On the Move

On the road to Bigfoot, Texas

T Fords of Texas at the Bigfoot museum

Last Saturday, March 6, I had the great pleasure of taking part in a ”T Fords of Texas” club cruise around Medina County.  Led by Castroville residents Tom Campbell and Wayne McBryde, a group of nine Ts traversed the area’s handsome back roads under a glowering sky, dense with dark and darker grey clouds, too high to actually rain, but very dramatic.  In an open runabout T driven by Gary Bethke, I had the full opportunity to take in the wintry landscape with occasional hints of spring, such as isolated peach and red bud trees in delightfully unexpected full bloom.

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The only thing to look forward to is the past

Omnibus soaking its wheels in the SA river

With all the zippidy-doo-dah hoopla over the possibility of a return to streetcars, why not go the whole hog and bring back mule drawn omnibuses?  I mean, who else is doing that?  Let’s think outside the box and get out of Portland, Oregon’s shadow once and for all.  Think of the benefits.  No expensive overhead or the need to tear up streets for miles on end and tourists will love it.

Mule drawn streetcars were introduced in San Antonio in 1878 but omnibus service has that beat by seven years.  It cost 5 cents to go from Main Square to Alamo Plaza.  With all the money we’ll save by not installing staggeringly expensive streetcar systems and their unsightly overhead power lines, we could go back and charge the same fare in 2010 that it was in 1871.  I guess there is a flaw in my logic somewhere but, you know, I’ll be d****d if I know what it is.

Streetcar dreams: Now it’s time to talk money

Streetcar from VIA Metropolitan Transit report (looks like it's in Portland).

After starting the fiscal year by shaving $19 million in spending, including 330 jobs, the city is now being asked to kick in $17 million to build a two-mile streetcar line.

That’s just part of the bill to buy streetcars and lay rails along Broadway and South Alamo Street by 2014. The county, VIA Metropolitan Transit and the federal government could also pony up to help pay what would be an estimated $90 million.

City Council heard the pitch this afternoon.

“If there was any sticker shock … council members mostly kept it to themselves,” the Express-News wrote.

The city hasn’t made any commitments, at least not yet.

At $45 million a mile, the price tag is quite a bit cheaper than, say, turning U.S. 281 out by Stone Oak into a superhighway, or, I should say, tollway.

Ah, but already I’m talking apples and oranges. This quaint two-mile rail line wouldn’t be a wide commuter route helping connect San Antonio’s core to its fringes.

Nope, unlike U.S. 281’s role as an artery for sprawl, the rail line, if done well, would be a magnet for compact living, working and playing. The idea is to drive some growth to the inner city, by creating a place where people would gladly leave their cars behind more often. Tourists would love it too.

Nonetheless, critics and proponents will duke it out with such comparisons. And with so many angles on varying public and private costs, some visible and some not so visible, expect a debate that’s about as clear as mud.

Docs and links:

• City Council agenda briefing
• Downtown Circulator Study
• City 2010 budget highlights
• Express-News story

Pay-and-display could be coming downtown

Pay-and-display station in San Francisco

The San Antonio City Council this Thursday will consider whether to approve a plan to replace most downtown parking meters with so-called “pay-and-display” systems.  (UPDATE: Council approved the plan during its 3/4/10 meeting.)  These systems, which originated in Europe and have become popular in US cities over the past decade, consist of a payment machine (”pay station”) located on each block, such as the one pictured to the right.  After parking your vehicle, you locate the nearest pay station, pay for the time you want to park, get a receipt from the machine, then return to your vehicle and place the receipt on your dashboard.  The drawback to this system, of course, is that you have to walk to the machine (which typically is located mid-block), pay, then return to your vehicle to put the receipt on the dashboard.  The benefits, however, are that the machines accept credit/debit cards and dollar bills, so no more having to scrounge for loose change.  Also, motorists can move their vehicle if desired without having to “feed” another meter.  The City is the biggest benefactor in the form of reduced maintenance costs and collection overhead for thousands of parking meters; remote maintenance of the machines via wireless connections; and enhanced revenue, likely the result of more people opting to pay since they can use credit cards and bills.  Also, unlike with parking meters where any remaining time is inherently donated to the next person who parks in the space, leftover time under pay-and-display systems is essentially forfeited to the City.  Studies generally show that parking violations are reduced under pay-and-display systems, so the City would lose some revenue from parking tickets, but can, as a result, reallocate those enforcement resources to other areas.

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Governors’ transpo planks

Well over a month ago now, I critiqued Kay Bailey Hutchison’s transportation policy plank of her gubernatorial platform.  I had intended to review the other candidate’s proposals soon thereafter, but alas, got sidetracked.  With the primary elections tomorrow, I thought it might be time to finally get to it. 

The candidates’ (major candidates only) policy statements are evaluated in order of their current polling numbers, Republicans first.

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Video added to TexasHighwayMan.com

A couple of days ago, I mentioned an “exciting” new addition that I was working on for my website.  Well, “exciting” might have been a bit of an overstatement, but it’s an addition I’ve wanted to make for a while now.  That addition is videos of all the area freeways.  I recently purchased a suction-cup camera mount for the windshield and, after some test runs, completed the first two videos (I-10 West inbound and outbound) earlier this week.  Within the next couple of months, I hope to have all the city’s freeways filmed and posted.  These will replace the so-called “driver’s view” pics that I had started to do.  Shooting, editing, and posting the videos is a lot easier than a plethora of photos, so hopefully it will be easier for me to get the initial batch completed and also to keep them updated that it was going the photo route.

In addition, I’m going to use the videos to update my exit lists (much easier to do from a video than trying to write them down at 65 mph <g>) and also to build the new lane schematics (see the previous parenthetical note).  I hope to get those done in conjunction with each video, although I haven’t done I-10’s yet.

To keep the clips within the YouTube guidelines (and to make them a little more interesting), the playback will be at double-speed (or even 4x for the longest ones.)  I opted not to put a soundtrack over them; everyone has their idea of perfect “driving music”, so crank-up whatever you like to listen to when viewing them!

Loop 1604 “super-street” approved

Diagram of a typical super street intersection (KY DOT)

Just yesterday, I mentioned that plans for a Loop 1604 super-street would be announced soon, and indeed the project was announced today at a Bexar County Commissioners Court meeting where the court approved kicking-in $900,000 of Advanced Transportation District funds to help pay for the $7.4 million project.  The remaining $6.5 million will come from federal stimulus funds.

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“Whoever put traffic lights on Loop 1604 needs to be punched”

The oft-maligned 1604/Braun intersection

Well, once again, it’s been a while since I’ve posted anything here.  I’ve been working on what I think will be an exciting new addition to my website (stay tuned for more on that soon.)  However, as I was watching the Sunday morning political talk shows, my wife mentioned something that motivated me to write this post, which is one that I’ve been meaning to do for a while.  While Facebooking (can that really be a verb?), she came across a new Facebook group with the same title as this post.  After rolling my eyes (as I often do in these situations), I realized (also as I often do in these situations) that the creator of that group– and those who subscribe to the explicit as well as implicit sentiment of it– probably just doesn’t have the back-story to understand why things are the way they are and that my initial reaction made me just as guilty of jumping to conclusions as that person was.  Whoever created the group is obviously frustrated– they even say they’re “pissed off” at the “stupid” traffic lights, and I sympathize with their frustration.  But, as is often the case, there’s more to the story than meets the eye, and maybe if folks understood how things got to be as they are, they might be more forgiving.  This posting is an attempt at that.

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San Antonio transportation history talks

Beginning Saturday February 20 at 9:30 AM, I will be be giving a series of four talks on local transportation history at the main public library downtown.   Technology willing, they will be accompanied with PowerPoint slide shows.  Admission is free.  I will have copies of my two local transportation history books available for sale.

Here is the topic schedule:

Saturday February 20, 9:30 – 11;30 AM – Ox, mule and horse drawn transportation.

Saturday February 20, 1:30 – 3:30 PM – Railroads; 1850 to the present

Saturday February 27, 9:30 – 11:30 AM – Public transportation, streetcars, jitneys and buses

Saturday February 27, 1:30 – 3:30 PM – Private transportation, from the bicycle to the present.

Live steam coming to San Antonio

1925 Baldwin steam locomotive at Pearl Brewery

Question:  How do you return a long dormant steam locomotive back to active passenger service in 2010, with all the heightened concerns about safety?  Answer:  Very, very carefully.  This ain’t 1964.  Way back then early Texas Transportation Museum members including one Dave Wallace, acquired the 1925 Baldwin 0-4-0 steam locomotive from New Braunfels where it had sat idled in a shed since being retired around 1928, brought it to San Antonio, placed it on tracks adjacent to Pearl Brewery, simply filled the boiler with water and fired it up.  While it didn’t explode, it sent out enough smuts and soot that those same volunteers ended up cleaning car windshields for several blocks around. more »