Delusions Of Adequacy

I attended an Elk Grovian special city council meeting Monday, to hear public comment on the proposal to cut my bus routes. Attendance and comments, I believe, led the council to cut only two runs instead of the four that were proposed.

Yep, the recession has finally hit me, 22 months into it. I was immune until Monday, but now I lost 1/4 of one of my options to get to work and back without having to drive my own car. My 2009 prediction of a loss of bus service has come true. What's really bad about this is that the buses are normally packed to the rafters, and now we're going to have to squeeze in all us riders into fewer buses. It's a good thing I ride my bike 1/3 of the time so I'm not competing with others to get on the bus.

Not only am I now paying more to ride (my cost doubled on Tuesday), I have fewer buses to ride. There is no need to wonder why people don't even try it. The #1 reason (across the whole USA) why people don't ride the bus is that service isn't on a time interval that can compete with the private vehicle. If you have to stand for a 1/2 hour to wait for the bus, well, fugettaboutit.

For me, the only cost I'm directly offsetting by transit is gasoline. As my car sits in the driveway I'm still paying to insure it and register it, the same as if I drove it 23,000 miles a year. Its rubber and plastic parts are still deteriorating the same as if I drove it 23,000 miles a year. The sun still beats down on the paint the same as if I drove it 23,000 miles a year. Perhaps I'm not replacing tires or changing oil as frequently, but really, there is no cost savings...not when I now pay more for a bus ticket than the cost of a gallon of gasoline to get me to and from work.

I could even argue that it costs me more to take the bus, considering it takes longer to take transit than it does to drive myself. So why do I even bother? I'm a "choice" rider. I have two legs; I can bike. I have three cars; I can drive. Both my next door neighbors work at SMUD with me; I can carpool. The Elk Grove city council, when looking to slash city costs, looks at me as a "choice" rider and wonders "why are we subsidizing this schmuck?"

I argue that this would be a false "choice," for reasons obvious to anyone who's read my monologues.

Elk Grove transit suffers from delusions of adequacy. We can never hope to make it work in our low density suburban slum. It cannot possibly do an adequate job under the framework of sprawl. The city realizes that everyone drives themselves everywhere to do everything at all times, and when you build a city like that there is no hope for alternatives to the private car. Take the bus? Spend a hour longer to get where you're going. Ride a bike? Risk permanent paralysis or death by our speeding agitated drivers. Walk? Spend three hours longer to get where you're going. Take light rail? Wait two more decades to even start your commute.

Comfortable Consumption

My little burg, Elk Grove, as car dependent a city as you'll find in America, prostrated itself to the motor vehicle even more with the announcement today that e-Tran funding is staring at a $1,700,000 deficit next year -- and services will be cut.

Wonderful. On the same week this fucking city received a Tranny award for the most beautiful new interchange in the state

we get word that transit will be cut back, curtailed, eliminated, or otherwise reduced.

Gotta love that new $83,000,000 interchange, eh? At night it will become a sight to behold -- what with its classic light fixtures reminiscent of a planked carriageway of a bygone era, anti-suicide fencing barriers reminiscent of a chain of wagons, those wagon wheels marching...marching along...triangular orange cones atop triangular concrete abutments, and the gorgeous concrete keystone at mid-span! We'll be mesmerized by the beautiful trail of weaving red taillights from the freeway to the turnstop on Christmas eve 2017, when another wave of our cyclical bubble economy bathes Elk Grovians with newfound, unearned housal unit wealth to buy new vehicles as consumer chariots to haul their purchases home from the Elk Grove Promenade.

The purpose of this interchange was twofold -- primarily, to shuttle personal motor vehicles to the vacant weed-filled quarter-finished soon-to-be-completed new mall but also to lay the groundwork for a potential freeway connector project from here to Highway 50 near Sunrise/Hazel, creating either a mini-freeway or a macro-expressway.

First of all, there ain't gonna be any SouthEast Corridor freeway. Just like trying to shoehorn in a choo-choo train track atop existing suburban sprawl, the open spaces needed for a new freeway and concomitant on/off ramps were sold off long ago to campaign-fund-providing land "developers," while the proposed route is planned to run through residential-agriculture zoned land whose owners are wealthy and well connected. They stand a better chance of fighting this project off than, say, the poorer, disorganized Del Paso Heights or Oak Park residents. These communities were sliced in half by freeway projects of the 1970s as they threw parades celebrating their new interchanges, too. No. I say Sheldon will successfully fight like Pasadena and the 710, or San Francisco and the 101, the byproduct of which will be tens of thousands of commuters shovelled off to collector roads and stoplights. Just because they'll successfully kill a freeway doesn't mean they'll kill southern Elk Grovian expansion and the hordes of fresh commuters to jobs elsewhere.

So really that $83,000,000 was spent to allow Elk Grovians to more comfortably consume at the future open-aire mall to raise tax revenues for the city. While the cost of car registration will go up another $15 per vehicle to fund state parks due to the state's insolvency, the cost of insurance is rising to account for my and millions of other stolen vehicles, and gas is $3 and will likely permanently arc upward, we build an environment where driving is the only way these residents will get to their new Jewel o' the Valley. Never a long term thought to build a light rail track down the middle of that new interchange. Never a thought for a safe bicycle lane, either. Wasn't even considered by our myopic one dimensional urban planners. Nope. I suppose if we ever do consider building a track across that in fifty years time, we'll have to raze this new one down and build anew, costing twelve times what it otherwise would if we had planned for it today.

And then, just like today, they'll claim that transit doesn't pay for itself! Well, no shit! When it costs $1,000 per inch to lay light rail tracks, what do you expect?

Mind The Gap

Last week, New Jersey celebrated the ground breaking on a nine billion dollar tunnel to shuttle its half million+ residents to Manhattan daily, while the same day my own Sacramento RT held a board meeting for another rate increase while slashing the number of transit routes due to a $9 million shortfall.

$9 billion will allow the New Jersey commuter to shave fifteen minutes off her commute time. The lack of $9 million will easily add fifteen more minutes to the typical Sacramento transit rider who already suffers from a lack of quality service. RT cannot reconcile the monetary gap.

I don't know if light rail services will be curtailed, but if they are then my 2009 prediction will come true; worsening service whilst ridership is an all time high. I don't ride the RT bus system, I ride e-Tran, but I most certainly use light rail. Every half hour would completely change the dynamics of local area transit. Today it takes about an extra 25-30 minutes to commute by bus rather than car and horrors! it also adds an extra quarter mile of walking. If service is slashed, this could become 45-50 minutes extra which becomes increasingly less likely for someone with means to want to take -- global warming or the environment be damned.

The federales are pitching in three billion into this under-the-Hudson tunnel while many regional transit systems are being cut off from their funding. I earlier lamented how my long-delayed 4 mile south expansion of light rail into Elk Grove was going to cost $1,000 per inch to build. But that stands in awe, in awe! of the $15,600 per inch this new tunnel under the Hudson will cost. And tell me of a New York/New Jersey transportation project that came under budget. OK, because you can't, we know the actual number will be in the double digit billions.

Thank Hitler

Western Germany is today well connected, in part, due to the efforts Hitler made to transport Ruhr valley war materials to the battlefront. Praise is due this man, yes.

It might seem callous, but hey, I'm just calling it like I see it. I know of no other region of the world that is better and more efficient in the movement of humans today, thanks to earlier efforts to more efficiently kill humans yesterday.



This is a typical view out of any main station. This one is just a small one in the city of Gelsenkirchen -- three tracks supply trains that run into and out of this city every ten minutes or so. Some are express trains, others stop at all stations, and all provide a stunning level of service. Indeed, for the entire week and a half, of all the trains I traveled on, not a single train was off by more than sixty seconds from schedule.

Then, when you're traveling within the city, you have access to an unprecedented level of surface trains and busses:



Now, realize that this city is about the size of my Elk Grove. Three intercity trains...seventy eight bus routes -- compared to Elk Grove which after nineteen years of unmitigated suburbal sprawl is still looking at another nine years to get a single fucking light rail train station. Elk Grove has thirty one bus routes, with half of them express commuter busses that only run weekday mornings and evenings. Less than half as many for a city as big with a quarter the level of service.

The truth is, Elk Grove public transportation can never, never! work. Never. Its low density is insufficient to make any service profitable for competing providers, nor self-supporting for governmental providers. Elk Grove has utterly failed to develop regionally or self sufficiently, so that surface streets, collector roads and freeways are all choke-a-block with traffic...the consequence of which would lead to intense resistance to either convert or sever any roadway to make room for rail. Or it leads to intense costs to shoehorn in rails and stations on top of an existing suburban automotive dominated fabric.

And all on top of a nation that subsidizes gasoline so heavily that car ownership becomes compulsive and mandatory. Why does California not build and maintain roads without federal matching funds? Because without federal tax dollars funding roadworks instead of gasoline taxes, and without state general funding instead of gasoline taxes, California wouldn't have enough money on its own. We end up with a perverted payment system where people end up paying for it indirectly. But so little is ever allocated to rail, bus, or alternatives such as multi-use trails.

Wishing for a transportation system like that in Germany for my little Elk Grovian burg is a fucking pipe dream, and I know this. It's a futile effort to even blog about it, mostly. But I do, because I like to comment on the sad state of our affairs, our environment, our culture...I like to comment on how wretched things are...not as they ever will be.

Another Unit Gone

I'm convinced my next-door neighbor abandoned his house in late October.

Here was a guy who moved from the Bay Area sometime in 2004-5, just like fifty thousand other Bay Areans since the dot.com bust. For 3+ years, he and his wife would climb into a vehicle at 4:30AM, drive to I-80 then to the I-680 to drop off his wife in Dublin, then he'd drive back up I-680 to his job in Concord. Then at the end of the day he'd drive from Concord to Dublin, pick up his wife, then drive back home to Elk Grove. I guess around 170 miles a day.

Total insanity if you ask me. But Bay Area homes were expensive, gas was cheap, and Elk Grovian homes even cheaper yet. Eleven hours a week in a car was something you just did for the sake of progress, for the sake of home ownership, for the sake of a Bay Area wage premium. Ain't that right? Wouldn't you spend 550 hours a year driving to get that $30k or $35k premium that a Bay Area wage brings? And tens of thousands of Elk Grovians and Stocktonians did just that, and are still doing just that.

Well, truth be told, my neighbor didn't actually own his home. The bank owned most of it, because he admitted earlier this year how he couldn't afford 20% down for a Bay Area home, otherwise he would have already left this [shithole]. And I think that as home values in Elk Grove are now down to levels not seen since 1999-2000, he was underwater. Underwater, driving 170 miles a day, I think he said screw it, packed up, and in less than an afternoon, having not said anything to anyone, they quietly moved to Vacaville.

No one's been living there since. No for sale signs. Lawn unmowed. Leaves piling up. Chalk up one more Elk Grovian "unit" to the economy. Pile it on to the thousands of other abandoned units here in my fair burg.

This guy was a real prick, too, so losing him as a neighbor was no loss. Losing his two German Shepards and their constant barking while locked in a cage in his backyard all day was a real blessing. But I digress...

Unicycle

I reported here how much the new, unlikely RT light rail extension to Elk Grove is going to cost. I say unlikely, because RT fails to respond to any of my e-mails and provides absolutely no revised information on the RT website. This project is as good as dead, in my opinion.

Today their lack of communication might be a function of these "tough economic times," but they've failed to communicate this project's status now for over two full years. Two years ago all things were bright and beautiful, no? OK, maybe two wars were going on...but who in Elk Grove gave a damn about them? No one. Which credit card to use to finance that new Blackberry was foremost on their minds.

Without any hope for light rail to the outlying southern hinterlands, and with no respectable jobs in said outlying southern hinterlands, Elk Grovians will be forced into their vehicles for at least the next two decades. I use 'forced' lightly, only because they all knew when they moved in that public transportation wasn't a viable option and besides, what better way to express your individuality than through private vehicle ownership? If you're frugal, a Ford sedan. If you're a pretentious prick, a BMW. Gay, a Subaru Tribeca. An alpha male jerkoff, a Chevy Blazer. On a public bus, however, you're just another fucking chump.

If and when this fabled Phase II extension from the Meadowview station to Cosumnes college is ever built (at the low cost of only one thousand dollars per inch), I will have a light rail station 2.06 miles from my door...the Franklin Station!

2.06 miles is a long-ass way to be hoofing it, however. I would do it once or twice, just to say I've done it. For 99.996% of our population, walking is out of the question. Walk 2 miles? Ha! You can't even get overweight Elk Grovians to walk two hundred feet between their cars and the entrance to Target. Walking is out of the question.

But biking two miles is almost as pointless, as I'd have the pleasure of manhandling my bike four times on and off the two trains to get to work. So I was thinking...unicycle.

I mentioned this idea to more than a few people recently. On paper is sounds plausible. But nearly everyone told me that I'd be debasing myself, as only miscreants, chowderheads, dolts and meatheads ride them. Is this accurate?

Everything I've ever seen and known about unicyclists support this statement. They are only ever associated with ballons, clowns, juggling balls and costume. I could see myself as the only Elk Grovian who commutes (in part) by unicycle, as someone who rides one on a utilitarian basis. To get to work.

Imagine riding one to get to work! That alone would have me blogging for several years...up and down Franklin Blvd., four miles a day on one wheel. Today my bike and my observations fuel this blog; imagine what one wheel might add!

I have a picture of me on my cousin's unicycle here on my street corner, holding onto my street lightpost. It is as hard as it looks. It's gonna take me forever to ride one of these damn things.

Breakdown

My commuting breakdown for 2008 (1/1 to 10/31):

Total 5,437 miles
Bicycle 40%
Transit 35%
Drive Alone 19%
Carpool 6%

I commute ~6,300 miles a year. So if I were a standard Elk Grovian I would do all of this solely through private, single occupant automobiling. Because no one can work in Elk Grove as there aren't any jobs that pay the median living wage, they are forced to commute at least 30 miles a day elsewhere. Assume a population of 125,000, 60% of them work, and 92% of them drive alone 30 miles a day, 50 weeks a year...that's over a half billion miles just commuting. Tack on another 50% for recreation and other utility trips and Elk Grovians drive ~1 billion miles each year.

Now with gas at two fifty, the long forgotten oil crisis of a few months ago has been superseded by a credit crisis. Both were incredibly cheap and abundant for most of this decade, fueling our special compound growth formula to finance the construction of more suburbia and fuel the [un]happy residents on their longer and longer commutes between the home and work and home again via strip shopping malls so they could spend money they didn't have on things they didn't need. This is the Elk Grove of today -- a badly designed suburban wasteland of cheap foreclosed bank owned homes, filled with cars owned by finance companies, strip malls owned by outsiders, and half-started aborted tract parcels owned by bankrupt developers. No one who lives in Elk Grove owns anything in Elk Grove.

But Elk Grove still drives its 1 billion miles each year, crisis or no crisis. Imagine the collective savings if even a fifth of Elk Grove did even a fifth of my commuter breakdown. How much less the city would have to pay to expand roads and perform road maintenance, how much less citizens would have to spend on motorized personal transport, how much less the fire department would have to respond to accidents, how much less insurance companies would have to pay for their less obese, better fit clients, how much less time Elk Grovians would have to sit in congestion when they did drive...

Drive 'Till I Qualify

Let’s say I’m all for helping the Merikan economy. Forget the “information” or “digital” economy bullshit -- our economy is based on the construction and servicing of suburban sprawl, so I buy a new Elk Grovian house this October for $430,000, little to no down. I can’t see myself occupying 3,684 square feet while riding a bus to work (how degrading) so I buy myself a $22,000 car. In order to afford the house payment the wife has to work, too. She buys herself a $28,000 car. We do this every seven years...because no one should have to drive an old car. No Elk Grovian should and it ought to be outlawed so as to not lower property values from all those jalopies in driveways. What a public nuisance!

At the end of my 30-year mortgage, my home, say, is worth 3 times as much, $1.3 million. However, car prices have also gone up 3 times. I spend $50,000 over the first seven years, then 75k, 100k & 125k over my subsequent visits to the dealership. That’s $350,000, and when I include gasoline, auto insurance premiums, Tom-Tom Go payments, smog checks, interest payments, oil & lube servicing, new MP3 players, On-Star service agreements, DMV registration and vehicle license fees, insurance deductables from the inevitable accidents, Sirius satellite radio charges, AAA fees, and periodic A&B maintenance schedule servicing, it’s far more than the original cost of the house...even when I subtract off the residual values of the used vehicles.

So much for buying a cheap Elk Grove housing unit, eh? It about costs me double once I factor in the vehicles needed to service it. This is what I get for living in a "drive ‘till you qualify" environment. Every Elk Grovian drives south, far enough from the job bases in Sacramento until they can find a house they could afford. Today, if you head south even farther still, there are throngs of new developments that will be tomorrow's new Affordavilles.

Micro Cat Naps

After 7,000 miles, I changed out my rear bicycle tyre last week. And only 20 miles on the new tyre, I caught a utility razor blade this morning, tick-tick-tick-tick, nearly shredding it all the way through the sidewall. I have to replace it although I obviously don't want to. Only 20 miles. Some tyres get to live full, productive lives, while others are cut short prematurely. Doesn't seem fair, does it?

Off to a later start this morning and traffic was heavy. I was pinned down between the curb and a tractor trailer at 47th but still I felt in control. It's really strange how some days I feel powerless against traffic, while on others, invincible. I am diligent about knowing my whereabouts, but also this morning a red car pulled out into the street and really startled me. It shouldn't have.

On a bicycle I'm forced to give traffic my due diligence. Contrast this with driving a car...how many times have you arrived at work with no recollection of how you got there? It's rote, so much so you ignore your surroundings and ignore yourself. I witnessed, on more than one occasion, my former brother-in-law take micro-cat-naps while driving us back from duck hunting. Freeway speeds and micro-cat-naps...

Driving is such a bore these days that you scan your cabin, looking for things to take your mind elsewheres. And you find them. The dead fly on the dash. The sound of the leaf caught in the fresh air intake blower motor. The half-empty water bottle that you can't reach but rolls up and down, up and down, back and forth, now under the passenger's seat. Didn't I already listen to Onslaught? What's that rattle from the rear door interior trim? This thing still shifts like a god-damn garbage truck and I paid those incompetent thieves $800 to fix it! Warranty? I'll give them their fucking warranty! I'll take their warranty and shove it up their...

Next time you're driving, take the time to notice the hundreds of thousands of tyre skid marks on freeway lanes where there's an approaching neckdown. All those people slamming on the brakes, caught unawares, caught in the cobwebs of their random, elsewhere thoughts. How many end up on top of the car in front of them?