My comments on the SPC 2040 Plan

The Southwest Pennsylvania Commission (SPC) is the metro Pittsburgh area's official municipal planning organization (MPO). This means that any major transportation project in the nine-county region in this corner of the state has to be cleared through them if it is to receive any federal funding. SPC also is required to develop long-range plans from time to time, and each time they do, they request public input.

Today was the deadline for public input on their draft long-range transportation plan, the 2040 Long Range Transportation and Development Plan for Southwestern Pennsylvania. I did not have time to do a blow-by-blow analysis of all 263 pages of the PDF document. I did have time to express my philosophical approach to what I think the world is going to look like by 2040 and how we should plan for that. To that end, this is what I sent them.

*

I think it is safe to say that if "peak oil" has not already happened -- and the experts say it HAS already happened -- then it certainly will by 2040. Combined with rapidly rising petroleum demand from China, India and other developing nations, chances are 100% that the cost of gasoline and diesel fuel will rise far beyond what it costs now, in that time, as measured in dollars constant to 2011. The actual pump price will be even higher, sooner, when fuel related costs in turn push up the cost of everything else.

In short, we are soon going to be at "peak car". The future is simple: fewer cars, less driving. If gas goes to $10 or $20 a gallon in 10 years, are we really going to be driving all that much? No, we're not. And yes, gas WILL cost that much by 2040.

With that as backdrop, I believe that any long range transportation plan has to reflect this simple mantra: Stop building roads, just fix what we have, and start making it easier to get around by anything other than an automobile. Bicycles, buses, pedestrians. There will be a lot more of that, and a lot less driving.

* Major new roads: Just stop. Nothing. No more. None.
* Additional lanes to existing roads: Precious few.
* Fix what's broken. The money will come from NOT building major new roads and additional lanes.
* Start thinking about FEWER driving lanes, more room for cyclists. I think the buzz word is "road diets".
* Sidewalks: Yes. Anything that gets built or fixed, needs a sidewalk, or at least a walkable shoulder (free of washouts, poison ivy, 2" deep mud, etc.)
* Pedestrian crossings at intersections: Yes. Lots of these.

Have you ever heard of "The Popsicle Index"? Think of yourself as a parent, allowing your 8-year-old child to walk to the store to buy a popsicle, and return, unassisted. What is your comfort level, as a percentage, that the kid will get there and back, safely? Aside from boogeymen jumping out from behind trees, the biggest fear is being hit by a car. That right there usually brings down The Popsicle Index in an area significantly, and that right there is squarely in the sights of long-range transportation planning. If we as a region cannot let our kids walk around without getting killed, then we as transportation planners are not doing our jobs.

I think I've said enough. Stop building roads! We need bicycle infrastructure, we need public transit infrastructure, we need to stop making it easy for cars to speed, and we need to be able to get around without needing a car in the first place.

OK, your move. Thank you for listening to my spiel.

Sincerely,

Stuart M. Strickland

Planning public transit (an old blog post)

Have a look at this post from my old MySpace blog. (Don't worry, it's not MySpace itself; I ported it from there last week. I also updated all the links.) It describes how different the transit experience is for several people who are geographically very close.

http://unicycleintransit.blogspot.com/2011/06/planning-public-transit-sept-25-2007.html

Thanks!
Stu

Funding transit: Stu's plan

Prefatory note: This post attempts to serve three purposes. First, PA Governor Tom Corbett has formed a Transportation Funding Advisory Committee whose purpose is to recommend ideas for both transit and highway/bridge funding. Second, a formal committee of Allegheny County (PA) government is soliciting suggestions on fixing the transit funding dilemma at a local level. Third, a group of transit planners and activists in various cities, using Twitter to contact one another, is pooling ideas for transit funding. This is my entry for all three.

In placing before you my ideas and suggestions for transit funding, I need to make clear the beliefs that guide my thinking. Following that, I will point out the likelihood of our having to live with this transit funding plan for an extended time. Next I will describe my tax plan, along with suggestions on how to sell it to elected officials and also the general public. Let us begin.

Belief #1: I believe transit keeps money in the state while automobile use causes it to leave. This should be fairly obvious, as most gasoline used in PA does not originate from PA petroleum, as it once did. Transit dollars are primarily spent locally, through salaries, wages, benefits, parts, supplies, advertising, etc. While buses obviously do also use petroleum, the "passenger-miles-per-gallon" figure for transit buses is still much higher than single-occupant commuter automobiles. Thus, encouraging transit and discouraging car use benefits the state economy directly.

Belief #2: I believe the Energy Information Administration (of our own national government) and the International Energy Association (consortium of 28 nations), each of which concluded that the world has passed the point of "peak oil": that no matter now much may yet be down there, and no matter how many wells we drill or where we drill them, all of humanity cannot extract it any faster than we were able to in November 2006.

Belief #3: I believe $4 gasoline will soon be viewed as cheap. Since many Third World countries like China and India are increasing their populations of automobiles at an amazing pace, we Americans are now competing for that same now-stagnant (and soon to decline) stream of petroleum. Gasoline may seem expensive at $4/gallon, but an inevitable, inexorable price rise is only getting started.

Belief #4: I believe road expansion should cease entirely. If we cannot afford to maintain the road system we have now, we should not be building more.

Belief #5: Regarding the constant political battles over transit, I believe the turmoil deters people from wanting to try using it. I believe the battles must cease entirely if we want transit to succeed.

The problem before us now is to implement a funding formula to sustain public transit systems -- Port Authority of Allegheny County here in metro Pittsburgh -- in a mere 12 months. This might be considered short term in the overall scheme of things, but what we implement will likely be with us for many years, even decades. It's been nearly 50 years since public transit as we know it got a makeover, almost 70 since the last major tax policy change was implemented. In 1945, the Pennsylvania Constitution was amended, in what is now Article VIII Sec. 11(a), restricting motor fuels taxes to paying for highway and bridge maintenance. While this seemed to make sense at the time, it helped kill the privately operated, tax paying, public transit systems of the time, causing them all to go bankrupt over the next 20 years. The resulting government takeover created the single, county owned and operated, transit systems we have today. Whatever we come up with, we need to realize that for the next 10 or 25 or more years, we will have to live with the system we are now putting in place, and it will be in a world that does not use much gasoline, compared to now.

Consider those three thoughts together: declining world petroleum supply, increased world demand for petroleum, and a tax system now based on petroleum usage. The world as we have known it for four generations will be replaced in the next generation. The game is changing, and any proposed solution that does not accept that will not work.

To that end, my primary solution is only partial, not intended to be a complete answer to all our funding problems. Do this, but do other things too that might work. There are four components to this, each of which will require legislation in Harrisburg, if only to enable the counties involved to do it for themselves:

(a) I recommend a Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMT) tax, in addition to the various forms of fuel taxes. Using numbers obtained from PennDOT (http://twitter.com/#!/PennDOTNews/status/64051033332125696), assessing $1 per 1,000 miles traveled would bring in $88 million annually. Since PennDOT already tracks odometer readings and collects money through both the vehicle registration and inspection programs, assessing this should be fairly easy.
(b) Once collected, the funds would be allocated to the counties in proportion to where the vehicles are registered. The public transit agency or agencies in these counties would directly benefit.
(c) Set up transit districts where many counties and agencies share a common transportation need -- such as the counties surrounding metro Pittsburgh -- and apportion the funds within that district based on the number of weekday revenue hours provided by each agency.
(d) I leave it to the politicians to decide on a multiplier other than $1 per 1,000 miles traveled. I recommend $5.

The next problem is selling this idea to legislators, apart from the public as a whole. The reality of the political climate is that Republicans do not want any new taxes. This must be sold to them on the basis of its being an update to an existing tax. Here's why: A growing number of cars are either hybrid or all electric, and as fuel prices rise, this is liable to become more pronounced. Whether a car's motive force is powered by petroleum, electricity, solar panels, hydrogen, or a wood-fired steam boiler, it's still a car, and contributes to traffic congestion, and wear and tear on the roads. More importantly, much of the time, its use competes with public transit. The more that drivers can use transit instead of a car, the better able transit would be to pay for itself. The commuter who uses the car for the "last mile" -- from transit stop to home -- will pay a much smaller VMT than one who commutes the whole way by car.

Fuel taxes will still be needed, as this is how roads and bridges will be maintained. This was the specific intent of the 1945 amendment. If the existing fuel taxes do not provide enough revenue to keep our roads and bridges in good repair, then raise the tax. If this cannot or will not be done, then close some roads and bridges. The simplest, most effective change would be to change the fuel tax from a per-gallon to a per-dollar basis.

The VMT, not being a motor fuels tax, would be constitutional for funding transit, and would provide the most revenue where also exists the most need for transit. It is also self-correcting. Say, for example, 10,000 additional cars were registered in Elk County next year, each driving 10,000 miles annually, then Elk County would have $100K more a year to implement or expand a transit system to alleviate the congestion all those cars would cause, and in so doing, avert or delay spending lots more money to widen roads and bridges to handle such traffic.

The final problem is to sell this to the public. For that, I propose developing an online game -- perhaps a couple -- to help people visualize these ideas along with competing and often ill-conceived, functionless, or even counterproductive suggestions. My inspiration for this is a New York Times online app accompanying a story on how to close the federal budget deficit, both near term (2015) and long term (2030) (http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/11/13/weekinreview/deficits-graphic.html). The first of two games would be similar to that.

I also suggest another, more complex game, that would appeal to the higher thinkers in our midst. I envision an app that takes a few variables under the player's control -- e.g., fares paid, taxes paid, driver salary/benefits, different types of taxes -- as well as a couple of variables not under player control, such as fuel taxes, and unemployment levels. Bar charts would indicate the number of people stranded without transit service, total taxation, and the amount of money leaving the area in fuel costs. Another could indicate the amount of structural deficit not yet eliminated. A GIS-enabled map of Allegheny County would get lighter and darker according to the areas served or stranded by transit routes and the level of service provided on them.

Under this would have to be a fair amount of programming to display the map and all these variables. However, the greater difficulty would be in quantifying the effect of all these variables into a formula. Perhaps APTA or a transit-friendly think tank already has such a game that could be adapted for Pittsburgh's specific needs. Still, being able to see what happens under various scenarios may prove essential in selling this to the greater community, especially if explanations, definitions, links and other documentation are built into the games at various decision and display points. We cannot and will not convince the willingly close-minded, so don't try. Focus instead on those with open minds.

With all that said, it is only a suggestion, a plan, a hope. I cannot expect to be taken so seriously that my ideas are just dropped into place without challenge. I do hope, though, that my precepts are taken seriously. Some may doubt me, but I think it would be impossible to prove me wrong.

Empty buses my foot

The plan this morning was to attend an ACTC committee meeting, followed by the Port Authority Board of Directors Stakeholders Committee meeting, but because of a last minute change in plans, I ended up doing something much more important: I rode a bus home. Let me tell you about that bus ride.

8:45 I check the timetables at the Wood Street T station and verify that an outbound 12 McKnight would be due in five minutes. Excellent. I've caught this bus, or its predecessor 12A McKnight Shopper, hundreds of times. Off to 9th Street at Penn Avenue I go.

8:50 A gaggle of people are waiting, but as this stop is shared by several routes, I did not think much of it, merely verified that the 12 had not yet gone. A couple of minutes pass, but not enough to be of any concern.

The bus shows up at 8:54, within the five-minute window for timeliness. It does not remain that way. Bus 5003 has a mechanical problem, the rear door won't open, but that's not the real problem. The bus is jammed to capacity from its inbound trip, and to my surprise, all nine of us waiting at that stop board here.

From here, let's pick it up from my Twitter stream, verbatim. This was all documented as it happened. All I've done is to timestamp the tweets that I did not already key in a timestamp. (Quick primer on Twitterese: bc=because, inb or ib=inbound, ob=outbound, w=with, wo=without.)

8:54 12 ob 5003 9St at Penn Av. 9 of us boarding packed bus. Packed bc 1st ob stop wo discharging (much of) anyone ib. Easily 50 aboard.
[Translation: Boarding an outbound 12 at 8:54, bus 5003, at the corner of 9th Street and Penn Avenue, Downtown Pittsburgh.]

9:00 Inb riders trading stories of O12s passing people up. This 12 isn't to the point of refusal but IS uncomfortable bc rear door won't open.

9:04 42 boarded at the Liberty & 7St stop. 9:02 crossing Penn. Almost 10 minutes late, partly bc of overcrowding bc of reduced trips.

9:07 The extended dwell time was partly due to the bad door, but getting 50 people off and 50 other people on at just two bus stops is bc cuts.

9:10 Throw a detour in there and we're now almost 15 minutes late. 9:10 Cedar at ENorthAv.
[Note: That trip of the 12 is due at E North & Middle, one block later, at 8:57. ]

9:13 One off, 6 more on. This is nuts. People are yelling to move back but it's jammed back there, too.

9:17 If a wheelchair rider showed up, we'd have to pass him up. There's almost no room for another standee let alone a w/c.

9:20 On East St at Venture. Squeezed two more on. Weird Al Yankovic, we hear ya. Baytree St, yet another.

9:22 I am jammed against the left front wheelwell so I have a perfect vantage point. Ivory Av, one more on.

9:25 Lady mid bus wants off. Actually 4 people. Dwell time at that stop was on the high side of 1:50.

9:28 Red Lobster stop dwell time 1:25.

9:29 Flowerama stop, about 30 seconds. I can see the back of the bus now.

9:31 Nhills Village, still 12 standees.

9:35 Ross Park Mall. Still 10 standees approaching mall.

9:38 23 off at mall. One standee but lots of seats. 17 still on board.

9:44 Northway Mall, almost normal. Someone sitting in traffic on McKnight would look in & wonder why Port Authority runs half-empty buses.

9:55 2 off at Kane, 4 at McIntyre Square, I'm next at Perrymont, 5 left. Empty buses indeed. Recall that the inb trip was at capacity, too.

10:14 Home. Blog post underway, hope to have it up by lunchtime. 80-minute trip from 9St/Penn, normally 57 by bus & foot on this route.

That's the blow-by-blow. Take a look at that. There was not a missing bus prior to this. At least 51 people got on at two stops Downtown, as counted by me, who could see every head getting on and off through the one operable door. That is vastly different from similar pre-cut trips, which were busy -- often to standing, but not to capacity even before crossing the Allegheny.

The peak load for that trip, by my count, was 61 people. The actual rider count would actually be higher because some got off before others got on.

The trip was mighty uncomfortable. With 61 on board and 39 seats, that means 22 people were trying to hang onto whatever was available, and on the 1999 Neoplan low-floor buses, there isn't much to hang on to in the front half of the bus.

People were standing in front of the white line because they had to. This also occurred on the inbound O12 I was on earlier, and likely occurred on the inbound trip of the 12 I boarded. Three trips, three technically illegal loads. There's something wrong with this picture.

Note that this is a morning outbound trip! The primary direction of travel in the morning is inbound. There is no earlier choice. The prior trip left town a full hour earlier, 7:50.

By the time we got past Ross Park Mall, the load had thinned to the point where, had someone looked in the bus from a car sitting in traffic, because of the low-floor design of the bus they would not have seen a lot of people, yet there were still 17 people on board. I am certain that some of the public thinks nobody rides the buses because they don't see anybody on them. Those most likely to think this are those who most often see a bus when sitting in traffic near the outer terminus.

The bus was seriously delayed by being overloaded. Dwell times -- the time the bus is stopped to board or deboard a passenger -- are commonly 20 seconds for a couple of people. Being stopped for 40 seconds is unusual. We had to stop for up to two minutes on several occasions. The bad door was a factor Downtown, but it did not impede the inbound trip, as it was only four minutes late arriving Downtown, perfectly normal.

The problem is a lack of service. Sixty-minute headways are not enough for the 12 McKnight, either direction.

I had the sensation that I was riding a third-world transit bus. This is not the third world. Why are we trying to make it so?

Our intractable transit problem, and a solution

This blog post is in two parts. Part 1 states the problem. Part 2 states the solution.

Let's start with Part 2.
* The voice of the people must be ignored, as the people are misinformed.
* The voice of the government must be overruled, as wrong-headed beliefs are in control.
* The power of the media must be nullified, as it does more harm than good.
* The voice of labor must be heard and heeded, but they are not wholly in the right.
* The plans of transit management are roughly accurate, but like labor, not wholly in the right. More they are incomplete than incorrect.
* Ignore labor-management disputes. Just give labor what they want. It's the cheapest and simplest way.
* Different taxing structures must be put in place, and quickly, and against the will of the people and their representatives. See first two bullets.
* Revenues to fund transit must increase $30 million to $50 million annually, locally, beyond what the current taxing structure now brings in.
* All cut bus routes and trips must be restored, including the full TDP implementation.
* Beyond that, $20 million additional must be spent to implement information technology improvements that will make the system more usable by everyone.
* Not to act to do the above is worse, as we will lose a system that actually does work. See first bullet.

That is the solution.

Now let's move on to Part 1.

One time back in college, the dining halls had a fly infestation. Flies around trash are nothing new, of course, but that one month, they were out of control everywhere. I'll spare the details, save one. Someone painted a sign saying "Welcome to [X] Dining Hall! Order sh*t. Can 10,000,000,000 flies be wrong?"

No, indeed, ten billion flies are not wrong, but that doesn't change the fact they fed on sh*t, and the sh*t was both plentiful and of excellent quality. It was not possible to enjoy eating, so pervasive was the cloud of flies. And with that as intro, we turn now to public transit in metro Pittsburgh.

It is simply not possible to discuss this topic in a rational manner at any level with any significant number of people. The vast majority of people with an opinion on the topic got it from the media in some manner, with the most opinionated set coming from hate ^H^H^H^H talk radio. Most opinions come from a fairly narrow set of sources: PAT staff. Union leadership. The Allegheny Institute. A political party machine, either one, any level.

Everyone thinks themselves right. Everyone has a piece of the story. I alone have no serious ties to any party yet am properly informed by all that matter.

Probably I pigeonhole well, too, though in the past year I have tried to consider all sides. I took a good bit of heat from various quarters following the many blog posts I wrote over the last year. (List of links: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22) Some of that criticism indeed was accurate, enough so at least that I now try to listen more and speak less.

With the political machinery returning to its annual routine, and the dreaded cuts now in place, it is time to return to the matters at hand. Wounds are raw, and the salt shaker is near. Add to that the sheer number of badly misinformed and highly opinionated people, and what you get is a constant pointless argument.

I am at a loss. Reason is ignored. To do any more than I've done is to resemble a child having a temper tantrum. Government reps of both parties are not only not helpful, they are anti-help. The media is worse, feeding us even more sh*t while smelling blood and circling for some imminent pending kill. Democracy as a viable form of government can only work when the populace is educated, and that isn't happening here. How's your German? Wir sind gefickt. [translate]

Transit, football, and pots of soup

Pittsburgh is crazy about football, and it's a good analogy for the transit situation. Both teams are trying to move the ball from one end to the other and score points. Yay, the union scored a goal! Yay, management upped the score! Go team!

In football, however, nobody cares about the condition of the ball. Players jump on it, throw it on the ground, kick it all over the place, and it often flies through the air, landing out of bounds. Who cares about the ball!

In public transit, riders are the ball. Nobody cares about the riders, really. We're kicked and pushed around just like the football. How different a football game would be if, instead of a leather ball, it was played with a pot of soup. Carry that soup pot and jump on it all you want, but don't spill the soup!

To this end, I do not care if there's a union, nor do I care if there's a Port Authority. I just want to have a bus to ride! They're both spilling the soup when they argue.

However, there are really three sides to a football game: Officials! Officials, in this case our elected representatives, really decide what happens. They don't so much spill the soup as spoil the soup. "No you can't add ingredients." "Yes, you must add paprika and I don't care if you hate paprika." Right now they're saying, "No, you can't plug in the burner under the pot."

Enough already! We riders want our soup. We do not want it spilled. We do not want it spoiled. Figure it out! Don't spill our soup!

Point-specific timetables, an example

So simple, yet so complicated: Catching a bus [written 2008]

A half minute ago, laptop in hand, I boarded my bus to the local public library. It was an unamazingly commonplace activity, free of any problem or annoyance.

But it wasn't that simple, for I used a bit of self-developed technology I wish everyone had. The simple part was that I just checked the bus time on the hand-built schedule I affixed by magnet to the side of my refrigerator, and made sure I walked out the door by that time.



Yes, that seems simple, but consider what most transit riders face. All they have to work with is a printed bus schedule, which merely tells you when the bus passes certain points. My "value added" is to calculate the time the bus passes my stop, build in the walking time between my house and that bus stop, then back up four minutes as a buffer.

I call my creation a Point-Specific Timetable, or PST for short.

All in all, for my particular bus stop, for that bus route, going that direction, I need to subtract nine minutes from the time on the printed timetable for their timepoint nearest my house. That timepoint is only 500 feet farther away, but since it's downstream of my stop, my bus passes my stop earlier than that one, so I back up one minute. Then, as I said, subtract my four-minute walking time, and subtract another four minutes to be sure I get to the bus stop before the bus does. That's for the outbound trip that gets me to the library.

For inbound trips, I also subtract nine minutes, but the numbers leading to that amount are different. First, I need to cross the four-lane road the bus travels. This might mean waiting for the pedestrian signal, or at least for traffic to clear, so I build in a fifth walking minute. Second, since I am now downstream of that timepoint, I don't need to factor in that "upstream" minute. However, it is not enough to warrant building in a minute of travel time for the bus. Thus four minutes walking, one minute crossing, and four minutes buffer, again for a total of nine.

In this particular case, at around 9:40 I glanced at the PST on the fridge, which indicated a must-leave-by time of 10:05 for the next library trip. OK, I thought to myself, that gives me 25 minutes to pack up the overdue library books, zip up the laptop, grab my wallet (with bus pass and library card) and cell phone (which doubles as a watch), and maybe even throw a load in the washing machine, before throwing on my coat and heading out the door.

I did all that, and when I got to the stop sign at the end of my little street, about one minute into the trek, I was pleased to see that it was 10:06. I arrived at the stop at 10:08, so I must have walked a little faster than usual. Still, I was there in plenty of time. The bus came along at 10:13, just a minute early by my figuring, but since I'd built in four minutes lead time, it didn't matter.

I waited just about five minutes, a comfortably short wait. Any less, I would have worried about missing it. Much more, I would have grown impatient.

The point of it all was that I was able to use my little PST tool to plan when to leave the house in order to catch the bus, and also to give myself enough time to prepare properly for the trip. Since the tool has the must-leave-by times figured out in advance, I don't have to figure it out. Bing bing, glance at the chart and the clock, all of two seconds, and I have all the information I need to make a snap decision.

Perhaps some really experienced transit riders have built all this into an internal clock, but most people are not experienced transit riders. Even for me, it really does help to have a tool that makes transit so much easier to use.

My plan is to equip every home in America with their own PST so that everyone can use transit as easily as I do. This would help lessen our dependence on foreign oil, and also allow taxpayer subsidized transit systems to pay their own way.