Something to Try: Restaurant Search and Reviews by Phone

I work for Tellme Networks. We just launched a new restaurant reviews app--so the next time your on a transit-enabled adventure, and are looking for a place to eat. Or after a meal, call up and leave your opinion.

Call: 1-800-555-TELL/8355.

Say "restaurant reviews".

Have fun!

Out and About Without a Car

That was my daughter's and my challenge last Saturday, because Mom needed the car to go to girl scout leader training in Alameda, and while she might have been happy to drop us off somewhere, the training began at 8:30 AM, and we had no intention of going anywhere that early.

So we set out a more reasonable hour, by foot and by scooter. There are no busses in our neighborhood on weekends, so we rolled and strolled a mile or so down to El Camino. But once we got that far, we agreed that a train would really be more fun than a bus, and pushed on to Atherton CalTrain, where trains still stop on weekends, if only hourly. All in all, that was a trek of 2.2 miles.

We timed it well, bought a child ticket (my monthly pass lets me go anywhere I want on weekends), and headed north for San Mateo and lunch at Mr Pizza Man. Seriously, if you are in San Mateo and want pizza, I'd recommend Pizza My Heart across the street, or North Beach Pizza two blocks away, but Mr Pizza Man is sort of a tradition of ours.

Refreshed, we moved on to San Mateo's Central Park, where the little kiddie train was running:

The Park's very nice Japanese tea garden, which we always seem to hit on the wrong day, or when it's rented out for a wedding, or something, apparently was closed for renovation as of last weekend and won't reopen til August. Gah!

We were determined to get a peek:

This is what we saw:

We hung out at the playground, and did a big of geocaching. The rules of one cache required that we find a statue of a dog--and kiss it!

Daughter exercised restraint:

Dad did not:

From the park we returned to San Mateo CalTrain, via the world's greatest toy store, Talbot's Toyland.

I also took a few pictures of street scenes along the way. As you may know, I collect Vintage Postcards featuring Trolleys, and one of my favorites is a scene from San Mateo, on B street, right where I've walked many times between CalTrain, Talbot's, Central Park, and Mr Pizza Man dozens of times:

Here's what the same location looks like today--look for two interesting roof lines on opposite sides of the street, and then flip the image mentally, and since I unfortunately was facing the opposite direction:

Back on CalTrain, we went to San Carlos, and did some pottery painting at Laurel Street Arts. We will return for our new cat water dish and other knick knacks next weekend.

At this point we were pretty tired, and moseyed to the very nice San Carlos Library, where we could find some books and a couch and lounge around a bit til Mom came and picked us up.

We took it easy on Sunday.

Streetcars in the Modern World

I've long been puzzled and dismayed by the cost of new light rail systems. The Muni's new T-Third line cost roughly $100 million a mile to build, which considering that this is by no means rapid transit--it's basically a streetcar line, at best only slightly faster than a bus--is pretty pricey.

LightRailNow.org has posted a new article analyzing the reasons for the high cost of light rail, and reporting on a few cities success in keeping costs in check: Rapid Streetcar: Rescaling Design and Cost for More Affordable Light Rail Transit.

Overall, much of the expense is due to overengineering. Here are some examples:

• Many lines with low traffic could be built as single tracks with passing sidings, but this is almost unheard of in modern transit.
• Sations are often more extravagant than needed.
• Transit projects are often bundled with, or encumbered by, various streetscape improvement projects, utility work, etc.

In a similar vein is the issue of vehicle performance. As speeds increase, there seems to be a point where costs snowball and go up dramatically. Light rail vehicles that travel up to about 45 mph, about what traditional streetcars like PCC's could typically do, can be built lightly and relatively cheaply. Design them to go faster than that, and:

• Overhead becomes much more complex; simple suspension (single wire) gives way to compound catenary (in other words, you get something that looks designed more for bullet trains than trolleys).
• Cars must be built much heavier to survive collisions.
  • So track must be built heavier, with a deeper roadbed.
    • So utilities under the street must be dug up and relocated.

Ironically, many light rail systems, due to stop spacing or street running, give their high-performing LRV's so little opportunity to really book it, that the effect of being able to run at 65-75 mph on actual trip times is next to nothing.

A few cities, notably Portland, and perhaps in the future Sacramento, have taken these observations to heart and had success augmenting heavy light rail lines built for high volume, higher-speed, suburb-to-downtown travel with simpler lighter and cheaper, honest-to-goodness streetcar lines.

Some interesting trackwork in Zürich, Switzerland.

Cake

I'm not normally one of those cranks that complains about stupid beurocrats wasting our tax dollars, etc, etc... But c'mon! (Click images for a bigger view).

There are 29 more pages.

Surprisingly, the bid instructions specify not to provide samples.

Actually the VTA has pulled this from their site--thanks to the good folks at BATN for nabbing it first!

Happy MLK Day!

Martin Luther King Day is a great holiday for transit fans, assuming you get it off; enough people still have to work that tourists are scarce even in the City, and transit systems run their full weekday schedules.

This year we rode the Freedom Train on CalTrain to San Francisco. A few years ago, we did this, and got to march down Market Street as part of a parade. This year, it turns out there was no parade--we were directed to chartered MUNI busses that took us to a rally at the Civic Center, but this really wasn't what we'd come for, so we decided to play tourists for the day.

After lunch at a 50's-themed diner on Powell (which fit into our diet surprisingly well) we walked back to Market and were astounded to find no line for the cable cars. Changing our plans on the spur of the moment, we hopped on the next car leaving, which was on the Powell/Mason.

Mr. Thinks-Very-Seriously-About-Transit 295Bus caught brazenly foaming

The family enjoyed the ride too!

At the end of the line we bought some cheap fleeces from a touristy stand--the pocket zipper promptly broke on mine, trapping my camera and phone, until we eventually discombobulated the pocket with a needle, keys, and other random objects pressed into service as tools.

We rode the F Line back to Market, where our serendipitous adventures continued. After alighting we discovered that a pair of gloves had been left on the trolley, and I ran, caught it, and retrieved them. I can take some credit for this save for the fact that I've been getting in shape, but have to give thanks to a helpful motorman and fellow passengers, plus an odd quirk of the F line routing (at the foot of Market it makes an odd U--look at the orange line at the very right edge of this map if you're curious) which us MUNI fans have long puzzled over, but which in this one case was quite handy since it let me outpace a PCC on foot by taking a more direct route.

As soon as I caught my breath we ducked down into the subway, and hopped on an outbound J. The MUNI Metro may be less scenic than the F, but it's nostalgic for me, and a treat for my budding transit-fan daughter. We rode to Dolores Park, a favorite in the City, where there is a decent playground featuring and old boat, and met up with Grandma (to me, Mom!). We tried a few geocaches--one just led to litter and unmentionable smells, the other we were more successful with, finding the tiniest cache we've ever seen a stone's-throw from the "serpentine right-of-way":

By the "Golden Fireplug"

With a lift from Mom back to 4th & King (much appreciated, because we were zonked by this point) we were back on CalTrain and heading home.

The weather's warming up, and I see more transit adventures coming up in the near future.

Happly MLK Day, everybody!

How About us Riders?

I read that the BART board, under pressure from anti-substance-abuse groups, recently decided to pull all ads for liquor from its trains and stations.

It's a small thing, but let me point out that booze (and ads for it) are legal, and the real objective of any public enterprise is not so different from a private one--it should provide as much service as it can, and if not profit from it, minimize its drain on public coffers.

Unfortunately, as public entities, transit agencies are subject to tinkering from all levels of government with objectives other than, and possibly at odds with, that of providing maximum service at minimum cost.

Consider some of the requirements typically placed on them:

• Infrastructure should be built by minority-owned contractors.
• Equipment must be American-made.
• All contracts must be with unionized providers.
• Vehicles must adhere to the most stringent emissions standards.
• Any most eggregiously: any changes to service are subject to the review and veto power of neighbors (see for example Menlo Park NIMBYs opposition to Dumbarton Rail, and a recent episode in which MUNI attempted to move some bus stops and the resulting fracas escalated all the way to the SF board of supervisors).

Typically, consideration for the time, convenience, and even safety of passengers comes way down below all of the above on the typical transit-planning checklist.

As an interesting case study, which atypically ended happily, let me tell you the story of the Sunnyvale CalTrain station fencing gap.

For years there was no official way to get between the Sunnyvale CalTrain station and the neighborhood to its northeast, except for a long walk to the nearest cross-street. Anonymous passengers remedied this situation by cutting a hole in a chain-link fence that separates the northbound platform from the adjacent street, Frances Avenue. Occasionally CalTrain would fix it, and a hole would be re-cut.

This informal access was workable enough, though not ideal--in particular it was not wheelchair accessible, which precipitated an odd sequences of events. The threat of an ADA equal access suit prompted CalTrain to pay closer attention and make a more definitive closure to the fence (I guess the ADA is another one of those policy tinkerings from above, though one I agree with--but it was not the intent of the law to achieve equality by removing access points only usable by the able-bodied!). Neighbors who used the hole in the fence then turned to the Sunnyvale city council to provide a more sanctioned, fully accessible connection to the station. But this incurred the wrath of other neighbors, who feared an increase in passers-through, crime, litter, and competition for parking.

"Since the hole access has been closed, our street has been quiet, clean and calm," said Frances Avenue resident Melinda Cook.

This is the point in these stories where public servants, in an effort to make everyone happy, are usually struck by paralysis, or else weighing the pros and cons of the options before them, decide that transit riders are the least likely people to remember their decision, or organize around a grievance, and are the safest ones to screw.

This story has a happier ending. Citing man's greatest font of wisdom, Star Trek, the council resolved that "the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few" and decreed that a new, professionally-installed and fully accessible gap should be put in the fence.

A rare triumph of sense in a world gone stupid. (Sidewalk curb cuts to either side out of shot).

Google Maps Working

After trying various things, I've finally found a way to display Google maps in blog entries:

I spent quite a while trying to actually put the javascript code for a map in a blog entry, and actually got it working for Mozilla, but failed for IE, and debugging was just too hard. So I'm taking the approach of hosting a fully tested html page with a map elsewhere, and displaying here via an <iframe> tag.

Breaking out into Traditional Media

The 12/23 Chronicle carried the following letter from yours truly:

Beyond platitudes

Editor -- The Silicon Valley Leadership Group (Open Forum, Dec. 18) is intent on reducing greenhouse gases by cutting down on the use of cars -- so it urges the employees of its member companies to bike to work, and favors extending BART to San Jose. But it seems blind to the role that valley employers play in fostering a dependence on cars, by setting up shop in remote, sprawling office parks that are only realistically accessible by driving. So how about a new pledge for the members of the SLVG: to put their offices within walking distance of Caltrain, light rail, or if it ever gets built, BART?

I wish I had taken a few minutes to edit for style--just because you have a PhD doesn't mean you have to sound like it!

Good News from New Orleans

The St. Charles streetcar line has been partially reopened, from Canal to Lee Circle.

http://www.cnn.com/2006/TRAVEL/12/19/neworleans.streetcar.reut/index.html.

A Comment from a Colleague over Lunch

In response to the fact that I write this blog: You're one of those people, aren't you--one of those people who cares!

Been Hassled Fanning?

If you ever get stopped by railroad police and have to convince them that you're snooping around, taking pictures, etc, because you like trains, rather than because you're plotting to blow them up, it might be handy to have a card in your wallet that identifies you as a member of the BNSF's "Citizens for Rail Security". Sign up here, and you can print one out. It also has a phone number on it that you can call if you ever do see anything suspicious.

Wisdom from Unexpected Sources

Mike Nelson, of MST3K fame (and more recently, RiffTrax) was recently interviewed by Rich "Lowtax" Kyanka of SomethingAwful.

Deep in a discussion of bad movies and freaky fans was this interesting little tidbit on technology and manners:

Lowtax	People on the internet, there's something on there, as soon as you log on, that gene inside of you that makes you argue over unimportant really trivial things just kicks in and takes over your brain I think.
Nelson	It's like climbing in a car. I used to commute by bike to work. And I was convinced, if people were driving convertibles, and you could actually look into their eyes, they would not do the things that they did, to nearly kill me every time. It's just you're in your little isolated bubble, and you have all the power, and nobody will know when I cut you off.

You can listen to the whole interview, and learn Mike's nominee for absolutely worst movie of all time, here. (Be warned if you start getting drawn into SomethingAwful that there's a lot of not-work-safe material over there).

Ridden a Cable Car Lately?

I have to admit, I haven't since the fare went up to $5.

If you'd like to vent a bit about that ticket price, enter www.cable-car-guy.com's contest to complete the sentence "San Francisco with a $5 cable car fare is a city...".

Send your entry in an email to cable_car_guy@hotmail.com with the subject "Contest: San Francisco With a $5 Fare".

If you Like Talking about this Stuff

Then join the new Trolleys-RemovalAndRebirth email discussion group. Sign up at:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Trolleys-RemovalAndRebirth

You will find that discussion is both intelligent and civil--quite a rarity on the internet.

The list is run by motorman/scholar/photographer Peter Ehrlich, a.k.a. "Milantram".

Wow, Someone as Mad as I am!

Published Wednesday, November 22, 2006, by the Redwood City Daily News

NIMBYs weigh in on project

I read an article in the Palo Alto Daily News titled, and I had to laugh.

As with any project which benefits the population at large, "local" residents are singing the tune, "Not in my backyard." It seems like Palo Alto and Menlo Park residents think that they have purchased some kind of inalienable right to remain insulated in their idyllic lives, while the rest of us shoulder the burden of maintaining it.

Expanding public transit directly benefits most Bay Area residents. Except, of course, those who don't commute to work and those who send the domestic help out to do their errands. It indirectly benefits all of us as it reduces the number of cars on the road, thereby improving our air quality, which isn't exactly great.

I live in Redwood City, I know how much of an inconvenience trains can be. Noisy? Yes. A safety issue? For the careless, again, yes. However, with an ever-growing population in the Bay Area, expanding the public transit system is necessary. In this case, the corridor is already in place. If they indeed can get 6,300 riders a day, it's a no-brainer.

Sometimes, you have to take one for the team. Even if you don't consider yourself part of it.

Rob Paul,
Redwood City

I was going to write something to that effect, but don't think I can top that. Rock on, Mr. Paul!

Waxing Poetic

Or maybe waning. Anyway, thank you to munihaiku.com for posting my submission (it's listed under "J Church"), and for linking back to this site.

Recommended Reading

This site is not new, but came up in a conversation with another San Francisco expatriate:

http://www.munihaiku.com

My own favorite is:

the 23 will
always, always be the 10
Monterey to me

Me too!

Online Amusements

Check out RedKit.net's sign generator. You can type in messages, and make them appear on a double decker bus, or a BART station sign, or various other amusing places. You can use this for political messages, like

or something hip and pseudo-cryptic

or geographically improbable

or just plain juvenile.

My kid did that one. That's my story and I'm sticking with it.

No Train Ride to Petaluma Yet

There was good news and bad news in the last election, but to me, the narrow defeat of SMART was a bitter disappointment. My visions of riding train-to-ferry-to-train to kick off a weekend trip to Petaluma will have to be deferred. Some background: The Sonoma-Marin Area Rail Transit system is envisioned to run commuter trains (a.k.a. diesel light rail) between Cloverdale in northern Sonoma County and the ferry docks at Larkspur in Marin, via Santa Rosa, Petaluma, and Novato, reopening the long-idle Northwestern Pacific Railway Line. It was to be funded by a new 1/4 cent sales tax in the two counties, which required approval of 2/3 of voters in both, and came up short by about 1%. It had solid support in Sonoma county, but was less popular in Marin. It strikes me as ironic that it only takes 50% of the vote to approve paying for infrastructure by running up billions in debt, while a financially responsible proposal that includes a tax to cover its expenses takes a 2/3, but that's the topsy-turvy world we live in.

Time is on the side of SMART. In a few years, traffic will likely be just enough worse to convince that last percent or two of voters that they need this train. But instead of just waiting for opinions to come around, SMART-proponents should be using this time to take a serious look at the objections that have been raised by detractors, and tailor their proposal to answer them next time around.

Objection	Analysis	Solution
Bus Rapid Transit would be cheaper	Real BRT, with service that would not get stuck in traffic, would require new bus-only lanes on the 101. This would could easily cost as much as rehabilitating an existing railway line.	The BRT alternative should be seriously studied. The advantages of rail should be demonstrated, not assumed.
Trains won't connect well with ferries	This is true, and to be honest, something that us boosters knew and hoped to work out after the system was up and runnig. Even though the proposed Larkspur station is only a theoretical five minute walk from the docks, probably 15-20 minutes would have to be allowed for a whole trainload of passengers, of various levels of mobility, to make the connection.	If possible, move the station closer to the docks. At the very least, put some thought into streamlining the connection: eliminate any street crossings or steps, make it wide enough for bikers and fast and slow walkers to get around each other safely, and make sure the gangplank to the ferry does not become a bottleneck. Also make sure that ticketing does not slow things down (sell tickes on board, rather than at a gate).
It will only benefit: Long-distance commuters The Well-off People living in Sonoma or northern Marin Counties But not People commuting shorter distances Working class people who already ride the bus Central and southern Marin	These are fair criticisms, and have their parallels throughout our region. Take a ride on CalTrain, and one on SamTrans, and you'll notice a definite demographic difference between the people who get to ride a train and the ones stuck slogging down El Camino on a bus.	SMART should be better integrated into existing transit, for example with free transfers between train and local busses. It should be bundled with other transportation improvements, such as speeding up bus lines (through dedicated lanes, or traffic signal pre-emption), and improving pedestrian friendliness of station neighborhoods. If carefully chosen, additions like this would not up the cost of the overall package too much, but would broaden its appeal--and "synergy" between busses, walking, and trains would boost SMART's ridership.
It will promote growth	Indeed, good transit promotes responsible growth, encouraging reuse and revitalization of existing cities over suburban sprawl. But there is a breed of "environmentalist", prevalent in places such as Marin County and Santa Barbara, to whom any growth is bad, not so much for its effects on the Earth but because it might make their own small piece of it more crowded.	These people are assholes, and there's no point reasoning with them, but emphasizing the ecological and economic benefits of transit will help undermine them. This is an area where support from the business community would help a lot--not in the usual form of campaign contributions, but by making pledges to put new places of employments near SMART stations instead of paving over farmland.
It will not relieve traffic congestion	This is true. Traffic always rises to meet the available supply of pavement. Transit doesn't really solve traffic problems, but it does solve transportation problems, by vastly increasing the overall capacity of the whole system.	Be upfront about this, and describe the benefits of transit in simple terms that are actually true: for example, that a single track railway can move as many people as ten lanes of a freeway--and that as more people ride trains, service actually becomes better and more cost effective, whereas more people driving just makes traffic suck even worse.

The SMART board has vowed to take their case to voters again in 2008. Even changing nothing, their chances of a win are good--continued growth and economic upturn are likely to make traffic just that much worse, and a presidential election will probably bring more transit-friendly voters to the polls. Still, it would be a shame if they didn't take the next two years to actually listen to their opponents and make their proposal a little SMARTer.

How Stupid are We?

The California political establishment has asked us to take on $35 billion of new bond debt, without any indication of how this will be paid off, or giving any assurance that it will actually solve any of the problems it's supposed to be spent on. In fact, the only promise we've been given is that they'll be back to ask us for more in a couple of years.

Before you even think about the merits of what these propositions are purported to pay for, do some simple math: How much money are we talking about borrowing, and how many people live in California. Now imagine that your share of this debt, over $1000, was personally yours. This is a bit sobering if, like most of us, you've wrestled with credit card debt sometime in your life. And don't forget, if you're married, that's a cool grand of debt for each of you--not to mention your kids, who'll have to do their part to pay it off, even though they probably won't see any benefit. Certainly, any traffic relief that 1B will pay for will be long erased by the time my 6-year-old daughter will be old enough to drive, but she'll be paying off these 30-year bonds out of taxes from her first couple of jobs.

The claim that we can spend money on capital projects without raising taxes is only true if we take that money from somewhere else, like education, law enforcement, or (ironically) from the operating budgets of transportation systems. Duh!

Now turning to the proposals themselves--beyond being fiscally irresponsible, they are downright insulting. Through numerous means, our state leadership had led us to our current quagmire of un-affordable housing, smog, and nightmare commutes. Commercial and residential zoning policies have made long, solo drives to work the only commuting options available to most Californians. And now we're being asked to pony up to perpetuate this mess.

Even if some good may come from this spending (1B throws a few bones to transit, 1C will give cheap digs to a few needy souls), I'm urging you to vote no on all of this crap, and tell our state government to actually fix what's broken: incent employers to make workplaces accessible without driving, force cities to allow enough housing to meet demand, and make drivers pay for the real cost of highways on a miles-driven basis.