M1EK's Bake-Sale of Bile

Transportation Microeconomics Bites Me In The Butt

So you may have heard me talk about the new suburban office. For a while, we were trying to keep making a go of it with just one car - my wife driving me in most days and picking me up sometimes; other times me taking that hour and 45 minute trip home with a long walk, 2 buses, and a transfer involved. I tried to work from home as much as possible - but the demands to be in the office were too great; and we couldn't sustain the drop-offs and the long bus trips.

Well, we relented. Just in time; I got my wife to agree on a color and we now own a second Prius - this one obtained right as the waiting list shot up from zero to many months (ours was ordered; but there was no wait beyond that so it took about 2 weeks - arriving right as the house exploded so ironically I ended up working exlusively from home for a few weeks longer anyways). Do not argue with the M1EK on the futurism/economics predictions is the lesson you should be taking away from this.

So that's the intro. Here's the microeconomics lesson.

Assuming $4 gas, the trip to work in the car costs $1.56 according to my handy depreciation-free commute calculator. The morning drive takes 20 minutes. The afternoon drive more like 30.

The transit trip costs $1 (although soon to go up to at least $1.50). That means I save $0.56, at least before the fare increase, right? Not much, but every bit helps, right?

Well, the transit trip takes an hour and a half in the morning; an hour and 45 minutes in the afternoon; and I can't afford that much extra time anyways, but even if I could, it would be placing an effective value of 23.1 cents per hour on my time, which seems a bit, uh, low.

So it's gonna take a lot more than $4/gallon gas, sad to say. You might be seeing some marginal increases in ridership around here, but only in areas where transit service is very good and where people should have been considering taking the bus all along. And there's no prospect for improvement - the reason bus service is so bad out here is because Rollingwood and Westlake don't want to pay Capital Metro taxes, although they sure as heck enjoy taking my urban gas tax dollars to build them some nice roads to drive on. In the long-term Cap Metro plan, there may be a bus route on 360 which would at least lessen the 30 minute walk/wait involved, but that could be a decade or more - by then we'll probably be getting chauffered through the blasted alkali flats in monkey-driven jet boats. Not gonna help me.

Also, those who think telecommuting and staggered work schedules are more important than pushing for higher-quality transit and urban density can bite it, hard. If even people in my business often get pressure to come into the physical office, there's no way the typical workaday joe is going to be able to pull it off in large enough numbers to make any difference.

Seriously, cut it out

Whichever one of you has the friggin' M1EK voodoo doll, STOP IT. Just got a knock on the door to ask me if I wanted to move a car; I head out and find out that despite earlier materials to the contrary, the city is indeed digging up my yard, sidewalk, and swale to put in a new sewer connection. Of course, since the last stuff I got said they weren't going to be doing this for our house, I didn't dig up and pot the plants on the corner of the driveway. The ones that just got dug up for me. Probably all dead after this despite my attempts to rescue them from various piles - even including the Pride of Barbados I had to nurture for the last 4 years through a couple of hard freezes that nearly killed it. Said plant, while still in the ground, is probably a goner with how close it is to the cut.

FIUHENOWIFOBEWIFPOEINWPDOINEOWIUGBPOFBIUEPWOVCNPWEOMIPDEWOINDPOEIPRO#IPROINPFWDOINPFOEWI

Further crackploutage

Since the last entry, a bunch of windows got blown out on the side of our house from the fukkenhail; a tree limb smashed the loaner car (old Prius was at body shop having last round of hail damage fixed; new Prius was at dealer getting some upholstery fixed); and my 4-year-old got strep (contagious, can't leave house for another day or so). And I'm trying to work full-time or a bit more while still taking care of the family while the clerking factory wonders what the hell I'm doing and why I'm not in the office yet. And the in-laws just went out of town for 3 weeks. THINGS IS GOIN' GREAT!

Crackploutage

For my curious reader, my wife tore her Achilles tendon and had surgery on Thursday; I've been swamped just taking care of the home front (stir-crazy 4 year old included) and trying to keep up with work (and failing). No crackploggery from me for quite some time; sorry.

City elections: Vote for Leffingwell (too willing to roll over for reactionaries, but far superior to that idiot Meeker); Shade (Kim is making it very obvious lately why she lost her original group of supporters, and it had nothing to do with policy); and either Galindo or Cravey (the top 2 candidates in all 3 races). If you vote for Laura Morrison, I'm afraid we can't be friends - she's a disaster in the making.

Last Best Chance For Urban Rail In Austin Is Here

I swear there's no conspiracy regarding the lateness of this posting - my gracious host happened to perform an apache upgrade which messed with Movable Type. Here's what I wrote this morning, Made With Notepad!

At 4:30 PM yesterday, I left my lovely suburban office and walked through lovely suburban Westlake to the awful bus stop at Walsh Tarlton and Pinnacle. After broiling in the hot sun for a few minutes, I decided to walk up to the next stop at Walsh Tarlton and Pinnacle; where there was also no shade. This did not bode well; but things got better.

The bus arrived on time (5:08ish) and was thankfully very well air conditioned. I read a book until I was dropped off quite a long walk from Texas Center (I should have taken the earlier stop). Went inside; saw Jonathan Horak and Kedron Touvell; introduced myself to both (how creepy is it that I knew what they looked like even though we'd never met; but they didn't recognize me? Pretty creepy, I think). Just on time.

Will Wynn gave a speech which emphasized how much he wants rail downtown. He got in the weeds a bit, first talking about how we were growing faster than everybody else in the world, then talking about how this decade's growth is actually slower than all previous decades back to the 1880s (huh?), but then eventually came back on track and handed the reins over to Brewster McCracken.

McCracken introduced ROMA; ROMA gave a nice presentation which I'll summarize in bullet points below. No surprises, really, if you read Ben Wear or the print article beforehand. My quick comments in italics. I will go into more depth on many of these in the upcoming several weeks.

• Terminology: The system is going to be called "ultra-light rail". ROMA mentions that streetcars usually run in shared lanes (where I got the sinking feeling ROMA believes a bit much in the magic fairy dust theory of streetcars).
• Technology: As mentioned, most likely streetcar vehicles. Possibility of more of a standard light rail vehicle if a decision point goes a certain way (see: Routes: doubling-back-to-the-east).
• Runningway: Usually the center of the street; almost always dedicated lanes. This is a big win over Capital Metro's previous plans, and everybody who cares about rail transit should be grateful that McCracken and Wynn understand how critical this is to success.
• Routes: Defined as three or four subroutes even though the service may not operate that way. They didn't actually say "downtown to" on all of these; some were Seaholm or something else; but realistically they'd all converge on Congress.
  1. Downtown to airport: Using Congress, East Riverside; reserved guideway (dedicated lanes, center of road). Alternative presented is a very unlikely extension of commuter rail to the airport. I'm very pleased we didn't try to run on the right side of Riverside. Big win here for business travellers to the airport, and we can pull in a lot of residential out there to hopefully fill trains.
  2. Downtown to Mueller: using Congress (possibility of San Jac or Brazos as fallback), 9th/10th/11th transition to San Jacinto, north to/through UT, Dean Keeton/Manor out to Mueller. Slight possibility of still going out there via MLK. It's not Guadalupe, and we probably won't get reserved guideway through UT without a lot of arm-twisting, but I think Guadalupe's a lost cause for right now. With this technology and route, though, we can eventually get there; whereas commuter rail is a complete dead end. The Manor vs. MLK issue is, I feel, largely settled for Manor unless UT makes going through campus prohibitively difficult - the only pro to MLK is the commuter rail TOD, which I obviously don't believe in anyways; and cons are many - have to deal with TXDOT; don't get even the half-assed acccess to UT that San Jac provides; etc.
  3. Downtown to Long Center and Zilker area: less likely at first, using West Riverside past Lamar, cutting over to Toomey after that. Alternative using Barton Springs would get you all the way to Zilker but no reserved lanes. I think these are unlikely to make it for the first cut anyways but it would be nice to be able to tell tourists they could take the train to Barton Springs Pool, wouldn't it?
• Financing - ROMA didn't talk about this but McCracken did - combination of TIFs and some other mechanisms (including requiring that some portion of Cap Metro's budget be under the control of the city or CAMPO for capital spending, which I heartily endorse
• Future - wide arrows going north and south. Again, this system can be expanded - although it'll never become anything as good as 2000's LRT line; it at least can grow into something better - whereas commuter rail is a dead end.
• Bone-throwing - Elgin commuter rail spur thrown in to try to get some suburban votes (even though we really ought to be doing better for the urban folks who provide most of Capital Metro's funds and essentially all of their support; we apparently still need to pander to the burbs - disappointing).

That's all for right now. Expect expanded analysis of all of the above coming soon. But here's the kicker:

You MUST support this plan if you ever want any urban rail in Austin. Unlike how 2004's commuter rail election was incorrectly framed, this truly is our last best chance for rail so although I obviously would prefer rail running up Guadalupe, I'm going to be supporting this plan whole-heartedly and urge every reader of this post to do the same.

Humorous snippets: I introduced myself to Ben Wear, and even though he wrote an article with my name in it a year or two ago, and I've emailed back/forth with him 5 or 6 times, I don't think he had any idea who the hell I was. Also, Jeff Jack (future Worst Person In Austin nominee? told me I should cut out the blogging until I know what I'm talking about.

Flu trumps trains

My wife and I have been very ill - it's been all we've been able to do to keep our non-sick bouncing-off-the-walls 4 year old reasonably well fed and taken care of. Today's the first day I'm going to try to do more than trivial work since Thursday - so the blogging has to take a very distant back seat. Quick summary:

I did go to the TWG last Monday (not yesterday's, though) and had a meeting with a councilmember afterwards. More cause for pessimism than optimism. I have a self-directed work item to bring back to them which I'll probably post here as well in the next few days.

BFATFIAC: M1EK at the austinist

My austinist post is up - this is why you haven't seen anything from me in a while. In retrospect, as pointed out by truecraig, probably too much of a rehash; but we'll see. Almost all about rail transit in Austin; with a little bit of bus thrown in for good measure.

This is a one-time affair; part of an idea truecraig had to allow frequent commenters to write a column.

Oh crap, I'm That Guy

Apparently just because the Popcorn Button works at home regardless of size of popcorn bag, DO NOT ASSUME it will work on a non-home microwave. The entire office is filled with smoke. I'm That Guy, dammit. (No, this is not a subconscious, or conscious for that matter, revenge for the location).

Why transit service doesn't work on frontage roads

This has come up frequently in the past in regards to the idiocy of claiming that major retail belongs out on the frontage road (where I have claimed in the past that it's impossible to practically provide good transit service). Here's a much better version than my previous one, and as a bonus, MS Paint was still tangentially involved!

(For non-Texas readers who may have wandered in from Jeff's excellent transit portal, almost all limited-access highways in this state are built from pre-existing major arterial roadways - where property access is maintained via the construction of new "frontage roads" which unlike perimeter roads often used for that purpose in other states, also serve as on-and-off-ramps. The incredibly wide road footprint that results makes it far more expensive to build new or maintain existing crossings over or under the highway).

Both images from google transit; click through for full details. This is basically the "how do I get from the drop-off for the express bus at the park-and-ride on the west side of the road to the entrance to all the office parks on the east side of the road". Note that the address for the park-and-ride you sometimes get (12400 Research) doesn't match the actual location, which is on Pavilion Boulevard back towards Jollyville.

First, the transit directions, which look pretty good at first:

Then, the driving directions, which look like this:

Huh. Wait a minute. If I can just jump across the road, why do the driving directions have me go down a mile and back? Let's look at the satellite image:

Oh. Now I see. Note that the bus stop images you see on the other side of the road are for a poorly performing cross-town route which suffers from the same basic problem - if you need to leave an office on that side of the street and go southbound on 183 back home, you get to walk to the next crossing - which on a normal street wouldn't be that big of a deal, but crossings of frontage roads are few and far between. Farther to the northwest, crossings are even less frequent - you face a walk of close to 3 miles in spots to make this trip across the freeway. Taking that cross-town route would be even worse than taking the express plus the incredibly long walk, because it would require a long slow trip down the frontage road and then a transfer to a second bus, and because the service on the frontage road is inevitably low-demand, it doesn't run very often either.

Keep in mind that this is just to cross the freeway. If you work at the Riata office park, you then face another walk of a half-mile or so inside the complex. I used to do this commute on my bike, with bus boost in the morning at times and am very familiar with the area - ironically, proximity to the Pavilion transit center was supposedly touted as a positive for this development when it was originally proposed. I was always pretty sure Pavilion used to connect with what is now called Riata Trace Parkway when 183 was just a six-lane divided arterial but have never been able to find a clear enough old satellite image to confirm, but our Tennessee correspondent has already confirmed in comments that it did cross.

For reference, my last job before this one was also on US 183, but between Balcones Woods and Braker Lane, which was much more accessible by transit - and yes, I did sometimes take the bus even on days where I wasn't biking. I tried the bus commute once to Riata and never did it again - that walk, in addition to being far too long even for a nice comfortable express bus, is just dreadful, even compared to conditions down by Braker.

And, yes, there's a personal reason this is coming up now too. All I can say now is dammit, dammit.

Gluten-free eating in Austin

Having gotten to eat many of her desserts thanks to the brother-in-law privilege, I can vouch for her delicious recipes and now she's on the front of the Life section of the Statesman in a big article on gluten-free cooking and eating in Austin. Congrats, Karen.

Transit Field Trip: Honolulu

Or, why you haven't heard from me in two weeks (click for large):

We (full family) returned yesterday morning from an 11-day trip to Oahu (mostly Honolulu), and I've got some transit talkin' to do about it. Some lessons apply to Austin, and others don't; but I've been meaning to write about good (and bad) experiences on other cities' lines for quite a while, and am finally going to do it. This week, I'll write a few posts trying to focus on particular areas of detail; this will serve as the introduction and outline. As for other cities, I'll hopefully go back and address Atlanta and New York - which I travelled to on business and leisure in the last 6 months.

My wife and I got married on Lanikai Beach a little more than five years ago. Since then, we've been back twice; only the last time with both kids (at the time 1 and 11 years old). I've also been to Oahu for two three-week trips as a kid during the 1980s with my family (grandparents lived near Chaminade University); and once for a week to help them pack up and move to Florida in the late 1990s. As for other islands, I went to the Big Island once as a kid; my wife and I visited Maui for 4 days two trips ago; and the whole family did day-trips to Kauai and the Big Island on our last trip (had free interisland air coupons from my grandfather which we finally used up on the last trip).

This trip included the whole family and stays at three different places - the first week, as usual, we used the timeshare I bought about 8 years ago (on ebay; don't ever do it any other way) which is roughly behind the International Marketplace in an old 3-story 1950s-era hotel building - much smaller than most buildings in Waikiki. Has a lot of charm, but is not a luxury property by any means. Since I own the timeshare, it's a cheap stay (obviously) but not free - the yearly maintenance fees skyrocketed a few years ago after the management company went bankrupt and was subsequently discovered to have not been a good custodian of the funds, as it were.

The next two days, we stayed at the Hilton Hawaiian Village, which is a little enclave on the end of Waikiki we don't spend much time at on our visits. I got this hotel for 2 nights on priceline for a very attractive price. This place is famous - my wife and I both remember the old rainbow tower always being used on The Price Is Right (although it looks a lot less cheesy now after a recent redo).

The last two nights, we stayed at the hotel which we used for our honeymoon 5 years ago (almost exactly): the JW Marriott Ihilani at Ko Olina. Very luxury; but I was able to find a great deal - a PointSavers reward from the Marriott chain's rewards program (most of the hotels I stay in for business are Marriott-owned chains). Had to buy a bunch more points, but it still ended up a steal overall.

Here's what I'll be covering this week:

Urban living and suburban sprawl: Waikiki is very urban and is a pleasure to walk around (mostly). Hawaii in general, like the town my family originates from in Pennsylvania, is about 10-20 years behind the times in discovering that suburban sprawl doesn't scale, as Kapolei (the intended "second city") has led to a traffic disaster. Other islands are largely Round Rock With A Beach - with all the bad that entails - I'll talk about the standard suburban theory that the other islands are where it's at.

Transit - current system: Waikiki (and most of Honolulu) is served by TheBus, a fairly well-run bus-only transit agency. We all rode the bus twice to Hanauma Bay, and I rode it once more on the way back from one end of Waikiki to the other. The system is well-used by the population - which has a high portion of transit-dependent and transit-leaning subgroups due to low median incomes and high parking costs. Had problems with bunching and reliability. Buses were very very full even though fares are very high. Outside Honolulu, service is still far better than you would expect - better than most of Austin; but other islands are essentially dead zones.

Transit - future system and needs: Honolulu's been flirting with rail for a long time and should be a slam dunk. The city has a higher residential density than even New York(!) and fairly good employment density too. A disastrous debacle with BRT planning put them back about a decade, but they're currently fairly far along with what finally looks like an adequately locally-funded rail plan to take to the Feds. Doesn't go to Waikiki at first, of course; which is a bonehead move. Local trogolodytes bring out the standard anti-rail FUD spewed here by Neanderthals like Jim Skaggs - showing that no matter how high the case for rail, the guys on the other side say the same ridiculous crap.

That ought to be enough. Aloha.

Real Baking

New link: The Art of Gluten-Free Cooking, a blog containing recipes and stories about gluten-free cooking from my sister-in-law Karen.

Forgot to link this way back when and was reminded after eating some very delicious desserts she baked for my mother-in-law's amazing retirement party at the Headliners' Club (which was itself arranged and donated by her and her husband). My wife and her family all have trouble with celiac disease to varying degrees; and these recipes will make eating gluten-free not only tolerable (which the off-the-shelf stuff rarely is) but often delicious. I loved all three desserts and would have gone back for more if I was able to exercise anymore. Man, they were fabulous.

Weird music thought on birthday #35

I was a big fish in my little tiny pond of high school music. First guy to win the "best musician" and "best jazz musician" award. All-county. All-state. Then I played in the marching band at Penn State. Nothing, since.

Meanwhile:

Not just one, but two of the dudes that I was in band with in high school are playing SXSW this year.

Dan Bonebrake was a good friend and trumpet player, like me, and has been playing bass ever since, although I've been too much of a loser to drag myself out when he comes through town. He even toured with Chris Carabba, aka Dashboard Confessional, and is now backing up John Ralston for SXSW.

Glenn Barovich was a year ahead of me trombone player - we had soloes in the same song one year in marching band; and he's got a band or two locally (have not seen them either). SXSW performance in Baby Robots

Meanwhile, I ain't done shit. A couple of times playing the beat-up trumpet and singing with a couple other dads last year, and that's it. And that probably isn't happening again either.

I'm pretty sure 35 is too old to pick up a more performing-in-a-club-suitable instrument. Dammit.

Brewster et al, I Told You So

Especially Brewster, but also some others are finally, now that it's long too late, beginning to question the wisdom of continuing to give Capital Metro $160 million / year when they turn around and spend all the rail money on a plan which screws Central Austin and provide useless Rapid Bus service as the "thanks for 92% of our tax revenue" gift. Kudos to Kimberly for coverage of this issue.

Let's set the wayback machine to May of 2004. I wrote a post on that day referring to a resolution I floated; the text is below. While Brewster from all accounts thinks I'm a troll, the irony of seeing him come pretty darn close to my 2004 position is just really really delicious. Of course, I'd trade it in a second for some actual movement on this issue.

WHEREAS the City of Austin does not receive adequate mobility benefits from the currently proposed Long Range Transit Plan due to its reliance on "rapid bus" transit without separate right-of-way

and

WHEREAS a "rapid bus" line does not and cannot provide the necessary permanent infrastructure to encourage mixed-use pedestrian-oriented densification along its corridor

and

WHEREAS the vast majority of Capital Metro funds come from residents of the City of Austin

and

WHEREAS the commuter rail plan proposed as the centerpiece of this plan delivers most of its benefits to residents of areas which are not within the Capital Metro service area while ignoring the urban core which provides most Capital Metro monies

THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that the Urban Transportation Commission recommends that the City Council immediately reject Capital Metro's Long-Range Transit Plan and begin working towards a plan which:

A. delivers more reliable and high-performance transit into and through the urban core, including but not limited to the University of Texas, Capitol Complex, and downtown
B. requires additional user fees from passengers using Capital Metro rail services who reside in areas which are not part of the Capital Metro service area
C. provides permanent infrastructure to provide impetus for pedestrian-oriented mixed-use redevelopment of the Lamar/Guadalupe corridor

IF CAPITAL METRO will not work with the City of Austin on all items above, THEREFORE BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the UTC advises the City Council to begin preparations to withdraw from the Capital Metro service area and provide its own transit system in order to provide true mobility benefits to the taxpayers of Austin.

It died for lack of a second. Since then, two fellow commissioners expressed their regret at their decision to not at least second the motion so we could have gone on the record, after seeing how the plan unfolded pretty much as I predicted way back then.

Ironystorm 2007

Inspired by DSK's posting of his wife's snapshots, I present: the most ironic picture of IceStorm 2007. Click for bigger.

Yes, them icicles was over a foot long. And yes, they formed on my icicle lights.

Picture dump

Finally got some more processed: February and March 2006. I actually just processed April but ran out of disk space on my ISP, which is yet another reason to get my ass in gear and finally get rehosted....

New links

Located blogs (mostly non-crackpot) of two friends from way back, Laurie and Bernie Thompson from Seattle. Co-oped with both in college; might have gone to a class or three with Bernie; worked with them at IBM and later at S3. At various times, almost pursued both to Microsoft too, although I Was Not Stalking Them.

Bernie created a neat startup company a while back which actually got bought; and now appears to be taking another shot. Laurie's been published frequently in magazines since I last checked in, according to her blog.

Bernie, actually, is indirectly responsible for me starting up the crackplog. Way back in the day, he chatted with me for a while about Seattle's light rail proposal and had the idea that we should do a point/counterpoint blog on it (with iconography of the two of us with skinny little bodies and big giant heads). That never happened; but it gave me the idea to inflict my transportation crap on the rest of the world. So, it's His Fault.

(I've also updated the link to Kim and Anthony's blog to reflect their move from Taiwan to Beijing).

The Bile And What To Write About

I obviously haven't written much lately - I've been getting progressively worse news about my arthritis (we've run off the end of where the infusion treatments should have worked, and they haven't - I'm not able to walk far at the present time either - much less ride my bike) so I've been spectacularly unmotivated to do much but occasionally snipe on the austin-bikes email list. It's hard to justify spending much effort crackplogging about bicycling, for instance, when it doesn't look good for me ever getting back on the bike.

Finally, I'm now far enough out of the loop that I don't know that I add much value even when crackplogging about Capital Metro, except in the obviously and purposefully annoying "I told you so" updates. But I still feel like I ought to be updating on their progress, since nobody else in the world ever talks about them other than Ben Wear, who vacillates between simply reinterpreting press releases and being a skeptic in the Skaggs mold.

My cow orker keeps reminding me how neglected the crackplog has become, so I'll try to at least do a monthly Cap Metro update. And the upcoming possible resurgence of the late unlameted all-ages helmet law (thanks to inaugural M1EK's Worst Person In Austin Winner Bruce Todd - subject of a future crackplog if I ever get motivated) should result in a few.

So this serves as notice that I'm alive, I guess. That's all.

Now that I can't bike (or walk)...

my career as an itinerant musician playing for children can begin. (picture is from La Tazza Fresca a week ago Saturday playing for the benefit of a pack of intermittently interested 2-year-olds and their hopefully-much-more-entertained parents). Ethan is wearing white; Jeanne is off to the left trying to get him to clap; and I'm second from left with trumpet (played a bit but mostly did horse noises and sung along with my much more able compatriots). Thanks to Mary Somers for the picture. Click for another shot with DANCERS!

Big catch-up on pictures

Finally almost caught up on the albums for 2005:

• February 2005 (birthdays)
• April and May 2005
• June 2005 (Luling Watermelon Thump, etc.)
• July 2005 (Washington DC)
• August 2005 (waterparks)
• September 2005 (Laura's wedding in Connecticut)
• October 2005 (farm trips and Halloween)
• November 2005 (Thanksgiving)

My Chest Hair Saved My Life

So the former mayor of Austin got seriously hurt while riding with the people who like to load their bikes up in their Tahoes, drive out to the country, and go for a ride, and people are claiming his helmet saved him. Which is newsworthy since he's the one who pushed an all-ages helmet law here in Austin (which got me to stop riding for a year or so), despite the fact that bicycle helmets don't appear to be working. The old "the doctor said his helmet saved his life" canard has come up, and of course, the fact that his helmet is crushed and he's alive is taken as proof that the first caused the second. Folks like the members of the ACA, who generally go riding for fun on the weekends, don't understand how anybody wouldn't want to wear a helmet; but oddly enough, a much larger percentage of those of us who ride for transportation find them ranging from uncomfortable and inconvenient to way-too-hot. And, of course, useless.

I didn't really want to talk about this story, because even though he pushed this helmet law and did a lot of other nasty things, he's lying in a hospital bed, and using his accident for political purposes is pretty wrong. But the pro-helmet people are out in force on this one, and they need to be answered.

I have a story to tell.

The one time I rode my bike down to New Braunfels to go toobing (before the reactive arthritis ruined my toes), I went over my handlebars after a light turned red too quickly for me to safely stop at an intersection on the far south end of San Marcos. I flew like Superman, put my hands out, landed and skidded in some gross black oil which the drizzle had brought to the surface of the road, and came to a stop short of the intersection. I survived (and rode on to New Braunfels, although more slowly), and a good chunk of the hair on my chest and my knees was scraped off. Cuts and bruises on both, of course.

From this, I conclude that the hair on my chest saved my life. Because I hit the pavement chest-first; and the chest hair got ripped off. That's all the proof I need.

From here on out, I'm going to make fun of anybody who rides their bike who doesn't have a really hairy chest. And I plan on pushing for mandatory bicycle chest hair laws. Because, after all, it's all about safety.

Studies which show no relationship in the real world between the amount of chest hair and likelihood of dying on the road will be ignored by me, and the people who still insist on riding despite their relative hairlessness will be mocked as potential Darwin Award winners.

I'm sorry Mayor Todd is hurt. Even though I think his work screwed Austin in a number of ways during his tenure on the Council; he doesn't deserve the painful recovery process he'll endure, at best, and his family doesn't deserve the consequences either way. But the rest of you? Just shut up about stuff you know nothing about. Even if bicycle helmets actually provided the safety benefits people think they do, you're a lot healthier over the long run if you ride your bike (helmetless!) than if you drive.

Thanks Be To The Baba

For Thanksgiving I'd like to thank the guy who's hosting this blog out of the goodness of his heart, Baba. He graciously agreed to rescue this thing from the purgatory of io.com after a failure to do database backups on their part left me in a real bad spot, spent a non-trivial chunk of time setting up stuff for me, and hasn't bugged me since to move on. And man, have I been lazy and cheap in not doing so.

So thanks Baba. The internet would be crackplogless if it was not for your largesse.

tagged

This is the first time I've done one of these.

Gregg passed along this game...

1. Delve into your blog archive.

B. Search the archives for the 23rd post.

2. Find the 5th sentence, or closest to.

III. Post the text of the sentence in your blog along with these instructions. Ponder it for meaning, subtext or hidden agendas.

C. Tag 5 more people

My 23rd entry was The Shoal Creek Debacle, Part III which had NOTHING TO DO WITH MASS-TRANSIT, SO THERE!

The 5th sentence was:

To be fair, the bike lane stretch between Steck and Anderson has one large gravel patch in it as well.

Analysis: Well, I was trying to give the wide curb lane guys a fair shake, but honestly I don't buy the claim that a wide curb lane has less debris than a bike lane - and it shows. This entry remains relevant today - see this blog category and this fun yahoo group for more.

This entry particularly sucks since I can't ride my bike now (maybe not much, ever) due to my body trying to kill me (had another subflare in the intervening time and was on crutches for another week; have not ridden bike since that posting). The good news(?) is that screwing up Shoal Creek won't matter much for me from here on out.

Guess it should have been a mass transit entry after all, dammit!

I don't know if anybody beyond a few kooks reads this thing, but what the hell: Steve Casburn can probably regale us with tales of Houston yore; Mark Hasty probably exorcised somebody on about that day; Chris was probably predicting a Democratic landslide; Jim was surely claiming to be non-partisan; and Thomas Gray was, I'm sure, still insisting it wasn't a blog.

Halloween 2005

I'm way behind on pictures because I still haven't gotten around to trying the Windows tools which may provide satisfactory automation for my album generation (thanks, Phil). But here's a teaser, from this Halloween.

I officially coin the term

crackplog - short for "crackpot blog", i.e., have you read M1EK's crackplog?

The evil google machine indicates today that I am the first person in the universe to use this term. Feel free to use it from here on out, but credit me.

Why I've barely biked in the last three months

Anybody who found their way to my bike log might have noticed a fairly large gap, like the one I had in 2001-2002. I've had a bad flareup and a very slow recovery from another attack of what I now (as of this morning) know is Reiter's Syndrome. The previous flareup, in 2001, was diagnosed as either Reiter's or spondylitis. Since then, some new drugs have come out to treat spondylitis, so we were hoping to get at least enough spondylitis apparent so I could try these drugs, since in the 4 years between the 2001 flareup and the 2005 flareup, I never recovered full function in my toes (leading to less volleyball, less biking, and gradually gaining back the 40 pounds I lost in 2000-2001, when I was in the best shape of my life - so much for being in shape preventing disease). After that initial flare settled down to 70-80% function (two courses of steroids), I went on a variety of drugs (mostly Vioxx and Azulfidine, the two of which I took for essentially two years) and got up to 90% function, but couldn't do any better. I ended up taking myself off the drugs after the long-term effects were becoming apparent - spent a couple of hours in the early morning most nights in the bathroom with severe intestinal pain. After going off the drugs, things didn't get any worse, so I figured I had reached a new plateau of 90%, which at least I could mostly live with.

Then the 2005 flare hit. Really really bad. Much worse than 2001. Had to do a business trip with what felt like a broken ankle. Two courses of steroids again; the second course barely worked; I was nearly certain I was going to go for the world record of three. Knocked it back to the toes again, apparently, although I don't have much flexibility in my ankle and knee, so it may still be there too. So I come back a couple months later to the rheumatologist and at the first meeting with the doctor I hear about the new biologics that can treat spondylitis; I go in for a (very expensive) bone scan; and this morning get the results. No spondylitis. Just Reiter's. And the bone scan shows that it's still affecting my knee and ankle too - so I'm still much worse off than I was in 2001 at this point.

When these flares hit, I can't even walk, much less bike. Right knee and right ankle become inflamed and red. This last time I spent two weeks on crutches with a HUGE THROBBING ANKLE!!!1, and spent a few nights unable to sleep until I got me some Vicodin. Sleep was even harder during the first flare, since my elbow was also hit - I had to sleep with my arm over my head in one particular position.

No dice. No new drugs; no new research; chance of recovering full function is zero. Oh, and, if I want to lessen the chance of more degenerative arthritis as I get older, my best course of action is to give up alcohol, red meat, refined sugars, and one other thing I forget now but probably was equally difficult to imagine living without.

I'm currently at about 70% (ironically I biked to the doctors' office in order to test out the new bike trailer with a load - got some soda on the way back to simulate the weight of my son), meaning I can play a little bit of volleyball very badly, and I can go on very short bike rides. Oh, and keep getting fatter, until I give up what joy remains in life and go vegetarian. Well, I DID have something delicious on Saturday that turned out to be cauliflower...

Excuse me while I go punch a clown. And then I need to drown my sorrows in a bacon margarita. With sugar on top.

Still At It

The folks who basically wanted us to suck it up and enjoy what crumbs we got from the All Systems Go plan are still at it, even today. On the Austin Streetcars group (for people who are trying desperately to salvage some kind of rail, even if it's stuck-in-traffic streetcars, for central Austin, which is otherwise going to only be served by "high frequency circulators" in the form of shuttle buses and, of course, Not So Rapid Bus), Lyndon Henry just called the ASG starter line an "urban light railway", to which I just had to respond with this old gem which now that I look back, is probably the best thing I wrote about this whole commuter rail debacle. Unfortunately, it was nine months after the election.

Update: Lyndon responded with:

They've ordered non-FRA-compliant light DEMUs for this line. It qualifies as a "light railway" by all standards I know of within the transit industry. However, since it's non-electrified, it is NOT LRT. Operationally, it will be somewhat similar to the Camden-Trenton RiverLine light railway and the Sprinter light railway currently under construction in Oceanside (north of San Diego - which they're calling "light rail").

to which I answered:

Pop quiz:

1. What are the headways it will run at during peak times when it opens?

2. How will the passengers get to their final destination?

The answers to those two questions are:

1. 30 minutes, at best

2. Shuttle buses

Neither of those answers is compatible with the concept of "light rail". As you know. It's a pretty shoddy effort to claim that it's light rail because it's using a slightly less heavy, but still non-electrified, locomotive.

This project is commuter rail, and not a very good one at that (most commuter rail lines at least penetrate a major downtown area; this one does only by the most generous definition of the term, and doesn't come remotely close to any of the 3 or 4 other activity centers of the region).

Your insistence on applying the adjective "light" to it as frequently as you can suggests to me that you might be uncomfortable with your role in selling Mike Krusee's Austin-screwing transit-killer to the citizens and are trying to convince yourself that this pile of garbage really is a stack of roses.

Again, I refer you to this:

and then I inserted the original blast that this isn't light rail by any reasonable definition of the term.

Lyndon is one of the "good guys" which is why I hate so much that he's helped, as I mentioned, sell Austin down the river for Mike Krusee (whose constituents by and large aren't even Capital Metro taxpayers).

Horrible news

The Bjorkstens were good friends of ours, and had 4 daughters. KVUE says that the girls weren't home at the time. I've been trying to spread the news to everybody I know who knew them this morning but do not yet know if the girls found other family (have call out to friend who may know better). Quite a shock. Please pray for the girls.

The Casbjorksen Has Landed

Steve Casburn is finally online in Portland and is telling a familiar story - the bad bicyclist tale of woe. What I hear on the libertarian sites that I spend an unhealthy amount of time on is that Portland is a hellhole on the verge of collapse. Hopefully Steve, (who somehow got deluded by the liberal media into moving there without even having a job in advance) will survive the post-apocalyptic urban-planning wasteland. At least there's fewer fat people there.

Pastafarians unite!

I've never talked about religion on this blog, and haven't said much about personal matters in general. Today, however, I am filled with the holy impulse to tell you about the real story behind the creation of the Earth. Please share and make sure that this correct version of our origin is discussed in schools alongside the so-called "Intelligent Design".

Other links:

• Wikipedia on Pastafarianism
• New Intelligent Falling theory refutes and discredits the "theory" of gravity

Help for Rick Perry

I know this is late, but the conversation below did really just happen this morning.

(08:27:57) (me): ok I'm going to check this mofo in
(08:28:05) (cow orker): ok
(08:28:06) (me): speak now or forever hold your peas
(08:28:26) (cow orker): if I don't like it, I'll just take it out later, saying "adios, mofo"
(08:28:34) (me): adieu, mofo
(08:28:47) (me): aloha, mofo!
(08:29:01) (cow orker): perhaps the gov can add those to his list
(08:29:22) (me): the aloha is best, obviously, because you can also use it to say HELLO to your friendly neighborhood mofo.

Oh, and I was in DC from Sunday to Thursday last week. My wife got to ride the Metro. I was stuck in far suburban Virginia. Sigh.

On office locations

I've been working out in the suburbs ever since I moved to Austin in 1996. There just aren't many high-tech companies who have had the guts to disregard their CEO's wishes and move downtown, where many of the younger workers would prefer to work (at least that was the case at my last job).

First office was in far north Austin at IBM, from 1996 through 1998, and during that time I bought and moved into a condo in Clarksville.

Second company was S3 where I had four different offices in three and a half years (five if you count the twelve months or so I worked at home in the condo between offices #3 and #4).

Then, I worked at two far western offices at the last company.

I currently work at 183/Braker, which, for the suburbs, is about as good as it gets - I can and did take the express bus to work to assist on my bike commute from time to time. But it still couldn't beat walking a block to the #5 and busing 10 minutes downtown. I could only bike to work once a week at best because of the time it took, but if my office were downtown, I could easily do it 5 days a week.

So when the economy picked up, I started asking recruiters who contacted me where the companies were located (thinking I wouldn't bother talking to somebody in the 'burbs but might at least listen for a downtown position). I usually got the answer quickly; but one guy really didn't want to say, and then claimed that this spot was "central". Give me a break. When I explained that "central" meant "could hop a bus or ride my bike every day rather than once a week", he said they'd pay for a bus pass (closest stop is miles away) and provide free parking(!) FREE PARKING IN THE SUBURBS! YEE-HAW! WHAT AN UNUSUAL PERK!

As it turns out, I'm now leaving the current job because a combination of a benefits change that hit us really hard and a property-tax mortgage-company screwup made it impossible to afford to stay, which stinks, since I really like the work and the people. The new job will mean a commute out to my desk in my garage (which I had to air-condition in order to work all that overtime which ate up at least 6 hours a day every weekend day from Memorial Day to mid-August). It was mildly humorous when I asked my normal question, and they responded "you'd have to work at home", and I got to reassure them that it was a plus for me, not a minus. And as it turns out, the new people seem cool, and the work seems like it will be interesting too. But this is the first time I've ever quit a job I liked, which is a weird feeling.

Anyways, this all came up again today because a couple of threads today regarding Microsoft have mentioned the difficulty in getting people to move to Redmond. One of the threads thinks that people just don't want to move to the northwest, which I don't believe, but the second one gets it right - you can't expect your twentysomething ideal hires to want to work in the suburbs as much as the fiftysomething CEOs.

This is applicable to me since I've been through the early stages of the interview process with Microsoft at least three times now, but haven't yet found a group which wouldn't require physical office presence in Redmond. And even if we could manage the blended family issues and move to the Seattle area (where my stepson was born and my wife and his father lived for ten years), you'd have to double my salary to get me to live in Redmond or any other such car-requiring soul-destroying suburban wasteland (and living in Seattle and commuting to Redmond would be like what I just got out of in Austin, except five times worse).

Unfortunately, as Joel on Software pointed out and I mentioned with regard to AMD, the wishes of the employees mean absolutely nothing; almost all corporate moves are to make the office closer to the CEO's home.

(The rank-and-file workers at the last job, who were disproportionately the bright twentysomethings over whom all tech companies seem to want to fight, disproportionately live in the central city, like I do, but as far as I know only two have found jobs downtown - although another one has started a company on South Congress - on the other hand, the workers at the job I'm leaving are mostly family guys who moved here from RTP, where there is no 'center city' to be had, so there's no demand there).

So my new commute is twenty steps out to the garage. Now I have two things to try to figure out:

1. How to work exercise into the daily routine without a bike commute (although I wasn't doing it much lately anyways, I had planned to ramp back up since school's now out for the summer). Maybe walking on my hands to the garage will do it...

and

2. How to write about Shoal Creek Boulevard when I won't need to use it for my commute. Actually, that seems like a benefit rather than a drawback...

picture dump

January 2005 pictures are now up. This marks a momentous occasion - I am now less than six months behind in posting pictures! Unfortunately, the job I'm leaving in a week or two is where I have the scripts I use to do this...

There is no lie brazen enough for the road warriors

A month or two ago I wrote a letter to the Honolulu Advertiser (we had just come back from there, and I was still reading the paper regularly online) rebutting the claims made by various right-wingers that Honolulu wasn't dense enough to support rail. (As it turns out, if you're measuring residential density, they're the densest city in the country - yes, more so than even New York City!). This is coming up because Honolulu is attempting yet again to start a rail system after a disastrous flirtation with Bus Rapid Transit which ended as almost all such flirtations do - with a scaled back system that doesn't perform any better than city buses, and thus didn't attract any new riders.

Today I was reminded of this again since their their drive-time columnist included this small blurb at the end of his column:

Still think of Honolulu has a small town? Think again.

Emporis.com reports that Honolulu is fourth in the nation when it comes to the number of high-rise buildings (10 stories or more).

The company, which specializes in geography information, says there are 424 high-rise buildings in the urban core from Pearl Harbor to Hawai'i Kai. That's enough to make us 14th in the world.

In America, only New York City (5,454), Chicago, (1,042) and Los Angeles (449) have more high-rises than Honolulu.

And yet, even in Hawaii, there are those (like Cliff Slater) who claim that rail won't work in Honolulu despite the fact that it works in far less-dense cities and the fact that the huge tourist movement from the airport to Waikiki could fill up three or four rail lines in the blink of an eye.

How dense is dense enough? Clearly the only dense things here are the road warriors themselves.

picture dump

December 2004 pictures are up, including the Annual Brindle Christmas SingALong, Christmas at the Hassells, Christmas in Florida, and Universal Studios. I don't have the energy to caption these, because there's a TON of them, but there's some really good ones in here.

Not much room for optimism

Thought I'd copy this here for posterity - this is a comment I made to an excellent entry by Kevin Drum of the Washington Monthly blog, in reference to somebody who thought that since we adjusted to the 1970s oil shock (he's right on that one) that we could just as easily adjust to the oncoming (soon or later, depending on your alarmism) peak oil shock.

Adding this comment to my blog has made me recall that I still owe an analysis of "fire stations per capita" back to the Texas Fight guy. I'm sorry, I've been busy at work and at home, and will try to get this done soon.

My comment:

John,

The answer to why this shock will be much worse than the one in the 1970s is two words:

suburban sprawl

One thing Kunstler gets right is his analysis of the complete lack of options in a modern suburban development (really exurb) to the single-occupant vehicle and truck delivery to strip malls. There's no way to carpool. There's no way to use transit. There's no way to ride your bike or walk. There's no way for the store to switch to freight rail deliveries (not even the way it used to be, which was truck for only the last very small N% of the trip, if even that).

The ONLY things modern suburbanites can do are:

1. Trade in their SUV for a compact car - works well if you're one of the early adopters, but what if everybody else is trying to trade down at the same time?

2. Move back to the cities - see above.

We would have had to change our development laws twenty years ago in order to have a prayer of solving this problem, but instead we've been operating on a regime that not only requires urbanites to subsidize wasteful suburbanites, it actually PROHIBITS BY LAW (through zoning codes) the development of additional urban neighborhoods.

For reference, my last two homes have been in two center-city neighborhoods where 80-90% of the dwellings would be impossible to build today due to suburban-influenced zoning code which applies even in these older neighborhoods. Of course, to even get to that point, you'd have to overcome their fanatical opposition to infill, but every bit counts.

picture dump

November 2004 pictures are up.

Also will do Gregg's book-tag thing when I get some spare time...

Picture dump

October 2004 pictures are up.

Picture dump

September 2004 pictures are up.

You'd better be hedging

Some fairly respectable analysts are beginning to join "kooks" like Kunstler, although in a far less inflammatory way, in predicting that high oil prices are not only here to stay, but likely to get quite higher. The latest "Occasional Report" from CIBC World Markets lays out the case. Older "Occasional Reports" are also highly recommended, as they seem to cut through a lot of baloney and show how and where higher energy costs will hurt (without going flat-out lunatic like the idiots who think every N% increase in gas prices means an N% increase n the price of everything delivered by truck, for instance).

I've been hedging higher energy prices for a long time now - we paid a hefty premium for our house in central Austin, and part of the reason was that we could, much more easily than your average suburbanite anyways, drastically reduce our driving and/or switch to jobs better served by public transportation. (my current office is served about as well as any out here in the 'burbs, which is to say that I can take the bus each day by spending only about 40 extra minutes - as sad as that is, it makes me the winner here by far). We also bought a Prius in February of 2004 (after waiting five months) - again, a hedge; if we do end up having to drive a lot, at least it won't kill us. Well, as it turns out, we're only driving about 10,000 miles a year combined anyways, but every little bit helps.

The only problem is that hedges like this are largely a loss-amelioration strategy - they don't gain us anything unless inflation makes wages go up. The same group above thinks it won't this time, unlike in the 1970s, so the best we're really able to do is attempt to be a bit less screwed than the average suburbanite will be.

This hedging logic (whether you believe in local kook Roger Baker's Kunstler-like rants or not) should also apply to public infrastructure spending. I happen to believe that building the toll roads is a way to do this - the 'hedge' being that since the roads are going to be built either way (an assertion the environmentalists disgree with), it's better to have them paid back with tolls rather than with property and gas taxes (even if the tolls come up short, the impact on central-city residents is still less than with the typical free highway payment mechanism - remember, you still pay gas taxes while driving around central Austin, but none of that money goes to those roads - in fact, urban areas all over the country are screwed by the gas tax's bias towards suburban and particularly exurban areas). In other words, paying for the new toll roads with gas taxes simply makes things better for people at the far edges of Leander, and far worse for people living in Central Austin.

A better hedge, of course, would be a gradual overall increase in gasoline taxes with a mandatory minimum payback for major urban areas similar to what the Feds do with 'donor states'. But with the average suburbanite convinced that they're undertaxed rather than subsidized, it's simply never going to happen. Toll roads are, in this sense, the best hedge we can manage at this point in time.

For those interested - ways to hedge on energy costs which are easier if you live in an urban neighborhood than out in one of the soulless sprawlburbs:

• I can bike to work (up to 5 days a week) - right now I average once a week; mainly due to scheduling difficulties, but we could change this if we had to.
• I can take the bus to work - at a 40 minute or so penalty per day (which as mentioned above puts me ahead of pretty much anybody else here)
• I can get a job downtown (easier said than done) and reduce the transit penalty to near-zero
• We're within a (long) walk of 5 grocery stores - right now this means we have a very short drive; we only occasionally walk, but at least we CAN walk if it becomes expensive enough to drive
• We can walk to a battery of other shopping and dining choices (we do this quite frequently now)
• In an era of higher fuel prices, the places we shop are going to be less impacted than the strip-mall businesses, due to efficiencies of scale (cheaper to deliver to 5 grocery stores that are very close together than 5 that are very far apart)
• Our house is small - less air conditioning and heating costs
• Our house is old enough that it was designed before air conditioning - meaning we have enough windows for good ventilation most of the year

For these hedge privileges, however, we pay through the nose:

• The house price is far higher, per square foot, than in the 'burbs -- this is not purely because of location, but also because post-WWII zoning laws have artificially restricted the supply of walkable urban neighborhoods. Most of the homes on our street are illegal under current zoning code for various bogus reasons.
• Our city, county, and schools tax mainly through property taxes, which are a double whammy - not only are we appraised proportionally higher, but the property tax itself is often used in ways which subsidize suburban development - providing city services is far more expensive per acre in Anderson Mill than it is in Central Austin, but the Central Austinites pay orders of magnitude more property taxes.
• Those property (and also sales) taxes are often grabbed by the state and spent in ways which not only subsidize the suburbs, but hurt central cities - things like requiring local 'donations' in order to expand freeways. (The 1998 and 2000 bond elections floated tens of millions of dollars in bonds which were used to pay for right-of-way and other costs for roads like the far north extension of Mopac, SH45, SH130, etc - none of which provide any use for central Austin at all, yet central Austin is where most of that tax money comes from - and when a project IS proposed which affects central Austin, it ends up being a destructive force like the ridiculous proposal by TXDOT to double-deck Mopac).

Shoal Creek Updates

I will hopefully move some of this content to my old moldy Shoal Creek Debacle Page when I get time.

Brief introduction: Prior to around 2000, Shoal Creek Boulevard was a minor arterial roadway with extensive bicycle traffic in fairly wide bike lanes which allowed parking (which presented a problem, since modern engineering practice does not allow parking in bike lanes). Shoal Creek's turn came in the "put up no-parking signs in bike lanes" carousel, and the city came up with a plan to preserve on-street parking on one side of the street. The neighbors freaked; a consultant came up with a ridiculous cyclist-killer proposal; the city rejected it; and then a small group of neighborhood people came up with the idea to just stripe a wide "shared lane" for parked cars, cyclists, and pedestrians. With curb extensions to theoretically slow traffic, although since the extensions don't go out to the travel lane (so cyclists can pass), their effect is likely to be minimal.

Here's some stuff that's been happening recently:

1. The neighborhoods' email groups (allandale and rosedale) have been full of complaints about the curb extensions, as well as observations about bad driver behavior, including running over and up onto curb extensions. Additionally, neighbors have complained that the bike lane stripe (separating the bike lane from the parking lane) never got put in, which shows that some people didn't realize that the awful Gandy plan was shelved when no engineers would sign on to it. Finally, motorists have (as I predicted) been using the shoulder as a driving or passing lane.

Gandy's plan, endorsed by the neighborhood:

The current striping is basically the image above, with no stripe separating the bike lane and parking lane.

2. Neighbors still think there's a "bike lane" here. There isn't. There's a shoulder, with insufficient space in which to safely pass parked cars. (the absence of the stripe separating the 10 feet into 4 and 6 a la the Gandy plan doesn't change the geometry here - bicyclists must still enter the travel lane in order to safely pass a parked vehicle).

Images copied from Michael Bluejay:

3. Motorists are still expecting cyclists to stay in the bike lane. I rode home down Shoal Creek on Monday, and had some indications of impatient motorists behind me as I passed parked cars (no honking this time at least). Remember that even when there's a bit more room than in the pictures above, you still have to worry about the dooring problem. Even the city compromise with parking on one side had this problem (although to a far lesser degree).

4. Parked car and passing car conflicts continue to be high. Many people who supported this debacle from the beginning are still cowering behind the idea that since parked cars are "scarce" (average of ten on each side for the entire stretch from Foster to 38th), that we don't need to worry about the passing conflicts. The problem, however, is that due to the higher speeds of automobiles, there is a very high chance of conflict on each one of those passes, meaning that it is very likely that a motorist will slow down and wait behind a passing cyclist on each pass. In fact, on Monday, my experience was that 4 out of the 5 times I performed this passing manuever, there were motorists stuck behind me by the time I went back into the shoulder area; and the fifth time I found myself stuck while a car passed me (I didn't get out into the lane early enough).

5. People continue to misrepresent this process as a compromise (implying that cyclists got something, parking motorists got something, drivers got something, neighborhood got something, etc). In fact, any rational observer can compare conditions before this change to conditions now and make the following judgement: Parking won. Period. Cyclists got less than they had before, and far less than they should have had. The neighborhood got curb extensions (even though they won't work). Cyclists got the middle finger.

6. The City Council member most responsible for this debacle, Jackie Goodman, is being term-limited out of office. Unfortunately, I hold little hope that a stronger (i.e. decision-maker rather than consensus-hoper) member will emerge from the pack seeking election.

7. Neighborhood troublemakers are still misrepresenting the history of this debacle; failing to mention that the original proposal from the city for this roadway preserved on-street parking on one side of the road, which is more than almost any minor arterial roadway (SCB's original classification) has, and about average for collectors (SCB's new neighborhood-forced underclassification). This city proposal represented a substantial compromise of bicycle interests, but because it didn't preserve ALL on-street parking, several malcontent nincompoops in the neighborhood fought it bitterly.

8. The same neighborhood troublemakers continue to misrepresent Shoal Creek's role in the city's transportation system. SCB was originally (correctly) classified as a minor arterial, which means that its main purpose is not for property access, but for a combination of traffic collection/distribution and small amounts of through traffic. For cyclists, SCB is a critical transportation link, since it's so long, and has right-of-way at all intersections (meaning it never has a 2-way stop where through traffic doesn't stop; everything's either a 4-way stop or traffic light). SCB was reclassified thanks to neighborhood pressure to a "residential collector" around 2001ish, against my objections (I-TOLD-YOU-SO-MARKER: I told the other members of the UTC at the time that this change would make it easier for them to then prevent no-parking-in-bike-lanes). Also note that this makes SCB, by far, the longest collector roadway in the city. The neighborhood, ever since then, has claimed that SCB is a "residential street", which means something very different from "residential collector". A "residential street" is supposed to serve property access first, parking second, and distribution a distant third, with essentially no provision for through traffic. A "residential collector", on the other hand, is supposed to serve distribution first, property access second, through traffic third, and parking last.

The original city plan, preserving on-street parking on one side:

9. (Humor value only): One of the malcontent neighborhood nincompoops has surfaced again on my old fan group (from my undergraduate days; no, I didn't make it).

Sometimes I get it right

Right after reading the stories about more buyers being upside-down on car loans (and pointing out to my wife that we have a 72-month loan on the new family car), this story comes out, and all of the sudden I look like Einstien again.

Was planning a Shoal Creek entry for today (after riding to work on Friday), but discovered Friday morning that my road (commuter) bike was missing, presumed stolen. Spent Sunday outfitting my old mountain bike; rode it to the bus stop this morning, hopefully riding home this afternoon. Spent all day Saturday reconfiguring the garage so I won't be tempted to leave a bike out overnight (unlocked) again. I may shift gears and write a rebuttal to my John Birch Society commenter today over lunch instead.

new picture dump

August 2004 trip to Schlitterbahn on which we totally missed hooking up with the Russins

I'm back

Was in Hawaii for 10 days; back now. I have a backlog of things to write, but for the time being, here's a link to Michael Bluejay's Shoal Creek page which has now been updated with new pictures.

RIP, Joseph Henry Dahmus

My grandfather passed away in his sleep on Monday afternoon. Since I spent my first 9 years in State College and was one of the oldest grandchildren, I got to spend a lot of time with those grandparents as a kid, and will miss him tremendously. Even today I find my outlook on things shaped by what I observed at their house as a kid - the model he set by living close to work and walking to his office every day (even when retired) is what I end up trying to achieve in my own life (well into his 80s he was in better shape than most people I know today). Read the obituary for more on this extraordinary man.

A picture including four generations (Grandpa, my dad, me, and Ethan) from this July can be found here