation costs for many of Maine's visitors, commuters, and freight shippers.

How about it?

GoMaine initiates new vanpools

As reported in this week's Forecaster, GoMaine has initiated a new vanpool service between Portland and Lewiston. The van's 10 riders subscribe to the service for $90 a month, which is less than the cost of three round trips in a private auto, if you add up the costs of gas, registration, insurance, wear and tear, and tolls. The Portland-to-Lewiston service is already booked, but according to the GoMaine website, "new vanpools will be formed based upon demonstrated commuter demand."

GoMaine also operates 16 other vanpools, but the Lewiston service is the first one that doesn't start or end in Augusta. Some of the other vanpools do still have open seats - check out gomaine.org/vanpool to check the routes and availability. And if you'd like GoMaine to start a vanpool somewhere else, send them an e-mail with your request.

Since subscribers pay for the vans' fuel and gasoline, the major limiting factor for new vanpools seems to be the capital cost of buying new vans: each one costs about $25,000, which is about how much the Turnpork Authority plans to spend every eight feet in their proposed widening project. That proposal would widen 9 miles of the turnpike in Portland for $150 million, a sum which could buy enough 10-passenger vans to seat every man, woman, and child in the city.

Right now, unfortunately, our state's transportation policy puts a higher priority on spending $25,000 on an 8-by-12 foot patch of asphalt than it does on providing an affordable and environmentally-friendly commuting option to Mainers. If you're wondering why, I suggest that you ask this guy.

How to pay for efficient transportation infrastructure in Maine

After the final passage and signing of a railroad investment funding bill in Augusta, the Downeaster will in all likelihood be running north from Portland to Freeport and Brunswick by July 2010.

Unfortunately, LD 2019 will only cover the cost of the train's capital expansion northward. Before the rails are ready, the highly successful Downeaster train service (which just experienced a 25% jump in ridership compared to last March) will run out of a key source of federal funding, and face an $8 million shortfall in 2009.

How to pay that $8 million in order to keep the trains running will be a critical task of the next legislature. But how is Augusta going to find that money in the midst of a recession, with shortfalls in nearly every area of government?

Naturally, lawmakers are looking to one quasi-governmental agency that's almost as bloated with excess cash as it is with outmoded bureaucrats who can't wrap their minds around the new realities and opportunities of 21st century transportation.

The TurnporkTurnpike Authority has been discussing plans to spend $150 million on just 9 miles of freeway west of Portland. With that kind of money, the Downeaster could keep on running, with expanded service, for decades - and it would probably be enough to let the train become financially self-sufficient, to boot.

Thanks to recent public outrage over expensive gas and the MDOT's plans to expand I-295 and increasing gas prices, lawmakers have a keen sense of what Maine's real transportation priorities are - and an expanded freeway isn't among them. Although there is a constitutional restriction on using gas taxes and tolls only on highways (and not on railroads), some lawmakers have been discussing using toll revenues on increased bus transit (a highway use) in and between communities along the Turnpike. That would free up millions in unrestricted state and local funds to pay for rail service along the Turnpike corridor, and potentially throughout the rest of Maine as well.

The Turnpike's right-wing highway partisans have long dismissed the Downeaster as an insignificant drop in the bucket compared to the volume of traffic that their pavement moves. But when's the last time the Turnpike experienced 25% annual growth in patronage? Is the train insignificant for the thousands of Mainers saving cumulative millions of dollars in transportation costs? Have they noticed how lousy, low-wage big box farms (Augusta Market-"Place", above left) sprout up like weeds around Turnpike interchanges, while quality, mixed-use, downtown infill projects (Brunswick Maine Street Station, below right) get built around train stations?


Most importantly, is anyone really so foolish to think that a six-lane freeway is more important, in an age of $4/gallon gasoline, than investing in transit alternatives? Well yes, a few people are - and your toll revenues are paying their salaries.

The million dollar parking lot

I've written before about how the new Maine Turnpike Headquarters Building won't include new sidewalks on Jetport Road because Turnpike hacks explicitly stated their disapproval of pedestrians walking in the area (see The Maine Turnpike Authority Resents Your Legs, published July 5 2007).

But that, alone, would be too benign an indignity for a neighborhood subjected to a Turnpike construction project. So the Authority also is planning to build an unnecessary parking lot that will send more oil-soaked runoff into Maine's most polluted watershed - and tollpayers will pay the million-dollar bill.

Portland's suburban office-park zoning in this neighborhood already requires more parking than ever gets used, but the Authority decided to tack on an additional 50 parking spaces than required by those generous requirements. At approximately $20,000 a pop, these extra parking spaces will cost an additional $1 million dollars - your toll revenues at work to keep the glorious promise of Socialized Parking alive!


Obviously, it's highly unlikely that these fifty extra spaces in the distant hinterlands of the Turnpike Authority's new parking lot will ever be used.

But hey, the Turnpike wants to be EXTRA SURE that no one will EVER have to walk an extra 1/10th of a mile from the existing park and ride lot to the new headquarters building. The million dollar parking lot rescues Turnpike employees from the heart-straining indignity of walking 200 yards from their cars to their offices.

Unfortunately, we're not just paying for this extravagance in toll money: this parking lot happens to sit in the headwaters of Long Creek, the state's most polluted watershed and currently the subject of a Clean Water Act lawsuit. Because of excessively huge parking lots like this one, development throughout the Long Creek watershed (in the heart of Maine's largest metropolitan area) will be severely hampered, and Casco Bay's water quality will continue to suffer.

One reason why the Turnpike Authority subscribes to the narrow-minded maxim that more pavement is good for our economy is because of its consistent failure to acknowledge the costs and impacts that its pavement exacts on surrounding infrastructure, whether it's built (dumping traffic and congestion onto local streets and roads), social (draining life and commerce from walkable downtown areas in Portland, Biddeford, and Lewiston) or natural (sending oil-soaked runoff into wetlands like Long Creek).

It would be nice if the Turnpike Authority spent our money at addressing some of these real problems. Instead, they're throwing millions around to study and "solve" problems they've fabricated themselves in their compartmentalized fantasy world.

Fortunately for the rest of us, the longer they fail to reform themselves, the less viable their agency will be in a century of expensive oil and limited budgets.

The Maine Turnpike Authority is busily paving the way to their own irrelevance.

Cars = Cigarettes

The following is cribbed from a Michael O'Hare essay on The Reality-Based Community. Check it out.

Conventional wisdom, fifty years ago:

• Americans will never give up their cigarettes, it's impossible;
• Do you know how important the tobacco industry is to the economy? Not smoking will impoverish the entire nation
• It's my right as an American to smoke wherever I want
• Smoking is actually good (remember the doctors in the Chesterfield ads?); the science on cigarettes' health effects is uncertain and alarmist.

Conventional wisdom, today:

• "Americans will never give up their cars, it's impossible;
• "Do you know how important the car industry, and road and home construction, are to the economy? Not living in car suburbs will impoverish the entire nation;
• "It's my right as an American to drive wherever I want and park near the door when I get there;
• "Sprawl and suburbs are actually good; the science on global warming is uncertain and alarmism."

Here's O'Hare's breakdown of how America de-smoked itself:

(1) Aggressive publicity for the scientific facts about the delayed costs.
(2) Extensive public education about the externalities of second-hand smoke.
(3) Regulations and constraints, putatively in the interest of non-smoking victims like airline flight attendants and restaurant waiters.
(4) Constant, steady price (tax) increases making the externalities internal and immediately visible.
(5) An education and social pressure campaign directed at Hollywood and TV to get the cigarettes out of its products.
(6) Publicly and charitably funded programs to help people quit.
(7) Legal action against the supplying industry to collect external costs in judgments.

In terms of dealing with cars, I'd say we're at step 2, and edging into step 3.

O'Hare writes, "Every one of these steps, especially (3), (4) and (5), proceeded in the face of confident assertions by people who should know that (i) smoking prohibitions could never be enforced, (ii) no-smoking restaurants would mean the complete collapse of the economy of one city after another, (iii) bleating about individual rights, (iv) pseudoscientific denialism."

In the case of Maine's Turnpike Authority and MDOT, I'd say that the problem isn't so much pseudoscientific denialism as pseudoeconomic denialism: the completely unsubstantiated belief that Portland's economy needs six-lane freeways so badly that we should spend a quarter billion dollars on pavement.

And so we'll proceed in the face of their confident assertions that car-addicted engineers know what's best for us, and we'll beat this addiction, too.

We don't want what they're serving

The lead editorial in Saturday's Portland Press Herald, titled "Too Many Cooks in Transportation Planning," criticized Maine's Department of Transportation and the Maine Turnpike Authority for their uncoordinated three-legged race to widen Portland-area highways. The editors note that three separate studies underway - one on the Turnpike, one on I-295, and one on commuter transit - deal with the same problems, don't acknowledge each other's existence, and come to completely different conclusions.

Not only are there too many cooks, but most of the cooks involved are trying to serve us stale ideas that will literally make us, our economy, and our environment ill.

A bureacracy that dates back to 1941, the Turnpike Authority is well past its retirement age.

It's the strongest endorsement I've seen in favor of banishing the Turnpike Authority and gutting MDOT. It also takes the Maine Dept. of Transportation to task for marginalizing transit planning in the expensive failure of their I-295 corridor study.

After three years of thinking about widening I-295, the state is only just now beginning to study transit in the exact same corridor - and even within MDOT's bureaucracy, we get the distinct impression that the intelligent people working to promote transit are consistently short-funded and marginalized by the crushed stone-age Neanderthals in charge.

With a Governor who's supportive of protecting our quality of place and making Maine's government more efficient, it seems awfully unlikely that our transportation agencies can continue tripping over themselves to pave Maine.

Too many cooks in transportation planning: Plans to widen I-295 and the Maine Turnplike should not be made separately.

Portland Press Herald Editorial:
Saturday, February 9, 2008

It's not as if there's been a lack of planning.

Restructuring tolls that would be used to pay for a widening project on the Maine Turnpike is under consideration.

Plans to add lanes and improve entrance and exit ramps on Interstate 295 are on the drawing board.

A $1 million study is under way to probe the feasibility of a commuter rail service in greater Portland.

The problem is more a lack of coordination.

Maine has separate bureaucratic structures that oversee the turnpike and rest of the state's road system. Alternative transportation gets some consideration, but there is little evidence that the entire transportation picture is viewed as a whole.

The decisions made now will have profound effects on the region's residents in the near and distant future, influencing more than commuters' travel time.

They will also affect future land-use and development choices, dictating where southern Maine residents will live and work as well as what they will have to support with taxes.

MERGER ON HOLD

A proposal by Gov. Baldacci to merge the Department of Transportation with the Maine Turnpike Authority is under review by a working group and will not be part of the current transportation budget. Before the group's work will be completed, several major projects will continue on their own tracks.

The weakness of the current approach is demonstrated by the lack of coordination between the plans for I-295 and the Maine Turnpike.

The turnpike, with its Falmouth spur, provides an efficient bypass around the city of Portland while Interstate 295 cuts the city in half.

While the turnpike collects tolls, I-295 is free. That discourages turnpike use while channeling traffic right through the middle of Portland's downtown.

I-295 has become Maine's busiest highway, and transportation planners say it needs to be widened in order to maintain safety. If approved, this would be the most expensive Maine highway project on the books, dominating federal highway funds.

But plans to change the toll structure on the turnpike, which could have an immediate effect on I-295 in greater Portland, are being conducted in a separate process run by the independent Turnpike Authority.

The Portland Area Regional Transportation Committee will hold a public forum to whittle down its list of high-priority projects on Tuesday at the Clarion Hotel in Portland.

The resulting list will be forwarded to Washington for funding through special appropriations known as earmarks.

PICKING PRIORITIES

Several items on the list are parts of the I-295 widening. The list also includes significant alternative transportation projects, including a $100 million request to buy and improve tracks for commuter rail service and $15 million to purchase ferries, buses and commuter vans. Critics say the earmark funding turns what should be a comprehensive planning exercise into a political one.

The ability to get earmarks is more often a reflection of a member of Congress' clout rather than the relative worth of a project. And money earmarked for a project, can only be used for that project even if the needs of the community change.

In the past, decisions like this would be made by bureaucrats with little public input. But since the passage of the citizen-initiated Sensible Transportation Act in 1991, the Maine public has a chance to weigh in.

The act also requires that the state look at alternatives to road-building, and the DOT has done that, initiating a federally funded commuter rail study that is expected to take two years to complete.

When it's done, Maine would have a chance to compete for funding from a larger pool of federal money to get the project under way.

This represents a balanced approach to transportation planning that recognizes that cars and trucks will be the dominant mode of transportation long into the future.

MAKING CHOICES

But it also represents a choice. Investing in a wider, faster I-295 now will likely delay the demand for passenger rail.

As long as highway travel is more convenient than mass transit, it will remain the dominant mode, contributing to sprawl development, greenhouse-gas emissions and dependence on oil.

Since one choice would likely affect the other, it makes sense to complete the transit study and explore changing the toll structure on the turnpike before beginning to widen the highway.

A more comprehensive approach to transportation planning would better serve the greater Portland region.