Tuesday, January 31, 2012

The Music & Urbanism Conflict

Wherever you lived in Texas at the time, you heard about the closing of Liberty Lunch. The iconic music venue had to close because of a redevelopment project which had taken the land. Ultimately the downtown area has boomed in part because of those developments but at what point do the new residents moving downtown have the ability to complain about noise that existed before their new residences?

For now, Austin is efforting in its drive to keep music venues downtown with a loan program that would soundproof the music rooms that made the city what it is today.  Personally, I have no sympathy for folks that decided to move right next to a music venue that plays until 2am.  To me, its just like moving next to a railroad track and complaining when they want to run more trains.  Ultimately I hope that Austin keeps its live music heritage.  With the closing of Emo's, I fear that more dominos will fall.  We shouldn't have to choose between a vibrant urban scene at night and a vibrant scene in the day.  There should be room for both.

Monday, January 23, 2012

Letters from Southeast Asia

Our good friend and sometimes guest blogger Ed recently came back from Southeast Asia.  As they often do, our foreign correspondents take wonderful transit pictures abroad.  Enjoy these beauties.


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Friday, January 20, 2012

OT: I Am the Mile - All 1609 Meters

Who out there in transit land watches track and field on television?  I'm guessing not many of you.  But most of you know that there is a big football game this weekend I'm sure.  Track and Field is waning to a certain extent but hopefully last month's struggle between the Athletes and USATF on sponsorship rules will turn the tide a little bit more.

What is not waning is the short sightedness of those inside of the sport.  I was deeply disappointed to hear that after Pat Henry of Texas A&M (Yes an Aggie!) suggested that the NCAA change the 1500 meters to the Mile (1609 meters), it was rejected out of hand by distance coaches around the country. Not only are these coaches short sighted about how to gain interest in the sport, they are also spiking the dreams of all kids who have ever read Once a Runner (Only the best book about distance running of all time!) and searched for their own route to Sub 4, just like Quenton Cassidy.  For runners, the mile is now the measuring stick of history.  To not have more opportunities at running one of the most fabled races of the last century, is to me somewhat criminal.
From Once a Runner: That quarter mile oval may be one of the few places in the world where the bastards can’t screw you over, Quenton. That’s because there’s no place to hide out there. No way to fake it or charm your way through, no deals to be made. You know all that stuff. You’ve talked about it. It’s why you became a miler. The question is whether you are prepared to live by it or whether it was just a bunch of words.

This would also be a big opportunity to refresh the sport.  As someone who has moved on from track into another world and another industry, it's harder and harder for me to come back and watch.  Especially when watching with friends who weren't runners. But everyone knows what mile times are, everyone.  And if you tell them someone is trying to break 4, they'll stop and watch.

Every time people learn that I was a runner and a miler they ask my time.  It can get really annoying to go through the whole description of what a 1500 is and even I still don't quite understand why we ran it other than it's the official Olympic distance and that's what they run in Europe.  Usually I rattle off three different answers to explain myself.  3:41 for 1500(3:58 converted), 3:56 in the Austin Congress Avenue Mile (downhill), and 4:03 indoors.  So I never broke 4 minutes "officially" to get on the national sub four list.  It's one of my biggest regrets but since one could only run the mile indoors and a few select outdoor meets, it was pretty hard to see how fast you could run when you were fit. I've always told myself that I could start training and just get out there and do it.  But after 9 years of not training, it's getting harder and harder to believe.

I'm sure there are others like me that never quite made it except in theory, but could have if given a few more races to try.  And perhaps there are a few kids out there that when they get into the perfect race they close out with enough speed to dip under.  My buddy Darren broke 4, just like his pops, the first father/son sub 4 tandem ever. But he had to have the race, which happened to be the only one that spring.  And without this mile, there isn't this powerful connection.

Watch more video of 2008 Texas Relays on flotrack.org


Watch more video of Darren Brown on flotrack.org

Everyone who runs the 1500 or 1600 should have more opportunities to instead run 1609, which in my opinion would certainly make track in this country more exciting and put everyone on the same list together against their peers.  In order to support the movement to bring back the mile, folks have set up a website and twitter to push this over the top.  I fully support the effort and perhaps those of you who are interested will support it as well.  We shouldn't have to do conversions.  I am the mile.



Saturday, January 7, 2012

High Speed Rail, For THIS Generation

I recently read a Burlingame Patch article where a local officials said this:
“What I would like to see…is for us to take a position saying not just that we think the current plan does not make sense…but to say what we do need for transportation,” said Councilmember Terry Nagel.  “If we could start a plan to have the money reallocated…that would make more sense.”
 and
"However, Baylock countered that as long as high-speed rail exists, all transit money will go towards it, and a ballot measure would be necessary to unfund the project and redirect funds towards local transit."
There have also been other places where really strong transit supporters such as Huffington Post writer Joel Epstein have suggested that the money be reallocated to local transit as well and that HSR should be killed on spot.

After reading the Patch article and remembering the Epstein post I wrote the following tweet:

"Sorry, but defunding HSR won’t make local agencies $10b richer."

My thinking behind this was that while local folks and advocates might feel that killing HSR will benefit local transportation funding, the truth is that the money will just disappear.  There won't be a $10B bond measure for local expansion and even if there were it wouldn't come back to the voters for at least another 5 years to a decade, or perhaps even a generation.  At 31 I'm becoming acutely aware of the fact that if I live to be as old as my 99 year old Gramma, I'm a third done with my life and would like to spend the next third building things that I will use in my final third.

But in response to my tweet, blogger Market Urbanism tweeted "But it might start a long-overdo convo on costs" and wrote a post on Forbes about how my thinking was wrong because if we lower the costs and fix the construction we can actually build the line faster.  In my opinion this ignores political realities about these types of large projects and a little how California is operating at this time.  This probably gets us more into the technicals vs politicals discussion that Alon Levy brought up a few months ago, but I feel like we can still have the cost or design discussion without killing the project outright or thinking we can redistribute the funding to local projects.  Stephen goes on to admit that the first segment is likely well designed but that folks are rightly spooked about the somewhat vague project funding realities and future possibilities of value engineering.  I don't think we should be too worried since these projects have a way of moving along as they should and people like Stephen are always going to be pushing those buttons.

I feel that there are a lot of things that could be fixed or fleshed out about the project.  People who know more about these types of issues than me (ie Clem).  But also, if we kill the project now, it's dead for a generation.  I'm a huge fan of fixing the issues of hand rather than putting them off for a later date.

Now full disclosure, I have a personal stake in this project.  My sister and her family live in Bakersfield.  I live in San Francisco.  I also hate driving I-5.  So this project would directly benefit me by getting me there faster and likely more often.  Some people think this project is just about San Francisco and LA and that the Central Valley is nowhere.  I beg to differ and this is why.

Wednesday, January 4, 2012

The Two Sides of Punishment

There are two sides to the phrase "my sport is your sports punishment".  On one hand the 80 - 90 miles a week I ran in college are enough to make people gasp when I tell them.  "You ran more than I drove my car" is the response that I often got from folks.  I guess you could say I had really high PMT (personal miles traveled).

But at the same time I cringe when sports coaches use running laps as a punishment.  This does not teach the joys of running or the personal accomplishment and fulfillment that occurs when you finish a marathon or a long run.  Rather it instills a hatred of running, often life long, that in my opinion steals away something that could be beneficial and dare I say, enjoyable if someone at least gave it an honest try.

So you can imagine how I feel when a humble mode of transportation is used as punishment. Had you heard this one?  The one where the Virginia Tech football coach decided to send his kicker home on a Greyhound Bus from the Sugar Bowl because he had stayed out past curfew.  I'm not against punishment for violating team rules, but does it have to be a mode of transportation?  Does it have to further stigmatize the only option that some Americans have?  This seems to me to be more windshield perspective from the wider world.

It was even the cover of the playbook.  "The Greyhound Experience" and ESPN proudly showed it during one of its talk breaks during the game. Perhaps I have it wrong though. Is this the free market at work? Maybe it is proof of how bad our transportation system is that it takes a whole day of travel and three transfers to get between two US cities when according to Google Maps, which is generally extra time, the trip should only take 13 hours in a car, or half the time of the bus trip.  In other words, we've handicapped trips on alternative modes so much that anyone going by bus would have to be crazy.  Or poor. Or punished.  And we wonder why we can't convince people that there's a better way.