Replay: 10/3/08 Walking and Biking is Wacky

h/t Treehugger

Replay: 10/09/08 Patriotic Beer Redux

I know I've posted this commercial before but it came through my reader again and I was about to skip it but decided maybe I'd have another listen. What I found, was that it had even more to do with the situation we're in today more than ever. Tough times call for tough men. Here's the transcript:

Ah. That's the way patriot. Let the OPECs keep their gasoline. We'll just tap into a far more efficient energy source. Man....power. If we all learn to pull our weight. Nobody, nobody will be able to siphon away, our high life.



HT Twin Cities Streets for People for the Reminder.

Replay: 10/07/07 Transit and Acupuncture

So I've been kinda sick for the last few months with a number of things like vertigo and sinus infections. I've decided to go get acupuncture and see if it changes anything. So today was going to be my first day and I wanted to go to my Gramma's afterwards so i decided to drive. Well the transit gods were not happy about that so they smited my car mid bay bridge. I pulled off onto treasure island as my engine temperature light was flashing at me and checked the temperature. It was above normal but wasn't to the red yet. So I let it cool off for a little bit and started to drive again. I go to the other end of the bridge before I had to stop again. Eventually I got the car to the Volkswagen dealership in Oakland and took the 51 to work downtown.

So now I had to get to the acupuncturist in Montclaire. I left an hour before the appointment as the 59 comes every hour from Lake Merritt BART. I sat in the back of a 30 foot VanHool bus and watched the really nice houses pass by on the hills. It was actually a nice ride if not a little bumpy. But there was a catch. My appointment was going to be over at 5 but the last 59 went to the Rockridge BART at 4:15 or so. Not good. So I had to figure out a way back. Well where the 59 dropped off the 18 picked up and I was lucky enough that it ran every 15 minutes into the evening. So when I was done at 5 I hopped on the 18 and traveled on the other side of the hill from the 59. It took me to the 12th Street BART station and I hopped on the 24th street and mission turn around train to go home since I wouldn't be going to my Gramma's house.

I was thinking a bit negatively that there wasn't a 59 but my roommate pointed out that we are lucky to live in a fairly transit friendly place in the bay area and the fact that there was an 18 at all was good. It was still at 15 minute headways so yes, that was pretty good. I imagine that if I were in Houston or somewhere else this wouldn't have worked. So my car died, but i knew that I could depend on transit to get me where I needed to go. It took a little more time, but I got to watch the world go by instead of having to slog through traffic.

Replay: 10/25/08 Urban Bumper Sticker

Considering a lot of people around here don't have cars and take transit, the bumper sticker is not an available option of displaying your politics or causes. However, I've noticed even before the presidential election that messenger bags can have the same affect. After the election started though, they have increased exponentially around here. Mostly Obama and No on Prop 8. I've noticed people on the train checking out my bag as well, which has my own "urban bumper stickers"


I've got the longhorn patch which has brought me closer to fellow Texans randomly on BART and the Hey Mercedes buttons of my favorite band that have gotten comments from some rock kids. Though no one has said much about the SF Municipal Railway or the Market Street Railway pins, it might be because we're usually smooshed together on the J Church.

The thing though is that unlike bumper stickers, you have to be in close quarters to see what the pins and buttons say, which makes people a bit more cordial than if they were in the space of their own car. No honking on transit.

Replay 6/9/07: Ipod As the Great Transit Equalizer

It’s funny but I think the advertisements for Apple’s IPod are fairly accurate. Especially in San Francisco you see silhouettes of people and these white lines hanging from their ears all over the place, whether its on the sidewalk, bus or train. But it strikes me that the IPod should also be known as the great transit equalizer. When it came to riding in your car you had a cd or tape case where you could choose from all the music you had, or at least what you had in your case. In order to do that on transit one would have to lug around their collection with them.

Now with the IPod, we can have thousands of songs in a device that is the same size of our wallet, allowing us to listen to whatever we want to, whenever we want to. But while the IPod can be hooked up to the car, it seems to be more useful from a transportation standpoint to walkable transit oriented neighborhoods. When you get out of a car the radio turns off or there is a tape transition, but when you leave a train or bus, the music continues on kind of like a soundtrack to your life.

In my opinion, it’s this soundtrack quality that can give transit a bonus versus the car. There are many songs that if I play them in my car they bring back memories. Specific places on a road from Austin to Houston when I would drive home for Christmas or Thanksgiving are imagined in my head when I listen to the particular song I like to play on that stretch of road. Since I had a CD changer in my trunk and not the front deck I would even pull the car over to switch CDs if the one I wanted for that certain section of road was not available in the changer.

Now I’m finding that I’m having similar experiences with transit and my Ipod. However instead of just in the car, I have it for walking around the city, places along bus routes and inside of department stores. It even allows me to drown out the awful music at say the Gap or other places where they try to match the brand with music types. Well what if I want to shop in the Gap or Target listening to some metal or opera? They wouldn’t play those over the speakers but with the great equalizer we can.

There might be some drawbacks including awareness of your surroundings that might lead to some unfortunate altercations with automobiles or with the less desirable and under discussed elements of city life. There is always an issue of being social as well; shutting people out by just having headphones on is easy. But if anything, the great equalizer is incredibly more social than say an automobile. People in their own pods of space cut off from having to deal with social situations has led to rises in the instances of road rage however I’ve never heard of anything called Pod Rage. It might exist but from what I’ve seen, people are generally passive when bumped into with their IPod versus people bumped into who don’t have one on.

There is a serious issue that should be discussed as well with regards to hearing though. I know I’m guilty of listening to my IPod much louder than I should if I’m in a subway to drown out the external noise. However this could lead to long term hearing damage and such is said your eardrums are like lobsters, once their cooked there is no going back. I’m thinking about whether I should get noise canceling headphones or just read with earplugs which might be a soundtrack setback.

But with all that being said, I see the Ipod and MP3 players in general as a great transportation equalizer. You can create a soundtrack of songs you like but now it won’t apply to just your car but rather memories and experiences of life in general.

Replay: 10/05/07 Collapse and Civilizations

I don't even know where to begin to talk about my trip. First there are the ring systems of Vienna and Budapest that I want to write about, I've got about 200 pictures to share and as I hopped on BART today to get home from the SF Airport I was more than just a little bit disappointed about transit efforts in the United States. As I get my bearings and overcome some jet lag I'll try to write up some of my experiences. Sitting at a bar with an Austrian named Mike, almost dieing on the faster than American laws would allow escalators on the Budapest Metro, and the legacy of eastern bloc communism in Budapest and Prague.

I would however like to share something I wrote up on the plane ride over to Vienna...

I’m sitting here on a KLM flight to Amsterdam then to Vienna Austria for vacation with my family in Eastern Europe. The seat to my left is empty and the movie Oceans 13 just finished but I noticed something so true. Earlier there was a man sitting next to me from Visalia. It’s a small town in Central California where agriculture is the lifeblood of the community. Earlier I overheard him talking to the man on his left from Stockton, which is quickly becoming a bedroom community for the Bay Area. He asked what he did for a living and the man replied “I’m a developer”.

Now I’m not usually one to listen in but of course being an urban planner I had to hear what was coming next. The man from Visalia was uncomfortable in his seat being about 6’4” or so. Of course these planes are more like cattle cars than luxurious transportation but his knees were sitting in the cracks of the seats in front of us and his elbow was in my ribs. But he continued cheerily talking asking the developer, if there was any more room to build in Stockton because of the disappearance of farmland. The man from Visalia asked, “Why don’t you build up instead of out?” The developer replied, “There is plenty of land left to build on.” Under my breath I said “Yeah right” realizing what kind of developer he was.

The man from Visalia kept going on about resources and conservation and even ended up discussing taking vegetable oil from fast food restaurants for reuse. He then moved on to me asking what I did. I said “I’m an urban planner.” He seemed surprised. “That guy next to me is a developer.” I nodded and said “Yes I heard.” He asked what I did specifically and I told him. He then went on to discuss his former job as a parole officer and the travesty of the red car. “The Mayor was a crook” he said. “Ripping out all those streetcars.” People I talk to always seem launch into the benefits of transit without provocation. I never prodded him or even told him about my thoughts on the subject but he told me about it anyways. He was around for the red car and seemed specifically upset about their demise. “You’d never be able to build it back today” he said. I told him they were trying.

Throughout the flight he kept getting hit in the knees by the lady in front of us who tried to lean her seat back. He had to protest each time which led him to ask to move seats. The flight attendant was more than happy to help him out so he was out of there leaving me and the developer an empty seat between us. As we both put our stuff on the tray table where the man from Visalia was sitting I noticed the book he put down juxtaposed with the one that I put down. His was a hardcover deep crimson red book titled “Empire”. Mine was a softcover book by Jared Diamond called Collapse about the collapse of several civilizations throughout history by climate change among a number of other factors including war and societal suicide (ie: Easter Island). It really stuck in my head the difference between the two sets of warring factions in the sprawl fight. The ones who think there are endless spoils to be had and a never ending supply of resources, and those who are looking to avoid a collapse. I’ve never seen the fight in such black/white or good/evil terms and probably will never again because of course it is never so simple. I’m not a hardcore environmentalist or anything but for a moment there I realized why I do what I do.

Away From Computers

I'll be taking two weeks off from my computer, leaving it at home while I go on a much needed vacation. I'll likely be tweeting from @theoverheadwire but probably not too often. Since no one is here to post I'll put up a couple of reruns from years past. Hope everyone has a great first half of October.

Quote of the Day

From the Edmonton Journal:

"The LRT is not just about moving people," says Bob Boutilier, the general manager of the city's transportation department. "It's about building a city."

I wish more transportation leaders would get this simple point.

Payback Time

Looks like the State of California is finally getting nailed for stealing all that transit money from local agencies. It would be amazing if transit agencies across the state get back the over $3.4 billion that was taken over the last few years. I'm not so optimistic that they'll get all of it, but hopefully this means no more raids on the funds that should go to transit. Of course this is California and they'll probably try to take it again next year. Can we fix the state already?

Demand

I'm not sure whether this means we need a ton of infrastructure or we just have low current priorities.

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood’s $1.5 billion discretionary grant pool won’t come anywhere close to meeting its requests, as states and other transport groups sent in applications for $56.9 billion to cover highway projects as well as transit, rail, seaport and other construction needs.