Bad Employment Location Decisions

Annoying me to no end are decisions to locate major new employment opportunities in areas that have no access to regional rapid transit.  The most recent of these is the idea that Berkeley Labs would take the Golden Gate Fields horse racing track and redevelop it to bring all the employees together that were once in different places. 

This is a laudable goal however it's right next to a major freeway and will basically add more transportation costs to the University, AC Transit district while also increasing auto traffic (A mention of 2,500 cars).  I'm sure my taxes will have to pay for that stupidity.  Apparently downtown Oakland isn't good enough. 

I think Auto Row might be a good location for this campus, right next to Pill Hill and Kaiser hospital.  There's plenty of space for a few tall buildings, its ripe for redevelopment because of all the parking lots, and its on a major transit route, and fairly close to BART.  Another good place would be downtown Oakland.  There's plenty of space if they really took a look.  People seem to be lazy and look for what amounts to an urban greenfield.  They really need to get an imagination. 

Mayor Adams Will Ditch Car

Following Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates, Sam Adams has said that he will ditch the car for a month and go on bike and transit.

We mentioned to Adams that the 71-year-old Bates was going even further: The Berkley mayor has traded in his 2001 Volvo for a transit pass and walking shoes. "Seriously?" Adams said. "He's really doing that? No driving at all?" None.

Adams paused, obviously feeling out-maneuvered in the race to become America's greenest mayor. "How big is Berkeley?" he asked. "Because Portland is 143 square miles?"With a chuckle, he relented. "OK," he said, "I'll take his challenge for one month."

Wha?! Who in their right mind would take that challenge? Oh perhaps someone who is not a member of the Emerald Aristocracy. Many people here in San Francisco talk a green game, but can they back it up? Plug in hybrids aren't going to cut it in this race. You gotta do more.

Not a Train, Never Will Be

BRT is not "rail-like". It is not a replacement for rail but rather an upgrade on a specific corridor from what exists. Buses in their own lanes are better, but they are not "rail-like".

In addition, the opposition needs to stop whining about the bus bringing higher densities to the corridor and reducing parking spaces. Parking is not free and the pavement has a better use than storing your car. You live in the East Bay on the best corridors to reduce VMT and oil dependence, and I imagine you talk about being green all the time. Yet you oppose density and better transit that will help that goal.

Cunradi agreed parking space losses are a serious issue. To offset the impact, the transit district will consider developing parking lots or garages, or installing parking meters on commercial side streets so the spaces turn over faster, he said.

Greg Harper, an AC Transit board member from Emeryville, said the fear of denser development is an underlying fear that has fueled opposition to bus rapid transit.

The transit district should not be responsible for replacing parking. The city should not be responsible for paying for parking for specific merchants or anyone for that matter. Parking is not free. Losing a number of parking spaces is a small price to pay for better transit.

Also a bit of warning to those who think that BRT is "rail-like". BRT will never be replaced by light rail. There is no example of BRT ever being taken out and replaced by rail. Once its there, that's it. Buses. That is not to say that it doesn't have its place in the network, but if a corridor needs rail, and buses are used, an upgrade is a long time coming, if ever.

Would Berkeley be "Destroyed"?

Regressive progressives are at it again in Berkeley. The November vote will determine if buses can have dedicated lanes in the City Limits and whether denser development can occur on transit corridors. The response by the opposition is fear:

"This election is huge," said Laurie Bright, president of the Council of Neighborhood Associations. If voters reject Measure KK and approve LL, she said, the combined effect could "destroy Berkeley as we know it."

This is a perfect example of the idea that things should always stay as they have been. People are really afraid of change and expect others to take the brunt of what is coming anyway (growth). This was highlighted by opposition at a recent meeting that claimed they should build dedicated lanes in places that "needed it" like Walnut Creek. It's always exporting things to somewhere else rather than taking initiative and controlling it yourself. It's also a direct contradiction of Wendell Cox and others who believe that Smart Growth policies are the bain of housings costs. It actually seems as if its general NIMBYness.

Election Day Coverage on The Overhead Wire

So you all know ahead of time, we're going to have an election night liveblog here at The Overhead Wire. The reason? No it's not to talk about the presidential race, but rather the Transit Space Race elections going on all over the country. Here's a preview of what we'll cover:

St. Louis - An election is being held to give Metro a half cent more in order to keep up with operating expenses and expand Metrolink, the region's light rail system. It's called Proposition M.

Santa Fe - A Sales Tax to extend Rail Runner into the city from Albuquerque.

Oakland/Berkeley - AC Transit is looking to raise the parcel tax $48 annually to pay for operations. This measure is called VV. KK is also on the ballot and would allow AC Transit to build BRT on Berkeley streets.

Los Angeles - This would be a half cent sales tax for capital expansion. It's called Measure R.

Sonoma Marin - SMART will go back to the polls to ask for an 1/4th cent sales tax to build a commuter rail line. It is called Measure Q.

Honolulu - Island residents are being asked whether they approve of a steel on steel transit system. (Crazy huh?)

Kansas City - A half cent sales tax is on the ballot to build a starter light rail line.

Seattle - Prop 1. I'm not going to be covering this as much except for some crucial updates. I'm sure the boys at STB got it covered.

High Speed Rail - $9.9 billion dollar bond for a statewide high speed rail line. This one is Prop 1a.

If I am missing something let me know. I'll be live blogging into the night until we get the Hawaii results. It's still a bit of time away. But I'll be reminding everyone every once in a while to keep your minds off the presidential election.

Documents You Shouldn't Use Against Transit

I have a problem with people using documents they don't quite understand to fight against transit they don't understand. In a recent Daily Planet article, there's a lady who argues that transit lines often overestimate ridership and underestimate cost. She uses the Contractor Assessment Report to make her point.

An August 2007 study by the Federal Transit Administration entitled “Contractor Performance Assessment Report” compared average weekday boardings for completed projects with the predictions made during the EIR process. Of 19 New Starts projects (mostly light rail), 16 had boardings below the forecasts, with some as low as 20-30 percent of forecast figures.

Ridership forecasts for busways performed even more poorly, according to the report, where “none of the available busway forecasts proved to be accurate. It appears from the limited sample that forecasts of ridership on busway projects . . . will not exceed 41 percent of the forecasts.”

First off, the busways in this study were either in freeway right of ways like Houston or built on an existing freight right of way as a new road like in Pittsburgh. These bear no resemblance at all to the arterial running Oakland BRT plan and should not be compared to them as much as I think these first generation busway projects show that buses are no replacement for rail.

This is a document that was done a number of years ago but recently cleaned up and released by the Bush administration folks under Ma Peters. It was a follow up to the famous Pickrell Report which was used by wingers and libertarians alike to say that transit was worthless. But as Todd Litman notes, you can't take the start number and compare it to the end when you have design changes in the middle of the plan among other things.

Studies by Pickrell (1992) and Flyvbjerg (2005) suggested that many earlier rail transit projects exceeded projected costs and failed to achieve first-year ridership predictions. But much of what Pickrell classified as cost overruns where actually adjustments due to design changes...

The FEIS numbers are also from the late 80's early 90's when ridership models for transit were still being honed due to the fact that we had just started building transit projects again after a long time off with a few metro subway lines in between. I'm not going to say things were perfect and there were some mistakes made, but I feel like now the FTA is starting to overcompensate for that. Recently ridership has been going over estimates like Charlotte, Denver, Minneapolis etc etc. In this report, the ridership estimates are extrapolated which make it look a bit worse if you look at the numbers without looking at the year they were forcast for. I'll also note that building automated guideways was a bad idea back then. 6% of ridership is really bad.

Ridership forecasts are developed to reflect trips in a particular year. For eleven of the twentyone projects included in this study, the ridership forecast year remains in the future (as of this writing).

The Capital Costs aren't anything different from what you would find with major freeway projects. Some over and some under the final estimate. But my main problem is using this report against transit at all, especially since the processes are completely different now. I know this report will get used again against transit at some point in the future, but I really wish it wouldn't, because without context, its worthless.

BRT Will Kill Your Children and Drink Their Blood

Ok. I'm not a huge fan of BRT as you know, but this is ridiculous. Some people are just over the top. Yes I know it's the Berkeley Daily Wacko, but the fact that there are people out there like this shouldn't come as a shock.

BRT is bigger than you think. Its pattern follows the national trend that General Dwight D. Eisenhower, Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces in Europe in World War II, famously named the military/industrial complex. Eisenhower (a Republican dedicated to preserving the Constitution) said government and private industries are determined to feed the war machine at the expense of all else and would ruin this country and the world if not checked by an alert citizenry.
...

“Policy-makers” care nothing for the residents and businesses along Telegraph Avenue. Not only does BRT mean turning Telegraph into an un-bike-able traffic nightmare; it also means large scale re-development under the rubric of turning Telegraph into a ‘transit corridor’: goodies for developers, fees for the city, and “closed” signs for existing businesses, many of which are likely to be replaced by corporate chains that duct money out and away from the local economy.

Because there's nothing like improving transit and slowing down cars for killing a streetscape!

EPA, Regressive Progressives, A Green Link

The EPA is saying that the EIS for the Columbia River Crossing doesn't consider growth from Sprawl or water and air pollution caused by increased driving. Don't get me wrong, I think its important to look at these things but the EPA has been super schizophrenic as of late. Perhaps this is the wing of the EPA not controlled by Bush lackeys? You know, the ones that reduced the value of life...really. From the Oregonian:

The critique is drawn from EPA's review of the Columbia River Crossing's 5,000-page environmental impact statement, and it extends to other areas as well. Among those are whether doubling the congested I-5 bridge from six to 12 lanes will promote suburban sprawl; whether the combination of air toxics, noise and other pollution will punish North Portland communities living close to the I-5; and whether massive pile-driving efforts will stir up toxic sediments, compromising federally protected migrating salmon.

In other environmental news from the bay area, BRT booster Charles Siegel writes a fairly scathing critique of Berkeley residents which has become a city of regressive progressives r.

These hard-core anti-environmentalists seem to believe that they are fighting to protect Berkeley’s character against growth. They don’t realize that Berkeley’s early character as a walkable streetcar suburb was disrupted by auto-oriented development. Transit corridors were filled with drive-in uses, and they ended up being more like strip malls than like walkable Main Streets. Even in downtown, there were surface parking lots, tire stores, a strip mall, a car wash, and other drive-in uses that made it less pleasant to walk.

Obviously I'm not a fan of BRT in these corridors that used to be Key System lines, especially when its not electrified but the grounds on which this proposal is being opposed is a bit silly. It makes Berkeley residents look bad. Eric covers the worst of it.

Meanwhile, one quite confused speaker claimed that giving buses a dedicated lane would cause them to “get stuck,” and that what we really needed was “flexibility.” She suggested that with “flexibility,” AC Transit could run buses every three minutes, while implying that three-minute headways would be impossible with a dedicated bus lane. Just incredible.

It's at this point when you kind of just have to throw up your hands and say uncle. These people are never going to get it. And its sad, because even though BRT is a small step up in service, it represents a giant shift in priorities (people over cars) and better service than what exists now.

And Green News from BART, all of their peripheral systems are going solar. Pretty cool.