Category / Rants

by Adron

Flanged Wheel Please

Give me some steal rail vehicles.  I took another bus ride out and about, as I’ve done hundreds of times before.  The biggest gruff I have with buses is they have to travel on the roadways.  The roadways in the US are absolutely falling apart – and if the roadways are as smooth as a runway, then the bus turns into a rickety rackety vibrating sardine can.  It makes it very hard to do anything on board, such as using a cell phone, txting, working on a laptop, watching a DVD, or otherwise.

Almost any type of flanged wheel vehicle; streetcar, tram, trolley, light rail, passenger rail, or otherwise has almost none of these issues.  Even on fairly rough track the issues are drastically reduced for maintaining a smooth ride.  Throw in the fact that rails last decades longer than roadways at a vastly higher ride quality and you have some real money savings!

I digress though, I’m really glad to have what services are available!  Seattle, Portland, Vancouver (BC), and San Francisco all have superb transit services (in spite of the locals, they always find reasons to bitch or become NIMBYs).  Oh well, I’m off to board a train and just wanted to rant about crappy, unmaintainable roads beating up buses (and by proxy, all of us riding the bus).

by Adron

How Many SOVs Don’t Need to be in Rush Hour?

Note:  SOV == Single Occupancy Vehicle, which is what about 98%+ of cars on the road are, one driver operating the vehicle on an inefficient trip to do X.

As I was sitting on the bus, which was actively removing over 90 people from SOV use I started thinking.  How many of these people do NOT need to be on the road?  How many people are confused and just think they need to be SOV?  How many of these people could take transit, could live in a better location or more intelligently?  How many of these people, if auto transport wasn’t so heavily subsidized, could even afford to be taking frivolous trips like this?  How much wealth redistribution through transportation dollars encourages needless trips that clog Interstates, Highways, arterials and other routes?  Not to even mention the environmental damage of the excess and unneeded trips.

Common Fallacies for People Living in Smart and Intelligent Cities

“I need a car because of X situation that I have!”

This is a nonsense argument for the vast majority of people traveling to and from work.  If X is a child, or a last minute errand to run on the way home, or other item that is an outlier situation to the normal commute.  So many people use this excuse and have not thought through their situation.

If you have a child all the more reason to encourage more intelligent, non-auto centric lifestyles.

If the child is sick or injures themselves at school, which is the often cited argument, it doesn’t hold up because if it is a big enough emergency you DO NOT and SHOULD NOT drive directly to them.  The emergency services in the United States are for that specific reason.  They’ll most likely get there before you and you’ll most likely endanger lives of those around you “hurrying” to get to your child.  If the child just needs picked up from school, in most cities there are a number of alternatives to you running to them and bringing them home.  There are taxies, zip car options, and more.  You just have to think without the absurdity of saying it is a necessity for you to maintain and keep an entire car just for the sole purpose of an emergency that may or may not happen.

If you’re excuse is even less, such as X being something like karate class or a meetup after work, then again the planning you have done is poor.  If you live in any decent city, if you’re traveling so far out of your way for a meetup that it requires a car you’ve grossly mismanaged your life.  Keep things close, keep things local to you, keep things within reasonable reach.

…and don’t just do these things because it’s more intelligent to use transit and be a more responsible member of society.  Do it because it servers YOU better.  Imagine not paying auto insurance, having a wide selection of cars at your disposal instead of JUST ONE (ZipCar, Rentals, etc), imagine no car payment, no maintenance, not paying for gas(ZipCar), not worrying about “parking” every time you go downtown, not having to step into the most dangerous mode of transport in the country.  Just imagine not having to deal with those things.  With a little thinking – in the good & smart cities in the US – you can get rid of these concerns and problems.  You can be a part of the citizenry that isn’t causing the problems associated with the sprawl.

…and I promise you, your life will be better lived for it.

Here are a few of the cities where people should and could drive less en masse.

  • Portland, OR
  • Seattle, WA
  • Chicago, IL (already a heavy transit usage city, but more could be done)
  • New York, NY (also already a heavy transit use city at over 50% of the city using transit, but again, there is more that could be done to get rid of frivolous and unneeded trips)
  • San Francisco, CA
  • Los Angeles, CA (transit is amazingly making a huge come back in LA)
  • San Diego, CA
  • Boston, MA
  • New Orleans, LA
  • Denver, CO
  • Miami, FL
  • Tacoma, WA
  • Sacramento, CA

All of these cities, and there are more too, are cities that offer enough transit, bike, and other alternatives that more people should really think through and look at options besides car ownership or leasing.  There are literally millions of trips per day, millions of gallons of fuel, millions of hours of congestion time, and millions of dollars to save if additional people just think through their lifestyle paradigms a little.

It doesn’t take much, just being smarter about your day.  I’m done with my transit rant of the day.  So help me though, if someone comes up with the above excuse again I’m gonna…

Live better, peace! – Transit Sleuth

by Adron

Seattle, A Tech Friendly Town? Sort of…

I’m going to start out with a rant, probably end with a rant too.  Seattle has some serious catching up to do.  For such a smart, educated, progressive city it has really missed a few key advances compared to Portland, Oregon and Vancouver, British Columbia.  I’m going to cover a few of these points now, so get ready.

First Point, I Want Transit Data NOW

Trimet has been a leader in this for about 6+ years.  Metro, Sound, Pierce, and the other agencies can’t seem to coordinate this in an efficient, standards based way.  Even though Vancouver, BC hasn’t been a leader with this, they’ve definitely made short order of catching up.

The solution is for the Seattle area agencies to coordinate and get the web services deployed, possibly using cloud technology (Amazon & Microsoft are IN TOWN!?!?!?), that provides real time location and other information.  This has been provided by TriMet for years, and even the MTA in New York (notoriously behind on technology too) has started providing this data.

Second Point

Timeliness has fallen apart completely in the US.  Metro, Sound, and others are on queue for this.  Especially Metro, as I haven’t ridden a bus that is on time. I know I know, it is inherent in any mixed travel lane service.  This is true.  Sound proves this even further with the timeliness of the Sound Commuter Rail.  Their on time arrivals are very high percentages.  But the bus system desperately needs help.

Solution is to either get the first point above taken care of ASAP or get services that can be on time (i.e. BRT, LRT, and dedicated transit lines).

Third Point

Actually get downtown figured out, and stop giving everything to the automobile.  If Seattle wants to get closer to the smart populations of Portland, Vancouver, Chicago, or New York in regards to transit share.  Better yet, get closer to a larger walking share.  Seattle transit authorities need to find some way to work closer with developers and getting downtown oriented more for pedestrians, especially in the residential parts of downtown.

Downtown Seattle absolutely kicks ass.  It is a fun place to be, a fun place to live, and can be very efficient.  However, the transit and development hasn’t lent itself to appropriate pedestrian friendliness.  There needs to be more tree lined streets, dedicated pedestrian crossings (especially on Pike & Pine), and other pedestrian friendly requirements.  New Orleans has it, Portland, Vancouver, and even parts of New York, Chicago, and other places.  Seattle has a rough spot around this aspect of life though.

Solutions Right Here in the City

Some prime examples of pedestrian friendly areas include Fremont, and Ballard.  These two town centers actually provide great examples of intelligent build up that Seattle might take care to notice.  Such as the tree lined streets, a number of streets that are no more than two lanes (yes, Seattle IMHO should decrease the size of some of their multi-lane boulevards).  This creates a much better atmosphere for street shopping, and other such pedestrian activities.

There are other points, and I know Seattle is working on learning from these areas, but it needs to a bit harder.  Seattle needs some hard line edge against the “let’s build more really big roads” mentality.  It doesn’t work and there is enough evidence to point that out.  I’m not anti-car, just anti-car commuter (the SOV people).  The “congestion” based lifestyle that so many “keeping up with the Jones’” create lies in the realm of mass stupidity.  Maybe one day we can cure it?

by Adron

Blame BP For Oil Spill? How About Blame Yourselves!

A  little context:  http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2010/05/oil_reaches_louisiana_shores.html

o25_23537411[1] (Image Credit:  John Moore/Getty Images) Yeah, back with the transit attitude.  So obviously, unless you live under a rock, you know about the bubbling black gold coming out of the Gulf of Mexico.  One could argue that it is BP’s fault, it is the Government’s fault, it is X’s fault.  I’m just going to step out here and say, if you aren’t riding a bike for every bloody day of your life in the United States, IT IS YOUR FAULT!  Yup, that’s correct.  You are the reason that BP is out there.  You America are the reason we’re addicted to the catastrophe, now and the ongoing one.  You are the reason that communities have been destroyed by Interstate Construction, people live farther away from each other than ever in history. You, you, you, and you.  All of you that drive.  Even the people taking transit have some things to answer for.  Streetcars did create the original suburbs.

Needless to say, we need new energy sources.  We need to clean up the ones we have to keep using and we absolutely have to find a way to reconnect society in a better way.  This is especially true if the US seeks to maintain some type of integrity, success, and basic standard of living for the children of today.  YES, the children of today.  Not tomorrow, but today’s children have their very future at stake.  Some may say it’s their children’s problems, but no, that is not the case.  It is the children of today that have their future already in debt, it is their environment that is already partially wrecked, it is their spoiled lives that we’ve set to a path of laziness.  What they have on their shoulders only our grandparents and great grandparents even could guess.  We’ve lived in an age of ease and it is slowly but surely coming to close for the US.  Transit, zoning, and technology are our rescue, but the children of today, and the minds of today must mitigate the risks of tomorrow.

I’ve got my fingers crossed, as I’m always optimistic.  But there are some days this lack of action really drives at me.  This oil burbling up from the depths definitely doesn’t help my optimism for the future.