gildone

I don't have free texting either. I have a basic phone with no qwerty key pad. I have to text the old way. Some things just aren't in the budget. When your job is in an automobile-centric exurb, and the job is too good not to keep, those car expenses (even though I also carpool) take a huge bite out of the budget. This is what too many people don't understand about car ownership. It's an insatiable money pit.

Thanks. That's what I thought, though. It wouldn't have helped me that particular day. I just didn't have time to fire up the PC that morning. When you are leaving the house at 6:15A, you usually do the minimum you need to in order to get out of the house. I'll try to remember to allow time for that in the future. If I had a smart phone, it would have worked. I wish that was in our budget... Thanks for listening Jerry and passing along my message. If I had to do it over again, I would have just stuck with the Health Line once I got downtown and then I probably wouldn't have thought to even mention anything here about the incident.

Actually, Jerry, I wasn't all that upset about things, other than the lack of communication. Most of this incident just falls into the "stuff" happens category. I'm sure RTA didn't plan on having a power failure yesterday morning. :-) I will mention that I've seen the level of communication at RTA improve quite a bit up until it peaked a few years ago, since then, it has been gradually slipping again. What is Commuter Alerts? If it's an e-mail thing, it may help for planned changes, but it probably wouldn't have helped me yesterday. I don't have a smart phone (can't afford one). Just remember a little communication goes a long way. Sometimes information that may not seem relevant to RTA, is all customers need to make them feel like they are being kept in the loop.

I was stuck in this. Full service did not resume around 7am. I realize this kind of thing is never easy to handle, but RTA's communication during this incident was lacking in some key respects. Anyway, here's what I experienced: I got on at Brook Park at 6:30 (Jerry: When did RTA become aware of this? Another passenger said 5 am, but I'd like to double-check with you). Anyway, we were not even told about the the problem until around Madison/117th. The only information we got at that point was that a bus would pick us up at West 25th, take us to Tower City, then to E. 79th St station for passengers continuing east. Upon exiting at W 25th, the shuttle bus had not yet arrived and there was already a big line of people waiting.-- I'd say a good 3 buses worth. (Jerry: how many buses did RTA dispatch to West 25th for the bridge?) Since it was so cold, a bunch of us (including me) got on the 81 to go to Tower City. Note: I'm not complaining about the bus(es) not being there. Given the weather and that RTA probably had to call in drivers who were not on the schedule, I know that sort of thing is going to take time, especially in a heavy, lake-effect snow event. When I got off at Tower City, I was going to take the Health Line, since my destination was UH Main Campus. But, they seemed a bit behind too and since the Health Line takes awhile to get to UH. when I saw the Red Line shuttle pull in, and figured, "Well, they bus is supposed to be going to E. 79th, that shouldn't take too long since it's not making any stops". I figured it might still be quicker than the Health Line, so I got on the shuttle. I asked the driver if it was going to E 79th Station. He said yes. Well, instead of taking a direct route to E. 79th, like Carnegie, then south on 79th to the station, it went out to Broadway and started on this circuitous journey. We didn't know what was going on. We ended up going to E55th and got there about 20 minutes later. Were we told that the bus would first go to E55th? No. We got to E. 79th station at 8:00. There were other passengers there. One of them said: I've been here since 7AM and there hasn't been a single train. I tried to call RTA, no luck. "All representatives busy." I went back up to the street to call my wife and let her know what was going on. While on the phone with her, an RTA employee in a small SUV pulled up and parked on the sidewalk about 100 yards south of the station. I was going to talk to him but I didn't get a chance. I saw a bus coming toward the station from the south (heading north). I asked a gentleman who was waiting for that bus if it went to Euclid Ave. He said yes. So I jumped on. And went back to the Health Line. I didn't have time to tell any of the passengers on the platform about the bus. As it turns out, I was only 20 minutes late for my 8:30 appointment (all that got messed up was my plan to get breakfast at the Atrium Cafe in the hospital beforehand). I understand the difficulties in coordinating a response to an incident like this, but RTA's communication needs to be better. Here's my critique. Any information that I'm missing and thus leading my critique in a direction it shouldn't go, I'd be happy if Jerry would chime in: 1. If RTA did in fact know about this before my train left, they driver should have been instructed to announce it at every station BEFORE the train left giving oncoming passengers an opportunity to change their transportation plans. Even after the first announcement just before arriving at Madison/West 117th, the operator said no more about it until we got to West. 25th. Maybe it was on the scrolling signs in the stations? If it was, I missed it (are they even working these days?) 2. The driver of the shuttle bus should have been instructed to tell passengers at both West 25th and Tower City that the shuttle bus would be stopping first at E. 55th, again giving passengers a chance to adjust their plans. Better yet, don't make the shuttle bus from West 25th even go 55th. Dispatch a separate bus if at all possible. 3. Even more puzzling, RTA had to know the trains still weren't running from E. 79th as late as 8 am. There needed to be more communication between RTA management and the shuttle bus driver about the status of the trains. It was 8 degrees. Why go through the exercise of taking passengers there when the trains aren't running? Definite communication breakdown here. 4. There was an RTA employee at West 25th when we got off the train. I don't know why she was there, but she was trying to get information for the passengers about the status of the shuttle bus. Seems to me, that kind of information should be easy for an RTA employee to get when such an incident is going on. Jerry: Does RTA have some sort of "incident commander" (for lack of a better term) when such things happen? It seems to me that during such incidents, someone should be responsible specifically getting information to passengers via bus drivers, train operators, and there should be someone for RTA employees to call who are trying to go the extra mile and help, like the RTA employee at West 25th. Would it be difficult to set up a communication strategy and SOP for such incidents? The biggest complaint people had was just a lack of information. 5. Did RTA tell any radio or TV stations about this? Two other observations of the early 21st century human species: 1. It seems a lot of people don't know how to dress for the weather anymore. Some people had no gloves or hats, inappropriate shoes, and/or were not well layered for the cold. Stuff happens that can mess up your plans, be prepared. Maybe it's just me, but it seems that people used to think of such things more often than they do now. 2. All the people with smart phones out there (I still do not have one-- can't afford it), and I didn't see a single person checking RTA bus routes and schedules for alternative options when we were waiting around at West 25th. If I had one, that's what I would have been doing. I just guessed that the 81 might be going downtown and asked the RTA employee who was there. My two cents, whether it's worth that much or not...

What's the deal? Why are they dropping the rail option?

I can't even figure out Amtrak on this one. Ridership would definitely be better at the East Avenue station rather than the current Amshack. With both track accessible, Seems like a no brainer for them, if NS would cooperate. Seems like a no-brainer for NS too because if Amtrak could use both tracks, it would improve the traffic flow for NS.

Spain's empty highways lead to bankruptcy By by Katell Abiven (AFP) – Oct 28, 2012 MADRID — At the Leganes toll booth outside Madrid, the workers scan the horizon for cars. In Spain's recession, the stream of paying drivers has slowed to a trickle and the toll road is all but bankrupt. Like the housing bubble, pumped up until it burst in 2008, and its speculation-funded phantom airports, the folly of Spain's road-building boom too is now being laid bare in vast stretches of tarmac. "Right now we can't meet our debt repayments. We are in the hands of the judge," said Jose Antonio Lopez Casas, director of Accesos de Madrid, the company that manages two major highways around the capital. The two highways, Radial 3 and Radial 5, opened in 2004 at the height of Spain's construction boom. Now the company owes 660 million euros ($850 million) to the bank, 340 million to the builders and 400 million to residents evicted to build it. Since the Madrid-Toledo highway entered bankruptcy proceedings in May, the trend has spread, with five other major routes following. "It's no surprise," says Paco Segura, a transport specialist at the environmental campaign group Ecologists in Action. "In Spain, just as there was a real estate bubble, there was also a bubble in infrastructure, and one of the areas that got most developed was the motorways," he added. "We built thousands and thousands of kilometres of motorways on routes that did not have the traffic concentration to justify it." Read more at: http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5iG9kIvCItOt2P08GOk5Mbmt84dDA?docId=CNG.1d490f0cdd7932b347e2cb36777d2fbd.6e1

So, non-automotive transportation of the type in Agenda-21 is good for the economy. Don't tell the Tea Party or Glen Beck! Published Oct 24 2012 by Resilience.org, Archived Oct 24 2012 Bicycling for Better Business by Jay Walljasper Cities across the U.S. discover that good biking attracts great jobs and top talent to their communities “Biking is definitely part of our strategy to attract and retain businesses in order to compete in a mobile world,” says Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak as we pedal across the Mississippi river on a bike-and-pedestrian bridge. “We want young talent to come here and stay. And good biking is one of the least expensive ways to send that message.” “I was having dinner with a creative director that a local firm was eager to hire for a key post,” Rybak adds. “He was an American living in Europe, and we spent most of the evening talking about the importance of biking and walking to the life of a city. He took the job.” Minneapolis has invested heavily in biking—creating a network of off-street trails criss-crossing the city, adding 180 miles of bike lanes to city streets, launching one of the country’s first bikeshare programs, and creating protected lanes to separate people riding bikes from motor traffic—which is why it lands near the top of all lists ranking America’s best bike cities... Read more at: http://www.resilience.org/stories/2012-10-24/bicycling-for-better-business

I commented by emailing Valerie Webb and Joe Schaffer. My comment was that the station should blend with the architecture of the neighborhood. The concepts I see above fail to do that. I also have a feeling that this station will be more popular than the proposed size may be able to accommodate.

^KJP: I see a great op-ed piece forming here. Since Amtrak is in the media again because of the presidential campaign, this is probably a good time to write one and send it to the papers. You might even be able to get it in some newspapers outside of Ohio.

What you refer to as "low traffic routes" sell out for many months of the year. Running more trains on more routes would actually improve Amtrak's bottom line, but that requires a large up front investment in rolling stock and infrastructure. The only way the private railroads were ever able to make any money at all on passenger service is because: 1) Freight cross-subsidized the infrastructure costs; 2) For decades they moved almost all domestic intercity passenger traffic, and; 3) The passenger trains shipped large quantities of mail and express. The railroads even subsidized the express part-- The Railway Express Agency was owned by the railroads, but it never really made any money over its lifetime. The bottom line is that the common-carrier passenger service is not much of a money maker at all. The aggregate lifetime profit of the common-carrier airline industry is nil, and this is with express shipments and taxpayer subsidies to airports, air traffic control, and security, and operating subsidies in some cases. Greyhound has filed bankruptcy 2 or 3 times. What KJP says are the 3 options if you want rail service is right on.

^No surprise here. In addition to Romney's ideological flip-flops of election year convenience, just like the road builders and gas station/convenience store owners association in Ohio pushed to kill the 3C, I'm sure similar forces and funders of political campaigns are pushing about Amtrak too. Rail ridership is surging while the airlines are in trouble and driving is flat. That's a threat to the status quo.

^Sometimes it takes an outsider to raise an issue like this.

^ I think the industry is in denial.

Running on empty: big airlines in big trouble by Andrew McKay http://energybulletin.net/stories/2012-08-18/running-empty-big-airlines-big-trouble "This is all bad news for airlines that are already combatting high fuel prices. I expect to see a number of big name airlines fold or amalgamate in the next two years as financiers can no longer afford to prop up an industry that is hemorrhaging with no relief in sight. This could mean a reduced number of flights, less options of places to travel and skyrocketing ticket prices. While mother nature might thank us for the reduction in emissions the airline industry is running on empty. "

Survey: High gas prices forcing consumers to cut costs Business First Date: Thursday, April 12, 2012, 11:02am EDT A new poll found that people are cutting their budgets in other areas as they deal with rising gas prices. A new poll found that people are cutting their budgets in other areas as they deal with rising gas prices. More than half of Americans are making budget cuts to cope with rising gas prices, according to a new survey. A Harris Poll of 2,451 adults found that 55 percent of people who own a vehicle have cut back on products and services as gas prices have increased. For households with an income less than $35,000 a year, that jumps to 67 percent, while those with incomes of $100,000 or more are cutting back at a 37-percent clip. Read more at: http://www.bizjournals.com/columbus/news/2012/04/12/survey-high-gas-prices-forcing.html?ana=fbk

The death of sprawl? by Warren Karlenzig Originally posted at Common Current. The United States has reached an historic moment. The exurban development explosion that defined national growth during the past two decades has come to a screeching halt, according to the latest US Census figures. Only 1 of the 100 highest-growth US communities of 2006—all of them in sprawled areas—reported a significant population gain in 2011, prompting Yale economist Robert Shiller to predict suburbs overall may not see growth “during our lifetimes.” We are simultaneously witnessing the decline of the economic sectors enabled by hypergrowth development: strip malls and massive shopping centers, SUVs and McMansions. The end of exurban population growth has been accompanied by steep economic decline in real estate value, triggering a loss of spending not only in construction, but also home improvement (Home Depot, Best Buy) and numerous associated retail sectors that were banking on the long-term rising fortunes of “Boomburbs.” The fate of these communities has been so dire that for the first time in the United States suburbs now have greater poverty than cities. Read more at: http://www.energybulletin.net/stories/2012-04-10/death-sprawl

This won't happen without taxpayer dollars paying for the track upgrades first, but this may be one of a small number of corridors in the US where this is possible: Florida East Coast Industries to develop private passenger-rail service A little more than a year ago, Florida Gov. Rick Scott killed the state’s high-speed rail project when he returned federal High-Speed Intercity Passenger Rail funds to the U.S. Department of Transportation. Now, a privately owned railroad has plans to implement passenger-rail service connecting Orlando and South Florida. Today, Florida East Coast Industries Inc. (FECI) announced it plans to develop All Aboard Florida, a privately owned, operated and maintained passenger-rail service that would run 240 miles to Miami, Cocoa and Orlando. The service would operate along 200 miles of existing tracks between Miami and Cocoa, and along 40 miles of new track into Orlando. The system eventually could be expanded to include connections to Tampa and Jacksonville. The project will cost about $1 billion. Read more at: http://www.progressiverailroading.com/passenger_rail/news/Florida-East-Coast-Industries-to-develop-private-passengerrail-service--30360

^just out of curiosity... the NPS is under whose pressure to not seek such large capital improvement grants?

The good news: US oil production up because of the Bakken and other shales. The bad news: not only is it not enough to offset depletion in other US fields for very long because it has a low energy return on investment, they return a low amount of oil per well, and production in them declines 65% after the first year: Parsing the Bakken by Tom Whipple There is a lot of talk recently that "tight oil" as found in North Dakota's Bakken and other shales in the Southwest will save America from stagnant global oil production and increasing gasoline prices. The current glut of natural gas which has brought prices to a 10-year low has forced companies drilling for gas to curtail their activity and move the crews and rigs to North Dakota and Texas where money can still be made in drilling for shale oil. New well completions in North Dakota are expected to surge again this year. A recent pronouncement by a noted analyst says that America's "tight oil" (shale oil) production could reach 3 million barrels a day (b/d) by 2020 which will again put us among the top few global oil producers. On digging a little deeper into the issue, however, many have a problem with all the optimism.... It took the production from 6,617 wells to produce North Dakota's 546,000 b/d in January. Divide the daily production by the number of wells and you get an astoundingly low 82 b/d from each well. I say "astounding" because a good new offshore well can do 50,000 b/d. BP's Macondo well which exploded in the Gulf a couple of years ago was pumping out an estimated 53,000 b/d before it was capped... ...As we have seen with the Bakken and the various natural gas bearing shales we have been drilling of late, it takes an awful lot of expensive wells and environmental disruption to get the oil out. One estimate of the Energy Returned on Energy Investment (EROEI) for the Bakken shale suggests that the EROEI is six. This means that it may take one oil barrel's worth of energy to produce six barrels of Bakken shale oil. This is getting very close to the theoretical point at which it really is not worth the effort and all the economic disruption... ... fracked wells don't keep producing very long. Although a few newly fracked wells may start out producing in the vicinity of 1,000 barrels a day, this rate usually falls by 65 percent the first year; 35 percent the second; and another 15 percent the third. Within a few years most wells are producing in the vicinity of 100 b/d or less which is why the state average for January is only 82 b/d despite the addition of 1300 new wells in 2011. There is a lot more to the U.S. shale oil story, however, than simply the Bakken shales in the upper Midwest. The Eagle Ford shale in southwestern Texas has been drawing considerable attention as a major source of oil and natural gas. However, it is the Monterey shale in southern California that is likely to become the biggest shale oil resource of all. Whereas the Bakken and Eagle Ford shales are estimated to contain about 3.5 million barrels each of recoverable oil, the Monterey shale with 15 billion barrels is 64 percent of the 24 billion barrels estimated to be trapped in U.S. shale formations. While this 24 billion barrel figure sounds impressive to politicians looking for a talking point, it really is only about 9 months' worth of current global oil consumption.... Tom Whipple is a retired government analyst and has been following the peak oil issue for several years. Read more at: http://www.energybulletin.net/stories/2012-03-21/peak-oil-crisis-parsing-bakken

Article doesn't mention transportation, but it does document that Ohio's population is aging. I thought this would be adequate to start a thread about transportation trends and needs among seniors... OXFORD, Ohio -- While Ohio's population growth has been nearly flat, 65-and-older residents are increasing at a rate of nearly 8 percent. "The Ohio Department of Aging's director says the report shows the need for changes in preparation for an older population. " http://blog.cleveland.com/metro/2012/03/ohios_65-older_population_grew.html Seems to me that an obvious preparation need is alternatives to driving!

Millennials are smart, sustainability-minded and savvy consumers. They want to do their part to save the planet, but don’t want to spend more money to do it. At least, that’s what I’ve heard from college students from every region in the U.S. They are unhappy about the problems associated with vehicles, from big ones like pollution from cars and trucks to the smaller pains like finding parking. They hate waiting in traffic and don’t love the cost of maintaining vehicles. They dislike the amount of land used for parking lots, roads and highways, and they loath the alternatives car companies are offering..,.. Read more at: How Millennials Feel about Cars, Public Transit and Electric Vehicles http://www.treehugger.com/public-transportation/how-millennials-feel-about-cars-public-transit-and-electric-vehicles.html

Americans Want a Walkable Neighborhood, Not a Big House http://www.good.is/post/most-americans-want-a-walkable-neighborhood-not-a-big-house/

A good analysis you won't see in the mainstream media: $5 Gas = Long, Hot, Crazy Summer by Richard Heinberg, Post Carbon Institute Driving dollars cartoonHere in northern California gasoline is now retailing for $4.20 a gallon. Prices haven’t been this high since mid-2008. Forecasts for $5 per gallon gas in the US this summer are now commonplace. What’s driving prices up? Most analysts focus mostly on two factors: worries about Iran and increased demand from a perceived global economic recovery. However, as we will see, there are also often-overlooked systemic factors in the oil industry that almost guarantee us less-affordable oil... Meanwhile oil prices are also tied to shifting assessments of the state of the global economy. On days when the financial news is good, oil prices nudge up; on days when the luster on the latest Greek bailout package fades, oil prices tumble. The ongoing Greek debt crisis promises to plunge the EU into recession this year; on the other hand, the Dow Jones average is flirting with 13000... Let’s not forget (though we wish we could): it’s election season! Republicans are already hammering Obama over the prospect of $5 gas and promising that, if elected, they will drive prices down to half that level. Meanwhile, with the exception of Ron Paul, they’re demanding harsher dealings with Iran, and are thus exacerbating one of the primary factors driving prices up. Altogether, it’s a neat trick... READ MORE AT: http://www.energybulletin.net/stories/2012-03-01/5-gas-long-hot-crazy-summer

Technology is still oil-dependent and not a substitute for energy, it can help ease the transition. I hope this turns out to be true: The Peak Oil Crisis: A Breakthrough? by Tom Whipple For many months, U.S. Energy Secretary Chu, the guy with the Nobel Prize in physics, has been running around the country telling audiences that big breakthroughs were coming for electric vehicles. Well, this week the other shoe dropped when an announcement was made of an advance in battery technology that has the potential to change the motor vehicle industry as we know it. The announcement was made at the Department of Energy's Advanced Research Projects-Energy conference by a California startup called Envia that has received funding from DOE, the California Energy Commission, and General Motors among others. The gist of the announcement was that Envia has developed a technology which will allow batteries to store energy at a density of 400 watt-hours per kilogram as compared to the compared to a density of 100-150 w-h/kg in existing electric vehicles such as the Chevrolet Volt or the Nissan Leaf. The best news, however, is that the new batteries are expected to cost less than half ($125/Kwh) that of the batteries currently being used in electric cars. This development means that within a few years, cars with a 300 mile range could come on the market at a price range comparable to current internal combustion cars. http://www.fcnp.com/commentary/national/11273-brekthrough2.html