Phoenix Liveblogging

Welcome to Arizona! I've heard Phoenix is like Los Angeles without Hollywood or the beach. So far... well, it's not quite THAT bad.

I arrived yesterday, here for four days to present some transportation research at the "Innovations in Travel Modeling" conference. My first experience was in the cab ride to the conference hotel, and the cabbie said he hates it here and is moving to Chicago next week. According to him, more than 40 conferences have cancelled due to the draconian anti-immigrant law that was passed last week, and he can't get any business. I was his third fare in 14 hours. He may have been exaggerating about the fare, but he was definitely leaving town.

Yesterday afternoon was the only free time I had here before the conference got underway, so I decided to sample the local flora and fauna by walking to the one gay bar close the hotel... well, "close" is relative because it was about a two-mile walk. But still, there are indeed sidewalks in Phoenix, a big step up from Houston. The place was nice enough; a bit like the Lone Star in SF with very friendly attitude-free guys. That's always a plus. In fact, I have to say I'm a bit surprised that the bar was actually fun.

Today's presentation on our bike route-choice model went fantastic, and we got lots of comments and positive reaction. I hope some other cities pick up on the research we did and take it further. Tomorrow is our downtown parking price research, and then Wednesday one last preso on advanced traffic analysis methods ("DTA") -- after which I can finally come home.

So far, so good! More to report soon.

Houston - What a shithole!

YAY! I'm back from Houston after a four-day transportation conference. The conference went very well and all three of our presentations came off without a hitch. I even got not one but two "Oooh"s from the audience during mine. Seriously, yay!

But that's not the real story of the trip. The real story is that Houston is a big shithole. I can't believe that it's the fourth-largest city in America (by population -- it covers a huge swath of Texas though); I can't imagine anybody wanting to ever live there.

First of all, downtown is incredibly dreary. The photo above is a main downtown Houston street at about 7:05pm, and as you can see there is one car, and one bus, for as far as the eye can see. I did manage to get one blurry pedestrian in the photo, which was also a surprise because, believe me, nobody walks anywhere in Houston. Even the McDonalds had already shut its doors by 7:00. Totally dead.

Then one night I took a cab out the 'burbs to find the gay bars with my fellow queer transit planners. The neighborhood known as "Montrose" has all the gay bars clustered together, which definitely had a feeling of circling the wagons in enemy territory. The neighborhood had "sidewalks" but I use the term loosely, because some blocks actually didn't have any sidewalks, and others had sidewalks at one point in the past, but now had ripped up concrete squares that literally rose three or four feet up where tree roots had busted them -- at least a decade ago. Walking the streets of Montrose really was a new form of urban hiking which required special footwear. I only wish I had a photo of that too. (Oh, and once inside, the bars were full of clean shaven twinkies no matter where we went... Texas is not bear country.)

And to top it all off, my hotel room had a fantastic view of Enron 1 and Enron 2, both now occupied by Shell Oil. Enron 2 was only half-built when the company collapsed under the weight of its shell-game crooked accounting scandals. Then, the huge american flag which they attached to the building in fall 2001 to commemorate our fallen, ripped off during Hurricane Ike and the flag's connector hooks clawed huge gashes out of the building's glass window curtain. That's some serious metaphor. The shiny 50-story building still has plywood taped over some sections of its facade. There are a lot of other evil corporations with HQ in Houston -- Waste Management, Hess, Elpaso Gas (which had great propaganda posters at street level).

What a creepy town, still filled with hucksters and crooks. Of course none of this should surprise me, because the head of Houston's travel modeling agency applied for my open position and spelled his own name wrong on his résumé.

Muni Meltdown -- it's back!!

It was too good to be true — a J-Church train with maws open and beckoning at the Van Ness platform. Of course it turned out to be my personal nightmare, a "medical emergency" on the train, which blocked all rail traffic out of the tunnel on all routes, for twenty-five minutes. This emergency was a heroin overdosing woman -- I can spot that look anywhere, after working at Civic Center for six years. When we did finally emerge at the Church Street Safeway, the wires were down over Market Street so it took another ten minutes to go one block. Then the train skipped my own stop for no explicable reason, and I had to walk back (and uphill, waaaah!) from 22nd. Gripe gripe gripe. Stay tuned for a later post on how urban local rail service is designed all wrong (think: no passing lanes!)

The past two days on Muni have been.... exasperating.

Yesterday there was the typical J-line trains coming in 18, 21, and 24 minutes (instead of evenly spaced) on my way to work; and then on the way back there were no J-lines at Van Ness for 18 minutes, and then a delay at Van Ness, so I took the first L-Terrible I could board (which was the fifth train to arrive at the station, due to overcrowding), and then got off at Church and walked all the way to the top of Liberty Hill and I still managed to beat that J-Church train home.

OK, so all this griping has a point. The unreliability problems on Muni would turn even the most ardent transit supporter into a single-occupant car driver. Parking at Civic Center is only $7 per day even at the daily rate, if you hunt around for the right lot. That's a lot cheaper than BART round-trip if you don't live in SF. For those of us who do live here, I know I'm not the only one that really wants to take Muni but is just bludgeoned by the awful user experience (on average, once or twice a week).

Thus, the photo accompanying this blog. This weekend, I am buying a "fixie" single-gear bicycle. I'm going to paint it pastel colors, and I am commuting up this hill with Billy Butt Power from now on. It can't hurt my physique, and I'll know exactly how long my commute takes, every day, from now on. I used to bike a few days a week when I lived in the Castro, before the bike was stolen, but it's been almost a year and it's long past time to get back in the saddle.

Friday commute: Déjà vu of disaster

Hmmm... another Friday afternoon commute of agony. Had to walk home today, because the tunnel was inexplicably shut down (again) during evening rush hour. I think I'm going to start a database of Muni Metro shutdowns and doing some data-mining to find patterns. Some friends who work for Muni told me that the afternoons are always worse than the mornings, and actually had an answer for me about WHY.

The problem is one of line and yard management. In the morning peak, each yard sends out the service with a team of line-management pros (they called these people by their official titles but I don't remember those). The problem is, when Muni balanced their budget they had to cut something so they eliminated a lot of the line management folks in the afternoon shifts. Those are the people who make sure that the vehicles aren't bunched together and are leaving the yards at the right time. Without that, the drivers just sorta "wing it".

So finally, I think I understand why the afternoons are worse than the mornings. How many times have YOU sat in the tunnel watching the next-train sign show that it's going to be N, J, N-N, J, K...

Any chance we can get that line management back by, oh, pulling staff off the outrageously expensive Chinatown subway project?

Please just let me pay my fare!

No other transit system I've ever used is so hostile toward infrequent riders. Ask anyone who's ever visited San Francisco how maddening it is to take BART into the city, and then try to transfer to Muni at Civic Center or Embarcadero. No cross-platform transfer; no useful signage; no integrated ticket (except fastpass but that's for residents).

The kiosk agents don't take cash (half of the kiosks sit empty anyway); and the change machines won't take $20 bills, or the ones that do only return four $5 bills which are useless at the Muni turnstiles.

My friend visiting last weekend actually got yelled at by the BART kiosk agent, telling him "This is a BART station!! If you need change, go upstairs to Burger King." Which he did -- and they wouldn't change his $20, so he ended up taking a taxi cab.

Plus, the daily and weekly passes are almost impossible to find unless you already know where to go to get them. Even visitors who want to ride Muni are discouraged every step of the way.

Here are some suggestions which would make Muni more inviting to infrequent users, thus encouraging them to become more frequent users:

1. More, working change machines or automatic ticket vending machines.
2. A simplified Muni system map, which shows high-frequency lines and major stops only. Portland has a nice downtown PDF and the SF Transportation Authority had a good start here but it would need some work.
   
3. Real live kiosk agents at the kiosks, actually helping! Or like in other cities, actually doing something like accepting payments.
   
4. Now I'm just dreaming: how about really funding and implementing TransLink so you can get one ticket for your entire ride?
   

Computer Glitch -- Tunnel Closed!!!

I knew it as I approached 17th and Market... that crowd standing at the F-line terminal could only mean one thing. Yep -- The station agent at Castro announced a "computer software glitch" had seized the entire Muni tunnel. No trains in either direction, good luck getting anywhere this morning.

Judging the size of the crowd at the terminus, I decided I'd race the F-line on foot, and hoofed it down Market street. The mass of people on the sidewalk were all walking the same direction I was. Two women chatted me up along the way -- "Nice day for a walk anyway, eh?"

I was well ahead of the F-line until Octavia, when it finally overtook me. But alas, by the time I hit Gough street I was ahead again as the crammed rail car got stuck behind an overcrowded bus. I love the cute little trains in midday when they aren't crowded, but when they get packed in like today, without any ventilation systems, those little trains are really uncomfortable. When I arrived at my destination near Van Ness Avenue, the train had just pulled ahead again, beating me by about 45 seconds.

Some thoughts for the proponents of Muni's expensive toy railroad, sometimes called the Market Street Railway:

• F-line streetcars are very slow -- I almost beat the train in my walk from Castro to Van Ness
  
• F-line streetcars are surprisingly low capacity, compared to the Breda cars and certainly compared to BART
  
• You cannot base a real, modern city's transit system on such old technology and expect residents to be well-served. Maybe it's nice for the tourists
  

I'll see if I can find out what exactly happened to tunnel service today and will update if I get anything.

Friday commute worse than usual -- as usual

Dealing with a transit system that is overcapacity is a nightmare. The service cuts from last fall really made offpeak travel unbearable. And, mind you, offpeak means just seconds after 6pm in the Muni Metro tunnel.

Waiting at the Van Ness station for a K/L/M train to Castro that isn't completely full is frequently an exercise in patience. This Friday I only waited for seven trains before giving up (this time it was NN, K, NN, NN, J, L, NN). The Van Ness platform was completely filled with people obviously trying to get into the Castro for the evening, all quite frustrated that none of the trains were heading in the direction that the most people want to go. I took the N, which was completely full; had no A/C; and in fact even the fan was not running.

So here's my question. Why does it seem like the mix of trains in the tunnel is the most screwed up on Friday afternoons? Even if more drivers call in sick for the weekend (something I don't know is true or not), it doesn't seem like a driver shortage should mean that only N-Judah and J-Church lines run.

And while I'm at it, since there only needs to be one driver per train, why are so many of the K/L/M trains one car during rush hour? Is Muni saving electricity?