blog.fogel.ca

The Senate and the House are currently munching on their respective plans for our mind-blowingly large economy kick-start stimulus package. Super-mind-blowingly large.  How large is that?  Well, let’s compare this stimulus package to some previous expensive programs that have come to help define the US of A as a country and a people:

• Land a man on the moon: ~100 Billion (1994 $$)
• Interstate Highway System: ~500 Billion (2008 $$)
• Vietnam War: ~530 Billion (2005 $$)
• Iraq II: ~630 Billion (2009 $$ and counting, at about 1 Million every 5 minutes)

The version of the stimulus currently on the Senate floor: ~900 Billion. Wow. This is more money than has been spent on any project we’ve ever seen in our lifetimes – excluding those readers that are old enough to remember WWII.

So what should we spend it on? Well, how about stuff that will work to keep our economy and productivity on top of the world on a time span of similar scale to the dollar amount being spent – say 100 years? Hum, what should we invest in that’s going to be keeping us going then?

How about new minivans?? Everybody gets a new minivan for cheap! Courtesy of your tax dollars.

Or how about a fat chunk of money (say 50 Billion – enough for ~8 new bay bridges) to repave all our highways? That’ll let us get around really fast in our new minivans, right?

Wrong.

Investment beyond required maintenance in our decaying automobile system will function only to slow us down and help speed our competition up.  Every dollar that makes it easier to drive reduces demand for other transport modes – which slows our transformation to a balanced mode share.  It’s not just a break-even investment – say sacrificing long-term productivity for short-term convenience – it’s plain detrimental to our progress.

China is using their stimulus to transform their national transportation system. They’ll reap benefits from this investment through the 21st century.  We can learn a lot from a little compare/contrast here.

Stimulating new minivans and repaved time-wasting mere 80mph highways will just push us deeper and deeper into the very hole we need to climb out of.  Rather than trying fix an unfixable system, we should be focusing on introducing a viable alternative. We can’t expect 21st century growth and prosperity to magically appear out of a 1950’s solution to our modern-day transportation problems.

I want to give a quick shout out to two blogs I’ve been following about High Speed Rail in California, and more specifically, its impacts to my commute, SF <-> Palo Alto (cause I’m going to be still doing it in 2018 and all).  Both are a great read.

The first is the California High Speed Rail blog.  Written and run by Robert Cruickshank, it played an important role in the Prop 1A campaign by providing both a place for discussion and a source of good information about the benefits of the project, statewide and local.  It’s now moved on to ensuring HSR in CA keeps moving forward – passing the bond was only the first step.

The second is blog is rather new.  The Caltrain HSR Compatibility blog focuses on the integration of HSR into the existing Caltrain right-of-way on the peninsula.  So far, it’s taken the form of a series of case studies on particular sections or stations of interest.  There’s a ton of good information there.  The author, ‘Clem’, is clearly very knowledgeable about the Caltrain right-of-way, its stations, and the operational requirements of HSR.

Not because:

• It’ll save California about 82 billion compared to the “no-build” alternative: building 3,000 new lane-miles of freeway plus five new airport runways.
• It’s projected to turn a profit of almost 1 billion annually.
• The rest of the world is building HSR as fast as they can to stay economically competitive in the 21st century.
• It’ll save 16 billion lbs of CO2 from being expelled into the atmosphere annually – HSR is the most energy efficient major mode of medium & long distance transportation known to man.
• It will reduce our dependence on foreign oil by about 22 million barrels a year.
• 2hrs 30 minutes @ 220mph from downtown SF to downtown LA for $55 would be just awesome – mainly for business, but also for pleasure.
• The line will generate about 160k construction-related jobs right here right now, in California, providing a badly needed stimulus as our economy tanks.
• With proper land-use controls, we can use HSR to help funnel our growth into (more) human-scaled pedestrian-oriented sustainable development patterns.
• The Central Valley will experience an economic boom – suddenly being able to realistically commute daily to two of the largest job centers in the world.
• All of California can expect congestion relief by eliminating 30-40% of intra-California air passengers and taking 3.5-7.9% of the cars off I-5 and I-15.
• HSR is proven, off-the-shelf technology that has become the dominant medium-distance mode of transportation in varied environments around the world – including those with similar density, vehicle use, and income patterns to California – the most recent example being Spain.

No. These are all good reasons to support HSR in California – but this is not why California needs HSR. So why does California need High Speed Rail?

America needs an example. The potential of California HSR to stimulate powerful change on local, regional and national levels across the country outweighs all the direct benefits it will deliver to Californians.

We Americans (including Californians) lack the concept of functioning transit in our collective consciousness. Assuming you’re going farther than you can walk or bike, functioning transit is:

• The fastest way to get there.
• The most convenient way to get there.
• The most reliable way to get there.
• The cheapest way to get there.
• The most environmentally friendly way to get there.

How can functioning transit be the best at all these indicators?  Because it scales.  The addition of “one more rider” to a transit system lowers your cost per rider, increases demand for more frequent service to more destinations, decease your emissions per capita, and increases your farebox revenue.  One more rider makes the system better.

If we rewind 50-70 years, all those indicators that now shine for transit previously shined for private automobile use and air travel in the United States.  In those days before vehicle and air travel demand became congestion-limited, one more car on the road or one more passenger on the plane didn’t make it worse for everyone else.  There was plenty of capacity.  Rather, one more user of the system encouraged the system to grow to reach more destinations, with more direct routes and at higher speeds, thus increasing the quality of the system for everyone. Our parents and grandparents took advantage of this positive feedback system by pumping massive investment into our roads and airports, and we can largely thank that investment for our global economic dominance today.

Those days are over. They fell tumbling over their peak in the 1970’s, and for the last 30 years America has been holding on to the now-dead dream of the “open road”.  For the 79% of us who live in urban America the “open road” has become the dirty, dangerous, slow freeway.  While this has had the obvious effect of degrading our communities, our environment, and our heath – it has (IMHO, perhaps more importantly) had the “slow burn” effect of draining time, money and energy from the American worker.

In the congestion-limited domain, one more driver or one more air passenger makes the system worse.

Our competition “gets” this.  HSR systems are going up around the world at a nearly exponential rate as costs drop and speeds increase.  Americans don’t tend to travel outside their home country as much as most, and it often takes new ideas a little longer to penetrate our shell.  Well, this is California’s opportunity to deliver one big shining wake-the-F-up to ourselves and the rest of the country.  Petrol-powered transportation at 80mph in your own private 2,000 lb box of steel is a 20th century idea who’s day in the sun has come to a close.

Vote YES on Prop 1A. Keep America and California economically competitive in the 21st Century.

At the Caltrain Joint Powers Board meeting today, Caltrain officially adopted its brand new Bicycle Access and Parking Plan.  That’s nice, I’m sure the <1% of Caltrain customers that park a bike at a station are stoked.  But the rest of us have reason to celebrate too!

Caltrain Executive Director Mike Scanlon announced that the Caltrain staff is, as of today, commencing a study to look into expanding/improving bicycle conditions on board. Specifically, he mentioned:

• possibly removing some seats to provide more space for bicycles
• streamlining the boarding/disembarking procedures for bicycles
• improving the on board storage of bicycles on the train
• providing information about bike space left on each train in advance of arrival

among other good ideas that I don’t remember.  In addition, nearly everyone on the board also took the time to speak favorably about improving conditions for bikes on board, right now, in the short term.  The several dozen public speakers were also overwhelmingly appreciative and hopeful that Caltrain is now starting to directly address the real problem – the currently dysfunctional state of bikes on board Caltrain.

In the bigger picture, this more than awesome.  Caltrain heard our comments, saw the 2.6k+ signatures the SFBC collected and dropped in front of the board, and is listening!  I’m sure this isn’t going to be the silver bullet that fixes all the bike+Caltrain problems, but this is certainly a step in the right direction.

Update:

The Chronicle has now published a story on this for tomorrow’s paper.

I while back I wrote Caltrain a ‘passionate’ letter about how they’re focused on the wrong issues when it comes to bikes and Caltrain.  The situation has evolved a little since then, a little good clarification and a little new nomenclature.

1. The bike plan they’re developing is no longer called the ‘Bicycle Master Plan’. Which is good, because it never was a bicycle master plan. It’s now called the ‘Bicycle Access and Parking Plan’. Again, good, because this means that we can forget this non-problem sooner rather than later and move on to developing a sorely needed ‘Bicycle Master Plan’.
2. The first draft of the plan is out. Some of the URL’s and such still say ‘Master Plan’, but if you search that pdf, the word ‘master’ never comes up in there. Read it, comment about it, but don’t get your hopes up for a response.
3. Why is Caltrain focusing on this non-issue right now?  Strings!  They’re attached!  On page 7 of the draft:
   

   In 2006, Caltrain secured a federal grant from the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) to develop the agency’s first plan to address station access and parking issues for bicycles…

   Well, I’ll give you that in 2006 there wasn’t such a problem with bikes on board. But something is wrong with the system when we’re spending money (even if it is federal hand-me-downs) on a non-problem when there are other, very closely related, much bigger and more pressing problems. Is it the responsiveness (or lack thereof) of the system? 2006 to now – that’s a time scale of years between decision and action. Is it the locality (or lack thereof) of the decision makers relative to the issues? This is federal money, which was allocated to Caltrans for bike/pedestrian/transit, then Caltrans at the state level decided what specific local issue the funds were to be spent on.  To much focus on infrastructure improvements when service improvements are what’s really needed?  I’m not sure.  But it is clear the system is running in a state that is far from optimal.

The final plan will be presented to Caltrain’s Joint Powers Board on October 2nd for approval/rejection.  Stay tuned.

Caltrain is currently putting together a Bicycle Master ‘Plan’.  This is a Good Thing, as Caltrain has some serious problems with their current bicycle situation, which are getting worse fast (and, I’d argue, will continue to worsen polynomially with respect to gas prices).  However, Caltrain’s Draft Bike Master Plan currently isn’t focused on these issues – but rather on bike parking and storage at stations.  Which is not a problem of any significance.  Awesome!  Is this one of those classic ‘the people making the decisions are not the people using the service’? Or is this intentional blindness? Is it that the money coming in has strings attached to it? What’s the deal?

In any case, Caltrain is accepting comments on their draft plan through August 17. If you ride Caltrain (especially with a bike), please take the time to tell Caltrain what issues you think it’s important the bike plan address, and any ideas you may have for actually addressing them.  You can email your comments to bikeplan@caltrain.com.

To: bikeplan@caltrain.com
From: Michael J. Fogel <mike … at … fogel.ca>
Subject: Bikeplan comments:  refocus on the real issue – bikes on board

Good Morning Bikeplan,

I want to add my voice to the chorus.  I feel it’s downright silly that Caltrain is investing time and effort into bicycle parking and storage at this time.  It’s true that may need improvement, but it doesn’t have anywhere near the urgency nor importance that the ‘not enough space on board for bikes’ problem does.

Currently:

- a significant portion of the Caltrain system is consistently delayed, primarily due to bikes loading and unloading.

- 100’s of riders a day are ‘bumped’ from their trains because of a lack of space for them and their bike.

- This problem is getting worse, fast.  This is primarily a product of rising gasoline prices.

Conversely:

- I’ve been riding Caltrain for 5 years, often with my bike.  I have yet to ever, ever hear someone complain about bike parking or storage at a station.

Addressing the ‘bikes on board’ problem is much more difficult than the ‘bike storage’ problem.  But Caltrain needs to suck it up, and address it now.  It’s getting worse, fast!  There are three classes of general approaches:

1. Disallow bikes on board.  They take up too much space and time.

2. Continue fully subsidizing bikes on board.  Thus you need to add more trains, and achieve better loading and unloading throughput.  I don’t (nor does Caltrain, I gather) feel this is a practical solution in the long term (long term meaning: $10-20 for a gallon of gas).

3. Implement a series of coordinated of incentives/disincentives to bringing bikes on the train.  Caltrain’s current approach falls into this category.  However, Caltrain is restricting their study and action to one small part of this solution:  Caltrain wants to provide one incentive (improved bike parking/storage) to help reduce demand for bikes on trains.

Providing improved bike parking and storage will indeed reduce demand and ease the real ‘bikes on board’ problem… by what, 3% ???  Has Caltrain made any estimates of the (intuitively insignificant) effect this is going to have on the real issue here?

Caltrain must refocus its Bikeplan directly at the real problem: bikes on board.  Improved storage and parking is a part of the solution, but a small part.

A few suggestions for other (larger) parts of the solution:

1. Begin charging a ‘fair’ (in comparison to the other Caltrain patrons, who do not bring bikes on board) fare for bringing a bike on board.  If a bike takes up enough space for what would have been another passenger, require that all bikes have tickets.  Also, a surcharge could be imposed on that bike ticket to account for the increased loading/unloading time.

2. Remove all bike cars from express trains and add them to the non-express trains.  Now you can still bring a bike on board if you need to, but you know your trip will be a little longer.

3. Require advance reservation (and purchase) of bike spot on a train, just like assigned seating.  This would reduce loading/unloading times, and greatly reduce the stress of bringing a bike on board.  In addition it would provide a moderate disincentive bringing a bike on board, via increased complexity.

Caltrain has made impressive strides in the last five years or so.  The issue of bringing bikes on board is causing significant problems, while the issue of bike parking and storage is not.  And worst of all – the situation with bikes on board is getting worse, fast.  Caltrain must refocus its Bikeplan now, directly and explicitly on the real issue: bikes on board.

Thanks for your time and consideration,

Michael J. Fogel

(This letter, and your responses, will be publicly posted.)

If Caltrain ever does reply, I’ll post it here.  Don’t hold your breath – we’re already pushing two weeks.

The San Francisco Bicycle Coalition has also publicly posted their comments on the situation.