To Zip or Not to Zip?

My first podcast is actually not out as a 'cast. Instead I'm doing the first couple of months as youtube slideshows with audio as I build my podcasting skills.

Part1: Folk, Foxes and Francisco

Part2: Folk, Foxes and Francisco

We are all so gosh-darned environmentally conscientious these days. Everybody’s got a view on the best method for saving the planet. And most of us are involved in our own plan for doing our bit. Are you getting tired of hearing about how all your friends are greener than you are?

There was that woman standing next to me at the Menlo Park Farmer’s market, for example. She was complaining about the prices. Fifty cents more, she said angrily, than the price at the Redwood City Saturday market. I remarked that the farmers pay more for the stalls at our downtown market, than they do one city north.

“I wouldn’t think it would be worth the gas to drive to Redwood City, to save fifty cents on a bouquet of sunflowers.” I tried to say it politely.

“I’ll get there in my hybrid,” she replied smugly. Well it’s pretty clear she is doing her duty by the earth!

I had to grit my teeth together, fighting the impulse to attempt to one-up her. Clearly she doesn’t consider the cost to the environment of producing a brand new car. I also forebore to tell her that, I always walk or bike to the weekly market. How much charm could there really be in showing up somebody who is that much of a dope?

It’s not that I never drive. I just manage to limit doing it. Both my husband and I can get away with it, because neither of us has a commute that requires driving. That’s not an option for everybody, and it certainly hasn’t always been an option for me. You do what you can. I can walk or bike to two grocery stores, a photocopy place and a pharmacy. So most days I do the family shopping in bits and pieces, and my husband makes one big Costco run a week for the heavy stuff. There’s days and evenings when I need a car. I take music and technology classes at the local community colleges, and our public transportation system isn’t well integrated with those campuses, if you live where I live. (I know because I’ve tried it, and pumped the local bus drivers for ideas.) So I drive to my classes.

My neighbor Jen and I have both downsized to one car. A bike racer and regular long-distance rider, Jen bikes everywhere. She ferries her children, via Burley, amazing distances. She and her husband both commute by bike. She also walks to the grocery store most days.

This didn’t start out as a plan to be greener-than-thou. Each of us had two cars until recently. But Jen’s lovely old purple sedan got crunched by another driver in a hurry. Stop signs were apparently not made for everyone. The insurance company gave her $900 for a car that had worked just fine and required little maintenance. My daughter was determined to be a good bike commuter at college, but it just didn’t work out for her. Sometimes you need a car. We are left with reliable Old Blue, the elderly mini van.

If pushed to it, we could each acquire a second vehicle. And that second vehicle, like each of our first ones, would spend a lot of time in our respective driveways. A waste of money neither of us is dying to spend. A waste of space in our none-too-sizable drives. An unnecessary drain on the planets resources, - yes mam - even if we got hybrids.

What would be nice, I thought, would be that Zip Car program. I’m sure you’ve seen it. Didn’t it start on college campuses? A fleet of cars I rent a share in. Access to a car only when I need it. Another expense, but less than that of purchasing a new or used car.

So do either Jen or I Zip?

In a way we do. We setup our own Zip. Each of us already has one car we rarely use. So we back each other up. On the rare occasion when both spouses need the car, and it does happen, we check in with our neighbor.

“Going to be using your car Saturday night, Jen? I’ve got a piano recital at school and Dave needs to drive down south.”

“No bike race this weekend. You’re on. And by the way, I’ve got a doctor’s appointment Tuesday afternoon and Mark needs to take the car, so he can drive down to San Jose after work. That’s not an afternoon when you have class, right?”

It’s not. My Old Blue will get her over to the doctor’s.

High Speed Rail: Train is a Comin’

Train is a comin’, oh yeah.

Train is a comin’, oh yeah.

Train is a comin’, Train is a comin’, Train is a comin’, oh yeah.

African American Spiritual

High Speed Rail (HSR) sounds great to most of us. Who can ignore current and future challenges when it comes to transportation? But must we recreate problems from the twentieth century?

Urban planners across the country work, to resolve the problems created by elevated rail structures typically, built between the early part of the 19’th century up until the 1980’s. Citizenry in places like Boston and Chicago, deal with problems created by these wide platforms that appeared like the tentacles of a giant squid from a Disney movie. Massive walls and roofs divided once flourishing communities, where trees and fresh air once flourished, children walked to school and neighbors of all ages walked easily to the grocery store, or socialized on an afternoon stroll. This past-times scenario sounds familiar, in fact it sounds like my own community today.

Of course these days, sane analysts and engineers don’t favor these type of urban constructions. They’ve learned from experience that these type of comparatively cheap, monstrosities lead to urban blight of the worst kind. It isn’t only the individual property owner who suffers when her backyard or entire house is consumed by the gaping maws of elevated rail tracks, it’s the entire society. Children and elderly neighbors can’t walk to school or the grocery store safely, or easily, anymore because walls below the elevated tracks have changed the outline of the town. Besides you wouldn’t want to anyway. The cops don’t have the resources to police the danger zones that flourish beneath the shelter of overpasses. Want a good place to meet up with your gang or shoot up? These constructions are the place for you! High track rail doesn’t tend to deposit a large, long-lasting fund for perpetual cleanup services needed within the area, and history has shown us that cities have typically lacked the resources needed to deal with the results. Could you design a better spot to attract garbage and vermin? Local business and industry suffers too. People don’t want to shop or work in a place like this.

As a matter of fact, communities across the country, like this one in New York, http://www.good.is/post/high_line_gets_off_the_ground/, are working to tear down, cleanup and rededicate these symbols of urban blight. It’s taking tremendous community efforts to turn these dangerous and unbeautiful community eyesores into parks and greenbelts. It’s clear that commercial, industrial and residential users have suffered where elevated tracks grew. But surely we’re a lot smarter than that now? I mean – we must have learned from experience, right?

Apparently not. The California High Speed Rail Authority thinks they know better. Out of four original plans for constructing a system for fast trains between San Francisco and Los Angeles, they simply chose the cheapest. The Feds put seed money on the table, and we need to grab it, and do something with it, while the grabbing is good. Seductive images of High Speed Rail, just like they’ve got in Europe!, will streak residents down south in two and a half hours. It’s only those NIMBY’s (not-in-my-back-yard-ers) whose houses back up on the new elevated tracks – five freeway lanes wide up and down the peninsula and eight wide at crossings - who aren’t willing to sacrifice for the common good. Ridership estimates? Sure everybody will be jumping on board, no matter what we charge ‘em! And the funding we still need to pay the lowest construction costs we can come up with? It’s in the bag!

Hey, you can count on us to know what we’re talking about. Our best people told us so. Just ignore that study released in June by the Institute Of Transportation Studies University Of California, Berkeley at the request of the California Senate Transportation and Housing Committee, “Review of “Bay Area/California High-Speed Rail Ridership and Revenue Forecasting Study” http://www.its.berkeley.edu/publications/UCB/2010/RR/UCB-ITS-RR-2010-1.pdf

Better public transportation - we need it. But we need it good and we need it done right. If we destroy the vibrant communities of the Peninsula in order to get it, then just who are we serving?

. . .

* Peninsula residents know it can be done better http://www.peninsularail.com/main/Call_for_Common_Sense/page63.htm The Peninsula Cities Consortium (PCC) If you want to stay on top of ideas and activities involving local people, sign-up to get the PCC newsletter. http://www.peninsularail.com

* Another regular e-newsletter is available from CC-HSR. Current “Hot Topics” at the Community Coalition on High Speed Rail (http://cc-hsr.org/) include: financial risks of HSR, report on HSR activities, and update on litigation. This group’s efforts to involve * Peninsula citizens in the Environmental Impact Report for High Speed Rail, led to it’s decertification. An excerpt from their site (http://cc-hsr.org/) reads, “The program-level EIR for the SF Bay Area was decertified in December as a result of the successful lawsuit. CHSRA had to re-do this EIR and accept new evidence and public comments. CC-HSR coordinated with peninsula cities, rail advocates, and the general public to make sure we built the strongest possible case under CEQA for a routing decision that didn't destroy our communities or undermine our economy.”

* A recent San Francisco Chronicle article talks about where we stand now in regards to building and funding

“San Joaquin award helps set high-speed rail's path”

o “…state high-speed rail officials say the decision on where to start building the 800-mile high-speed rail network has yet to be made.”

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/10/28/BAH11G3J0L.DTL#ixzz150dAb7Dj