Category / Transit Discussion

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

Transporting the Smarts

While riding the bus recently, I was contemplating the absolutely gregarious myth that public transportation is for the poor and downtrodden.  Of course, this myth isn’t particularly held by those that actually know about cities, urban lifestyles, and other such things.  However there are a large number of people (namely on random AM radio talk shows) that hold this myth to be true.  They hold it as if it is some real redistribution of wealth, some hand out to the poor, or just some hand out in general.

As I sit here riding the #545 toward Microsoft, I realize just how objectively wrong they are.  There are approximately 60+ people on this bus as it travels across the bridge toward Microsoft.  These 60+ people have a median taxable income near the upper 93-95% bracket.  That means the following facts are true:

  1. These people are absolutely not poor, in any sense of the word.
  2. These people are in the bracket that pays the largest percentage of tax share to the Government.  In other words these people pay approximately 1.8-2.4x their costs incurred by the Government.

Think about that for a second.  These people are the bread and butter of America’s Economy right now.  The part of the economy that is actually creating jobs, not shedding them.  The part of the economy that is growing still.

In another part of town, Amazon has thousands of people coming in on busses and even walking to work (which I’d say is a better corporate citizen than Microsoft when it comes to environmental and economic activity).

Again, the facts for these individuals hold true also.  Amazon is growing massively.  They pay very well and need intelligent and highly skilled people.  Everyday they’re hiring more people.

Both of these companies have a large percentage of employees that use public transit to get to and from work, and in both situations both companies provide private transit agencies to get employees back and forth to the various areas of their campuses.  Both of these companies are prime examples of what should be encouraged and perpetuated in cities throughout America.  These companies are also prime examples of employers, that don’t require you to have a car.  Going car free with Amazon or Microsoft is super easy, and with either you could be an urban, suburban, or even rural person and get away with being car free.

So get rid of the myths if you hold them, you’re holding things that are not true in the least if you have that thought.  Public transit is vital to our most productive and growing industries.

by Adron

Seattle’s I-5, 520, and I suspect 90

These are all poorly designed roads leading into the core of Seattle.  Why the United States indirectly gutted its cities is beyond me, I’m sure someone out there has their conspiracy theories.  I must say though, learning the history, effects, affects, and various permutations of the actions over the last 60 years has been disturbing.

Seattle has a lot of infrastructure changes to make, this is without doubt.  The largest problems with the city as I see it are the Alaskan Viaduct, I’ve smashing right through downtown, and the way 520 and 90 are only auto based, without priority for BRT, LRT, or other options.

The smartest infrastructure elements I’ve found in Seattle so far are elements that have nothing to do with modern Seattle, but were built by the previous generations.  As it seems in most cities, our planners, industrialists, capitalists, and other men of that nature thought out things far better than the modern politicians.

  • The Downtown Transit Tunnel, for one is genius, and I think it should be extended in more than one way.
  • The Link Light Rail, finally provides infrastructure that was destroyed about 50 years ago that should never have been.  Connecting the airport to the core of the city is smart.  I think that the University and other districts should have been connected first, but it is a start.  The best idea, going with the statement above, is to rebuild and reconnect what the previous generations built.
  • If played right, the Seattle Streetcar can play a HUGE part in adding a much needed human oriented element back to downtown.  The monorail is novel, and the shopping district downtown is great, but there is just a slightly missing human element after about 5 pm downtown.  But that leads me to the next points…
  • Fremont, Ballard, Wallingford, Greenlake, Capitol Hill, and the other neighborhood areas of Seattle are absolutely awesome.  The bus connectivity for a transit advocate as myself is excellent.  Of course, I can’t go without saying that it could and should be much better.  These neighborhoods all have great character, built by previous generations, and carried on today based on the people of the areas.  Absolutely awesome.
  • Belltown is moving forward.  There are some minor legislative changes that need to be made to clean up some of the violence, but otherwise the area is spot on for what should transpire from a business, infrastructure, and human perspective throughout more of downtown.
  • West Seattle & Alki Beach both need a significant transit right of way option.  Otherwise the area is also one of my favorites in the city.  The infrastructure that was destroyed to give auto users their free ride is fine in many ways, but with any primary arterial like the routes here there should be a dedicated transit option to complement it.  It would be good for west Seattle and it would be good for the rest of Seattle.

There are other areas I’ve yet to discover.  Any suggestions from some Seattlians?

by Adron

#545 Redmond Bound

Today the bus had wifi and I was seriously grateful.  I had a few key things I wanted to research before getting to work today and needed to send and receive a few e-mails.

Today I got to thinking about a number of transit related questions I haven’t verified or researched lately, the most important being a verification of transportation costs for multiple modes.  I’d like to get a baseline, and the extreme costs for $5k, $13k (cheapest option), $22k car (median family car), and $40k car (the cheap BMW or something) and pair that to the same trips on transit for the average commuter.  Then break that down to trips that are transit friendly and trips that aren’t.

The other cost factor I’d like to see is how much we pay the Governments of our respective areas for transportation, infrastructure, etc., and how much we paid out of pocket 50 years ago, 100 years ago, and about 130 years ago (when streetcars were taking off).  My hypothesis is that transportation is actually more expensive today in net societal cost than the disciplined approaches of yester year, but for about 50% of the population it is cheaper out of pocket.  I’ll get to the bottom of this eventually.  Anyone else have some opinions to interject, I’d love to hear others’ hypothesis on the matter.