Bus is a Bus

Sorry, putting a cattle guard on a bus doesn't make it a streetcar.

Round Rock Rail?

Hmm. Doesn't anyone else think they should pay their fair share before they start thinking they can use Capital Metro's tracks. And when is Central Austin going to actually get rail?

Vacation is Over Links

Well vacation will be over in the morning. I was enjoying my time off but can't be a bum forever. Here are some links for the day.
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The New York Times has an editorial asking for more funding for transit and an end to the cost-effectiveness index. Never thought I would see that!
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Folks in Tampa are hoping to expand their transit types to include a rail system.
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The debate over light rail vibration continues in the Twin Cities. A study says that it can be minimized by technology.

Price Signals

The Vine writers over at the New Republic discusses the end of unlimited driving insurance. They discuss how it could have a greater impact on driving than even the climate bill or energy taxes. I tend to think that the more we can get people to pay the true cost of driving, the more it will change policies that encourage walkable land uses and alternative modes of transport such as biking, walking and transit.

Who Knew...

bricks were so much trouble? A lot of what I have seen in this area is concrete that is pressed to look like bricks. Is it also possible that there is a spray that could keep the friction coefficient higher on these bricks while also allowing them to look the same? Here are a few of my own pictures of good looking but perhaps troublesome brick streets.

Prague:







Vienna Woonerf







Budapest Pavers





Why does this matter for transit? Well transit users are pedestrians before and after they use the train. It's important to focus on the complete movement from place to place.

IBM Congestion Pricing Commercial

Has anyone seen this? I saw it this morning during the Miami/Baltimore game but wasn't able to find anything on youtube yet. Here's a link to the IBM ad campaign. There's even a podcast about the Stockholm pricing scheme that IBM implemented, which I haven't been able to watch yet. But if anyone finds the commercial let me know and I'll post it.

Likely Unlikely Ally

Folks in the steel industry are getting behind the idea of transit for the stimulus. Seems to me like there are other unlikely allies out there. Anyone have an unlikely ally that should be in the mix?

Before Transit

In my previous life I was a runner. Many people that didn't know me before I moved to California ask what I was like before transit took over as my thing, since I spend so much time blogging about it and thinking about it. Well, there are a few descriptions I could use to explain, but to the non-runner its hard to understand or perhaps even believe. I often get confused looks.

The word "Monk" comes to mind, with a secluded life and permanently focused mental state. The best way that I could explain to people what it was like was to send them to read Once a Runner. It's a fictional tale of how one runner lived and is used as the basic template for telling the story of one's running life. Though I tried to write down what it was like to run and live the life of a runner, it never quite filled everything in the way this book does. According to Slate, it's getting a reprint. Good. Because like so many other runners, I lent my copy to a girl (or friend) at one point to explain my lifestyle.

...but a part of me wishes the novel had stayed out-of-print. Not everyone is up for the running life, and not everyone should be able to get their hands on this book. It should take effort, whether that means borrowing (or stealing) it from someone or saving up $77.98. Once a Runner's portrait of running may smack of elitism, but it is a democratic elitism: Not everyone can be a runner, but a runner can come from anywhere.

Though I will warn you as the article explains:

It aggrandizes the insular world of running in a way that, with due respect to its new publisher, no nonrunner could possibly relate to. It is written for runners—and to keep nonrunners out. But it also nails the running life like no other novel ever has.

Perhaps that is the point of the book, it allowed running to be kind of a fight club. You were a member or you weren't. You showed up to class Monday with spike marks in your shin or calf and mud washed away from the race last weekend that tore up a University Golf Course in such a manner that you weren't allowed back again in the near future.

I don't miss waking up at 6am to run 10 miles for an easy day. I don't really miss being 25 pounds under weight, or having to watch exactly what i eat. And I certainly don't miss having to go to bed when everyone else is out having a beer. But I do miss Sundays. 18 mile runs through the woods with no destination and no sound but the pitter patter of feet and your own breath for an hour and 45 minutes. If we could stay at the fitness level we achieved forever, that's where I would be. But at some point running 90 miles a week wears on your body and mind. But like life there is no secret to running. Some might think they have the answer, but the answer like the article states, is just patience and a lot of hard work.

Like many cults, distance running has its mysteries, and The Secret—how you become a real runner—is Once a Runner's chief concern. ("As Denton's reputation grew," Parker writes, "a number of undergraduate runners decided they would train with him, thinking to pick up on The Secret.") But it turns out that The Secret is that there is no secret. The runner must pound the mileage, as we say. It's a grueling, tedious, insane lifestyle. So why do we keep doing it?

To understand the answer, you have to understand a bit about distance running. For one thing, it helps to know that only nonrunners talk about a "runner's high." It's not that it doesn't exist, that weird feeling of euphoria you sometimes get briefly after a tough day at the track or a superlong run. But no one could possibly be a runner just for the highs, whether brought on by natural chemicals or by winning a race. The running life is mostly just lots and lots and lots of miles. Only a few competitions punctuate the grind of thankless workouts on anonymous tracks, and you literally need a very loud gun to snap you out of the training existence and tell you it's time to save nothing for later. There simply isn't enough in the way of traditional rewards as compared with hard labor to make it worthwhile—that is, if you're only after the traditional rewards.

I'm tied deeply to my past as a runner. It taught so many lessons that no school or teacher could ever go through. Patience, Integrity, Hard Work. As a poster that once hung in my room says:

There are clubs you can’t belong to, neighborhoods you can’t live in, schools you can’t get into, but the roads are always open.

So when someone asks me if I'm going to join the gym. I kind of laugh. The roads are free, at least for now.

Things We Could Have Told You

Sometimes studies are funny things.

However, very few road projects are 100 percent “toll viable” — meaning, profitable and thus enticing to the private sector...

So much for PPPs for all!

Mental Block

I took a some heat a few days ago for saying that Atlanta is falling behind. Even though they have more transit and have a big plan, other cities seem to actually be "doing" rather than just talking. But its also an issue of regional mentality. I've seen a lot of these articles over the last few years and the feeling that nothing is getting done while other cities are building makes the fact that they are already ahead not so much of a consolation. And this doesn't help either:

Olens said plum employers with skilled jobs are slipping away. “In the last two years, I’ve had two major corporations tell me they would not move their headquarters to the Cobb Galleria area because all we had are buses,” Olens said this week.

The fact that there is little movement is well known to leaders that want to move forward in Atlanta, and there are many. But it seems as if no one with the political will wants to push.

“I continue to be frustrated that we can’t seem to move in that direction,” said Sam Olens, chairman of the Atlanta Regional Commission and the Cobb County commission. “We’re losing our competitive advantage.”

Two years ago, the Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce invited reporters to hear officials from Phoenix and other cities talk about their new transportation initiatives. The message was clear: Atlanta and Georgia could be left in the dust.

On Wednesday, Sam Williams, president of the chamber, said in a statement that “cities that have made transportation a priority, like Phoenix, Dallas and Charlotte, continue to leapfrog Atlanta with respect to regional mobility. … While these areas make progress, we seem choked in congestion with little leadership to get us out.”