Insert Highway Wreckage Metaphor Here

The Senate passed the bailout bill and the Daily Show covered it. Now this has only a slight a transportation bend to it, but its totally worth it. Fast forward to 5 minutes in on the Comedy Central clip.





Ah Tommy Boy.

Related Comedy

GEORGE: Ladies and gentlemen, this (Opens the door, Steven is standing there) is Steven Koren. His G.P.A. is a solid 2.0! Right in that meaty part of the curve - not showing off, not falling behind.

WYCK: George, the quailifications for this scholarship were suppose to be… largely academic.

GEORGE: I'm sure we're all aware of the flaws and biases of standardized tests.

WYCK: These aren't standardized tests - these are his grades.

GEORGE: Besides, Steven Koren has the highest of aspirations. He wants to be (pauses for effect) an architect.

WYCK: Is that right?

STEVEN: Actually, maybe I could set my sights a little bit higher.

GEORGE: (Laughs) Steven, nothing is higher than an architect.

STEVEN: I think I'd really like to be a city planner. (Sits down, addressing the entire foundation board) Why limit myself to just one building, when I can design a whole city?

Related Cinema

Batman Begins

Bruce Wayne: Did you build this train, Dad?
Thomas Wayne: Gotham's been good to our family, but the city's been suffering. People less fortunate than us have been enduring very hard times. So we built a new, cheap, public transportation system to unite the city. And at the center...Wayne Tower.
Bruce Wayne: Is that where you work?
Thomas Wayne: No, I work at the hospital. I leave the running of our company to much better men.
Bruce Wayne: Better?
Thomas Wayne: Well...more interested men.

Related Comedy

From Seinfeld.

George: I'm, uh, I'm an architect.

Vanessa: Really. What do you design?

George: Uh, railroads, uh...

Vanessa: I thought engineers do that.

George: They can...

Juno & Planning

There's not much that I agree with Sam Staley on, but i thought this post on Planetizen captured some of what I was thinking when I watched the film Juno.

This perception fits the landscape. As Juno is driving to meet Vanessa and Mark, we see her drive through her run-down neighborhood of eclectic single family homes and enter into the wealthier, cookie-cutter sprawl of large, well adorned ones inhabited in St. Cloud, Minnesota.

This sets up a cinematically and artistically visual contrast. It turns out Juno’s family, living in the decidedly less affluent neighborhood (albeit early 20th century sprawl), is far more stable, loving, and grounded than the picture perfect couple in the wealthier contemporary suburb.

From the looks of the neighborhood, Juno probably lived in a Streetcar Suburb.

If You See Someone, Say Something

Ben has an post up about subway love in NYC. I've often wondered what, if any, etiquette there was to talking to girls (or guys) that caught your eye on transit. Some of my friends have said that it creeps them out while others are indifferent. One of my friends said that she gave a specifically creepy guy an evil look until he moved seats.

Apparently its not unusual to find creepy people on the subway, but its not unusual to see cute girls either...although most seem to have wedding rings. I certainly don't want to get the evil eye and I usually try to follow the golden rule, do unto others... And since I really don't like being bothered, I find it really hard to bother other people. So I end up listening to NPR or watching Diggnation and every once in a while catching a glimpse of a cute girl walking on or off the Muni or BART.

Very Cool Subway Commercial

Check out MetroRider LA for the coolest transit commercial ever. I remember I heard somewhere that the auto industry spends more on ads in this country than we do on transit operations. Go figure.

Lance Armstrong to Open Commuter Bike Shop in Austin

News from my third home of Austin. What a great push for commuting by bike. If only other transit modes had such a well known and authoritative ally. From the Austin American Statesman:

It's not about the bike sales. That from Tour de France champion Lance Armstrong, who plans in May to open a bike shop, commuting center, training facility and cafe in a 1950s-era building at the northwest corner of Fourth and Nueces streets.

"This city is exploding downtown. Are all these people in high rises going to drive everywhere? We have to promote (bike) commuting," Armstrong said Wednesday, gazing up at the towering 360 condos rising next to the site of his new shop. "This can be a hub for that." Mellow Johnny's, named for the nickname Armstrong earned while wearing the Tour de France leader's "maillot jaune," or yellow jersey, will be housed in a yellow- and red-brick building next to the music venue La Zona Rosa. It is a block north of the Lance Armstrong Bikeway, a path that will cut east-west through downtown Austin.

...

Armstrong predicted that Mellow Johnny's will be "the coolest bike shop in the world," but said he's not trying to put any other Austin bike shop out of business. "It's not us versus them," he said. "We're all about the cycling culture."

I'm glad that they believe in the bike community of Austin as well and acknowledge there are other bike shops in Austin that are awesome. Here's a plug for my boys Jack & Adam and their shop, a part of that community.

When You Ride With...

Martin over at Seattle Transit Blog has a good discussion going about how to appeal to anti-transit conservatives on issues of transit expansion. The Bill Maher book cover that he uses is taken directly from a WWII poster that promotes carsharing. 60 years ago they had carsharing yet we're just starting to pick it back up.

Streetcars Sell ... Products

I've been noticing that yes, cars still have cache when it comes to selling products through the lens of love, but what about transit? You'll never see a bus on an advertisement for love or pants for that matter but you will see streetcars. Why? I'm sure there are lots of reasons. But as you can see, there are a number of examples including Slacks and Personal ads. The dockers ad and Yahoo! personals ad are both set using San Francisco Streetcars. I even noticed at one point a Hummer commercial set in St. Louis (UPDATE: Commenters have noted that it isn't St. Louis but Edmonton) that had light rail in the background. Talk about subtle, see if you can spot the LRV in the 'Urban Techno' commercial for Hummer below.

Really Freakin Fast

So if you go to Budapest watch out for the killer escalators. They are faster than any others I've ever seen. My mom almost ate it a number of times getting on. They are so fast they get videos on YouTube. AND they have bike races on them!

An Inconvenient Acronym

There were a few notes on the internets about the South Lake Union Streetcar. Apparently it was almost called the South Lake Union Trolley. You can put the letters together. Diamajin thinks it will boost popularity. I can see that, especially from kids who think its kinda funny. Some are worried that the neighborhood is losing the SLU moniker. Well with an acronym like this, it will never go away.

Gimme-Gimmeism & Employment Sprawl

As I was reading accounts of the new Microsoft Bus service which is an obvious nod to the famous Google buses which grace one of the streets by my house every day, I was struck by a comment made to the Seattle Post Intelliger about the transit system:

This is something that the county bus system should be doing and they're not," said Stephen Gerritson, executive director for Commuter Challenge, a Seattle non-profit. "To some extent, Metro is dropping the ball here."

Really? Well I guess the question is what is a good corporate citizen? Obviously Microsoft chose to locate their campus in a sprawling area instead of in the city which has the most commuting options. To me it doesn't seem to be a problem of the county bus system but rather of businesses that decide to locate in unsustainable locals. I have this same problem with Dell in Austin or Chevron in the Bay Area. They located out into nowheresville for cheap land but what they really did is transfer transportation costs onto their employees, specifically employees who wanted a different lifestyle than the auto-oriented trash that we see today. Does anyone wonder why young professionals flock to certain cities like San Francisco, New York, or Seattle? I'll give you a hint, its not to live in Redmond Washington or San Ramon California so they can be closer to their work campus.

This same idea can be applied for people who live in sprawl. Cheaper house? Well pay more for transportation. A study by the Center for Housing Policy showed that for every dollar saved on moving further out, a 70 cent transportation increase was had. We don't seem to let those folks off the hook for their choices so why should we let Microsoft off the hook for theirs? While hard to do now because of their entrenchment in Redmond, what would really help is a move closer to the transportation spines of the region or the creation of a new dense city like center with light rail access to Seattle. People shouldn't blame the County bus for not wanting or being able to incur $2.4 million in operating costs to serve one company, specifically a company who chose an inaccessible area.

Transit Board at Portland Transport

A cool new tool for folks to use. They explain more at Portland Transport:

Transit Board is a web browser interface designed to be used in a fixed location, perhaps as a kiosk or as an intranet page for a company office, allowing users to see multiple transit lines departing from a particular place or general vicinity.

One TMA has already implemented it.

There are two ways to set up a Transit Board. One requires help from the admins at Portland Transport, the other can be done on a do-it-yourself basis.

The first model requires defining something we call a 'choice set', which is a list of transit stops and specific lines that serve them. If you'd like to do this, send e-mail to webmaster@portlandtransport.com and we'll work with you. With the custom approach we can tailor colors and create special messages as well.

The do-it-yourself form just requires a URL with a list of stops.

Using Shame to Promote Good

There was a story today from Thailand which was quite disturbing, yet seemed like it might work. Thai police will be forced to wear a Hello Kitty Armband if they are caught misbehaving. This will in turn guilt them into being good in order to avoid having the Hello Kitty shame.

The guilt trip was also used by a Judge in my neighborhood who is now a US Representative in the Houston area. But shame might also be useful in terms of environmental stewardship. What if people who let a certain amount of GHGs into the atmosphere had to put hello kitty on their cars? Well maybe not hello kitty but some sort of sign that they were producing more than their fair share of pollutants.

This is an idea I had for a public service commercial as well. "Carrying your carbon." And if you rode a bike you could carry a black marble but if you were riding a moped it would turn into a small brick. If you drove a huge SUV you would have a huge block on the top of your car. I'm not sure if it would work, but it would be interesting.

Riding at Night

I'm dismayed at transit in the bay area. It's convenient, but at a certain time of night on the weekends (midnight) it all shuts down and you need to know the alternate universe owl schedules to use it. BART and the J Church line close down. But why is that? In New York City, trains run all night and people use them. I know that maintenance is performed on BART tracks that late, but how many people drive into the city to drink and drive out drunk as skunks because they have to memorize a bus schedule and a new location?

This doesn't just happen in the bay area though, a writer recently discussed this phenomenon for the Twin Cities.

There really is an issue with the light rail system not staying open until 2:15 or 2:30 am. There were two letters published on July 31 concerned with the "Minding the gap" article. The letters seemed to be arguing against the light rail staying open later and had some very weak points.

First, there were suggestions to take a bus or taxi. But the buses run once every hour or so at that time, so you'd have to wait until 3 a.m. if you leave the bar at 2 a.m. Also, if you've ever been downtown and tried to take a cab at 2 a.m. you'd realize it takes over 20 minutes to finally flag one down -- and when you do it's a very expensive ride home. Most people just want to use the light rail at bar close, get closer to their homes and take a cab from there.

Freeway? No. Beerfest!

Portland used to have a freeway on it's waterfront, but decided in the 1960's to make a park instead. Well you can only fit so many cars on a road, but how many beer drinkers can you fit in a park that used to be a freeway? A lot!

World's Scariest Train Wrecks

Just Watch. Quite Ridiculous. But Funny.



Thanks Andrew for the Link.

I Dreamt I was An Architect

I got the Decemberists first album Castaway and Cutouts. Mostly because I watch the show How I Met Your Mother and I heard this song in the background.

and i am nothing of a builder
but here i dreamt i was an architect
and i built this balustrade
to keep you home, to keep you safe
from the outside world
but the angles and the corners
even though my work is unparalelled
they never seemed to meet
this structure fell about our feet
and we were free to go

The main character in the show is an architect and he had to go into work late one night while his friend Barney (NPH) used his name and profession to score with a woman. Apparently the idea of an architect is appealing to women, at least in the show.

But the reason I posted this was not because architects are related to urban planners but the fact that the singer of this song would be protective of his girl by building her a home. However when it fell over they were free. Personally this reminds me of the suburbs and gated communities in America. Working so hard to pay the bills and not being rewarded is exactly what I believe is happening to the middle class today. No transport options and being forced to live so far away. Also feeling like the answer to crime is to move away to a homogeneous community just makes our communities more segregated and less racially and economically integrated.

In the 50's people left in droves believing the cities unsafe and crowded. This movement from cramped spaces began with the streetcar suburbs and utility expansion available in the mid and late 1800s, however post war suburbia went too far and swang the pendulum past its equilibrium. Today energy usage is too high and an article in the Wall Street Journal Monday stated that we are getting closer to lower oil supply and increasing demand. Perhaps we'll wake up before then, but we'll just have to wait and see. Until then, let's build more transit and livable places so the end game won't be so shocking, and when it comes crashing down we be less bothered by energy supply inconsistencies.

In any event, if you haven't heard the song, check it out.

Too Sexy for This Bus

Apparently some bus drivers can't have cleavage in their rear view mirror. From Reuters:

A German bus driver threatened to throw a 20-year-old sales clerk off his bus in the southern town of Lindau because he said she was too sexy, a newspaper reported Monday. "Suddenly he stopped the bus," the woman named Debora C. told Bild newspaper. "He opened the door and shouted at me 'Your cleavage is distracting me every time I look into my mirror and I can't concentrate on the traffic. If you don't sit somewhere else, I'm going to have to throw you off the bus.'" The woman, pictured in Bild wearing her snug-fitting summer clothes with the plunging neckline, said she moved to another seat but was humiliated by the bus driver. A spokesman for the bus company defended the driver. "The bus driver is allowed to do that and he did the right thing," the spokesman said. "A bus driver cannot be distracted because it's a danger to the safety of all the passengers."