August 6, 2009 by Adron

Low Cost Transit Floods City With Crime

I’ve been sick and tired of these crap statistics that do not have factual correlations being drawn in society. One of the big fluff stories that has come up time and time again, especially here in Portland, is that light rail brings crime to an area. The other, more general assertion is that transit brings crime to an area. Fact is, there is no cause based correlation to be drawn between the two. Other indicators are what actually ties to crime.

Take for instance the top 100 least safe cities. I’ve included a list below in case you don’t follow the link. I’ve scoured each, curious myself, to see if any of these cities has light rail. Out of these areas the only city that sort of has light rail is Trenton, part of a line. Strange thing is, all the crime existed before they got the light rail. It is also 83rd on the list. Distinctly, one of the cities that is NOT ON THE LIST, is Portland. Because our crime rate doesn’t even rate on cities with serious crime. Hopefully it stays that way.

Point being, saying light rail, or transit in general, promotes or provides crime increases to an area is simply not true. You want to figure out where crime is you have to look at other indicators or you’ll merely be lying to yourself. For now, enjoy this list of least safe cities, and I’ll be back later with more top city lists and some correlations, with and without causation to discuss what’s up, and what isn’t. Media be warned, I’m watching your BS – try to keep it straight.

Top 100 Least Safe Cities (www.city-data.com)

August 4, 2009 by Adron

How Best to Improve Transit in Portland, Bus Studies

I’ve been scoping out various Portland routes, as has my girl Jo as she heads out via transit to work and such. Here are some of the observations about the routes, what could be done to improve them and how they work great already.

#9 Powell/27th Saratoga – This is our main bus route into downtown Portland and pretty much the main connector to every other route we might also take somewhere.

The Bad: This route is in desperate need of increased capacity during the rush hours. Also the bunching that occurs causes the capacity to go down as the buses don’t always arrive in good consistent timings. This route would be the prime route to bump up to light rail next. I would strongly encourage Portland & TriMet to make this line a priority. The development, ridership, and increased positive views TriMet could get from riders if this line was improved would be vast. Technically, it is probably a better option for light rail than the current Milwaukee Light Rail effort.
The Good: The bus line is a frequent service line, which during rush hours has about a dozen buses come by per hour giving us some great service in those hours. The line also runs late into the night and the last bus into and out of downtown swings by around 1am. The route as it exists is extremely useful and has huge ridership counts.
Route Summary: As soon as possible bump the service levels between downtown and the I-205 stretch of the #9 route to light rail. Just skip BRT, the LRT would immediately gain ridership far beyond what would be attained by BRT. In addition the development potential for this route is great for BRT, and massive for LRT. If light rail connected to the Green Line and into PSU & downtown it would most likely become the most ridden line in the city. I’d bet a few grand on that easy.

#4 Division/Fessenden – This is our secondary route into and out of downtown, and to the lively Division Street stores and restaurants.

The Good: There are literally over a hundred destinations along Division that this bus stops at between the east bank of the Willamette and 82nd. In addition this bus cuts through downtown and heads north through the Rose Quarter and up along Mississippi, cutting across the Yellow Line MAX, and even further. I’d have to say, this bus is connected to more cool stuff in Portland than any other route in the city, hand down! The #4 also is a frequent service bus, but starts cutting out much earlier than the #9 and besides the rush hour, is not as heavily ridden after about 9pm. Altogether though, it is an awesome route.
The Bad: This is another route that could use larger buses during rush hour. There really isn’t the space to place light rail or even BRT, that should be left to Powell & the #9 route. However larger buses that could almost double the capacity, some dedicated ROW along some stretches, and better express type service to downtown along this route from 60th, 82nd, and beyond would do wonders for this route. From riding it appears about 10% of the riders, especially during rush hour, are traveling form the far reaches of the route to downtown. About 20% of the riders are close in and ride downtown and about 70% of the riders are in between short hops between 39th and Gresham. Extremely hard to manage.
Route Summary: Bump up to longer buses, maintain the same frequency and reduce bunching to eliminate unneeded runs.

Anyone else have any major routes they would like to see service fixed on. Better yet, any props you want to send to TriMet for excellent service on a particular route or props to a driver or drivers on a route? Let me know and we can work up some joint entries for cross posting.

August 3, 2009 by Adron

Transit To Kraków

Kraków is a city in Poland that dates back to the 7th century. However, Kraków here in Portland is a delicious Polish Pub & Cafe. Serving numerous items ranging from coffee, beer, and other beverages to desserts, entrees, and pastries.

Recently Jo, Abhijeet Thacker, and I swung over on the MAX Yellow Line for a bite to eat. After ordering Jo & I grabbed some Black Boss & Boss. This has to be my favorite beer that one can buy by the bottle. Black Boss has an almost syrup like texture, with a massively thick flavor. The regular Boss Beer has a lighter and smoother flavor. Both, rock. Period. Ever get a chance to try them out give em’ a shot.

The pierogies we had where delicious. Out of all the pierogies I’ve had in town (which is more than a few) these are hands down the best.

Jo’s plate had a variety with various ingredients. My order was the meat innards. With a side of applesauce and sour cream. A little cream and sauce on the pierogies makes for a great combination or without. I like to eat all of it independently, it seemed to work best for me that way.

After a great round of grub we headed back downtown via the MAX Yellow Line.

August 2, 2009 by Adron

Speed Kills? I Call BS!

I despise when the media distorts the truth with statistics by misrepresenting mere correlation as causation. It is a mistake of grand magnitude in statistics to do so, but so often the media and even worse the Government perpetuates statistically irrelevant information to the public. Let me point out some glaring issues with the statement, “Speed Kills”.

The French TGVs are some of the fastest trains in the world, not having killed a single passenger in their entire history. The Shikansen travels over 180mph every single day carrying hundreds of thousands of people in Japan. In Germany the Autobahn is home to many of the fastest drivers in the world, traveling over 130mph and sometimes reaching 180-200mph while driving the system. All of these modes of transport either have no fatalities or are vastly lower in fatalities than our Interstate System is. Which if you take those things into account, “Speed Kills” isn’t just incorrect, it is an outright lie.

On US roads speed isn’t the culprit, inattention and almost nonexistent training is the killer, rooted in the core cause of people not knowing, not paying attention, and being ill prepared for an incident of any sort. US drivers don’t understand car balance, driving dynamics, weight distributions of their vehicles, all things which make driving safer or more dangerous depending on the level of knowledge. The US, simply, has completely unskilled in incapable drivers. Meanwhile Germany maintains a much higher skill level, a smaller amount of traffic, and provides vastly superior alternatives to driving – all which contribute to a lower fatality rate. This same thing applies to France, Japan, and other developed nations.

So stop lying, your parents told you not to as a child and you shouldn’t now.

This is a public service announcement via the Transit Sleuth. Please, do us all a favor and provide real information, factual correlations, and accurate causations. Fear inducing false causes and incorrect correlations do no one any good and absolutely does NOT help provide solutions to a problem.

If you are a policy maker, stop focusing on speeds and start focusing on training, licensing, and eliminating wreckless drivers from the roadways. A focus on ticketing speeding will do at best a minimum of good and at worst it will drive more regular people to drive and behave dangerously as the laws get more disconnected from the reality of the roads.

August 1, 2009 by Adron

Transit 101 and Transit Futures

The 101

Transit has throughout history been directly tied; either through profits, funding, or other mechanisms to land development and the growth of cities. Even today the more urban cities, that maintain a night life, human element, and a penchant for growth all have a distinct transit element that grows larger by the year. There was a short segment of time during the mid 20th century where transit services saw a lag in use. But those years are now long gone and transit is seeing a resurgence as a way to mitigate the destruction of cities and instead breath new life into cities, culture, and other positive features of cities.

With the new administration putting a little more focus on real city growth, intelligent zoning, restructuring the car centric maze of roads into or at least in addition to human oriented cities we’re seeing growth in transit discussions and opportunities. The future, in this regard for cities and their inherent generation of wealth, increased standards of living, and cultural history looks much better than it did over the last 50+ years.

Albeit we’re giving up a lot of other things for this new life, but that is for a different discussion.

Transit Futures

With that said I’d like to look to the future. Currently we have a lot of sprawl that continues on a daily basis to drain billions of dollars form general budgets and feed it directly into foreign growth, foreign oil purchases, and depletes our internal valuations of all sorts of things, which most notable is our currency wealth generation. This sprawl devalues human involvement in our world, pushing us aside for the modes of transport we use – namely the personal automobile. This mode of transport, heavily subsidized in hundreds of ways both directly and indirectly, has been sold via dubious means as a private industry, free-market creation. It is however, anything but. However it has created a massive hurdle to creating interconnected, human scale, comfortable, livable, and culturally vibrant cities.

With the connection of cities, internally and externally to cities, becoming a more desired focal point in politics and slowly in private industry again some key points are being brought up time and time again.

What is actually efficient, price competitive, and won’t significantly drag on our future generations. In other words, what can we build that provides logistical movement of peoples without bankrupting our nation, our future, and our children’s future. According to most sources we’re somewhere in the range of $1-16 Trillion behind in transportation infrastructure investment compared to China, Europe, and even Russia. This includes highway, rail, and other infrastructure. The question is, how do we fund it, how do we make the money for it?
How can we bulk up movement and travel in corridors between close cities without excessively expensive highways, Interstates, and Airports? This leaves the absurdly obvious answer of passenger rail. The nit picking then starts about what kind, how much, how fast, and where is the money for this also?
Highways, Interstates, and roadways in most cities are at their peak many hours of the day and increasingly this is becoming the standard operation of roadways. Roadways don’t pay for themselves in the least, and many states are looking at privatization, tolling, and congestion pricing to find money to pay for these existing roads, new prospective roads, and other solutions. Currently the other question is how to expand road capacity without destroying further neighborhoods and the ever unpopular eminent domain.

There are other points that keep coming up, but these are the main ones I keep seeing. The recurring theme of all these points is funding. Where can we, as a nation and peoples, come up with the money for this need & desire for better, more reliable, and more capable transportation? I have two proposals for this, which have been mentioned many times in blogs and other places, but I’m going to tie these together since many are just suggested separately.

1. A national policy… elaborate… or no national policy & increased focus on specific areas.

2. Private investment vehicles & interest generation. Without this, there will NEVER be enough money in the industry to really build out like the nation desires and wants.

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The 101

Transit Futures

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