Oly Trials Coverage: Decathlon

Update: Trey is In! Going to Beijing. Way to go!

My friend Trey is in second going into day two of the Decathlon. If he can stick it out, he'll be going to Beijing. Good luck T! Also, Tyson Gay ran the fastest 100 ever recorded. It won't count because there was too much wind at his back (has to be less than 2 meters per second to count) but its still fast, and this is a guy who takes voluntary drug tests more often than required to show he's clean.

Trey Hardee - Texas Ex

Sloooow Subway Escalators

I was on the escalator going down the cavern that is the Dupont Circle station and thought, man these are really slow. I realize that the Budapest escalators would never be considered safe here, but man do they get the job done.

Slooowww Dupont Circle



Faaast Budapest

Senator Cardin the Man on Transit

More at Gristmill.

Grist: You authored the transit portion of the Climate Security Act. Clearly this is a priority issue for you. What role do you think transit policy should play in climate legislation?

Sen. Cardin: A huge part. [The transit portion called for] $171 billion over the life of the bill. That's big money. That can make a major impact. It can make a huge difference in the capacity for transit programs. We are in desperate need of significant transit improvements. We've got to have the facilities and we don't today, and then we need the fare-box and economic policies that reward people for taking public transportation. Some try to say that it should be "self-sufficient" or have a certain percentage return through the fare-box. We don't do that on our roads, and public transportation is much better for so many reasons -- not just the environment or the quality of life. We should be providing much stronger incentives for people to use public transportation, but first you need to have the facilities.

Let's Not Use the Word Boondoggle

Mass Transit Magazine says so, and I tend to agree.

Cut It Out Already!!! Using Cost to Design a System Is Wrong

No no no no no more using existing rights of way to put together a cheap transit system. Stop talking about it in terms of money and stop thinking its a good idea to start out that way! If we want people to take transit we need good transit that connects to places people want to go. And these days there are very few existing ROW opportunities that do that.

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel has an article about what the region needs to do. It's a good push but the following should never be the start of a regional system.

Minimizing capital costs by extensively utilizing existing rail rights of way.

Existing rights of way mean commuter rail but before commuter rail is implemented, a good central city system needs to be in place to get people to all of their destinations. We're learning this from systems like Houston where an extensive core system is going to lead to a much more effective commuter rail system. This is also evidenced in the large rail cities like Chicago, Boston, New York, and DC. If you don't have central circulation, the commuter rail doesn't work as well. So cut it out already and do it right. We've learned so much in the last few years, why do we want to keep going down the same path?

Running: Olympic Trials Track Coverage

I've got a few friends up in Eugene right now looking for spots on the Olympic team. If you get a chance check out the races. Good luck to Jacob, Leo, Trey, and Jake. Hook 'em. I'm going to do some coverage of the meet between transit posts so bear with me.

Complete video coverage at Flo's site.

Writeups over at Letsrun.com

USA!

10K 2008 Olympian Kara Goucher: She's a class act and a great person. She's also a story of falling down and getting back up again as she was the NCAA Champion in XC and Track but fell on hard times with her running after college. It's people like her that show perseverance and grit and are truly an inspiration. Watch for her in Beijing, she's going to do something great.

If Ridership Is Up, Why Service Cuts?

My friend Nick was wondering, if ridership is way up, why are some places cutting routes and service. Wouldn't the increased ridership pay for it? In theory I guess it should but there are a number of factors that are specific to the economy and transit funding which need to be addressed.

Part of the problem is that most transit agencies are primarily funded through sales taxes. The problem with this is that when the economy is down and people need to take transit more, transit suffers more because revenue comes down due to that already existing gloomy market. Also, ridership only pays a fairly small amount for most transit system's budget. An article in the Boulder Daily Camera covers this quite well:

But, therein lies the terrible Transit Paradox. It turns out the same factors that are driving a spike in demand for transit services are having an unfortunate negative impact on RTD finances.

Fuel costs, roughly 9 percent of the RTD expenditure budget, have risen 47 percent over last year's rates. At the same time, sales and use tax income, which accounts for approximately 66 percent of RTD operations revenue, is coming in at about 5 percent below projections. The cumulative impact of these two economic factors, alone, is expected to be a hit of about $23 million to RTD's total operations budget.

Adding insult to injury, the fares transit riders pay only cover a portion of the cost of each bus or train trip. Thus, the unprecedented 9 percent increase in transit ridership that RTD is welcoming into the system is actually creating a substantial additional financial burden.

What needs to happen is a better way to fund projects and operations than the sales tax. While it seems the most common form of funding for transit, it often creates these problems with the shrink swell of funds and service. Tri-Met funds transit through a payroll tax. I'm not sure if that is much better but its something different. And then there are development fees for capital expansion and perhaps carbon taxes for operations. Another idea thats used is parcel taxes on estimated value. Anyone have ideas on this?

So also there was an article in the Rocky Mountain News that tests the water for another increase, the idea of just 4 years after Fastrax was passed, having to go after more money to pay for the program. This is somewhat of a problem from an advocates standpoint. It gives opponents a lot of fodder, even though none of them really complains when freeway projects go over, which they almost always do. See Katy Freeway in Houston and I-485 in Charlotte.

Even though the Denver Projects (T-Rex, SW Corridor) have been on time and on budget, its hard to predict the amazing increases in materials that have happened since the initial project budget was created in 2004. It's also hard to predict what the costs are going to be in the future when the lines hadn't even been engineered yet. I think that is kind of the problem with engineering projects. There is generally a standard and other projects, but all projects have different challenges and difficulties. While I think cost/benefit analysis is good, people getting super upset if a big project doesn't meet its exact budget is a little bit out of order. But unless its a project like the big dig which was a ridiculous overrun, people see the benefit in freeway projects, but chide transit projects...why? Most of the time they have no alternative plan, they just don't like transit for some reason.

The Bears are Moving In

Epic Fail

I think LOLstuff is pretty funny. This one probably wasn't funny when it happened but its quite transit oriented and a bit humorous now. There's a similar picture of a railroad fail where the train fell out of the second story of a station. Ah I think I found it.

But the photo below kind of got me thinking on how diesel buses are the work horse of transit yet they are still susceptible to all the price hikes and gas issues that hit cars. I wish they weren't, but they don't all have alternatives to diesel yet. Perhaps more trolley buses would help save agencies money. Just a thought.


see more pwn and owned pictures

Hawaii Mayor Calls Out the Opposition

It's not often you see this but I wish more Mayors would hit back at the auto industrial complex. Mayor Mufi is trying to build for the umpteenth time in Hawaii's history a rail system for Honolulu, a very dense city. Basically though, he slams the media for giving surrogates of the Reason foundation too much air time.

Mayor Mufi Hannemann criticized the media for doing a poor job of challenging opponents attempting to stop the city's planned $4 billion rail-transit project, prompting him to spend campaign funds to take out advertisements.

In his first interview since ads ran in Honolulu's two daily newspapers last weekend, Hannemann said yesterday he stands by his assertions that the local anti-rail campaign is backed by mainland companies and individuals connected with the oil and automobile industries.

These guys are big rabble rousers that spread a lot of misinformation. It's funny that these guys only fight in regions that don't have rail yet because they can't beat back the facts on the ground. But everywhere they fight they fail and move on to the next city without. This however is the funniest comment of the bunch:

All three local rail critics denied Hannemann's assertions, calling them "ridiculous," saying they have not accepted any money from mainland companies. "We have not received a penny that we did not raise locally," said Slater, a vocal critic of the 20-mile rail system from Kapolei to Ala Moana.

Cliff Slater is associated with the Reason Foundation as an Adjunct Scholar. The Reason Foundation has gotten at least $321,000 from Exxon. Their funders also include the following; Chevron, Exxon, Continental Airlines, Delta Airlines, Daimler Chrysler, Ford, General Motors, National Air Transportation Association, Western States Petroleum etc etc. Hmmm...