A Day in the Life

Today I had a cinco. I was on three different transit systems and on five different transport modes. This morning I woke up realizing that I needed to take my car in after the check engine light had been flashing at me lately and the throttle just wasn't acting right. Since I drive to my Grammas each week (because the bus line used to stop running at 3:30pm and is now gone) it's nice to have my car to get too and from her house.

But today I took my car to Broadway in Oakland and dropped it off. "Can I get you a courtesy Shuttle?" says the service manager. "No thanks, I'll take the bus". I walked through the showroom where everyone else was waiting for thier shuttle to take them to thier car needy areas and stepped out to the 51 bus stop. I hopped on and waited five minutes for the driver to load a wheelchair customer who almost ran him over. "Whoa, slow down man" he said to the motorized wheelchair owner who wanted to back over his feet while he held the seatbelt up for him. The rest of the trip to 14th and Broadway took about 6 minutes. Not long at all.

Later that evening when I got off work, I hopped on BART and rode to Powell. I got off and walked up stairs to the Muni Metro and hopped on the J Church LRV. I hopped off at Church and Market and walked into Safeway to buy groceries for the next few days. I walked back out and back onto the J to go home to 24th street.

That's pretty cool. I drove, took the bus, took the subway, took the Muni Metro and walked today while running a number of different errands that were on the way to my final destination. All possible because I live in a place that gives me options. I wish more people could do it this way and I know there are plenty of people out there who wish they could have the opportunity, but our leaders are denying them the option on the false premise of car superiority and lame numbers.

Betterments

Part of the problem with costing complaints for light rail is that everyone wants to throw everything into the project. From repaving the street to urban decor such as special pavers and street lamps. I'm all about these "betterments" but we need to understand that attaching them to the light rail project only makes it more expensive and gives opponents fodder when they go on about cost per mile estimates. In reality, the repaving of a street curb to curb should not penalize a project. If anything it should create a better mobility score for increasing the number of people that can use a street. Where's the transit SYSTEM user benefit for that?

But because such improvements are underfunded in general, cities see FTA funds as a gravy train for getting these important elements done. If we can figure out a way for these pieces of the overall puzzle to be eligible for another funding pot dedicated to pedestrian mobility that would be great. But we shouldn't have to. This is just another reason why the cost effectiveness measure that can kill a project based on a penny over a certain standard is dumb.