Talking Headways Podcast: Avoiding Carbon Emissions by Taking Transit

This week we’re coming to you from the UITP Global Transport Summit in Montreal with guest Projjal Dutta, director of sustainability at the New York MTA. We chat about the idea of “transit-avoided carbon,” how you measure emissions, and the impact of Superstorm Sandy on sustainability thinking in the New York region.

Talking Headways Podcasts: Dr. Lisa Schweitzer

I took a longer session with Dr. Schweitzer and turned it into two podcasts below.

Lightsaber Fights From Autonomous Pods


Supply and Demand is So Boring

Podcast: Navigating Nairobi

This week’s guest is Stephane Eboko, chief revenue officer at Ma3route, a transportation information platform with over half a million users in Nairobi. Stephane tells about about the platform and how it helps people avoid traffic, interesting information from users reporting their experiences, and what travel on the private buses called Matatus is like in Kenya’s capital.

Podcast: Christof Spieler Talks Holistic Transit Planning

At last month’s Rail~Volution conference I caught up with Houston Metro board member Christof Spieler. Hear from Christof about the progress on Houston’s bus reimagining and his tips for public engagement and transit system planning.

Podcast: 100% Universal Design with Sunday Parker

This week on the podcast: Transit advocate Sunday Parker discusses access for people with disabilities. We talk about the design of transit stations, the layout of the new BART train cars and what that means for different types of users, the idea of universal design and access in the overall built environment, and our best transit days.

Podcast: A Car Free Travel Guide to Los Angeles

Nathan Landau, a transit planner at AC Transit, joined me to talk about his book Car Free Los Angeles and Southern California.  It's a travel guide to SoCal with transit in mind.

Podcast: Matt Johnson's 101 Rail Transit Systems

This week we chat with Matt Johnson of Greater Greater Washington fame about the 101 rail transit systems he's ridden and which ones he thinks are the best.  We also talk about the origins of the #NerdTrain.  You can also see a spreadsheet of all the lines at StreetsblogUSA.

Atlanta's Transportation Barriers

Atlanta has had an issue with freeways for a long time.  Just yesterday an article from Curbed Atlanta reported out how freeways tore apart the fabric of the city in the 1950s.  (Also see the Institute for Quality Communities for some fun time series maps)

But that was just the start, it's been a long slow devolution in a region of highways, sprawl, and ridiculous county boundaries for a long time.  I remember in college reading Tom Wolfe's A Man in Full and thinking that the region was crazy, with lots of development leapfrogging and questionable deals.

The place sprawls like no other city and is hard to serve with transit due to freeway blockages and absent a grid or rationally organized street network.  Seems like MARTA CEO Keith Parker is working to fix it, but it's a long, very winding, road even if they end up reworking all the transit routes.

And the region could be the archetype for Chris Leinberger's favored quarter where much of the jobs march North as the Southern parts flounder. When I was at Reconnecting America, I did some work in Atlanta and for kicks made the chart below.  While not as stark as I thought it might be when I started pulling the numbers, it still shows the imbalance between jobs and where workers live.  Many low and moderate workers live in the southern part of the region while the vast majority of the jobs are above I-20.

And then look at where people who make low wages live...

And where they work...

VS. Where High Wage Workers Live

 

And where they work...

That to me is the biggest transportation issue.  Connecting low wage workers with low and moderate wage employment.  I wonder if the next SPLOST will address this more.

   

Tri-Met In Motion

This is a really cool simulation of bus and train movements in Portland from the Walk Score Page:

CA - 10 Special Election + Smart Growth

I was looking through the candidates for the special election to replace Rep. Ellen Tauscher in California's District 10 and was struck by the amount of attention was given to "smart growth and transportation" on almost all of the democratic candidates websites.

John Garamendi has a fairly in depth transportation page that discusses TOD, HOT Lane BRT, eBart expansion (we can talk about whether this is a good idea at all later), and cycling. Anthony Woods has a page that mixes transportation and smart growth even if smart growth is never mentioned in the description. Finally Mark DeSaulnier, who helped write SB375, has large descriptions in separate sections on transportation and smart growth.

It's amazing how far the movement has come but I'm reminded by a post by Kaid Banfield at the NRDC switchboard that there is still a long way to go. Density itself has to be designed well to work, and now that the issue of smart growth is getting greater attention, we need to push the issue even further. While the talk of the above candidates is great, I'm still wondering if they actually get it.

Happy National Train Day

I don't believe I'm a foamer but if I were, this would be my day. Enjoy the outdoors and see some trains. I'll have some posts up hopefully soon. Some interesting new BART data out so stay tuned.

Fox Earth Day Campaign Pushes Transit

I saw this commercial on Fox tonight. It went on in the middle of American Idol which is pretty amazing given there are millions of people who watch the show. If only they told the news wing about the environment.

Public Transit Keeps You Fit

I would tend to agree with this. Especially considering my own experience that I walk much more than when I lived in Austin because I'm not just walking to my car and driving somewhere but walking to the store and taking transit to work.

The researchers say that the fact that transit trips by bus and train often involve walking to and from stops increases the likelihood that people will meet the recommended 30 minutes of moderate physical activity a day, five days a week.

According to them, people who drove the most were the least likely to meet the recommended level of physical activity.

Reframing a "Highway" Bill

We need to stop calling it the "Highway Bill". It should never fund mostly highways ever again. It's just like the needed reframing of the "Farm Bill." Michael Pollan has called for it to be called the food bill.

Doing so starts with the recognition that the "farm bill" is a misnomer; in truth, it is a food bill and so needs to be rewritten with the interests of eaters placed first. Yes, there are eaters who think it in their interest that food just be as cheap as possible, no matter how poor the quality. But there are many more who recognize the real cost of artificially cheap food--to their health, to the land, to the animals, to the public purse. At a minimum, these eaters want a bill that aligns agricultural policy with our public-health and environmental values, one with incentives to produce food cleanly, sustainably and humanely.

If we follow this logic to its transportation end, we should be calling the transportation bill something else entirely. Livable mobility bill? This means that the bill should be written with livability placed first. Is that so hard a goal? Let's try Michael's paragraph replacing the food words with transportation words.

Doing so starts with the recognition that the "highway bill" is a misnomer; in truth, it is a livable mobility bill and so needs to be rewritten with the interests of people placed first. Yes, there are people who think it in their interest that driving just be as cheap as possible, no matter how poor the quality. But there are many more who recognize the real cost of artificially cheap driving--to their health, to the land, to themselves, to the public purse. At a minimum, these people want a bill that aligns transportation policy with our public-health and environmental values, one with incentives to move us cleanly, sustainably and humanely.

Sounds pretty good huh? If you have something better than the livable mobility bill, let's hear it.

Before Transit

In my previous life I was a runner. Many people that didn't know me before I moved to California ask what I was like before transit took over as my thing, since I spend so much time blogging about it and thinking about it. Well, there are a few descriptions I could use to explain, but to the non-runner its hard to understand or perhaps even believe. I often get confused looks.

The word "Monk" comes to mind, with a secluded life and permanently focused mental state. The best way that I could explain to people what it was like was to send them to read Once a Runner. It's a fictional tale of how one runner lived and is used as the basic template for telling the story of one's running life. Though I tried to write down what it was like to run and live the life of a runner, it never quite filled everything in the way this book does. According to Slate, it's getting a reprint. Good. Because like so many other runners, I lent my copy to a girl (or friend) at one point to explain my lifestyle.

...but a part of me wishes the novel had stayed out-of-print. Not everyone is up for the running life, and not everyone should be able to get their hands on this book. It should take effort, whether that means borrowing (or stealing) it from someone or saving up $77.98. Once a Runner's portrait of running may smack of elitism, but it is a democratic elitism: Not everyone can be a runner, but a runner can come from anywhere.

Though I will warn you as the article explains:

It aggrandizes the insular world of running in a way that, with due respect to its new publisher, no nonrunner could possibly relate to. It is written for runners—and to keep nonrunners out. But it also nails the running life like no other novel ever has.

Perhaps that is the point of the book, it allowed running to be kind of a fight club. You were a member or you weren't. You showed up to class Monday with spike marks in your shin or calf and mud washed away from the race last weekend that tore up a University Golf Course in such a manner that you weren't allowed back again in the near future.

I don't miss waking up at 6am to run 10 miles for an easy day. I don't really miss being 25 pounds under weight, or having to watch exactly what i eat. And I certainly don't miss having to go to bed when everyone else is out having a beer. But I do miss Sundays. 18 mile runs through the woods with no destination and no sound but the pitter patter of feet and your own breath for an hour and 45 minutes. If we could stay at the fitness level we achieved forever, that's where I would be. But at some point running 90 miles a week wears on your body and mind. But like life there is no secret to running. Some might think they have the answer, but the answer like the article states, is just patience and a lot of hard work.

Like many cults, distance running has its mysteries, and The Secret—how you become a real runner—is Once a Runner's chief concern. ("As Denton's reputation grew," Parker writes, "a number of undergraduate runners decided they would train with him, thinking to pick up on The Secret.") But it turns out that The Secret is that there is no secret. The runner must pound the mileage, as we say. It's a grueling, tedious, insane lifestyle. So why do we keep doing it?

To understand the answer, you have to understand a bit about distance running. For one thing, it helps to know that only nonrunners talk about a "runner's high." It's not that it doesn't exist, that weird feeling of euphoria you sometimes get briefly after a tough day at the track or a superlong run. But no one could possibly be a runner just for the highs, whether brought on by natural chemicals or by winning a race. The running life is mostly just lots and lots and lots of miles. Only a few competitions punctuate the grind of thankless workouts on anonymous tracks, and you literally need a very loud gun to snap you out of the training existence and tell you it's time to save nothing for later. There simply isn't enough in the way of traditional rewards as compared with hard labor to make it worthwhile—that is, if you're only after the traditional rewards.

I'm tied deeply to my past as a runner. It taught so many lessons that no school or teacher could ever go through. Patience, Integrity, Hard Work. As a poster that once hung in my room says:

There are clubs you can’t belong to, neighborhoods you can’t live in, schools you can’t get into, but the roads are always open.

So when someone asks me if I'm going to join the gym. I kind of laugh. The roads are free, at least for now.

A Nice Word

Ray LaHood from today's press conference:

We have a task before us to rebuild America. As a nation, we need to continue to be the world leader in infrastructure development, Amtrak, mass transit, light rail, air travel, and our roads and bridges all play a vital role in our economy and our well-being as a nation.

What no HSR, Walking, Biking and (insert forgotten mode here)?

Q3 Transit Ridership Out

Expect to see these articles over the next few days. Below are links to ridership documents that haven't been updated on the APTA site quite yet (They'll be there Monday). 5% growth in transit ridership in Q3 (July to September) which is usually the heaviest ridership quarter of the year. Guess which mode has the highest ridership increase from percentage standpoint again. Light Rail at 10%. I'm not sure how they do the average weekday ridership calculations, but its interesting to see a lot of places in the 70,000 range that don't seem to get there often. Dallas, St. Louis, and Denver. Even Sacramento is close to 60k. Interesting.

Heavy Rail Numbers
Commuter Rail Numbers
Large Agency Bus Numbers
Trolleybus Numbers
Find Your Agency Totals

Paying the Rent

Insurance, depreciation and financing charges are major costs. "If you have two cars sitting in the garage, you can sell one for eight grand and that will help pay the mortgage,"

Who knew transit made money for you? The Washington Post has an article that in tone belays the shock that while gas prices are dropping, people are still taking transit. There are many who have known the benefits for years. It's like finding Narnia or something for those on the outside of urbanism though.

The Green House Gas War

Here's an interesting article in Slate that talks up the difference between driving and transit and airplanes and GHG emissions. It's nothing you don't already know but a nice read complete with links to the Reason Foundation and the Center for Neighborhood Technology. Here's an interesting clip:

Secondly, you can't discuss the environmental impact of getting around without considering the infrastructure that makes travel possible. We have a tendency to focus on the environmental impact of the things that move—the cars, trains, and planes we see getting from point A to point B. But Chester and Horvath found that in some cases, construction is the biggest polluter. Roads were responsible for more particulate matter than tailpipes, for example. For rail travel, operating the trains actually accounts for less than half of a system's greenhouse-gas emissions. The implication: Making concrete and asphalt in a more environmentally friendly way can be just as important as getting vehicles to run more efficiently. In other words, it's not just the road you take, but what it's made out of, too.

H/T Public Transit in Ottawa

Pay No Attention to the GHGs Behind the Curtain

Is it just me, or is it really short sighted to use stimulus money on expanding roads?