San Antonio traffic jam photo from viainfo.net.

A recent study laid out what I found to be an amazing stat.

For every hour driving, U.S. life expectancy decreases by 20 minutes, suggests analysis in a University of Toronto study. The shorter life spans are due to crashes.

An hour a day is about the average two-way San Antonio commute. So the typical driver here loses four days a year, about half a year over a 40-year career. The payoff is a year and a half slogging through traffic to make the bucks.

The finding that drivers lose a minute of life for every three minutes on the road wasn’t even the main point of the study. Authors wanted to consider the risks of driving faster to reduce travel times. They determined that time saved by speeding is far outweighed by shortened lives due to higher chances of crashing.

The conclusion: Americans drive a little too fast and can live longer by driving slower.

Larry Walsh and the Austin MetroRail

My friend, Larry Walsh, and I finally found the time last Tuesday, July 27, to make a visit to Austin’s new commuter rail line, Capital MetroRail.  This is what is hoped to be the first thirty miles of a city wide system.  This first section runs from the city center at 4th and Trinity to Leander, a commuter colony way to the north of Austin itself.

Larry is, to put it mildly, an avid passenger rail enthusiast.  Now in his eighties, this has been his passion for every bit as long.  He served on boards pushing for the extension of passenger service across the north east of the country.  He can expound, at length, on the unlikely success of commuter rail in Los Angeles.  He sees a myriad of opportunities for it here in San Antonio, if only nay-sayers like me would only look beyond our road bound perspective and see the entire picture.  In fact he and I once traded barbs in the op-ed and letter pages on the San Antonio Express News regarding the proposed passenger service between San Antonio and Austin.

While we continue to disagree on that propoal, I actually have a fondness for the type of service which is now in its infancy in Austin.  Anyone who has used urban light rail in other cities will have a good sense of how successful they can be from any number of points of view.  My personal favorite is the Dublin Area Rapid Transit System in Ireland which runs on elevated track.

In Austin, the system mainly runs on track acquired by the City of Austin from the Southern Pacific when it was announced the line as far as Llano was to be abandoned.  While it continues to move a considerable amount of freight, it has been best known by the public, up till now, as the line used by the Hill Country Flyer, between Cedar Park and Burnet.  Ironically, Cedar Park has yet to acquire a MetroRail Stop so its residents can only watch the new service pass through on its way to Leander but may decide to opt in if the rail commuter service becomes popular.

As things stand, there are only six stops along the thirty mile stretch.  From the newly laid tracks on 4^th Street the train head due east under IH 35 until it makes contact with the pre-existing Southern Pacific built line.  It then heads north a while before crossing under the interstate again on its way to Leander.  Rather than give you a blow by blow account of every stop, I think it would be better  to simply give you a link to the MetroRail web site, which is:

 http://allsystemsgo.capmetro.org/capital-metrorail.shtml

 What I can more profitably do however, is provide a consumer’s point of view of what riding the train is like.  First of all, because they are only getting started, the number of trains available is limited only to weekday mornings and evenings.  Because Larry and I were essentially tourists out for a joy ride, we found there was only one train in the evening that would allow us to both ride form downtown and return.  For most commuters this would not be an issue as, presumably, most are coming in from the suburbs in the morning and returning in the evening.  Larry tells me the train ticket is good also for the buses which feed people to and from the rail service.

The train we caught, the 3:45 PM, the first one out, was not at all busy.  Presumably the following five trains would be, assuming most folks don’t get out from work so early.  The last one leaves at 6:40 PM.  Built in Switzerland, the “train” consists of two back to back cars with each having all its seats facing either forward or backwards.  The seats are not really very comfortable.  The padding is thin.  Also the leg space, at least in the seats we chose for an optimal view, was cramped.  The other 52 seats did not look a whole lot better.  But the view was good,  the engine noise level superb, especially for diesel powered rail cars, and the ride very smooth, including station stops and starts.

One of the unexpected benefits of ipods and other MP3 devices is that, unlike boomboxes of the previous generation which used to plague rail cars, the new devices do not cause much, if any, noise pollution.  Smoking is banned on the train and, just to make you feel even more comfortable, a uniformed police officer rides each train.  These also perform crossing guard duties in the event of signal failures but, fortunately, this did not happen on our ride.

A couple of people brought their bicycles on board and utilized some clever hooks to vertically stow them out of the way.  There were only two available with an obvious opportunity for two more to be installed later on if needed.  I don’t know if dogs are allowed.  I forgot to ask and it isn’t mentioned on the official web site.  The trains appear to be ADA compliant, with good ramp access from outside and almost no gap between the platform and the cars, plus set aside space within them.

My most serious complaint about the service is not about the trains at all.  It is about the lack of seating while waiting for the train down town and, far worse, no public restrooms at the large park & ride facilities.  It so happened we encountered a MetroRail board member on our way back, who seemed phased when I asked him why.  While most people will not be riding there and back in one go, as we did, the outbound trip to Leander lasts an hour and who wants to get into a car with a full bladder or worse?

All in all, I impressed with the service.  It was done with an eye to containing costs, by using existing rail lines which may not run through the most heavily populated areas of the city.  Expansion will most likely occur along the old Missouri-Kansas-Texas right of way which is fully abandoned.  Even so, bringing this into service will be cheap in comparison with establishing and building new rights of way if the system is to fully cover the entire city.

The same situation would apply in San Antonio except there are no city owned or abandoned lines available.  The Union Pacific is running profitable freight service to the quarry just outside Loop 1604 near Camp Bullis and delivering millions of tons of coal to the electrical power stations at Elmendorf.  These are the only two remotely possible stub lines.  All the other trackage is Union Pacific owned and operated mainline which carries well in excess of seventy fully loaded, highly profitable, unsubsidized freight trains all day every day.  It is not legal to operate light and heavy trains on the same track at the same time and “bumping” freight service to night hours only is not even remotely possible.  The cost to upgrade existing tracks to passenger standards, complete with signaling and other amenities would be enormous, not to mention the cost of constructing stations and massive parking lots.

The difference between theory and practice is often where Larry and I diverge on this issue.  Wishful thinking is one thing, but as the old army saying goes, amateurs argue about tactics while professionals discuss logistics.  When all is said and down, we could flood the ciy with buses and subsidize the service almost to the point of providing it free for what it would cost to create passenger rail in San Antonio.  There are other “social benefits” that rail brings with it that bus service does not.  However while it’s important to consider more than immediate economics in regards to commuter rail, it’s equally important that we don’t just ignore the numbers in the belief that social engineering, which is what passenger rail proponents principally rely on to make their case, is worth all the money we can throw at it.

Augusta Street bridge, San Antonio

My wife and I spent some five hours out and about on our bikes yesterday, heading downtown from our house near Red McCombs Ford outside Loop 410 to the King William district.  Altogether it came to a trip of 22.35 miles, mostly along San Antonio’s old main thoroughfares, San Pedro Avenue and Fredericksburg Road.  We set of around 8:00 AM, when it was only 80 degrees and got back just before 1:00 PM, when it was well over 90.

 The reality is I have all but given up cycling again.  It was not my idea in the first place.  And since, for my wife, cycling is so 2009, our nearly new expensive machines have become, more or less, garage junk.  During the first twelve months I rode just over 20 miles a week.  Most of these were round trips of 24 miles to and from my two jobs.  This year, for several reasons, I am not doing that any more.  Essentially I don’t have the time to extend my commutes from twenty minutes each way to an hour.  Who has two hours to give up just to get to work?  Plus my hours changed at Camp Bullis.  I now quit at 9:00 PM.  Riding at night in any major city is not particularly smart.

 It’s also even more boring than riding during the day.  That is my major issue, truth to tell.  Cycling is just dull hard work.  I’m not the kind of person who marvels at the changing scenery and architecture.  I’m not interested in “raising my performance” as all the bicycle literature is forever exhorting us to do.  Learning how to endure pain in order to go nowhere in particular fractionally faster is a fool’s errand if ever I heard one.

 I did enjoy owning a bike in Aberdeen Scotland.  In fact I did not learn to drive until I was around 26 years old.  But, once I got behind the wheel of an automobile, I found my ability to explore the Grampian countryside an eye opening experience and, before I knew it, my biking days were over.  It was almost a relief when my rather nice touring bike was stolen.

 So, why the trip yesterday?  I am working on adding several additional local transportation history “chapters” on the Texas Transportation Museum web site.  I wanted to take a whole bunch of snaps of roads and bridges to go with the voluminous amount of material I have amassed.  While I could have driven downtown, it occurred to me that going by bicycle would be a lot more convenient plus probably afford a far greater number of photo opportunities.

 I was right, for once.  I was delighted when my wife said she wanted to come along.  Between us we must have taken over four hundred snaps of things like the Augusta Street bridge near the main library and the Arsenal Street bridge in King William, where we encountered tourists on Segways and three wheel bicycles.  The major benefit to digital cameras is that it allows a person to adopt Stalin’s dictum that quantity has a quality all its own.  In other words if you take enough shots one or two are bound to be OK, if only by the law of averages.

 Despite the fact we were pretty wiped out by the time we got back to the house, I am beginning to think there might be a future in using or bicycles in this way in the future.  I can see us taking our bikes and cameras to other towns and just slowly roaming around, making frequent stops and taking a boat load of snaps.

 In conclusion, this was the first time I ever used a bicycle to perform work, as opposed to just getting there.  As an adjunct to spending time in libraries and going through musty records in obscure archives, it has a lot to be said for it.  You can be aware that at the intersection of Fredericksburg Road, and IH10 you have the old railroad to the Hill Country crossing the old main road to the same destination in the shadow of the interstate that has rendered both obsolete, but I don’t think you get to truly appreciate the labor involved any better than when you yourself are providing your own motivation.

Can buses look and operate more like light rail?

VIA Metropolitan Transit officials think so. And now the public can peek under the hood of a plan to spend $57 million to speed up bus travel and make trips more comfortable along Fredericksburg Road.

The agency will hold three public meetings over two weeks to explain the latest on an environmental study:

Monday, May 24
6 p.m.
Jefferson High School cafeteria
723 Donaldson

Thursday, May 27
1:30 p.m.
Norris Conference Center
Wonderland of the Americas Mall
4522 Fredericksburg Road, Suite A100

Thursday, May 27
6 p.m.
Norris Conference Center
Wonderland of the Americas Mall
4522 Fredericksburg Road, Suite A100

The study says buses could scoot along 30 percent faster on nine miles between downtown and the Medical Center, two prime job centers anchoring one of VIA’s busiest routes. More than a fourth of the area’s 79,000 residents depend on transit.

The cost for bus rapid transit, as it’s called, includes traffic signal controls to give buses more green time, faster ticketing, sidewalk-level boarding, two roomy transit centers and eight enhanced stations. The hope is that developers will create walkable, mixed-used hubs around the stops. 

The cost does not include dedicated bus lanes on part of the route, as proposed in previous plans that put the tab at around $100 million.

Construction is supposed to start this year, with service starting in late 2012. 

LINKS:

• Study summary
• Full study
• BRT main page

One in four big-city commuters walk to work, ride bicycles, use transit or at least share car rides with other workers, a new study says. A good number even stay home to work.  

In other words, 24 percent of Americans in the 100 largest metro areas don’t drive solo to work, according to ”The State of Metropolitan America,” a report released this week by the Brookings Institution.

And though a whopping three-fourths still drive alone, that portion has been shrinking, says the report’s 12-page commuting chapter.

From 2000 to 2008:

TRANSIT RIDERSHIP: went up for the first time in 40 years, reaching 5 percent in 2008, though that’s still shy of 5.1 percent from 1990.

DRIVING SOLO: slid down slightly, mostly in 2007 to 2008, the first year of the Great Recession and a time of shockingly high gas prices. Austin led the nation’s biggest cities with a 3.6 percent drop.

CARPOOLING: dropped to 11 percent, less than the 12 percent from 1970.

TWO-WHEELING: by bicycle and motorcycle rose slightly, to 1.7 percent.

WALKING: declined to 2.8 percent, down from 7.4 percent in 1970. 

TELECOMMUTING: jumped to 4.1 percent.

The report breaks down the trends by demographics and geography and mentions some other notable Texas numbers: 

El Paso is third in the U.S. for a 3.2 percent increase in solo driving and second for a 5.2 percent decrease in carpooling; McAllen ranks in the top five for both the percentage of commuters who carpool and those who quit carpooling; and Houston is fifth for loss of transit share.

LINKS:

• Report home page
• Commuting chapter

Yes, it does, according to safety officials. And that’s just one of a half dozen habits that distract motorists.

Drivers are considered distracted when they:

• Talk to passengers
• Smoke
• Eat
• Fiddle with dashboard controls
• Reach for something
• Talk or text on a cell phone

OK, so some of these, especially the last one, aren’t surprises. And it’s the last one that Oprah Winfrey is targeting with her “No Phone Zone” Day, which is tomorrow.

Agencies across the nation, including the Texas Department of Transportation, have joined Oprah’s campaign. Tomorrow, electronic highway signs will flash, “Make Your Vehicle a No Phone Zone,” or “Drive Now. Text or Talk Later.”

Motorists using hand-held devices are four times more likely to be in a crash, TxDOT says. All distractions caused 103,526 accidents and 524 deaths in Texas in 2008.

Nationwide, distractions led to 5,870 deaths and 515,000 injuries, statistics show.

Young people are especially vulnerable. Almost half of teens use phones while driving, a Texas Transportation Institute study found.

More information:

• Distraction.gov
• Oprah’s No Phone Zone

People mill about at a meeting earlier tonight for Loop 1604

Here’s the gist of what’s being laid out, in a series of public meetings wrapping up tonight, for Loop 1604’s future.

The problem, officials say, is that traffic demand in 25 years will be twice as much as what can fit on the highway today. The lanes can currently handle about 80,000 vehicles a day, but demand is 110,000 now and will surge to 155,000 by 2035.

An environmental study is sizing up impacts of three basic strategies:

Buses and passenger rail. At best, this can meet 15 percent of demand when you consider that top-notch transit cities such as San Francisco, Washington and Boston snare about that much of the trips in those cities.  

Managing and improving traffic flows. This is done with engineering, like the super street idea, and behavior incentives that range from carpooling to staggered work hours and telecommuting. California enacted laws requiring large employers to use such commuting strategies but cut traffic just 3 percent.

Adding four lanes to the highway. Since each lane can handle about 20,000 vehicles a day, that would do the trick.

So you can see where the math leads. 

However, a dozen various community criteria will also drive decisions, and that produces a little more mix into the approaches.

That brings us to the proposed options:

ONE: Add lanes in the median. Weaving and merging would increase. Adding multi-modal solutions might require additional right of way. 

TWO: Add managed lanes to the median, which can restrict use based on things such as paying tolls, sharing rides or riding transit. Adding other multi-modal solutions could require additional right of way.

THREE: Add managed lanes between frontage roads and existing main lanes. Long stretches might need to be elevated, which is expensive. The median could later be retrofitted for use as a multi-modal corridor. 

There it is. My money’s on TWO rising to the top.

And tolls? I’d bet on that too, though the Alamo Regional Mobility Authority is open to multiple sources. It’s just that, as hot as toll roads are, so is raising taxes. 

Workers began plopping orange cones into place along Loop 1604 near Randolph AFB and driving in heavy machinery last week. 

The job is to widen the road into a four-lane divided highway from FM 78 to Graytown Road by summer 2011, according to the Texas Department of Transportation. Federal stimulus dollars are funding the $6.63 million cost.  

“These improvements have been in the works for several years but were unfunded,” TxDOT engineer Frank Holzmann said in a statement. “With availability of economic stimulus funding, we now have an opportunity to move forward on this.”

But moving forward could be a slow and/or muddy affair for now. The National Weather Service has forecast rain throughout the week.

The top ideas on how to add lanes to almost half of Loop 1604 will be laid out in a series of three public meetings this week so officials can get input.

With gas taxes strangled by decades of inflation, diversions and political inaction, toll fees and toll-backed bonds have emerged as a primary path to get some things done on the 37-mile stretch of highway. 

A previous study was derailed in 2008 after toll opponents and environmental activists filed a lawsuit in a federal court. The lawsuit in part called for Loop 1604 and U.S. 281 to be studied together, since they would have been part of an interrelated tollway system, and the judge seemed to agree.  

For this week’s meetings, study officials will provide several short presentations each night, from 6 to 8:30 p.m.:

• Monday, Valero Headquarters, Building D, One Valero Way.
• Tuesday, Live Oak Civic Center, Main Hall, 8101 Pat Booker Rd.
• Wednesday, Vale Middle School, cafeteria, 2120 N. Ellison Dr.

For more information or help, start out at More for 1604’s event page.

Other links:

• The environmental impact statement
• More for 1604 Blog

2011 Audi R8

MSN has had fun giving us the show’s 10 most notable unveils, and the 10 sexiest rides — i.e., to your right is a glimpse of the Audi R8 Spyder (go ahead, click the glitz for a full view).

“Give us sports cars and make them sexy as hell,” MSN’s Matthew de Paula declared. “We want 10-mile-per-gallon Lamborghini Gallardos and 510-horsepower Aston Martins all the way.”

Closer to ground level, Consumer Reports plodded forward to give us the New York standouts. Cars.com patiently poked and prodded the show’s winners and losers.

It’s a lot to digest, sort of like trying to eat your way into a bargain at an all-you-can eat buffet.

I guess that’s why my thoughts keep drifting back to a more meat-and-potatoes Top Picks announced just before the noise revved up in New York. Using affordability, comfort and safety as criteria, AAA selected the best cars to commute to work in.

And topping AAA’s list is the …

2010 Honda Insight

Yeah, how’s that for a splash of vanilla?

Two of the other nine commuter workhorses on the list are also Hondas — the Civic and Accord, of which two older models sit in my driveway every night. 

My sandy-brown 2000 Accord isn’t sexy by a long shot, but it’s the best car I’ve ever owned, beating out makes by Ford, Chevrolet, Chrysler and Oldsmobile, even — I almost hate to say — my beloved 1968 Volkswagen Beetle.

So, for predictably practical consumers, here’s AAA’s Top Picks of cars that balance gas mileage with just enough leg room.

1. Honda Insight
2. Ford Fusion
3. Volkswagen Jetta TDI
4. Hyundai Elantra
5. Subaru Legacy/Outback
6. Honda Civic
7. Chevrolet Malibu
8. Honda Accord
9. Mazda3