TSTC

For as long as Streetsblog has been covering the transportation reform beat, Albany has been a graveyard for progressive transportation legislation affecting New York City. Sheldon Silver and Assembly Democrats buried congestion pricing there in 2008. The State Senate poured cement shoes for bridge tolls last year, hobbling the attempt to provide the MTA with greater financial stability. Now our transit system is shrinking, and the fiscal disaster that the state has unleashed on bus and subway riders seems poised to grow worse.

The campaign to rein in sprawl and build more livable communities across New York state intensified yesterday, as advocates redoubled their efforts to pass two critical pieces of legislation in Albany. Groups working to advance complete streets legislation, including AARP and the Tri-State Transportation Campaign, and those pushing for statewide smart growth policies, such as Empire State Future, announced they will be teaming up to pass both bills.

Streets in Manhattan, Brooklyn and Staten Island continue to be among the most dangerous in the region for pedestrians, says a new report from the Tri-State Transportation Campaign.

Last week we reported on the state DOT's expensive plan to widen part of the Major Deegan Expressway in the southwest Bronx, even as the agency fails to maintain upstate bridges. The dubious Deegan project sucks up $266 million in the state DOT's new five-year capital plan, while more promising initiatives -- like the potential removal of the Sheridan Expressway -- languish without much money at all.

It's not news that a half-century of transportation spending to accommodate the automobile has made the typical American city hazardous and hostile to people on foot. But it's shocking how we still devote so few resources to correcting those mistakes. A new report released today by a coalition of advocacy groups, including Transportation for America and the Tri-State Transportation Campaign, quantifies current funding disparities and the cost in human lives. From T4A:

Here's a scenic shot of the Sheridan Expressway in the South Bronx during the evening "rush," courtesy of the Tri-State Transportation Campaign and the advocates behind the Southern Bronx River Watershed Alliance. Even in the peak direction, reports Tri-State's Steven Higashide, the Moses-era relic is barely used at all:

One of the more common excuses we've been hearing from local pols during the current MTA crisis is that "service never improves," so why bother to fund transit? Set aside, for the moment, the fact that subways and buses are moving way more New Yorkers than they did just a few years ago. Courtesy of the Tri-State Transportation Campaign, here's an interesting case study of service actually getting worse and why it happened.

The Daily News published an op-ed today that highlights the broad coalition of labor unions, business interests, good government groups, transportation advocates and neighborhood activists who want Albany to adopt the Ravitch Commission's MTA rescue plan.

While we've been focusing on the stimulus action in Washington this week, the Tri-State Transportation Campaign has kept an eye on the region's state DOTs, which will dispense billions for transportation infrastructure. On Wednesday Tri-State filed suit to prevent the New Jersey Turnpike Authority from widening the Garden State Parkway, a project the agency intends to fund in part with stimulus cash. Tri-State has also kept the pressure on Connecticut's DOT -- which never made its wish list public -- to invest in transit, bike, and pedestrian improvements.