From the "Duh" column...

From the Golden Gate Transit Website

Gas Prices and Bus Ridership

The correlation between gas prices and bus ridership is evident when comparing the change in ridership from this Fiscal Year 2008 to Fiscal Year 2007 (Column D) and the change in gas prices from the current month to previous month (Column G). Looking at those two columns, when gas prices go down, bus ridership goes down and when gas prices go up, bus ridership goes up (with exceptions: February, September and October 2008 when gas prices decreased and ridership increased).

Click the link to see the data.

The data is a little tricky to mine. The best comparison for ridership data is against the previous year at the same period in order to remove seasonal effects. But the data comparison they chose shows situations where "Gas prices decreased but ridership increased". They don't draw any conclusions, but since I am so smart I will.

Once gas prices increase above some pain threshold, a decrease in gas prices can still leave the gas price above the pain threshold. Of course, that doesn't explain why the riders weren't there the month before when the price first went over the pain threshold. I believe the answer is simply that for those who require a decent amount of pain in their wallet to switch from driving to transit - it takes a little bit of time and research to figure out the alternative solution.

The Sept 2008 data shows not only a 10% year on year gain, but also a 4.5% month to month gain, while in Sept 2007 there was a month to month net decrease. Sept 2008 was a good month for attracting new transit! This is despite the fact that gas prices were dropping! I posit that this is because prices were still almost four dollars, and by now the population had been dealing with such prices for four months or so, and the pain was starting to hit home. GG Transit attracted all sorts of new riders who finally got off their butts and figured out how this "bus thing" worked. I can confirm this anecdotally, I was occasionally taking the bus from Santa Rosa to SF in this time frame and the buses were packed, the park and ride lots were overflowing, and the riders waiting for the bus talked nothing but gas prices.

Notice that in November 2008 gas prices - and ridership - dropped dramatically. The column they hightlight shows it 5% less than Nov 2007. Again, I think it's more important to look at it differently. From October 2008 to Nov 2008, ridership dropped 17 percent. This could of course be seasonal, which is why they look at data compared with the same month in a prior year. But we can get some really useful data if we compare the deltas - the Oct-Nov delta for 2007 to the Oct-Nov delta for 2008. In 2007, this drop was 7.4%, but it was 17% in 2008.

There are a couple of potential factors here. First, Gas prices dropped with the economy, less people working, less people commuting in any form. Secondly, while there is a barrier to switching from driving to transit that slows the rise of transit usage when prices go up, this barrier does not exist when switching back to driving from transit (unless you sold you car I guess). Gas prices dropped, the bus started to seem less attractive.

The most interesting conclusion to try to draw is if - factoring out gas price increases and economic contraction - transit ridership is increasing in general. After the prices dropped and it all washed out - will public transit keep some of the riders that it attracted when it was more compelling from a financial standpoint?
Time will tell...

Vilsack recommends more pixie fairy dust to solve our problems

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack - the former Governor of Iowa has a great idea - the government should move quickly to increase the amount of ethanol allowed in gasoline.

Ah yes. The Ethanol Fallacy - most popular in heavy corn producing states - say for example... Iowa. Friggin Hawkeyes. Of course they grow a little corn down in Champaign-Urbana too. My father in law is from "downstate" and has given me a pretty good view on how much ethanol has meant to corn farmers in the midwest. Hint... "a lot". And who is from downstate Illinois? Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood. Double Ethanol Whammy.

But it's not doing us any good. It feels good, but it's not.

Key quotes from the Popular Mechanics Op-Ed linked to above...

"Let’s start with the math. Corn doesn’t grow like a weed. Modern corn farming involves heavy inputs of nitrogen fertilizer (made with natural gas), applications of herbicides and other chemicals (made mostly from oil), heavy machinery (which runs on diesel) and transportation (diesel again). Converting the corn into fuel requires still more energy."

“Today, 1 Btu of fossil energy consumed in producing and delivering corn ethanol results in 1.3 Btu of usable energy in your fuel tank. Even that modest payback may be overstated. Skeptics cite the research of Cornell Uni¬versity professor David Pimentel, who estimates that it takes approximately 1.3 gal. of oil to produce a single gallon of ethanol."

"If the benefits are in doubt, the costs are not. It would take 450 pounds of corn to yield enough ethanol to fill the tank of an SUV. Producing enough ethanol to replace America’s imported oil alone would require putting nearly 900 million acres under cultivation—or roughly 95 percent of the active farmland in the country. Once we’ve turned our farms into filling stations, where will the food come from?"

Before I really get on my high horse about my former brethren in the midwest... the AP article continues... "House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said she also supports raising the cap after a separate speech to the group."

DOH.

If the Obama administration allows us to go further down this dead end I'll be very disappointed and will await Vilsack to use his moxie to keep the Ag Subsidies afloat as well. Ugh.

Speaking of reckless cyclists...

How timely in lieu of my last post, that Comcast catches this idiot on tape.



Crazy cyclist. That seat is at least an inch too low.

I will not apologize for reckless cyclists

Update - good comment on the NY Times article from Richard Masoner via SFBike Listserv.

Seriously, when's the last time there was a 2300 word article in a
major paper exhorting drivers to drive lawfully? When's the last time
you saw a letter to the editor demanding that motoring advocacy groups
control their membership's behavior?

And what's with this bicycling author castigating cyclists based on
how they DRESS?

Richard Masoner
***********************************************************
Katherine Roberts forwarded this article from the New York Times to the SF Bike Coalition list serv. It's an article from a daily NY bike commuter getting on his apologist shoes complaining that cyclists who cause whatever form of havoc are hurting the cause.

Actually, she posted a direct link to the comments and said "Have at 'em".

The comments sections of newspapers and blogs is of course where the "real battleground" is of course, whether on NY Times, on SFGate, or the ever popular Morgan Hill Times. In that last instance the anti-bike folk jumped down the throat of cyclists who "jumped to the conclusion" that Rita Campos was at fault. Campos was then charged with manslaughter which was not surprising, the aforementioned cyclists didn't have a hard time sleuthing with their knowledge of the area and a quick peek at Google street view to ascertain the chain of events (Note: I fully realize that Campos was negligent - not malicious - but I have a pretty dim viewpoint on negligence when it results in a fatality.)

The first comment in the article on the manslaughter charge?

I drive Uvas road quite a bit. It is narrow, curvy, many blind spots, and very little room for a bicyclist to ride. Why someone on a bike would risk their lives on this road is beyond me. Many bicyclists I encounter are also riding side by side which further complicates the problem. Talk about a dangerous activity! I read the comments of these bikers and they always bring up the fact that they have equal rights to the road. They may be right. Unfortunately, like Mr. Finch, they are "dead" right. There are many roads in this area that are safe to ride on. Uvas is definitely not one of them.

Even with a charge in place, the victim is blamed, much like what happened with Gough and Peterson.

Anywho - here's my thought on the NY Times article. The author has fallen prey, and this is easy to do, to apologizing for his perfectly legal behavior. What? Isn't he apologizing for the behavior of miscreant cyclists and urging them to shape up their act? Not in my opinion. My opinion - the fact he apologizes legitimizes the opinion that riding a bike to get from point A to point B - period - is an abnormal behavior that requires the participant to genuflect at the knee of the "normal people" who are at best tolerating his anti-social behavior.

STOP APOLOGIZING. Who cares if there is some helmetless hipster running lights as he whizzes across the Mission. This isn't your problem. Worry about your own riding. And one of the best things you can do is to not fan the flames of passion in the anti-cyclist crowd - you are giving them a platform to spew their crap. Ignore them and their platform disappears.

I'm only slowly learning this lesson myself given my addiction for trying to pick on Rob Anderson. He's impossible to back into a corner because he just redefines the corner. The only way Rob can be tweaked is by turning him int an apologist himself - by calling him a racist for example. Or to just say "You are probably right Rob, but I'm a selfish prick and I want the damn bike lanes and we're going to get them, and while you've done a fine job of being an obstructionist, your time is almost up".

I am doing a pretty good job on my resolution to not lash back on SFist, let alone the cesspool that is SFGate. There's a lot of noise there, but it's just like Rush Limbaugh and Fox News - it doesn't matter how loud they yell - yelling isn't votes and the Democrats won the election.

And in person? My tactic with anti-bike people is to put them on the defensive with the absurd. "These cyclists get in the way of traffic". Answer? "Well, do you run them over?". "No". "Why not? They got in your way, get them out of your way - run them over". 75% of the time the angry cretin starts to shift and look very uncomfortable, this was not the fight they were trying to pick.

HSR NIMBY's in Palo Alto

The California High Speed Rail project, given a green light by voters in California in November. If this thing actually gets built, it will run from LA to "the Bay Area". I say that because I'm getting pretty convinced that Murphy's Law is becoming pretty solid these days and that anything that can get changed, probably will. The theory is this thing will run to San Jose via the Pacheco Pass and then up the Caltrain line to San Francisco. In SF it may or may not enter a "Train box" - a new tunnel that will extend it to the Transbay Terminal at 2nd/Mission.

On that Caltrain section they need to run 4 tracks the whole way to make this thing work. In some places Caltrain already has 4 tracks, in some places it will be tricky to add them. Additionally the whole thing needs to be grade separated, Caltrain has something like 23 at grade crossings today. In Palo Alto/Menlo Park/Atherton the plan of record (for today) is that the grade separation and track addition will be done on a raised berm, similar to how grade separation is done in San Carlos today. This has the people living near the Caltrain line in an uproar. They (hah!) want a tunnel dug underground for the train, probably half a billion dollars or so. Well, really they want the thing to go over the Altamont Pass and terminate in Oakland so they never have to see it - which is amusing since this project will electrify the line (quieter - a big plus, I used to live at Alma and Hawthorne in Palo Alto and it was VERY noisy), and remove the at grade crossings which are bad for traffic and even worse for cars or people who stray onto the tracks when the train comes through.

My friend Dan Connelly has shot off a well reasoned letter to the editor of the PA Daily News.

People wanting to follow this drama are well advised to follow the California High Speed Rail Blog. I used to think I knew a few things about trains until I started reading this. There is a cadre of folks who are literally obsessed with trains and tell you minutia about how there is a little spot in San Carlos, just north of the station, that is going to require a lot of money to fix for HSR - it currently causes trains to slow in San Carlos - left as is it HSR trains would have to slow from 125+ to 60 something (I am not an expert but this is my general understanding) adding 1%+ to the overall trip time.

Sunday Streets...

July 17, 2008

http://district5diary.blogspot.com/2008/07/sunday-streets-working-out-with-susan.html

The businesses on the wharf are right; it's a dumb idea that won't be helpful in their busiest season of the year. The Third Street merchants seem desperate enough to try anything. The city should close that street off on Sunday mornings, before the Punks with Guns get out of bed.

Regards,
Rob Anderson

Wednesday, March 4, 2009

http://sf.streetsblog.org/2009/03/04/sunday-streets-will-expand-to-six-days-this-year/#more-1668

Last year, up to 15,000 bicyclists, pedestrians, rollerbladers and others turned out for two very successful pilot Sunday Streets. This year's events still need to get through the permitting process, a move expected next week, but there is no opposition. The first event in just six weeks along the waterfront from the Giants ballpark to Aquatic Park enjoys the support of many Fisherman's Wharf merchants who were previously opposed.


"We really need to embrace it otherwise we may be the ones losing out on it," said Karen Bell, the executive director of the Fisherman's Wharf Community Benefit District. "We think it's a good thing for families to get out and be healthy. It's almost springtime and we want people to get out and visit Fisherman's Wharf for different reasons."

Rachel Maddow hits a homer tonight

I personally find Rachel Maddow a bit oversnarky. Sure, Olbermann is played with his schtick - way over the top, but I have always been a little annoyed by Maddow. But flipping around I landed on MSNBC and she was interviewing the head of Duke Energy about Cap and Trade. She really nailed him - of course he changes the topic as well as Rush Limbaugh and Rob Anderson, but the point was clear.

He discussed the fact that a lot of investment went into Coal plants and we needed a "smooth transition" to non-carbon producing energy. Maddow posited that Duke Energy had made a lot of money off those coal plants for decades, producing a lot of pollution that the general population has had to pay for (even if you are a global warming denier the health impacts of burning coal are pretty clear).

He responded that he has been a consumer advocate early in his career and has fought for consumers, and they would not be able to take the sticker shock of the increased price of electricity and we needed to protect the consumer.

Maddow read my mind with her comeback - "Is Duke Energy Profitable?"

"Yes"

To paraphrase Maddow -

If you agrees we need to move away from carbon, and you think we need to protect the consumer - why doesn't Duke Energy take the hit? After all you made a ton of money putting pollution into the air at the cost of the cosumer...

He then babbled about prices being set by regulators blah blah double speak.
Good Stuff. March 3 show, entitled "Power Play"