My cats in the bike trailer (on the way to the vet)
I’m lucky enough to live in a city that has easy transit access, so I’ve never had to own a car. While bikes (including our cool new bike trailer – which I even used to take our cats to the vet) and buses do their jobs about 99% of the time, there are those days when I need a car. To visit family living on the coast or to pick up heavy groceries (namely cat food and litter). So that is where car sharing comes in.
Zipcar has been a wonderful service that has been in Portland for a few years and it is also in several other cities – which is nice for traveling. But what if more people shared their cars? What if two neighbors decided to share one vehicle? That would leave a car sitting idle for less time of the day and would greatly reduce the easy tendency to just drive somewhere, when you could walk, bike, or bus. Oregon is looking into allowing other car sharing services.
What are your experiences car sharing? Would you share your car with someone if you made some money from it and drove less? Watch a video from Streetfilms to learn more about car sharing.
For all of the planning/urban development geeks out there, finally, a scale we can all relate to. Students at my alma mater, Portland State University created a scale that takes into account the 20 minute neighborhood concept and added in variables unique to Portland, including coffee shops, MAX light rail stops, food cart pods (a must-have for any Portland Neighborhood), the bike network, beer shops and breweries, and other businesses catering to the late-night crowd, local Supportland merchants which encourage shoppers to buy local, and pinball machines. Check out the full discussion on vimeo for what makes neighborhoods “badass”. The full report is also here.
Areas of Portland that are particularly "badass"
I feel like I have a good handle on the transit system in Portland. I live here, work here, and studied the city as a graduate student. But what happens when you, say, visit Vancouver, BC? The smartphone helps with navigation, but what if you have a limited amount of time – how do you decide where to go?
A German computer programmer by the name of Stefan Wehrmeyer has a solution. Enter Mapnificent, presenting all the destinations you can reach within a certain time frame. It doesn’t tell you how or which bus/train etc. will get you to where you need to go, but it provides a starting point to see how far you can get within a given time period. You can adjust the time, zoom in and zoom out similar to Google maps. With some more refining, this could be a useful planning/livability tool. Looking to buy a house? See how far you can travel, or if your work is within a given amount of time from a transit stop. You can also search the area you are able to reach for specific amenities, including coffee shops.
Ghost Bike Juanita Drive
Ghost Bike U District
When colleague Tony Abbo, NMDOT, asked if I’d ever heard of Ghost Bikes a year + ago, I had to search it out. With the grim irony of the Beatles verse “now we know how many holes it takes to fill the Albert Hall“, folks in Seattle have three ghost bikes as reminders of biker vulnerability on the roads. Ghost bikes have become memorials of bike fatalities (bikes were struck by autos) in Seattle and Kirkland. They also serve as reminders to be cautious in mixed mode environments. With daylight shrinking everyday, it even more important to be vigilant when you are driving a bike or auto.
Godzilla vs the Viaduct
Traffic jams with personality – every urban/urbanizing area has them. Grid-locked city streets, blocked highways inching along and as regular as clockwork you almost wait for them. In Puget Sound we have:
- The S curves
- Kennydale Hill
- Mercer Mess
- the Iron Triangle (know that one?)
- the Knot
- and now Viadoom
With personal devices delivering precision traffic information the days of the infamous traffic jam names may be over. But Viadoom with all the fear, and anticipation of Halloween has not disappointed. Advanced information had folks staying away, rescheduling appointments, taking the ferry and taking the bus. But nine days might have been the limit as this Fridays evening commute gets real sticky. Be afraid be very afraid!
So the viaduct gets shut down for a week…and all hell breaks loose. All of a sudden, congestion infects Seattle as drivers struggle to find their way to work. Sounds familiar? It should, because it’s happening right now.
As viaduct users plug up city streets and turn I-5 into a parking lot, consider these alternatives.
- Biking to work
- Probably the most hard core of the three options. Biking to work does more than simply save the planet and keep you fit. Biking will reduces traffic for yourself and others. So you can be a nice person and feel good about it.
- Smug points: 8
- Fitness points: 10
- Convenience points: 5
- Using public transportation
- Busses are affected by traffic just as much as anything else on the roads. So where is the benefit, you may ask. If we get enough people to ride the bus, we can remove enough cars from the road so that traffic is not nearly as bad. It’s a nice thought
- Smug points: 5
- Fitness points: 4
- Convenience points: 4
- Giving up
- Why not work from home next week? In fact, why not pick one day every week to work virtually? Not only do you save money by not driving, and save stress by not getting stuck in traffic, you get to have a relaxing morning at home.
- Smug points: 10
- Fitness points: 0
- Convenience points: 10
PSU’s Center for Transportation Studies hosts a great seminar series with a live webcast and a green growth bent many weeks. If you can’t participate live, keep in the loop with the podcast . I just listened to the October 7th edition with the CDC’s Andrew Dannenberg discuss the connection between transportation planning and public health. In particular he focuses on the role Health Impact Analyses (HIAs) can play in evaluating transportation capital investments. HIAs can be a relatively low effort process with major benefits, helping to make transportation decisions objectively and consider their full implications in a policy environment that often favors certain modes through dedicated funding sources and inertia. HIAs can be an important tool to better tie transportation and land use and illustrate outcomes of different designs and scenarios for stakeholders.
Great post by MrMoneyMustache showing the connection between your wallet and your commute.
http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2011/10/06/the-true-cost-of-commuting/
Getting stuck here eats at your patience and your paycheck
Viaduct as play field
Mondo thriller dance party, game to 7 ultimate frisbee, serpentine three mile game of leap frog, hardscape house of horrors, uber side walk chalk….. What would you do with 30 minutes on an empty Alaskan Way Viaduct. That is what Washington State DOT asks in thier unsual contest to do whatever you want for 30 minutes on the Alaskan Way Viaduct when it closes October 21st through the 31st.
Ho hum, you say, have you gotten too used to these closures? Maybe more your cup of tea is the empty canvas of what will be when this monstrosity is gone. The folks at WaterfrontSeattle.org are planning an open house on October 27 with family events including photbooths and trick-or-treating on October 29 and 30. Bring your self and your ideas for this once in a lifetime event for a great waterfront. And of course bring the monsters for the Waterfront Trick-or-Treat.
Trick or Treat Seattle
- Transportation Priorities
Washington State Governor Christine Gregoire has formed a task force to develop comprehensive options for a statewide legislative transportation package including finance options such as public private partnership and tolling.
The Task force includes the broad range of transportation interests across the state and have already met three times. They will be meeting two more times with a goal of providing recommended strategies to the 2012 legislature in January.
They are seeking your ideas and suggestions through this short on-line survey. An even more in-depth survey from the Washington State Transportation Commission is located at this survey.
So come on Cascadia, what is important to YOU?
