For the last few months, I've been pondering a little incident in New York City. It was Memorial Day Weekend, and I was playing host to Felix, a friend from Mexico who had never been to the US. I'm not in the least a New York City guy, but this is my country. Felix had hosted me at his modest home in Oaxaca State, and now he was attending a United Nations conference of indigenous peoples, so I felt privileged to go to New York (by train, of course!) and show him around a little.

We had walked up Fifth Avenue, past imposing buildings, classic churches, and crowds of weekend tourists, to Central Park. I had been looking forward to sharing the park with Felix, but after ten minutes or so, he asked to go back to the streets. "I have plenty of trees where I live; I didn't come to New York to see more of them," he said. Of course, like any good host, I acceded to my guest's wishes and headed with him to the nearest park exit.

Felix and I had a good visit, and we both enjoyed the scenes of the city. We rode the A train all the way to Far Rockaway and basked briefly on the boardwalk by the sea. But his remark about the trees stuck in my mind like a bit of fiber caught between my teeth, and it wasn't until this morning that I was able to work it out in the shower (where my best thoughts often come!).

Felix grew up and lives on a rugged mountainside, cloaked in majestic trees. Right outside his family's front door are a coffee tree and a cacao tree. The scene is spectacular, uplifting, inspiring. Making a living there is tough, and they're isolated by lack of transportation and rains that turn the hillside into a slick mud-slope. Felix had to carry 50-kilo bags of cement on his back up the hill to build his house. I can understand why he doesn't totally "appreciate" the beauty of his spectacular mountainside retreat, and enjoyed seeing what it was like to live in a place where streets are level and well paved.

But I still felt disappointed that he hadn't spent more time in Central Park. It was certainly logical that he didn't want to "see more trees", and I couldn't understand why I felt let down.

Today's "shower insight" was this: you can't truly understand a city if you don't see - and appreciate - the parks along with the "concrete canyons". This is particularly true of New York City, where Frederick Law Olmsted began his career in park design, and with it brought the concept of green spaces into the heart of American urban design. In so many ways, Central Park is the "heart" of New York City, without which the totality of the city can't be appreciated. I feel the same way about Seattle, the loveliness of whose Freeway Park comes to mind often when I think of that city.

To me, the skyscrapers of a city are impressive and the trees are beautiful, but it's the sight high-rise buildings through the trees that brings me a true sense of awe. The contrast of the natural with the man-made is what expresses the full humanity of the city. Each without the other is insufficient for our needs. Humanity cannot reach it fullest potential living in a forest, beautiful as it may seem. Nor can it attain the heights of its capacity in a "concrete jungle".

I guess that's what I wanted Felix to see. I'm just sorry it took me so long to express it.

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PS - I've decided not to blog more from the Moving Minds conference. There's another day-and-a-half, and some of the topics, like transportation security, are beyond my scope. I'm sure a few more good ideas are will to pop out, but I'm also sure the majority have surfaced. Now, on to action!

Moving Minds 2

There were a lot of ideas bounding around in the Michigan League today, but many ideas recurred or were expressed in different ways. Here's my take on them:

• Coordination between modes of transport is essential, and there are many creative things we can do at points where modes intersect. People need to be informed where the intersections are, and what they can do at each one. In fact, looking at these nodes of intersection is a creative way to leverage scarce resources.
• Sharing resources is another universal need. The waste of having millions of automobiles spending most of their time taking up parking spaces calls for lots of creative thought. The Zip Car model is one solution; the "slug line" (flexible carpooling, mentioned in last night's blog) is another.
• Lack of information about public transportation is one of the biggest barriers to its use in the USA. There are many electronic solutions to dynamic information, like bus or train arrival times, but good signage and paper maps are the most reliable for static information like route maps. Electronic trip directions have a lot of potential, but in many cases haven't been perfected yet.
• Culture and psychology are significant barriers. Presenting a positive vision of the future is the best way to inspire people and get them to participate in change; fear (of climate change or terrorism, for instance) produces only short-term gains, followed by long-term resistance to change. An example that came up many times was GM's Futurama, a vision of a future where cars and highways brought freedom and the good life. Futurama was presented at the 1939 Worlds Fair in New York, and inspired the generation that created the Interstate Highway System.
• Psychologist Clotaire Rapaille identifies automobiles in the US as symbols of freedom, identity, and sex - extremely powerful forces in our lives. There is no way, IMHO, that public transportation can replace automobile's link to the identity and sexuality of many Americans, but I believe significant numbers of Americans now see cars being as much burdens as they are passports to freedom.
• The needs of the developing world are similar to those of the developed world, but the solutions are not. An information-intensive system is very appropriate for places where smart-phones and computers are a small fraction of the average person's annual wage. A simpler, less costly system is necessary in places where that's not true, or where literacy rates are low.

MOVING MINDS: the next transportation infrastructure

Moving Minds is the theme of this year's SMART conference at the University of Michigan (UMich). SMART is "Sustainable Mobility & Accessibility Research & Transformation", a project of CARSS, the Center for Advancing Research and Solutions for Society at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. I'll be passing along the highlights of the conference for you, day by day.

New Mobility Primer Salon: Pecha Kucha style

This was our first session. What's Pecha Kucha? It turns out it's the Japanese expression for "yackety-yak" or "yadda-yadda". The idea is to present a creative idea through a short, image-intensive presentation. (PowerPoint on steriods?) The limit here was 5 minutes. Of course, this won't make much sense without seeing the images, but I hope this will give you an idea what to look into more... I'll revisit this and add links to all the presentations SMART makes available on the Web.

What floated to the surface of this intense session? With so much being presented, everybody will have picked up something different. Here's what floated my way:

Changes in population and energy availability make for an extremely complex mobility problem, or rather, series of problems. There are no magic bullets (though there may be "magic buses"!). Rather, the solution lies in a combination of ingenuity and telecummunications, taking into account the needs of the diverse humans who need access to jobs, food, and entertainment.

Want to sample tidbits? OK, here goes...

GLOBAL MEGA-FORCES: Tom Gladwin, UMich
We seem to expect super-technical advances to solve our problems, but... Climate change, water availability, ecosystem health, population size, poverty prevenence, and urbanization are the mega-forces to confront. Interactions are complex, but climate change is the major driver. Climate refugees move to urban areas (slums) around the world, and all are poor, if not desperate.

ENERGY FOR TRANSPORTATION: Sue Nichols UMich Phoenix Memorial Lab.
Nothing is simple! What you love one minute, the next minute seems to have a lot of problems (the "Britney Spears effect" LOL!). Energy solutions need to be wholistic. Human nature resists change, and we get NIMBY, BANANA, and NOPE attitudes.

ACCESSIBILITY: Jonathan Levin, UMich Department of Urban and Regional Planning
Stats on who drives most shows per capita is related to population density. The purpose of transportaiton is not movement, but access. Accessibility = meeting our needs through mobility, proximity, or connectivity. Rather than measure vehicle miles traveled, a better measure of urban transportation is a rather complex formula encompassing distance and destinations such as jobs, entertainment, and life necessities.

SOCIAL JUSTICE AND TRANSPORTATION: Joe Grengs, UMich Department of Urban and Regional Planning
Social injustice: anything that holds back a person from reaching their full potential. People who live without cars in our auto-oriented world are largely invisible to us. What to do? Change land development patterns; measure accessibility. We need to see cities as made up of multiple worlds - not all from a dominant-group perspecive.

NEW MOBILITY AND INCLUSIVE GOVERNANCE: August Mathias, Advisor, National Confederation of Municipalities of Brazil
When government doesn't provide needs, people will take it into their own hands. the planning process should involve the people for whom the planning is being done, changing to a flexible, innovative, decentralized decision making process

TRANSIT-ORIENTED DEVELOPMENT: Deena Fox, Architect, Rossetti of Detroit
What is TOD? Walkability, connectivity, diverse and dense mix of uses, diversity of housing types oand price points; quality architecture, sustainable communities with good access to transit. Transit drives real esate development, producing a dynamic, memorable environment.

COMMITMENT TO HIGH SPEED RAIL NETWORKS IN SPAIN: Robert Polk, Former Director, Detroit DOT.
Mr. Polk was very impressed by Spain's commitment to high speed rail. They have invested $116B in HSR, or 1.5% of their GDP. An interesting fact: 0.1% of greenhouse gasses in Europe are emitted by trains, 3% by airlines, and 15% by road trafic.

BIKESTATION: Andrea White-Kjoss, Mobis Transportation
BikeStation provides sustainable "last mile"transportation linked to transit - bike parking, changing, showers, repair for bikes; e-accessible. Thirty bikes can park in the space of 1 car at their Washington DC Union Station site. "...not what it provides, but what it makes possible" - Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood, about the DC BikeStation.

500,000 TONS: Robin Chase, ZipCar
There are 325,000 members of ZipCar, using only 6,500 cars. Each normal (non-Zip) car requires 3 parking spaces (work, home, leisure), while a ZipCar requires only one. Robin estimates there is a 93% reduction in automobile usage (emissions, fuel use, parking...) among ZipCar members, 40% of whom do not own a car, due to change in driving habits. Paying for the car by the hour encourages more efficient habits, resulting in saving 500,000 tons of carbon emissions.

LESSONS FROM THE SLUG LINES -FLEXIBLE CARRPOOLING: Paul Minett, Trip Convergence Ltd.,
their goal is to "make it easier and more rewarding for people to share rides." In the San Fransicso Bay area and the DC area, there are informal ridesharing systems known in DC as "slug lines". People line up in designated places, like the BART station in Berkeley, and are picked up by people with cars who can save time and money crossing Bay Bridge into San Francisco. Paul observed 116 carpools being formed in 1 hour in Berkeley. 9,000 people in Bay Area use flexible carpooling each day. In DC "Slug Lines", 2,000 riders per day get to the Pentagon. Trip Convergence is setting up a new project in Seattle, aiming for more efficient organization.

AUTONOMY: Jeffrey Adik, Intraduce, on personal transportation and goods movement.
This hyper-slick presentation pushed automatic vehicles. Lots of graphs of several mentions of the Department of Defense were thrown at the audience, but not much of a coherent or realistic program.

DELIVERING THE GOODS IN CITY REGIONS: Sue Zelinski, UMich SMART Program
Goods movement is our teacher especially in Japan and Germany. Supply chain efficiencies; moving less stuff less far; reducing the impact of trips by using last-mile bike and foot couriers.

TDM AND TECHNOLOGY: Alan Huynh, University of Southern California, Urban Planning major
TDM = Transportaiton Demand Management, encouraging people to use alternative modes of transportation rather than build more highways. Alan spoke of the convergence of social media like Facebook, mobile technology, and Web 2.0 making transportation more personal; there are no cookie-cutter solutions, and it necessary to be sensitive to the culture of a region. But using technology can help bypass the mires of bureaucracy.

MAGIC BUS TECHNOLOGY PLATFORM: Adrian Fontino, Shepherd Intelligent Systems
Shepherd (SIS) is a spin-off of UMich; their system has been running 4 years on UM buses, now tracking AATA Route 6 (my route!!). They're working to solve what extensive research (and commonse sense) say are the toughest problems in getting people to feel comfortable using public transportation: Navigating unfamiliar cities; never know "when the damn bus will come!"; can't find the best way to travel from point A to point B via public transportation. Solution: great SIS algorithms for predicting bus arrival times!

EXCESS CAPACITY: Robin Chase reprise
ZipCar does for cars what hotels do for beds. Add open platform Web technology, and we'll get something like CouchSurfing for transportation! We need open devices, open data, open networks, engaging the common man.

GET DOWNTOWN: Nancy Shore, Ann Arbor Get Downtown
New Mobility hub network - people are what drive transportation; we need to help them integrate their transportation. Where do transportation modes intersect? (Parking, bus, bike storage, etc.) Those are hubs, and should be marked on maps along with bus stops.

THE PERSONAL VEHICLE: Dan Sturges, Intrago
Last-mile mobility, hybrid of personal vehicle and transit. 80% of people have trouble getting to a transit stop. Dan has designed several "Neighborhood vehicles"; A related venture, ItMoves, is working to provide a "mobility bundle" to help people get where they need to go by transit.

NEW MOBILITY HUB NETWORK CHECKLIST: Raj Cherubal
Lack of knowledge on the part of the public is frustrating. How do you multiply the benefit of transit? Raj proposes a quick checklist to engage designers in multi-modal transportation and prevent the many specialists from overlooking essential details unfamiliar to them.

MOADL (MOBILITY OPEN AMBIENT DATA LANGUAGE): Kyle Lawson
This is a proposed standardized way to organize and retrieve mobility information, that can be utilized within applications.

NEW MOBILITY AND USABILITY:Ilona Posner
Challenge: we spend a lot of effort building a product, but the user connection is often left as an afterthought. Usability guarantees the success. Enter, USER-CENTERED DESIGN, balancing needs of users, business, and technology. (This has been applied to lots of products, and we need to apply it to mobility design.) BTW, Ilona checked Google Maps, as we all do, to find the meeting venue: 100 Washtenaw Ave., Ann Arbor, MI. Try it - Google will take you to Ypsilanti instead!

HUMAN CENTERED DESIGN: Barbara Knecht, Institute for Human Centered Design, Boston
Meet the 21st century human for whom we are designing new mobility systems. Social sustainability! Not all humans are created equal, and as medical advances make a productive life for people who formerly would not have lived, we need to design mobility systems to meet their needs.

AFRICAN COUNTRIES - THE FRONTIER OF SUSTAINABLE ABNORMAL PROFITS: Andrew Russell, CEO of Kab Shuttle, Cape Town
Rather than talk about the Kab Shuttle enterprise, Andrew delivered a sales pitch for investment in Africa. Not too credible in certain respects, but perhaps some South Africans are desperate to get non-Chinese investment?

Inspiration from Rail~Volution

My last blog entry was such a downer (for me, at least) that I didn't send out a notice about it to anyone. If you haven't read it, now's a good time, because a) this will be an antidote, and b) I'm going to mention some stuff in it shortly. (Link to "Left Behind" here.)

So I'm in Boston now at Rail~Volution - "Building livable communities with transit". A couple of years ago, Megan Owens (of Transportation Riders United) recommended that I come to this conference, but last year I headed off to Japan instead. I'm glad I did, but this conference is "freakin awesome"! I don't feel any better about Michigan's situation, but I feel much more able to cope. I got good pointers from several people, I've seen lots of transit, a fair amount of transit-oriented development (TOD) and heard about much more, but most of all I've been inspired by the people and places that have made transit really work - and really bring prosperous development - in their cities.

It started with the first plenary session. Speakers included Michael Dukakis, former governor of Massachusetts and 1990 presidential candidate; Bill Millar, President of the American Public Transit Association (APTA); Ron Sims, Deputy Secretary (and COO) of the US Department of Housing and Urban Development; Peter Rogoff, Administrator of the Federal Transit Administration; and Derek Douglas, Special Assistant to the President for Urban Affairs. Big hitters.

Bill Millar is a wonderfully warm, loud and boisterous fellow, well placed at the head of APTA. He reminded us of all the great advances transit has made in the past year, including the opening of several new rail transit systems around the country, and of course the 180 degree shift in federal policy on transit with the new administration. This policy shift is also the reason why the FTA, HUD, and the White House were all represented here together.

You see, the President understands the close link between transportation policy, urban development, and quality of life. Sims emphasized the President's commitment to meeting diverse housing needs. Rogoff recognized that some metro areas are real pros when it comes to writing government grant proposals for transit, but many of the areas that need transit the most are newbies, and need help with the whole process. He will direct the FTA to shepard those areas through the process.

Douglas mentioned the President's commitment to more efficient ways of moving people around: the 50 major metropolitan areas of the country share one characteristic: congestion. The President has said that the US can't be globally competitive if we're burning up resources in congestion.

All of them stressed the essential nature of regional cooperation. Loners (jurisdictions that don't work with their neighbors) don't stand a chance of getting a government grant. And all the agencies - FTA, HUD, the Federal Railroad Administration, and the Federal Highway Administration - are committed to working together on grant approval. That's because of the realization at all levels of the interconnectedness of transportation and urban growth. What a waste of funds to build affordable housing where there's no transit. John Porcari, Deputy Secretary of Transportation, echoed all these messages when he took part in a panel today. At last, the federal government "gets it".

Today's plenary was an inspiration to persistence. Congressman Earl Blumenauer of Oregon knows how to work effectively over a long time period. As you may know, Portland is the "poster child" for light rail, streetcars, and smart growth; it's in his district. He is willing to work long and hard to get things moving - on rails or any other way that makes sense.

The final inspiration came from an unexpected source: John Cowman, Mayor of the City of Leander, Texas (population in 2000: about 7,000). I quoted him in my last blog entry. Yesterday afternoon I was on Boston's Red Line subway with a group going to see the Ashmont TOD site. I looked across the crowded car and did a double-take, seeing what looked like "John Cowman" on the conference badge of a very ordinary-looking fellow - in spite of his memorable name. OMG, I thought, is this the man I quoted in my blog last week without permission? If so, I'd better talk to him before he discovers it for himself!

It was indeed the Mayor of Leander. He turned out to be very friendly, and admitted to not using the Internet much, so I need not have been concerned about quoting him. He's very positive and projects an image of having succeeded almost by accident. Not at all, of course! He is a master of getting people to do what he thinks is right. He often says, "I just want to help," and "I just wanted to make things better."

He heard about smart growth from people at The Seaside Institute, and immediately recognized it as an opportunity to take his city from backwoods obscurity to sustainable prosperity. He campaigned successfully for the Austin-to-Leander commuter rail service I highlighted last time, and got Council to set aside a large area of town - 23,000 acres, or about 1/3 of the city - for TOD. How did he manage this in conservative Texas? (Well, maybe not as conservative as we thought?) A combination of political smarts, enthusiasm, a willingness to fight for his town, knowing his limitations, and what he calls "moxie".

Oh, and by the way...the employer coming to Leander is Valence Technologies, a maker of lithium-ion batteries and other green-energy equipment. (Michigan: are we green with envy?) According to The Statesman of Austin, Valence plans to employ 2,700 people by 2012, and 1,300 more by 2016, making 160,000 battery packs each year. Valence is an Austin company that currently manufactures batteries in China, but they've decided to bring their operation back home. Keeping local business in the area is the best way to grow our prosperity, according to many economists, because unlike outside companies they have roots and a stake in the community. And let me remind you: "the first words out of their mouth about why they selected Leander was, 'access to public transit.'"

I told Mr. Cowman how I impressed I was, and how much I wanted that kind of growth for my home town. He laughed and invited me to "come on down" and let him give me the "dime tour".

According to him, the best thing that had ever happened in Leander was a severe water shortage in the late 1990s, which forced the town to re-think everything about how they would operate. Michigan is in a pretty severe shortage now too - though it's not about water...

Bottom line from Rail~Volution for us in Michigan? Don't be discouraged. Use our misfortunes to re-think how we operate. Be humbly persistent, and very enthusiastic in our determination to turn things around. Use our resources, not limiting ourselves by thinking that resources = money and we don't have any. Use a lot of moxie!

Left Behind

Michigan is getting left behind. No, it's hardly the "rapture". As our state writhes in the grip of legislators who refuse to allow investment in our people or our infrastructure, population drops and industries leave. Planning Commission meetings in Ypsi Township are cancelled because there's practically no new development, and scant money to pay the commissioners for their time.

The economy is bad. But it's not like that all over the country. I subscribe to Rail magazine, ("Connecting Communities by Moving People") whose current issue features articles on five regions that have recently inaugurated new rail service. All are very much like what Wake Up Washtenaw has been proposing for the rail line north and south of Ann Arbor: (1) use a freight rail line that sees little freight traffic or has been abandoned, and (2) use diesel multiple-unit cars (DMUs). These paragraphs really jumped out at me in the article about Austin, Texas's, new MetroRail:

Leander Takes the Lead

Leander Mayor John Cowman is an enthusiastic proponent of Capital Metro's Red Line and of regional rail in general. He credits passenger rail with fundamentally changing the image - and future - of Leander (pronounced Lee-ann-duhr [li 'æn dr]).

"Our sleepy little hamlet, which many regarded as the laughing stock of the Austin region, [nothing like Ypsilanti, of course! - LK] has been awakened and rail is a key component in that change," says Mayor Cowman.

Indeed, the changes around Leander in the past decade have been significant. Since Cowman was first elected in 2003, the population of Leander has jumped from 12,000 to more than 30,000. [Probably half of them from Mexico and half from Michigan. - LK]

Today, significant transit-oriented development is underway in the town and the local economy has seen the arrival of several new employers. [Mostly relocating from Michigan? - LK] In 2005, Leander adopted a 23,000 acre transit-oriented development community plan that encourages more dense development as well as improved pedestrian and biking right-of-ways. [23,000 acres? WOW!!!]

"Recently, a manufacturing firm located itself here in Leander," says Cowman. "This brings hundreds of new jobs along with it, and the first words out of their mouth about why they selected Leander was, 'access to public transit.'"

For mayor Cowman and many residents of Leander, the approach of the Red Line is more than just a passenger rail link to Austin, it is an affirmation of the community's dedicated sales [...] tax to Capital Metro and [its] vote in 2004.

"We're energized by the train, we've been anticipating the day it starts serving Leander for a good while and it gives us a feeling that we did the right thing," says Cowman. "And since that vote, so many issues have cropped up like the economy and fuel prices that the train will help us manage."

But of course, nothing like this could happen here in Michigan, right? We're too dedicated to being left behind. No sense investing our dollars in a sinking state. *Sigh*

 

Courage in Government

We don't normally think about "courage" in our local government leaders and "bureaucrats". A few US presidents (not many!) have earned respect as courageous leaders, but it does take courage to make decisions that may be unpopular even at the local level. I saw a movie (Amazing Grace, 2006) about William Wilberforce a couple of weeks ago. He was the English Member of Parliament who almost single-handedly led his country to abolish the slave trade in 1807, half a century before we did in the US. It took Wilberforce several decades of frustration, ridicule, and threats to overcome the resistance of powerful merchants who had made their fortunes on the suffering of Africans. the argument then, as now, is that it was bound to hurt business and cause unemployment. England was the first country in the world to outlaw slavery, and I highly recommend seeing Amazing Grace to learn what it took.

A couple of examples of courageous government decision-makers have come to light recently. Nothing as earth-shaking as the abolition of the slave trade, but little decisions that can have long-term consequences for all of us.

Ypsilanti Mayor Paul Schreiber

Last Tuesday evening, September 15, Ypsilanti City Council was faced with the tough decision of what to do about AATA service. You may recall that residents of the City of Ann Arbor pay their full share of AATA service, but residents of the other jurisdictions where AATA runs pay only part of their share. The rest is picked up by federal grants, organizations like U of M that subsidize their staff and students' transit use, and ...residents of the City of Ann Arbor. Having encountered objections to this arrangement from Ann Arbor, the AATA Board of Directors decided to ask the other jurisdictions to pay more, gradually increasing over a 3 year period until they are paying their share. Then the recession hit.

The outcome (so far) for Ypsilanti is a Council resolution asking AATA to reduce service to a level the city can pay. The resolution asks AATA to eliminate the Ypsilanti portion of Route 5, Packard Road, and cut back the last night run on Route 10, Northeast, and Route 11, Southeast.

At first glance, the impact might seem minimal. After all, by the time Route 5 enters the city of Ypsilanti on Cross Street, it is running only two blocks from Washtenaw Avenue, where Route 4 runs every half hour, and six blocks from S. Congress Street, where Route 6 runs every hour. Why can't transit-users walk the extra two blocks to Washtenaw, or perhaps a little further to Congress? Maybe they could, but eliminating Route 5 makes it much harder for Ypsi residents to reach the parts of Ann Arbor served by Route 5, but not by Routes 4 or 6. I believe the issue is much the same as with the elimination of access to Arborland: at a time when more transit service is needed for economic and environmental reasons, it is being eroded.

The same is true of eliminating the last runs of Routes 10 and 11. The east side of Ypsilanti is already underserved by these two routes, which run only once every hour and only in one direction, using circular routes that discourage and confuse potential riders. I've already mentioned in this blog the need for much better service to the East Michigan Avenue corridor, and here we are cutting it back. East Michigan is a place where there is considerable night-life, so cutting the last bus of the night has the potential to hurt business there. (OK, so maybe the business there is not the most upstanding. But cutting bus service certainly won't help that.)

Ypsilanti City Council's resolution also called for use of Federal (stimulus) funds to cover the remaining shortfall. A one-year solution at best. It's always easier to ask someone else to pay for what you want, isn't it?

And what of Mayor Schreiber? He cast the lone vote against the resolution, saying bus service is a high priority for many reasons (according to WEMU and AnnArbor.com). Now, that took moral courage. Ypsilanti would have to come up with funds to pay for the service, and very few people in public office are willing to stand up for anything that will cost more money, even if it will save them money in the long run, as transit does. I'll come back to this shortly.

WATS Executive Director Terri Blackmore

The second courageous action was a decision made by the WATS Policy Committee, specifically the WATS Executive Director and the staff. If you've followed this blog for a while, you may recall reading about the Washtenaw Area Transportation Study, the county-level authority for allocating transportation funding. One of the big tasks WATS faces is the revision every five years of a 25-year transportation plan for the county. It's the result of analyzing all the county's transportation needs and dividing up available and anticipated funds for different types of projects. The new 25-year plan was finalized at Wednesday's WATS Policy Committee meeting (September 16).

To understand the situation, here is a look at the planned allocations. These two pie charts show the percentages recommended for different types of projects five years ago (in the 2030 plan) and now (the 2035 plan):

Here's a table comparing the allocations.

Improvement Type	2030	2035	Cost (000’s)
Bridge	16.4%	6.8%	$68,743
Capacity and New Road	13.7%	12.4%	$126,685
Intersection	6.9%	0.9%	$8,851
Studies and Miscellaneous	6.9%	0.3%	$2,671
Resurface/Reconstruct	39.6%	42.7%	$432,874
Non-motorized	3.4%	2.8%	$28,154
Safety	1.1%	0.7%	$6,941
Signal	5.1%	0.3%	$1,292
Transit Capital	6.9%	33.3%	$337,020
	100.0%	100.2%	$1,013,231

It's the Transit Capital that I'd like to draw your attention to, of course. Such a massive leap in percentage allocation! Naturally, Wake Up Washtenaw is in favor of this increase because we believe if shows an understanding of the true needs of the future, and it takes courage to put that into numbers. To make that increase, it was necessary to reduce the percentages recommended for bridges, capacity, new roads, intersections, traffic studies, non-motorized transportation, safety, and signals. There are a lot of people likely to be dismayed by each of those reductions - I'll come back to that in a moment.

First, a couple of notes: most important, the cost estimates don't represent existing money. They represent needs, and a reasonable estimate of what we should expect to pay. Coming up with real money is another challenge. Also, the Safety category wasn't listed in the 2030 plan, but the total in that plan added up to only 98.9%. It's just my guess that the missing 1.1% (in gray) was allocated to that category.

The Courage of their Convictions

Both Blackmore and Schreiber are to be commended for standing up and allowing themselves to be counted in potentially unpopular decisions. If you're a transit supporter, or an environmentalist, or a "smart growth" advocate, you may wonder why anyone would question these two decisions. Well, there are plenty of people who would:

• Small-government people, whose position was well articulated by a friend of mine: the role of government is to legislate and regulate, not to provide services - that should be left to private business. They're not necessarily even the "tea party" shouters. The problem is, there are services that are necessary to community well-being which can't necessarily make money on their own; transportation is a prime example. These people usually insist that government does everything inefficiently, holding up one or two examples and ignoring the many recent cases where private business has cost us more money than anything else.
• The folks who want to let somebody else pay. These are the people who want all the benefits of civilization without paying for it. They're the ones who vote against any and all taxes, and then complain loudly when their cul-de-sac isn't plowed by the County immediately after each snowfall.
• Car-worshippers: "You'll have to pry my cold, dead hands off my steering wheel before I'll give up driving, so why should I subsidize someone else's public transit ride?"
• The complacent: whether because they're comfortable now, or because they don't believe there's a storm over the horizon, they just think things will continue indefinitely the way they are now.
• Those who believe public transit is the wrong answer: many people believe transit is simply too expensive and underutilized because of the spread-out nature of our cities and suburbs. They're right as far as that goes, but don't see one step further: that we're spread out because of publicly-funded roads that made it cheap to spread out - for a while.
• Most elected officials: unwilling to risk voting for anything that might jeopardize their re-election or campaign contributions, no matter how necessary the measure may be.
• The highway/developer/real estate lobby: the many businesses that make (or made) a good living from the automobile-based economy, and you may be sure that even now they have enough money to mount a powerful campaign against anything they believe will threaten them.

With all these groups opposing spending more for public transit, it takes courage to stand up and insist that we find the money for it. According to the September, 2009, calculations, riding public transit saves individuals $9,147 annually, but even a fraction of that to pay for transit would be opposed by most of the groups I just mentioned. In the future, citizens looking back will wonder why doing the right thing was so hard, just as we do when we look back at William Wilberforce's effort to abolish the slave trade. (If you're not sure why transit is "the right thing", take a look at the June 9 blog, which recaps the advantages.)

And of course, a hearty Thanks! and Well Done! to Paul Schreiber, Terri Blackmore, and the staff at WATS: Ryan Buck, Eric Bombery, and Nick Sapkiewicz!

Highball for HyRail?

It's gone under several names: HyRail, Hydrogen Superhighway, and Interstate Traveler. It's been accused of being "sci-fi". It's a transportation system, it produces and distributes electricity and hydrogen fuel. It won't cost the government a penny, but it will provide millions of jobs. It's the brainchild of Justin Sutton. Unfortunately, it's still a dream.

What is it really? In a nutshell:

• Transportation: maglev vehicles of various sizes will travel along pairs of rails containing superconducting magnets
• Energy: a central conduit covered with solar panels will generate power to move the vehicles, while extra power will be converted to hydrogen using electrolysis; the hydrogen will be used to generate electricity to run the system during the dark hours, so it will be entirely self-powering
• Distribution: pipes in the conduit will carry water for electrolysis, hydrogen to storage, fiber optic cables for communication, and large amounts of electricity using the supercooled pipes needed for magnetic levitation
• Where: along existing rights of way - highways or railways; the tracks are elevated maybe 15-30 feet above the ground
• Financing: Revenue is expected from generating and distributing energy as well as from farebox, and will be shared 50/50 with right of way owners; the economic model looks very promising
• Environment: produces zero greenhouse gasses, and being elevated, has a very small footprint on the ground
• Vehicles: can be made by any company that meets the ISO specifications now being drafted
• Speed: the goal is to top out at about 180 MPH.
• Manufacturing: could be anywhere, but Interstate Traveler LLC is based in Michigan, so Justin says they'll be starting in Michigan.

What's not to like about this plan? Absolutely nothing, the way Justin tells it. Several Michigan legislators are supportive; State Senator Valde Garcia (R-Livingston) and State Reps Bill Rogers (R-Livingston/Oakland) and Mike Huckleberry (D-Montcalm/Ionia) held a hearing on the energy implications of the system this morning at the University of Michigan. All were positive about the proposal. Politically, it's a sure win: no tax money to be allocated, but possible revenue and jobs to be gained.

I was skeptical when I went to the hearing, and remain skeptical after attending. Not opposed in any way. It all sounds so good, I just have to ask, is it too good to be true? The concepts are great. The math seems solid, both the physics and the finances. The assumptions appear conservative. The graphics are cool.

But there are no prototypes. Nothing has been tested against reality. Computer models are fine, but they're talking about lots of stuff that has never been put together before. Solar panels are reliable; hydrolysis has been used a long time to make hydrogen; superconducting magnetic levitation is in commercial - but limited - use; elevated guideways have been used reliably in many places. But these technologies have never been put together, and never on this scale. There are no working models or prototypes of the proposal, not even a quarter kilometer of track has been built, let alone tested.

So a lot of up-front work still has to be done before this will rise to a confidence-level that will attract private funds. Justin is avoiding public funds, even for R&D. More power to him! But can he attract funds from cautious private investors without anything more than cool pictures and computer models? That's the big question now.

Good luck, Justin!

Check out the company's Web site for yourself. What do you think?