James Rath's organization Capital Streets works to raise awareness about the importance of public transportation and pedestrian-centered infrastructure in New York's Capital Region. WAMC's Sajina Shrestha spoke with the executive director of the grassroots advocacy group about the importance of and realities behind building a walkable municipality.
INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT
Editor's note: This conversation has been lightly edited for clarity.
Shrestha: When people think of public transportation in New York State, they're thinking of the big leagues like New York City, right? They're thinking of the MTA. But your work focuses a lot in the Capital Region area. Could you talk more about why the Capital Region area, but also what's being missed when people are only thinking of the MTA when it comes to public transportation in New York State?
Rath: I think transportation is inherently local, and we're here in the Capital Region. So Capital Streets is focused in Albany and Troy, and that Hudson River corridor in between. And now we're working in communities like Watervliet. We're really excited to work more in places like Rensselaer and the Capital Region. I think there's a special context because we don't have one big city, right? We're kind of this constellation of small cities. Even on the commute here [from Troy], which is about, I think, eight miles, I think I've gone through five different municipalities. So you're subject to different infrastructure, and a lot of times, if you're on a highway and you're in a car, you're not experiencing that in an intimate way, right? That you're on 787, and there it's a standardized kind of commute. If you're walking or biking or taking transit, you are noticing those cracks in the pavement a lot more. You're noticing whether a community is replacing curb ramps and making them ADA compliant, you're noticing whether or not they're focusing on mitigating speeding, and you're subjected to ways that they're investing or not investing in transit infrastructure.
Shrestha: You touched on just how you are working with different municipalities, and when people think of infrastructure and they think of pedestrian safety, someone might bring up the point, 'Well, why don't you let the municipality handle it, right? Like that's their job.' But I was hoping to see if you could talk about the reality behind that ideal. Of when I like, I'm thinking of the city of Albany. They have a budget deficit. Sometimes they have a hiring freeze. What falls through the cracks when you're just putting that onus on the municipality?
Rath: One of the most noteworthy things, and this might be surprising for folks who aren't in the work every day, is that most of our municipalities are relying on very few people to hold up the infrastructure that everybody is counting on. They're spread very thin. They're working super hard, but they can only do so much. That's a huge challenge for a municipality, and the result is that they're relying really heavily on consultants, consultants who have a bottom line, consultants who don't live in the communities most of the time, consultants who are you know juggling other projects in other places, sometimes across the country, and so I think that's a that's a major problem.
Shrestha: One thing that I noted in the work that you do with Capital Streets is that you are very people focused, right? You hold community walks, you hold forums on different things. Like right now, with the curbside parking in the city of Troy. Now, obviously there is a lot of respect given to GIS technicians and consultants and engineers that do that work, but could you tell me more about why it's important to also include the everyday man, the person walking down the street in your neighborhood, in that input when it comes to fixing the sidewalks in that neighborhood, let's say.
Rath: The experience is really intimate, right? Like we talked about, if there's a crack in the pavement that a mother with a stroller is trying to navigate every single day, that's probably not going to get picked up in a you know $100,000 planning study that a firm is being brought in to to tackle without that public engagement. So, finding ways to hear the people who are affected by it, you know, to raise those voices is absolutely critical. And we've done some of that, right? Capital Streets. I think we're always looking for ways to get those perspectives. The other part of it is building a movement around these issues. It's starting to change. It's pretty noticeable over the past three years. But when we first started this work, we were having a lot of conversations with with folks where there were these aha moments of realizing, 'Wait, somebody is making that decision about how long it's going to take for me to cross the street, or somebody's making that decision about how easy it's going to be to take this turn at a high speed,' Everything that is affecting me on my daily commute or just walking around town, whether it's to go to a shop or to take your kid to school, everything is basically being decided by somebody, and it's our job at Capital Streets to inform and empower people to speak up and to play a bigger role in that process
The communities that are going to become more whole, the communities that are going to become more just, and basically be able to weather these challenging times, you know, whether it's around affordability or the climate crisis, are t the the cities that are listening to their community members and saying, "Oh, you want it to be safer. You want it to be easier to get your kids to school. You don't want to sit in a pickup or drop-off line for an hour and a half every day. You want to be able to bike to work." These sorts of things that we're hearing over and over again. I mean, the the most unanimous thing that we're hearing not only about transportation, but overall, is that people are really heavily affected by speeding in their neighborhoods, and we're seeing changes here in the city of Albany. But you know, this is a major, major priority for community members, and it's time for all elected officials, all city leaders, government leaders, to realign their priorities to meet their constituents where they're at.
Shrestha: What are some issues that affect people on a daily basis that Capital Streets is trying to address, but people may not be thinking about because it's so you know secondhand or it's just so on the fly, basically.
Rath: We're focused on how those that infrastructure and how policy is impacting people, and like I mentioned earlier, one of the biggest things is speeding, and so we're trying to take every opportunity that we can, especially when we're working, as we are in Troy and Albany, where there are really tight budgets, to figure out where are the opportunities where we can make big impacts with a pretty small investment. So things like repaving- while you're repaving, getting that striping perfect so that pedestrians, people walking, people biking are having a much better, safer experience- and also people who are just in their homes aren't listening to super noisy, fast-moving traffic, but also doing things like quick builds and being able to deploy temporary or interim treatments really quickly, so that we can address the safety concerns that we have and make those improvements at a fraction of the cost. So that's something that folks can definitely look out for. We're going to do a project in Watervliet in the next few weeks that we're really excited about. It'll be a good example of what municipalities around the region could do at a lot of different places for really small investment to have that big impact.
Producer Skylar Butenshon contributed to this report.
