New St. Lawrence Theater offers to pay for better bus service

The new performance hall for the St. Lawrence Theater on the top of Munjoy Hill is going up for its planning board review this month, and the proposal includes a nice treat for Portland's bus riders: in order to entice more of its audience to ride transit to the facility (which, in an unusually progressive fashion, will be built without any on-site parking), the nonprofit is offering to pay to increase frequency and extend service hours on METRO's Route 1, which runs up and down Congress Street from one end of the peninsula to the other.

Currently, METRO's Route 1 runs roughly every half-hour from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m., with a couple of additional runs until 10 p.m.

If the new St. Lawrence Arts venue is approved, the bus would run every 20 minutes, until 11 p.m., six days a week. They're also proposing to rebrand Route 1 as the "Art Line," a reference to its route through the heart of downtown's arts district.

The funding required for the additional service – $70,000 a year – would come from a surcharge in ticket fees at the new venue.  They're also planning other goodies, like abundant bike parking at the front door and discounts for cyclists. You can read the full "transportation demand management plan" here. 

Obviously, the enhanced bus service wouldn't just benefit theater patrons at St. Lawrence Arts. It would also benefit late-night hospital workers at Mercy and Maine Medical Center, on the other end of the line, plus dozens of restaurants and other arts venues downtown.

But no good idea goes unpunished: a group of wealthy neighbors calling themselves "Concerned Citizens of Munjoy Hill" is working hard to sink the proposal, or at least force St. Lawrence Arts to build an exorbitantly expensive parking garage.

So, if you'd rather see more sustainable transportation on Munjoy Hill instead of yet more parking, let the planning board know: email your comments to Nell Donaldson, HCD@portlandmaine.gov.

After over 16 years, Portland gets a sidewalk to its bus and train station

Back in the late 1990s, Concord Trailways moved its bus terminal out of Bayside to more spacious quarters on the edge of the central city, on Thompson's Point. That gave the bus company lots of room to grow, from a handful of daily roundtrips to Boston to the near-hourly, round-the-clock service we enjoy today. But there was one problem: there were no sidewalks on any of the streets leading to the bus station.

The problem got worse about 10 years ago, when the Amtrak Downeaster started running to the same station. Car-free arrivals from Boston and other points south found themselves stranded at the edge of a huge parking lot and a tangle of hostile freeway ramps.

It didn't feel like arriving in Portland – it felt like arriving in the strip malls of Falmouth, Scarborough, or Freeport.

In truth, though. it's only a 30 minute walk from the Portland Transportation Center to Longfellow Square, in the middle of the city. Back in 2008, the Portland Bike and Pedestrian Advisory Committee designated this area one of the city's top priorities for bike and pedestrian infrastructure improvements – due largely to its significance as a destination for Portland's car-free travelers.

This summer, thanks to a grant from the federal Economic Development Administration, street improvements in the area have finally created a few passable walking and biking routes to the city's busiest transportation hub. I took a bike ride down there this weekend, and here are some shots of the area's newly completed streets.

This new crosswalk across Fore River Parkway connects to Frederic Street, a dead-end for cars that will now serve as a nice bike/ped shortcut to and from Congress Street (there had been an informal goat path through a fence here before, but the new one is accessible to bikes and wheelchairs).

The new Thompson's Point Road now boasts sidewalks. It was also widened, from 2 to 3 lanes, but the center lane will be a "reversible" lane to be used only when events are happening at a still-unbuilt Thompson's Point arena.

Sewall Street (below) also received some new sidewalks, and remains cut off from Thompson's Point for motorized traffic. Sewall is the first built link in a planned and funded "neighborhood byway" connection that will run on quiet neighborhood streets from Thompson's Point to Deering Center, 1.5 miles north of here. 

Part of the new neighborhood byway includes safer crossings of the three busy streets that lie between Thompson's Point and Deering Center – Congress, Brighton, and Woodford. Here's what the corner of Congress and Sewall looked like a few weeks ago:

...and here's the same scene from this past weekend. Sewall Street has been narrowed down and the crosswalks have been improved with ADA-accessible ramps.

Finally, Fore River Parkway has gained a new separated shared-use path that runs from Thompson's Point Road to Congress Street. I understand that the bike lane on Park Avenue, which currently peters out into a freeway on-ramp, will be extended to flow into this new bike path. 

Fore River Parkway still lacks a sidewalk on its western shoulder – building one there will require the roadway to sacrifice a lane for car traffic, so we'll still have one good battle to fight. Still, it's a good start.

Northwestern 'burbs get new express bus service

The Portland region just got its first new bus route in nearly ten years with the addition of the new Lakes Region Bus Service from RTP, the regional paratransit provider.

The service is modest, with only four round-trips per day and six stops along the route at town centers along Route 302. And with the possible exception of a stop at the end of Main Street in Raymond, most of the bus stops aren't in walkable locations.

Still, with a 30-mile span, the new bus could make a big difference in helping residents of Windham, Raymond, Casco and Naples drive less and save a lot of money in commuting costs.

The bus comes with some nice amenities, including free wifi and bike racks. For the rest of December, the service will be free; thereafter it will cost $3 for a one-way fare.

With only six stops, the bus will effectively offer express service into Portland at speeds comparable to driving. It resembles somewhat the existing ZOOM bus service from Portland to Biddeford, and I'd suggest that it might benefit from common branding with that service in the future.

Here's the route and schedule information. For detailed stop locations, visit rtprides.org/lake-region-bus/.

Public hearing on Libbytown freeway ramp removals

Tomorrow, the Libbytown Traffic and Streetscape Study holds a public workshop at Portland City Hall, Room 24, from 5 - 8 pm (entrance is off Myrtle St. on the east side of City Hall). Displays illustrating the proposed changes will be available from 5-6:30 pm and 7-8:00 pm for comments, with staff available to answer questions. A presentation on the neighborhood conditions and the proposed changes will take place from 6:30 - 7 pm.

This study is a pretty big deal: it proposes to remove multiple freeway ramps that connect to Congress and Park at the western gateway to the city, immediately adjacent to our bus and train station (in fact, the cruddiness of this intersection was one of the first things I blogged about when I first moved to Portland years ago). 

All of the alternatives under consideration would sell off acres of empty space currently occupied by looping freeway ramps and make that real estate available for transit-oriented infill development, like housing or offices. All alternative would also install high-quality, separated bikeways to connect the bus and train station to downtown Portland, plus better sidewalks and calmer, smaller streets throughout the neighborhood.

Doing these things would be relatively cheap, and could be implemented in the next few years, but only if these ideas receive public support.

Here's my personal favorite option, alternative 1b (note the conversion of a freeway ramp into a bike path, which could extend all the way into Deering Oaks Park and ultimately connect to the Bayside Trail):

Click here for a more complete view of the alternatives being proposed.

5 Reasons to Prefer Buses

Councilor Dave Marshall is trying to rally support for a streetcar line in Portland,  Maine.  I've written about this possibility previously, here, and I think it would be great to see it happen someday.

But not quite yet. Portland's regional bus network is woefully inadequate and we need to improve that system first before we talk about spending tens of millions of dollars on a single transit line that only serves a couple of select neighborhoods. Our city needs bus routes to Brunswick and Gorham a lot more than we need a streetcar to Woodford's Corner.

From the other Portland, where they've sunk a lot of money in light rail and streetcar lines, here are five arguments for building cheaper "bus rapid transit" routes — dedicated streets for buses — before we build streetcars and light rail:

Topology advantages. One thing that BRT does easily but rail cannot do is operate in an "open" configuration--meaning vehicles travel in a transitway for part of their journey, and then filter out into the existing street network without need for any special off-transitway infrastructure. Trains can only run where there are tracks and switches, but busses can mix between a busway and local operation. 

Partial operation: The ability of busses to run on ordinary streets has a second set of advantages. It permits easier phasing--agencies building a busway or bus lane can open half of it when it's done, and have busses run in the completed sections of the busway and on local streets the rest of the way, and then shift additional sections of the route into the busway when it completes.

Costs. For Class C/C+ operation [in mixed traffic, similar to most streetcars]; bus is way cheaper to install--it's just ordinarily local bus service, possibly with changes to traffic signals and nicer stations. The equivalent rail technology is mixed-traffic streetcar. Streetcar may be better suited to placemaking and land-use transformations, but the performance characteristics of mixed-traffic streetcar are generally the same as ordinary bus service; but streetcar requires installation of tracks. BRT also lets you do class B [dedicated lanes for buses, similar to most light rail lines] cheaply--if planners are willing to take a traffic lane.

Less prone to catastrophic failure. BRT doesn't break down as easily or as spectacularly when the line gets blocked or closed. This benefit is most often discussed in the context of streetcars vs local bus (where obstacles along the route are plenty), but even [rapid-transit rail] lines are impacted by events such as accidents, breakdowns, power or control failures, and maintenance of the right of way. With a BRT, vehicles can simply navigate around, leaving the transitway if necessary.

The ability to pass. BRT makes it far easier to mix express and local services and provide skip-stop service. Busses can simply pull out of the busway for stops; only a little more pavement and real estate is needed to enable passing. 

Here in this Portland, the streetcar concept is being promoted by nostalgic railfans whose love for trains obscures these more practical concerns. Some of our local rail advocates actually actively protest against expanding the region's bus system because they see it as a threat against their beloved choo-choos.

Unfortunately, as long as transit advocacy is dominated by these train-first fundamentalists, I doubt we'll see much progress of any kind.

Press Herald: Portland car registrations down 24% since 2004, even as population increases

For the past week, Portland Press Herald reporter Tom Bell has been researching a story on Portland's declining rates of car ownership. The story ran in today's paper, and even I thought that its findings were surprising: the number of registered cars in the city has fallen, Bell found, by 24% in the last 8 years.

And, a corollary: because Portland one of the few places in New England that people can live without the hassles and expenses of car ownership, it's becoming an increasingly attractive as a place to move to: "the city's apartment vacancy rate of 2.5 percent was tied with Minneapolis as the nation's second lowest," writes Bell, "behind only New York City, according to a survey by the National Association of Realtors."

This is a trend we've been hearing about on the national level for quite some time, and particularly where my generation is concerned. But what Tom found locally was particularly striking. Even before the Great Recession began, the number of registered passenger vehicles was declining steadily, even as the city's population has been on the rise:

Source: Portland Press Herald

Bell's article profiles a few Portlanders who have gotten rid of their cars in recent years and don't regret it. They cite the many hassles of car ownership: onerous paperwork, the expense, and the deleterious effects that cars have on the urban landscape and the environment in general. But the cost factor seems to be the most important one. The American Automobile Association estimates that owning a car costs, on average, roughly $9,000 every year. So getting rid of a car can provide a huge boost in a household's disposable income. I personally don't think that it's been much of a coincidence that Portland has gained dozens of new neighborhood-oriented businesses and restaurants in this same 8-year period that car ownership has fallen off a cliff: without the hassles and expenses of babysitting cars, we have more time and money to spend right here in the city. Bell's story alludes to this phenomenon as well:

"The decline of car ownership presents opportunities for the city's economy. Its high population density, mix of services and retail stores, access to public transportation, car sharing services and extensive bicycle network have made it not only possible to live without a car but made the city a magnet for those who want to."

And as more car-free households move here, more businesses will be able to spring up to serve their needs in the neighborhoods where they live. It's a virtuous cycle that's leading us to a more vibrant, prosperous city.

This is a positive trend. But it's happening in spite of the city's housing and transportation policies, which are still focused overwhelmingly on building cheap or free parking.

In the same 8-year period that car ownership went down 24%, the City of Portland sunk millions of dollars into tax-subsidized parking garages in Bayside and the Eastern Waterfront district, while public bus services, which are still frustratingly meager, haven't received any new investments from city government. And in spite of our housing shortages, it's still largely illegal for developers to build new homes without expensive parking spaces; every single "affordable" housing development built by the city's nonprofit developers in recent years has been forced to include expensive and little-used parking garages.

People want to live in Portland without worrying about automobile ownership. The City ought to let them, instead of forcing them to pay exorbitantly for roads and parking we don't use.

The House transportation bill could kill Amtrak's Downeaster and most other transit services

The U.S. House of Representatives is today voting on H.R. 7, a 5-year transportation budget that would effectively kill public transportation in the United States in order to fund a Nero-like orgy of freeway construction and oil drilling.

Among the bill's features:

• Elimination of the Mass Transit Account, which Ronald Reagan created in the 1980s to fund transit capital projects and maintenance;
  
  
• Elimination of bike and pedestrian safety programs like Safe Routes to School. These programs comprise a miniscule fraction of federal transportation funding, but they make big impacts with safer crosswalks and more vibrant main streets. These projects use very modest funds to deliver big results to neighborhood safety and economic development. A political party that's fond of frugal government ought to embrace these programs — but a political party that's ruled by Big Oil paymasters might see them as an existential threat.
  
  
• Elimination of Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality (CMAQ) rules that would allow state Departments of Transportation to divert funds from transit operations and bike/ped projects to highway expansion.
  
  It's worth noting that the workers at Maine's DOT have a revolving door arrangement with several highway engineering and construction firms, and that the Amtrak Downeaster service relies substantially on CMAQ funding for its day-to-day operations. This change would leave the door wide open for Governor LePage to yank Downeaster funding in order to build a new freeway to Gorham.
  
  
• And a massive expansion in domestic oil and gas drilling for good measure — as though sabotaging our public transit systems wasn't enough to make sure we stay addicted to the oil lobbyists who bought this bill from their Republican Party puppets.

Call your representatives and tell them to VOTE NO on H.R. 7, the House Transportation Bill:

Chellie Pingree: 1-888-862-6500 or email.

Mike Michaud: (202) 225-6306 or email.

New Hampshire 1st district (eastern/southern NH, including the coastal area):

Frank Guinta: (202) 225-5456 or email.

The Candidates on Transit

This week's Forecaster includes a rundown of the mayoral candidates' positions on transportation and transit in Portland. Some highlights:

• Dave Marshall continues beating the drum to build a streetcar along Forest Avenue to Woodford's Corner. While this is certainly a visionary idea, I'm curious to know how Dave plans to pay for a project like this one, which would easily cost upwards of $20 million. I'm concerned that too much of a fixation on trains could distract him (and divert scarce funding) from making more realistic improvements in the shorter term.
  
  
• Jed Rathband countered with a proposal to bolster city bus service funded from savings in diminished spending on public parking lots and garages. That may be less sexy than a train, but a whole lot more realistic and would benefit more of the city more quickly.
  
  
• Similarly, Markos Miller talked about revising the city's land use codes to support transit-oriented development instead of defaulting to our status quo of car-oriented development. Markos, of course, is also very involved in the efforts to reconfigure and redevelop Franklin Street, a project in which he'll play an important role whether or not he's elected.
  
  
• John Eder endorsed ZOOM service to Lewiston/Auburn. He wasn't involved at all in last winter's Legislative efforts, though, which makes me doubt his passion on the subject - I suspect he's just singing from the League of Young Voters' choir-book.

Overall, I think that Markos Miller has the most experience and knowledge with respect to the city's land use and transportation issues, and having worked with him frequently in neighborhood and smart growth activism, I think he's the best candidate in that regard.

That said, I also admire Jed Rathband's approach. While he's been less directly involved in these issues, they do dovetail with his primary interests in promoting small businesses and additional growth in downtown Portland and in outlying neighborhood centers, where automotive parking costs and regulatory burdens are the major barrier to additional growth. His proposed policies to re-direct city investments and development requirements from a focus on parking lots to a focus on better transit services is a pragmatic, fiscally responsible no-brainer that more candidates should be talking about.

I'll also probably cast a vote for Dave Marshall, although he probably won't be my first choice, for the boldness of his vision for better transit service in the city. Even if it is mostly political razzle-dazzle with little substance, at least Marshall is demonstrating to the other candidates that better transit can be a galvanizing idea for a more sustainable city.

ADDENDUM - other papers are covering this story this morning (10/5), and coverage from both the Press Herald and the Portland Daily Sun included a dig against METRO from fringe candidate Charles Bragdon.

However, only one of those newspapers did any fact-checking to see if Bragdon's Tea Party-style* claims were actually true or not. So kudos to the Daily Sun for holding Bragdon accountable:

"[Bragdon] also said the 'average ridership is about six people per route, per day' on Metro buses. (Metro officials said average daily ridership is more than 4,000 people.)" - from reporter Casey Conley's story in the Daily Sun

*i.e., inflammatory and false.

Will Portland's "transit-oriented" development offer a way in for transit riders?

The Thompson's Point mixed-use development proposal heads to its first workshop at the Planning Board on Tuesday afternoon.

Commenters on this blog and elsewhere have been giving the proposal mixed reviews, accusing it of being too suburban in its style and layout to be considered a real "transit-oriented" development.

I think that's fair, but I also believe that some minor changes could improve it drastically, and make it much more successful as a business venture for the developers and as an interesting place to go for visitors.

This week's planning board workshop will be a good venue to advocate for urban design improvements. It's still early enough for the developers to make changes, especially if those changes might, in the long term, add value to their development.

Here's the site plan as it currently stands. The big building in the middle is the sports arena and event center; just to the south, and sharing a wall with the event center, is a hotel and restaurant. Two mid-rise office buildings are on the southern tip of the peninsula.

Now, imagine that you're a conventioneer arriving here from Boston by bus or train. You walk out the front door of the station and turn left towards your hotel, crossing the train tracks on your way, and see the event building where your event is being held. But then you get annoyed: the main entrance is all the way on the other side! You end up walking roughly the length of a football field, dragging your luggage, to round the corner - at which point you then need to walk along the edge of a large parking lot before finally getting to your hotel lobby.

May I propose a slightly better way?

Instead of attaching the hotel and event center, which inconveniences foot traffic, the Planning Board ought to ask the developers to include a pedestrian street running east-to-west between the events building and the hotel and restaurant. This would give transit riders a shortcut to the complex's other spaces, but it would give the developers a neat little outdoor space to give their development some street life - potentially something like Yawkey Way or Portland Street in Boston:

A more modern example is the "Center Court" outside Portland, Oregon's Rose Garden (in the photo below, the basketball area is on the left; a complex of restaurants and shops is on the right):

I imagine that the developers had initially proposed to attach the hotel to the event center to make it easy for caterers to move between the two spaces, thus easing operations. That's valid. But I used to work in hospitality myself, and there's an old joke that the way to make your work as efficient as possible is to get rid of the guests altogether. And in a way, that's what's happening here. Is having your caterers cross a narrow outdoor space such a high price to pay for accommodating your thousands of car-free guests from New York, Boston, and elsewhere?

What about a Streetcar in this Portland?

As a citizens committee mulls over how to improve Forest Avenue, I've been mulling over whether it might be a good place to try to build Maine's first modern streetcar.

I've run some back-of-the-envelope calculations, and I think that Portland could afford it - I'd actually go so far to say that Portland could easily afford it. It could well end up making the city fiscally better-off: smart-growth developers love streetcars, and a line along Forest could spur dozens of building projects to bring new thousands of new jobs and housing units into the corridor's empty and underutilized lots.

The stretch of Forest Avenue from Bayside to Woodfords Corner could be a really cool Main Street for Portland, similar to Congress Street downtown or Commercial Street in the Old Port. It's got a big university campus anchoring one end, and the down-on-its-heels-but-still-kicking Woodfords business district on the other, and a smattering of fine historic buildings and neighborhood attractions in between.

Unfortunately, a few businesses and landlords along the street are more interested in serving cars than in serving their own neighbors, and their drive-thrus and blighted parking lots are dragging the entire neighborhood down. Even the banks seem to be anti-development: two brand-new branches built within the past decade are killing the neighborhood's foot traffic (not to mention choke the neighborhood's vehicular traffic) with hideous drive-thru teller lines.

Still, a high-quality transit service might convince them that those parking lots and driveways might be more valuable as housing or workspace. By my rough count, there are over 20 acres of aging strip mall, parking lot, or empty land along the line from Woodfords Corner to downtown:

View Dowtown Streetcar feasibility in a larger map

If just a handful of those lots were redeveloped with 4-5 story buildings, the city could gain a few hundred thousand dollars annually in new tax revenue - enough to pay for the annual operations costs of a streetcar line. And many of these lots are owned by the government, from the Maine Dept. of Transportation's land-wasting Exit 6 interchange, to the extensive parking lots of the University of Maine Campus, to the City of Portland's public works lots in Bayside. The city and state could potentially sell 10-12 acres of downtown real estate, setting aside a few million dollars for a streetcar line and saving the rest for other programs.

The streetcar construction projects in the other Portland have averaged $12-$13 million per mile - a figure that includes road reconstruction work and the costs of the vehicles. The line I sketched out above would be 1.8 miles of track downtown, plus 2.4 miles of track out to Woodfords Corner and back (or 1.2 miles in each direction). Based on the ballpark $13 million per mile figure, Portland could buy this for around $55 million. And given that these streets will probably be reconstructed soon anyhow, the marginal additional cost would be substantially lower.

$55 million is a lot of money. But in terms of transportation investments, it's relatively cheap.The Jetport terminal expansion, for instance, is going to cost $60 million - funded by surcharges on our plane tickets. The old Turnpork Authority tollbooth proposal in York would have cost about $50 million. And widening Forest Avenue to accommodate more car traffic might easily run to over $100 million, in addition to the loss of dozens of taxpaying businesses and buildings.

Another thing to keep in mind is that the federal government matches up to 80% of our transportation infrastructure expenditures. If we could compete in effectiveness with other proposed streetcar projects in other cities, and earn the full 80% match, then City would only need to raise $11 million locally.

Still, even though a streetcar might be possible, it won't happen unless three very uncertain conditions are met:

• key property owners along Forest Avenue and in Bayside get smart enough to replace their parking lots with new buildings, to help the line attract enough riders;
• the surrounding neighborhoods remain open to having new neighbors, more businesses, and taller buildings along Forest Avenue, and
• a leader in city government can champion the concept and secure funding from state and federal partners.

Right now, we have weak leaders, a lot of NIMBYism, and mostly unimaginative landowners. But maybe the idea of a high-quality streetcar line, and a fast connection to downtown Portland, could change things for the better.

Portland and South Portland bus schedules & routes now on Google Maps

View Larger Map

The schedule and route information for METRO and South Portland Bus Service buses have been added to Google Maps. Ask for directions in the Greater Portland area, and you'll now be able to get directions by public transit (in addition to walking, cycling, and driving directions).

This is a handy way to use the buses without a printed schedule. Now, instead of consulting a timetable, you can just get on a computer or your phone to see when the next bus is coming, and find different routes to get where you need to go on time.

Maybe you've arrived on a flight from the Jetport, and are interested in saving a cab fare downtown - follow this link to see when the next 3 buses depart.

Or maybe you got carjacked in Falmouth Foreside. No problem! Here's the schedule for the Falmouth Flyer.

Happy riding.

Huge transit-oriented development proposal for Thompson's Point

The Press Herald is reporting on a major new development proposal for Thompson's Point, a small peninsula on the Fore River that's adjacent to Portland's train station and Concord Coach bus terminal. The concept calls for a major events arena that would host the city's D-league basketball team, a large music venue, and a convention center, in addition to two mid-rise office buildings on the end of the peninsula, a large parking garage, and a hotel.


All this would be located within easy walking distance of the Portland Transportation Center, which offers hourly buses to downtown Boston and Logan Airport, in addition to five daily round trips to Boston's North Station via the Amtrak Downeaster. The convention and hotel elements of this development proposal are obviously trying to capitalize on the site's easy connections to the larger city to our south. This is a major transit-oriented development proposal.

The developers also claim that they have investors lined up and that the project would be privately financed - which is impressive, given how many convention centers and sports arena proposals ask for government handouts in other cities. And it looks like a nice waterfront esplanade would also be included around the edge of the site - hopefully this will be a truly public space, and not a private garden with "no trespassing" signs.

My one regret is that the developers aren't planning to rehab the old brick warehouse building on the site - that building in its own right could have been a really awesome music venue, and added some historic authenticity to a development that runs the risk of feeling like a sterile office park. I'll hold out some hope that the developers and architects think of a creative way to save it, but even if they can't, the overall merits of building so much right next to a major transit hub outweigh that quibble, in my mind.

This project's announcement also comes close on the heels of another convention center proposal from the Shipyard Brewery's owner. The fact that two developers independently are proposing convention centers for Portland speaks to the city's potential to attract more business travellers and events. The Shipyard proposal wouldn't have the direct connection to an intercity transit terminal, but its location within walking distance of downtown's businesses and restaurants, might mean that it could have a stronger positive impact on the local economy.

But that proposal may well be moot: the Thompson Point concept looks more polished, and if they're telling the truth about their financing, it looks like this one's more likely to get built.

Which means that, if Portland wants other downtown businesses to be able to capitalize on its promising convention business, it needs to start planning more robust and reliable bus transit connections between Thompson's Point and the rest of the city.

I'll wait to see more details before I make an outright endorsement, but this looks like a very promising concept, as well as a strong vote of confidence in transit-oriented development sites.

Congress St. Bus Priority Corridor Meeting Tonight

This is kind of late notice, but tonight will be the first public meeting on the Congress St. bus priority corridor planning effort:

http://ci.portland.me.us/showart.asp?contentID=2009

It starts at 4 pm in the ICA (first floor of the ME College of Art building on Congress Street), and goes to 7. Maybe I'll see some of you there.

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!

Can Buses Spur Economic Development?

A recent article in Streetsblog pointed out that Brooklyn's Fulton Street mall, open only to buses and pedestrians, is the most successful retail strip in the city outside of Manhattan.

There's no doubt about it. Buses do spur economic development, by bringing more people into street-level retail spaces, by giving landlords and tenants a much more affordable alternative to building and maintaining huge parking garages, and by saving money for local governments (which spend less on transportation infrastructure) and commuters (who spend less money on gas and cars).

An anonymous comment in the last post asserted (rather scornfully) that only trains can spur transit-oriented development. That's just not true. In Portland, we've seen much more new development happen along the Congress Street corridor between Maine Medical Center and Washington Avenue - a street where buses run every five to ten minutes during workdays - than we've seen in the neighborhood around the train station in Libbytown. Bus service deserves some credit for this new development along Congress Street for reducing employers' parking requirements and their commuters' expenses.

In fact, City of Portland zoning codes explicitly reduce parking requirements if the development is within walking distance of bus routes. And the builders of the recent expansion at Maine Medical Center cited the availability of bus service and its high rate of bus commuters among employees as a reason to build more space downtown than the hospital otherwise would have.

Unfortunately, the economics of intercity rail in Maine require large parking lots for drive-in passengers to access stations that are miles apart from each other. But the economics of local and intercity express buses like the Metro and ZOOM buses require dense, vibrant employment centers and residential neighborhoods where passengers can walk to bus stops that are within a few blocks of each other in downtown neighborhoods. That's the kind of transit-oriented development we need more of.

There's no doubt that a handful of people don't like riding buses, and Anonymous seems like s/he is probably one of them. But for many of us, any option is better than no option. For the vast majority of people - including the thousands of households in our cities who don't own cars - the idea of waiting a decade or more for Amtrak to expand to Auburn with only three trips a day is not that exciting when an intercity bus route could start up within months, serve more destinations, and offer dozens of trips a day, for a much lower price.

Before I get more angry notes from railfans, let me make it known that I absolutely want to see Amtrak expand to Lewiston/Auburn. But it won't happen soon and it will take even longer unless those cities really begin to lay the groundwork of becoming a transit-oriented community. I'll reiterate the points I made yesterday: those cities need to stop throwing away their money away on temples to free-parking socialism. And they need to invite smarter forms of downtown development, by bringing commuters in on buses until they can afford to bring even more people in by rail.

At the end of the day, "sustainable transportation" also needs to be financially sustainable, and transit advocates need to be practical. Connecting two of Maine's largest urban centers by passenger rail does make sense, but building it will be very, very expensive, and it will be at least ten years before our small, aging, and poor state is able to afford it.

In the meantime, though, buses can deliver a similar outcome - the efficient movement of thousands of people - for a fraction of the cost. Rail advocates might be threatened by the idea that buses could become too successful, and make people forget about buying an expensive new train. But that's no reason to sabotage an important new transit connection between Portland and Lewiston.

PS: You don't have to take my word for it - here are a few more examples of places where buses - not trains - have cultivated successful transit-oriented development:

• Almere (The Netherlands): "North Americans try hard to do 'transit-oriented development,' (TOD) but the Dutch are doing it on a massive scale. Even more heretically, they do it with buses! All of Almere is transit-oriented, and the transit is all in the form of busways," writes transit planning consultant Jarrett Walker.
• Pittsburgh: "Faced with a long, slender five-acre parcel of land between Centre Avenue and the East Busway, the project needed to encourage tenants to come to the neighborhood without turning it into a suburbanized desert of parking," from a review of a new bus-oriented retail development in the Pittsburgh City Paper.
• Bogota, Colombia: "Analysis across time reflects slight average annual increases in property values correlated with the implementation of the [Transmileno Bus Rapid Transit] system."

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.

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.

Commenters' Questions

A few questions have cropped up recently in the comments section, and I'll do my best to answer them here:

[From Anonymous] A woman who lives near my house routinely parks her car in a driveway, but the car completely blocks the sidewalk. As a pedestrian, today, I literally had to walk through a snowbank to continue on my way around her car (SUV). I have asked her to keep her car off the sidewalk, but she basically flipped me off. Who is legally correct here? Who owns the sidewalk?

While the property owner technically "owns" the land under the sidewalk, it's a public right of way that must be kept clear. If you would like to report an uncleared sidewalk, call Portland's Inspections Department at 874-8793, or citysidewalks@portlandmaine.gov. Use the same number for neighbors who don't shovel.

You could also encourage her to take a long drive tomorrow in the snow - with an SUV, she'll be more likely than others to get it stuck in a snowbank along the side of the freeway, opening up your sidewalk for a while.

[From Turbo]: "I'd been wondering whether you were biking to work on these days when the Rt. 1 shoulder is under multiple inches of grimy snow. I've been taking the bus myself most days-- probably passing you en route. I have to say, though, I find the bus depressing. I spend most of the ride trying to think of ways to make it a more appealing experience."

In general, I'll take the bus too if there's slush on the roads - getting damp salt on my bike and clothing is not much fun. I'll admit it's been making me a little stir crazy, though.

I have ridden in the last couple of days, since the roads are generally dry. I rode in to work this morning as well, but with the snow flying outside, I'll probably make use of METRO's bike racks on my way home.

When the shoulders are icy, I take the middle of the lane, which is perfectly legal and arguably makes a cyclist even safer by virtue of improved visibility (I'm in motorists' direct line of sight, instead of in their peripheral vision). If cars want to pass me, they switch lanes - just as they would do with any other slower vehicle. Winter tends to make people slow down on the roads anyhow, so it's not much of a problem to keep up.

As far as making the bus ride less depressing, I'd say it's a damned shame that METRO plasters its buses with advertisements that keep us from looking out the windows. The part of Route 7 that I ride might be one of the most scenic bus routes anywhere, with abundant views of Back Cove, the Presumpscot River, and Casco Bay's islands - often with sunrises and sunsets at this time of year to boot. Of course, I get off before the same bus enters the cluster of strip malls around Route One, also known as Falmouth's Lower Intestinal District.

I usually bring a book or a magazine, or just rest my eyes for a few minutes. In the past few years I've seen a lot more people sending emails or web browsing with smartphones. Reading or writing are things you just can't do in a driver's seat. I'll take a dingy bus and a good magazine article over the cushiest Lexus any day.

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.

Excuses

You've probably seen it - this was the cover story on the Portland Press Herald yesterday:

How Maine missed the bus for a federal transit grant

Maine communities lost a chance to land $20 million from the federal transit system this year, apparently because the state's grant application was incomplete.

State transportation officials said Tuesday that they are trying to figure out how the application for a State of Good Repair grant arrived in Washington by e-mail with a cover letter only.

None of the required supporting documents was received, and a Maine Department of Transportation official said she was unsure if the application was e-mailed without the documents attached or if the attachments were somehow stripped off during transmission.

Kat Beaudoin, who heads the MDOT's Bureau of Transportation Systems Planning, said the state hasn't come to any conclusions.

"We believe that we attached (the supporting documents), but we believe that somewhere in the transmission they got unattached or got lost," she said. "I'm not sure we'll ever know what happened."

It's pretty clear to everyone who reads this what happened. After all, documents don't get "unattached" from emails. This excuse only works if you believe that the Internet is literally a series of tubes, and the document got stuck in the bend of a pipe on its way to Washington. If Beaudoin really wanted to get to the bottom of this, she'd check her "sent mail" folder, and there, she would probably find that the grant application never got attached.

A stupid mistake, and it's one that everyone makes. Unfortunately, in this case, the mistake cost Maine's transit agencies and riders - a group that doesn't exactly have lots of money to spare - $20 million.

I wonder why didn't nobody called Washington to follow up and make sure the application had arrived? I've done this when sending a $100 invoice - surely somebody could have done the same when $20 million was on the line?

But Kat Beaudoin didn't follow up. Neither did her bosses, Commissioner David Cole and Deputy Commissioner Bruce Van Note, who have repeatedly made the claim that Maine should raise gas taxes because their agency is so strapped for cash. So it's easier to raise taxes than to call Washington about your $20 million grant application?

Another person who failed to double-check with Washington was David Redlefsen, the local manager of METRO, which lost $5 million that it could have used to replace Portland's most decrepit bus vehicles.

I'll go out on a limb here and tell you one reason why no one bothered to call and follow up: Kat Beaudoin, and her employees, and even the local managers of local transit agencies, don't themselves rely on public transit to get around in their day-to-day lives. If one of Maine's antique buses breaks down, they won't miss any appointments, they won't be late for work, they won't get home late. What difference do your customers make, when your job is protected by a union, your mistreated customers are working too hard to be politically engaged, and nobody's holding you accountable?

In Augusta, it's way easier to make excuses than to demonstrate competency.

Kat Beaudoin's entire department is at a high risk of being eliminated in Paul Lepage's administration, and this stunt won't do them any favors. That's largely fine with me - Augusta's highway middlemen have not proved themselves of any value in recent years. They're building projects we don't need and meddling with positive local initiatives that would do some good. Unfortunately they're likely to take local transit agencies down with them.

There are all too many places where Beaudoin could go collect a paycheck as an excuse-making professional. Maybe manage the archives at the Nixon Library? Or go defend altar boy-loving priests for the Catholic Church? Or work as Lebron James's new agent? The world of dumb mistakes is your oyster, Kat.