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

The MPO is the agency charged under state and federal law to control the transportation funding purse-strings for the San Antonio urban area, which in this case includes Bexar County and portions of Comal and Guadalupe counties in the Schertz area.  The TIP is required under federal regulations as a condition of receiving federal funding.  Projects not in the TIP cannot use federal funds, so this is an important process.

There will be three meetings, all with identical content:

• Tuesday, May 4th from 5:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m.
• Thursday, May 6th from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m.
• Saturday, May 8th from 9:00 a.m. to noon

All three will take place at VIA Metro Center on San Pedro just south of SAC.  Visitors will also be able to check-out some new interactive systems and discuss the transportation planning process with the folks that make these decisions.

For more information and to see a draft copy of the TIP, click here.  Also, see the interactive site here (link added 5/4/10 10:35 am).

(* As I’ve discussed before vis-a-vis the US 281 project, the term “funded” in transportation parlance means that anticipated revenues during the plan timefame will be able to fund a project.  Until those revenues are actually allocated to the MPO, a project does not actually have money available to start work.)

No worries about the revelry cranking up. It will. But before joining the fun, here are some things to check on:

PARKING: Even tested downtown drivers can lose a little focus when Fiesta fills up parking lots and kicks up parking fees. The Express-News has a decent map of parking lots, but alas, doesn’t include fees. MAP

EXPRESS BUSES: Avoid parking altogether by hopping on special Fiesta express buses. VIA set up an event page with details, which includes reroutes of regular services due to street closures. FIESTA BUSES

DRINKING: If you drink, have a drinking and NOT driving plan. The easiest thing to do is assign a designated driver. In a pinch, Yellow Cab will provide up to 700 free rides for certain events, thanks to a state grant. Of course, you can always fork out your own $25 for a cab, and it’ll be a lot cheaper than a $17,000 DWI fine. CALL 222-2222

TRAFFIC: Make it easy on yourself. Just a few minutes checking TransGuide’s site for wrecks and slowdowns can save you an hour on the highway. TRANSGUIDE

WEATHER: Nuff said on that. FORECAST

Now go have a great time. And be safe. 

More links:

• Express-News Fiesta page
• Official Fiesta site

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. 

 I marked the occasion by not driving it at all.  Instead I cycled the 23 miles to and from my job at the Texas Transportation Museum.  It was a windy day, too, and the ride was, as usual, significantly less than enjoyable.  Too many busy roads impossible to avoid.  I have an easier time cycling to my other job at Camp Bullis, which I did for the first time this year on Friday.  Yesterday, Saturday, I took the museum’s 1924 Ford Model T truck for a ten mile spin which was unsatisfactory, as it has just come out of the shop – again – and it needs some more work before everything gets settled in nicely.  The same day I also took the museum’s 1929 Ford Model A truck to a meeting at, of all places, the Barnes & Noble store at Henderson Pass and Loop 1604.  Nothing makes you appreciate how much of an improvement the A was over the T like driving one right after the other.  And both will make you feel like you drive in luxury in any kind of modern vehicle.

 The 2005 Dodge has been, so far, a wonderful form of transportation.  I no longer drive it anywhere near as much as I used to, mainly because research for my “San Antonio On Wheels” book which obliged frequent out of town visits to places like Kerrville and Seguin is long finished.  Since I have owned the vehicle, it has only been out of the state once.  I think I have only had the third row seats installed and occupied maybe three times since I have owned it.  On the trip to Orlando in 2007, accomplished more or less non-stop in less than twenty-hours each way, we took out one of the second row seats as well and placed an inflatable mattress so my wife and I could lay down between driving shifts.

All in all, I am delighted with it.  I bought from a Red McCombs used car lot which now sells new KIAs and HYUNDAIs.  There is a flip side to their slogan, “Where the deal gets done.”  Having sold cars for a while, not too long ago, I knew how the system could work to my advantage, despite being in a tough spot with a badly damaged trade-in, less than glamorous credit and nothing to put down.  I told them up front what it would take for me to leave in one of their cars and they made it happen, with a pretty good interest rate to boot, something my own lousy credit union could or would not do.  My bottom line buying point was a low monthly payment.  How they made it happen was up to them.

 It helped that they happened to have a short wheel base minivan with non fold-flat seats on the lot due to go back to the auction the next deal.  Dealers will do just about anything to avoid sending such “cold” vehicles back.  Not only was this the first minivan I have owned, it my first non convertible.  But I like the thing, I really do.  You can drive it for hours and not get a sore back and the backs of the second row seats go almost horizontal which is wonderful for taking naps.  I have heard that the trade off for the utility of fold flat minivan seats is that they are nowhere near as comfortable plus they don’t recline.  That’s a bad deal, if you ask me.  Admittedly the seats on mine are a tad cumbersome but I’ve only had the second row out two or three times, and the discomfort is not worth the sacrifice, in my experience.

 The thing has been very reliable and gets pretty good mileage.  Before they started selling 10% ethanol gas, which screws up the performance of the Model T and the Model A something rotten, I used to get over 26 MPG.  Now I only get 25.  It has the popular SXT package, with a lot of nice features.  The most amusing is the CD / tape deck combo.  Who would have guessed in 2005 that both formats would be completely obsolete so soon?  The tape deck has one big advantage.  It allow me to play my MP3 player through an adaptor.

 I also spent some time today on a John Deere back-hoe / front end loader combo today, smoothing out some of the museum’s unpaved roads after this weeks rain.  Talk about getting in touch with the fundamentals.  And in yesterday’s mail I received my first ever toll road bill, for a couple of trips in Austin over the last few weeks.  No toll plazas on those roads, just a bank of cameras and scanners at certain points.  I guess over the next few years I’ll be getting more and more of those unhappy-grams as souvenirs of my continuing travels around the state.  I’m optimistic the Dodge will see me through many more comfortable miles.  I’m certainly happy so far.

Photo from www.luminariasa.org.

It’s going to get a little crazy this Saturday, with some 200,000 or more people converging on downtown and carrying on from morning to night.  

If you’re heading down there, or just passing through, have a plan. Several streets will be closed. And buses on a dozen routes will be rerouted throughout the day. 

First up, an annual St. Patrick’s Day Parade will thump and blast its way past the Alamo, starting at 11 a.m. Then the party will shift to the River Walk for an afternoon of dancing and music at the Arneson River Theatre and a 3 p.m. river parade.

Later, throngs of artists, performers, musicians and fans will light up La Villita and HemisFair Park for Luminaria: Arts Night in San Antonio, and hang out past midnight. The celebration highlights Contemporary Art Month.  

So if you want to be mobile in downtown San Antonio this Saturday, you might have to get a little creative. Good luck!

More on:

• Bus rerouting
• St. Patrick’s Day celebrations
• Luminaria: Arts Night in San Antonio

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.