Yeah, Right...

Anti-density zealots can seemingly find value in anything, no matter how run-down or humble, that is proposed to be replaced by housing, and come up with vital reasons why it must be preserved. In Mountain View, they called an office park a civic resource. In Menlo Park, Foster's Freeze is suddenly part of the city's cultural heritage. And now in San Mateo, where transit-oriented housing has been proposed for the site of a Kmart, they worry (see this letter in the 8/23 SM Daily Journal) that the city's poor will have nowhere to shop, without "Kmart's huge selection and low prices".

Never mind that San Mateo's housing crunch is turning it into a city totally unaffordable to ordinary working people--but I suspect that's really the point.

Some Simple Suggestions for CalTrain

How about:

• On trains with more than one bike car, why not put a sign in a window to tell us that. Generally we only find out there's a second bike car when the conductor comes to tell us, just as the last few bikers are getting on, and generally just shrug. A sign on the train would get half of us to head back to the second bike car before we've waited in line to get on the first one.
• Put ticket machines at the ends of station platforms, not the middle, so we can buy tickets as soon as we reach the station.
• Make electronic station signs display the time more, instead of the date.

A mostly satisfied customer.

Shamelessly Taking Advantage of Tragedy to Advance my Agenda

The recent collapse of a highway bridge in Minneapolis brings up an important and generally-ignored fact--anything that's built will eventually need maintenance or replacement. We like to talk about new infrastructure as an investment that future generations will benefit from, but it also imposes a financial obligation on them.

It is pretty clear that our leaders, typically looking no farther forward than the next election, have no serious plan for paying for this maintenance, not surprising since their only plan for paying for building infrastructure is gobs of debt, with no idea of how to pay it off. I very nice double inheritance for the next generation, indeed!

I would like to point out that in terms of right-of-way maintenance, rapid transit can (potentially) impose much lower future maintenance costs than highways, since the right of way is so much smaller. An overpass for two tracks has more passenger capacity than one for ten freeway lanes, but is only 20% as much bridge.

Of course, how much this matters depends on how a system is built. Most of BART in the East Bay is elevated, and that's a lot of bridge (and it is, in fact, in need of seismic upgrading). Transit systems with simpler (and cheaper) grade-level right-of-ways such as CalTrain, or (for a more modern example) the San Diego Trolley are both vastly cheaper to construct and ultimately to maintain. Of course, there are clear safety advantages to grade separation. Adding over and underpasses to transit lines gradually, where and when it will most improve safety, but not demanding it for every last industrial backstreet that happens to cross the line, is a good compromise, raising safety without imposing excessive costs--either at the time of construction or down the road.

Ideally, every infrastructure project should have a plan for paying for long-term maintenance. Fares or tolls or some sort of usage fees ideally should cover not only basic day-to-day operating expenses, but depreciation. Few, if any, are (maybe the Golden Gate Bridge?). The budget-busting rebuilding of the eastern Bay Bridge is a prime example, and BART is manouevering for bond money for seismic upgrades of the transbay tube.

Would this raise fares for transit riders? Certainly. But it would raise the cost of driving as well. As much as transit advocates like to lobby for funding, let's remember that in the long run transit really does just work better--so the more everyone has to pay the real costs of their modal choice, the better off we are.

San Francisco's Billion-Dollar Bus Station

Entries are in for the contest to design the new Transbay Transit Center, a replacement for the somewhat dingy terminal once used by Key System, IER, and Sacramento Northern bridge trains, and for the last half century by AC Transit transbay busses.

The designs all feature spectacular towers, like this:

All this design lacks is the flaming eye of Sauron floating between its spires.

and Grand Entranceways:

Imagine this on a typical (cold and windy) San Francisco morning--and don't forget the sleeping winos!

Whatever you think of this as architecture, it doesn't do much to improve transit service. Although the terminal is the intended endpoint for an extension of CalTrain to downtown, that's really a separate, so-far unfunded project. Transbay bus riders may have a classier place to wait, but it's not at all clear to me why, with BART and ferries, transbay busses are even necessary--perhaps all this money might be better spent improving transit connections in the East Bay to make BART more convenient to get to.

Only in San Francisco could this project, which promises no improvements to speed, capacity, or ridership, be hailed as a great improvement to public transit. But however you look at it--as a billion dollar bus station, or as a train station without trains, or as (most honestly, in my opinion) as a real estate deal masquerading as a transit project--it's another example of the type of "investment into transit" that our region's leaders prefer--ones that boost civic and personal pride, and enrich developers, but address the needs of the transit-riding public only as an afterthought.

A Failing Grade for the MTC (Organizational Skills)

As I wroter earlier, the Department of Transportation wants to know how good a job our Metropolitan Transportation Commission is doing, and is accepting citizens' input by email at cert.review@fhwa.dot.gov. Here's my response:

If the MTC were doing a good job of organizing transit in the Bay Area, I wouldn't need to know how many transit agencies there were, or which were responsible for which lines.

Today, if I want to travel beyond my own county, or make any transfer between transit modes,

• I will have to spend a lot of time researching schedules before I begin.
• I have to buy a pay a new ticket for each leg.
• I will probably waste a lot of time waiting for connections.

If the MTC were doing it's job well

• There would be one, clear map and timetable of all major transit routes.
• There would be a fare system (perhaps dividing the region into zones) giving access to all systems with one ticket.
• Schedules would be coordinated for timed transfers.

The MTC is not totally ignorant of these problems, but the only solutions it seems capable of imagining are ones that add more complexity to a broken system, rather than actual fixes. They have sunk $150 million into TransLink, a farecard system which may (someday) allow riders to transfer between systems without literally digging through their pockets for change, but still requires multiple fares to be paid. They have built an online trip planner--whose main utility is in documenting just how poorly coordinated our region's transit is, through the onerous itineraries it provides--but are incapable of printing a simple, unified, regional map.

Cool Bus

A SamTrans bus, seen at Sequoia Station:

Complain and Maybe Someone will Listen

First of all, thank you to the Mountain View Voice for printing a (slightly toned-down version of) my post lamenting Democrats' collusion with the Governor to strip transit funding (original blog post is here, letter in online edition of the Voice is here).

But perhaps it would be better to tell them directly. You can find out who your state representatives are, and their email addresses, at http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/yourleg.html.

Transit riders need to start acting like an interest group, and advocating for our needs, and not taking crap anymore!

Redwood City to Mountain View--Via Fremont!

I ascended the Dumbarton Bridge by bike again, and pushed on to the other side.

Looking down, I noticed that the eastern stub of the original highway bridge is open as as a fishing pier.

On the Fremont side of the bridge, the bike path goes past baylands and sloughs.

What looked at first like an old-fashioned riverboat turned out to be a dredger, I think.

The bike path connects with Thornton Blvd. I passed this interesting agricultural remnant, which I think was once a pump house with a water tank on top.

Thornton leads almost directly to Fremont Centerville Station.

At Centerville Station, you can get on both Amtrak Capitol Corridor and Altamont Commuter Express trains. If you're heading south, either one will take you to Santa Clara/Great America (not the same place as the Santa Clara CalTrain station). There's a vending machine for Amtrak tickets in the station's waiting room, but for ACE tickets, go to the Depot Cafe in the other end of the station.

I was waiting for an Amtrak train, but I checked out the cafe because I needed some coffee. It was pretty good and their breakfast menu looked allright, too.

Centerville is an interesting area, with nice old small-town downtown type brick buildings, many filled with middle eastern businesses. This is the heart of Fremont's "Little Kabul".

The station has a webcam which you can view at oiccam.com, which caught this picture of Mr 295bus checking a schedule.

The train was punctual, lead by some unexpected motive power. Hey, buddy, wasn't expecting to run into you over here!

A CalTrain engine was coupled in front of the usual Amtrak California one. Probably it was on its way back from maintenance at Sacramento.

The run from Fremont to San Jose is more scenic than you'd expect to see from a commuter train. There's a mountain of salt,

and the ghost town of Drawbridge.

The VTA's light rail passes right over the Great America train station, but it's not totally clear how you're supposed to get between them. I think you're supposed to climb up a spiral staircase and walk a block east--since I had a bike, I went a different way, and rode several blocks west, to the VTA Great America station. I'm pretty sure now that that's the long way!

After a few minutes, a light rail train came along.

It was surprisingly crowded. I had to stand. Perhaps business is picking up?

This has been my most roundabout commute yet, but definitely the most fun!

I Feel like I've Entered a Parallel Universe

I just discovered the MetroRider.Elhay.Net blog, and recommended it. Seems like transit riders have to put up with a lot of the same crap down there too.

Mark my words, though: I expect that in 20 years Bay Areans will say, "I wish we had good public transit like they have in LA".

A skeptical, car-oriented culture may actually be a healthier environment for transit to develop, since there it needs to continually prove itself by actually moving people, rather than being seen as inherently good (passenger trains are only good for the environment when people ride them, folks!) or as a point of civic pride.

The Record Man

Is a decent, hole-in-the wall little record shop in Redwood City, a block south of Sequoia Station on El Camino.

You can find them online at www.recordman.com.

Their web site makes them sound like one of those shops for the "vinyl sounds better" crowd, but in fact they had plenty of CD's, a few of which I bought on the way to the station yesterday.

I hope that in light of this plug, they won't mind me linking to this image, which might also help you find the store!

Betrayed Again

First, the Democrats joined up with the Gov to sell us on "infrastructure" <cough>highway</cough> bonds, an investment in and indebted, smoggy future for the next generation of Californians.

Now, in the midst of budget wranglings, they are preparing to give up $1.3 billion in operating funds for public transit, after months of assurances that this gas-tax revenue was safe.

As you may have deduced from this blog, I am results-oriented. Being "theoretically" in favor of public transit doesn't do us riders any good.

So that's it. I'm not voting for any of you guys until you actually earn it. It's Green all the way, baby! Don't tell me I'm throwing my vote away--what good does it do me if the people I vote for win, and do nothing for me?

And I'm still pretty mad about NAFTA, "don't ask, don't tell", the war, and the rest of it too.

I can't be quite as mad at the Governator, because (a) I already know he's a dumbass Republican, and (b) I didn't vote for him. But he better stop calling himself an freakin' environmentalist!

Half Way to Fremont

On my occasional bayside rides to Mountain View, the Dumbarton Bridge has always beckoned, promising to up my mundane ride to work into something more like an adventure.

This morning I decided to make a practice run, and went to the top and back. It was not as hard as I expected. It's a long climb, but not very steep. Lately I've been trying to keep my bike in it's top gear (better workout), and I was surprised that I didn't have to break my self-imposed no-downshifting moratorium.

The bridge has a pretty decent bike lane, divided from traffic by a low concrete wall. It's a pretty good view at the top--you can see all the way from downtown SF to downtown SJ. I made a 360° photostitched panorama:

(Click for full size image)

The current Hwy 84 birdge is neither the first nor the only Dumbarton crossing. Off to the south you can see a railway bridge, with a central swing span, out of service since the 80's but hopefully someday to serve a new Dumbarton Commuter Rail Corridor. The Hetch-Hetchy pipeline also crosses the bay here, carried almost all the way across on bridges, then diving under the floor of the bay to cross the very middle.

Immediately adjacent to each end of the current highway bridge are stub ends of a earlier bridge, which was low and level and had a moveable span in the middle like the railway bridge. They look as though they were open as fishing piers once, but seem to be gated off now. Here's the western stub.

As I came back down the bridge, another biker staring up gave me a big smile. I think I'm passing some kind of threshold into hard-core-dom here.

As I continued my usual bayside route to Mountain View, it started to rain. In July? Whatever.

Local kids seem to have found some interesting alternative routes.

Guess I won't be quite that adventureous!

Along the Stevens Creek trail, I found a few blackberries, which were appreciated. I made sure to keep the bike away from the thorns this time.

Happy 4th! Part I

We kicked off the holiday on the 3rd with a trip to the San Jose Children's Discovery Museum. Balancing practicality and transitfandom, we drove to the "Metro Center" station and rode the VTA the rest of the way--which turned out also to be fortuitous, since the CDM's own parking lot was closed for the day (we got off at the Children's Discovery Museum station. If you do this trip, note that Santa-Terese-bound trains stop at the CDM station, but Winchester-bound trains don't--but if a Winchester train comes first, get on anyway, and get off at the SJ Convention Center, the last stop before the lines split; it's only about a block away).

There was do-it-yourself facepainting.

We checked out science exhibits,

and the ever-popular bubble-basement.

There's a room of changing exhibits, and currently it's all about Clifford the Big Red Dog. Kids can bee fish and chip (and fruit?) cooks,

or deliver letters around Birdwell Island.

I climbed into the stagecoach. Stagecoaches are a form of public transportation, right? It's research!

Besides, I have a feeling this particular stagecoach may have been on display in a Wells Fargo branch in my neighborhood about 30 years ago.

Wanna Rip Someone a New One?

The Bay Area Metropolitan Transportation Commission is the agency responsible for "Planning, financing and coordinating transportation for the nine-conty San Francisco Bay Area". Its reason for being is that the federal government requires some such agency to exist, not beholden to any one government, to propose the most effective and most equitable use of federal transportation funds.

The feds would like to know how good a job the MTC is doing. Since I signed up for something sometime, I just received this email:

The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) and Federal Transit Administration (FTA) are reviewing the Bay Area's transportation planning process carried out by the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) and its partner agencies. To provide the public with an opportunity to comment, the two federal agencies are sponsoring a public meeting:

Date: Tuesday, July 24, 2007
Time: 5 p.m. to 8 p.m.
Location: Joseph P. Bort MetroCenter, Dahms Auditorium, 101 8th Street, Oakland, (across from the Lake Merritt BART station)

Oral and written comments may be presented at the meeting. Written comments also can be sent via e-mail to cert.review@fhwa.dot.gov or by regular mail to:

Jean Mazur
FHWA California Division
650 Capitol, Suite 4-100
Sacramento, CA 95814

or

Ted Matley
FTA Region IX
201 Mission Street, Suite 1650
San Francisco, CA 94105

Public comments will be accepted through Friday, August 17, 2007.

Please call MTC Public Information at (510) 817-5757 to request special assistance, such as an interpreter, at the meeting.

Thank you,
MTC Public Information

You might or might not care enough to blow an evening at some boring meeting--but it wouldn't take long to drop them an email with your opinion of how well organized, or not, you think Bay Area transit is.

So how do I think the MTC is doing? A few things to consider:

Pick two random points in the Bay Area. Try to get between them on public transit. How many tickets will you have to buy? Will the connections be coordinated, or you will blow half an hour at each transfer point. Is their even a map you can look at to figure out a route?

If the MTC were doing its job, you would neither need to know nor care what agencies operate what routes.

Are the MTC's favored projects of the past and future cost effective and fair? Or does the MTC just rubber-stamp the pet projects of political elites? Consider the cases of Muni's T-Third light rail line ($648 million, slower than the bus it replaced, but a fulfillment of Willie Brown's wheelin' and dealin'), and BART to San Jose ($6 billion for 17 miles, only eligible for federal funding because our local congressional delegation specifically exempted it from the FTA's cost-effectiveness rules, but the centerpiece of SJ Mayor Gonzales's hopeful "legacy").

Meanwhile, CalTrain's downtown extension never quite seems to make it to the MTC's funding A-list, since CalTrain is the unloved stepchild of Bay Area transit.

Biscuits

A bit tangental, I suppose. But transportation links to biking which is a form of exercise which leads into health so I might as well talk about cooking once in a while, right?

Well, Mom was out, so we decided to make biscuits. We started with Nature's Path flax-plus pancake mix (yeah, I'm on a diet but I still get to eat pancakes). Add milk and eggbeaters or equivalent.

Stir.

Glop onto a cookie sheet after spraying with nonstick stuff, bake, 10 mins or so. They look good!

Apply jam.

Enjoy!

One Way not to get Lost onPublic Transit

Permanent and effective!

http://www.sueddeutsche.de/kultur/bildstrecke/774/100674/p0/?img=1.0.

Since it's in Süddeutsche Zeitung, I presume that's Munich.

Das schmertzt means that hurts!

Landscaping Schmandscaping!

Nature finds her way through, inexorably, in the most hostile environments--see, for example, these California Poppies growing in a totally unlandscaped patch of earth between the CalTrain and VTA Light Rail stations in Mountain View.

Dumb*ss

A YouTube link, showing a very stupid driver, some nice improvisation by Muni, and lamenting the as-usual poor backup by the City:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AecezmFchg4

In Search of the King in Yellow

The King in Yellow, by Robert Chambers, is an obscure collection of Gothic short stories, was an inspiration of H. P. Lovecraft, and is not the sort of book you expect to find at Borders. I have been trying for several weeks to find a copy, thus far unsuccessfully.

My three regular places to look for books are all conveniently located near CalTrain stations, and as usual, I managed to find something I wanted to read...

• At BookBuyers in Mountain View I found a collection of Saki's short stories.
• At Feldman's Books in Menlo Park I got an anthology of vintage pulp fiction.
• I discovered that Know Knew Books on Cal Ave, Palo Alto, is having a 50% off sale (but was glad to hear this in preparation for remodeling, not going out of business). No dice here either, though the owner had at least heard of the King in Yellow, and I found another of Chambers' works (unfortunately, a later, more conventional historical romance, though a hopeful looking read nonetheless).

Next on my list is McDonald's Books in San Francisco, and if they don't have it, I'm heading to Berkeley.

Summer's Here!

Us bike/CalTrain commuters have made it through that window between "too cold" and "too hot", where fair-weather bikers make it hard to get on the train, and can enjoy plenty of room on the bike car again. At least, we'll enjoy it when the A/C is working (I've found that on the older gallery-style cars, there seems to be separate A/C for each half, so if the bike section is sweltering, try the other side; and either it's my imagination, or else a trick of the internal thermostat, but when one side's A/C is out, the other's seems to go into overdrive to compensate, and it's very nice and cool over there).

I have a few tips for bike commuting in the heat:

• Bring lots of water (yeah, everybody knows that, but it's worth repeating).
• Take off your helmet the moment you stop riding, and you'll radiate a lot of heat out your head.
• Go to work early (not that I'm taking this advice).
• Ride just fast enough to get a breeze, but no faster.

I actually take a perverse enjoyment of biking in non-optimal weather. The world is not designed for our comfort. Suck it up, and thrive in the knowledge that dealing with a somewhat human-hostile environment means you're alive!

Summer is a good time of year for transit adventures. Kids are out of school, and if you take a day off of work, you can go places with them during the week when everything's running. Late sunsets help too.

Last week I took my daughter to Great America via CalTrain and VTA light rail. This works splendidly, but be advised to bring extra clothes--you will want to go to the water park, and a long walk and trolley ride in wet clothes is not so much fun.

Plenty of other outings will suggest themselves. This morning I saw a guy on the train with a fishing pole. Now it turned out he was meeting a buddy at SJ Diridon and they were going to drive to a lake, but there are actually in plenty of transit-accessible places to fish around here, especially on the bay. Just bear in mind that your fellow passengers will appreciate it if you make sure to have a fairly secure container for carrying your catch home.