Obama's Rail Envy

Bring me some Budapest or Frankfurt anyday.

Why not start building high-speed rail? One thing that, as an American who is proud as anybody of my country – I am always jealous about European trains. And I said to myself, why can’t we have — (applause) — why can’t we have high-speed rail? And — and so we’re investing in that, as well.

"This City is Supposed to Be Green"

Yes it is. But we have a fake green mayor. So this argument falls on deaf ears at city hall.

"I get that times are tough," Shelley Keith, 19, said as she waited for either a 14-Mission or a 26-Valencia for her trip home to Bernal Heights on Friday afternoon. "What I don't get is why cut public transportation. This is supposed to be a green city."

Transit riders get it. It's San Francisco's leadership that can't get their heads around that idea. Wake up you emerald aristocracy. It's times like these we need transit most. Congestion pricing for carbon cars anyone?

The Mission

If you choose to accept it, is to only build a transit system for people who can't afford to have a car. If you deviate from said mission, you will be endangering the... eh why should we listen to guys like this?

Once again, UTA has demonstrated that it doesn't have a clear idea of its mission. Should UTA provide sensible, economical public transportation to the Wasatch Front, or should it just build things? Should it try to serve the population that cannot use automobiles, or should it spend public funds in an impossible quest to lure wealthy commuters to mass transit?

In fact yes, public transit should provide quality transportation for those who can not use automobiles. But we shouldn't say you're poor so you can't have quality service. Perhaps we should start saying, you're rich, so why should we subsidize that suburban freeway. You can pay for it. There are many reasons to provide great transit service instead of just adequate including the idea that better transit for those who need it most is better transit that can be used by all. Complaining about it just makes it look like the forces of better transit are winning. Cheers to that.

The Others

John over at RT Rider has an interesting post about his observations of a lady who clearly didn't feel comfortable at the bus stop with folks that weren't like her. This comes on the same day that I have a discussion with a person I had invited to a concert next week. Since the show is downtown, I asked if we could meet somewhere off of Muni so she didn't have to walk through a somewhat seedy part of Market Street by herself. She responded that she didn't take transit. Oh she'd tried it a few times but transit had always let her down.

The first thing that came to mind was oh man, we are not going to get along, the second was, how much different is the transit riding experience to females than it is to someone such as me who is somewhat tall, somewhat driven to take transit, and can be a bit scary myself when I haven't shaved in a bit? Would ridership go up if the situation were improved such that females felt safer and more comfortable on transit? I know many girls that are pretty hardcore about transit and aren't worried at all. But then there are those that I know that don't like to take it, especially alone. I think improving it for those types would improve it for everyone. Is that a standard to meet?

Muni History - Video of Twin Peaks Tunnel Opening

George B sent this to one of my email lists and if you're from San Francisco you'll appreciate it for sure.

So Basically...

the TEP was just a way to figure out which routes to cut. Awesome. You know, more people would take transit if you weren't always screwing them over. Though its not just Muni. You can give a big kiss to your state legislature for giving transit the bird over the next five years. And Gavin, you can take your Gubernatorial run and shove it down your fake green... anyone else angry?

Milwaukie Max Gets into PE

I hope that means that the New Starts Report lists are coming out soon. Can't wait for that data mine. Makes me wonder what other lines made it into Preliminary Engineering. Here's an interesting look though into what happens when transit agencies submit to the FTA.

In applying for preliminary engineering, TriMet sent the transit administration a six-foot stack of documents on the project.

What a waste of paper. I'm sure everyone has a copy.

The Problem is Not Just in Atlanta

Jay Bookman always has great columns in the AJC about how messed up things are in Atlanta and Georgia in general. But after reading it, it just sounds like every other MPO or State issue in the country. Too much money gets political and not data driven attention and that means a lot of money generated by Metro areas gets funneled into the less urban parts of the state. Even within metro areas the funding goes to the suburbs rather than urban areas. This is why I'm worried that in most places, even funding the MPOs by bypassing the state won't be good enough to step the tide of urban underinvestment.

If transportation funds were instead allocated on the basis of data, need and transportation impact, metro Atlanta would fare much better. This is where the need is greatest; this is where the impact would be most noticeable. But that’s not how things work.

State leaders are now trying to muscle through a “reform” of the system. But rather than make our transportation planning more professional and data-driven, the goal is to make it even it more political. For example, it is supposedly “reform” to give the Legislature the power to spend up to 20 percent of transportation money on projects it gets to approve. Now, how many professional transportation planners sit in the General Assembly? Do you think that money will be allocated to where it would do the most good for Georgia, or to where it would do the most good for powerful legislators?

In Texas, they are deciding on a bill to allow regions to tax themselves, and in recent years it's been state legislators who have cut it down for what I can see because they just are against taxes. It's not about letting people decide for themselves that they need more local funding. In fact, this need to raise taxes is a direct function of funding not being allocated correctly in the first place.

I do have to disagree with Jay on one thing, traffic isn't the issue. They've had more than enough money to build roads that are rediculously huge and part of the reason why traffic is so bad is because of Metro Atlanta's land use problem. They have let developers go nuts wherever they want and subsequently people are living in one place and driving everywhere to get there. I highly suggest A Man in Full by Tom Wolfe for some real estate fiction based on Atlanta.

Ridership Ahead in Phoenix

It's really not known when the initial novelty of the line wears off but I would say around 6 months you really know what you're gonna get. With that said, Phoenix is showing signs of promise at sticking to over 35% of projections.

Ridership for the Valley's new light-rail system appears to be stabilizing at a level well above expectations, Metro's chief executive officer said Wednesday. Although passenger counts for March were incomplete, Rick Simonetta cautioned, data collected through three and a half weeks show the average number of boardings during weekdays was more than 34,300.

Giving Up the Ghost

I've been thinking a lot about this lately. I'm tired of always being on the losing end of things and have decided to switch. I'm giving up being pro rail and deciding to go with the winners in the anti-transit movement. I've taken a long hard look at all the BS rail projects I've been advocating for over the last three years of this blog and decided that really they are too expensive and don't give the flexibility that buses give. In fact, building more rail is likely to cause greater gridlock.

I'm also thinking about leaving San Francisco and it's hatred of cars. Because of its lack of zoning, I can become a developer in Houston and make tons of money building anything anywhere I want, unless there is a deed restriction of course. I'll be sure and build lots of parking and hopefully I can meet up with my friend Robert Bruegmann who has converted me to the ways of doing things right.

And can we give up on this lefty fantasy for high speed rail already? I'm tired of having to fight off people that know so much more about HSR than the experts. Especially folks in Palo Alto. They really know thier stuff. Why can't we just let them have their way and be done with it. Besides, rail is a 19th century technology.

Finally, stop making me pay for other people's transit. We subsidize the hell out of public transit and in a free market world (the United States is the best place in the world because it has a completely unfettered market) it should pay for itself. This article says everything I want to say and more but just felt like I couldn't being a good liberal and all.

But maybe the taxpayers grew tired of subsidizing a failed government-run transit system. According to the March 29 St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the St. Louis Metro system is bleeding money. It faces an operating deficit of $45 million in 2009 – expected to reach $50 million in 2010.

All transit is a failure. I'm just realizing this now but wish I would have just given in years ago. I want to be on the winning side for once. Let's stop building rail lines and start building more roads. And get those bikes and pedestrians off my street. It was designed for cars and should stay that way.

Anyways, if you believe that I would ever say any of the stuff above Happy April Fools. Hopefully you didn't get suckered again.