The Peristaltic Testator

Last Wednesday, I volunteered to take a road trip to our state capitol, Olympia, and lobby my State Senator and Representatives on the importance of maintaining public transit. Yes, that position serves me well since I drive transit; but that is something I would support even if I didn't. All one has to do is live in Seattle to see how important buses and trains are to our economy. If all the people in those conveyances had to switch to cars, there wouldn't be a way to drive in our fair city half the day. Our roads would become near-permanent parking lots.

Thanks to a persistent tooth ache, I haven't been following State Legislative politics lately. ( Frankly, it's taken a turn for the weird. )

X-Posted to talk_politics.

For those of you still unfamiliar with M. King Hubbert and his now-famous theory of "peak oil," do look up Wiki entries on his name and theory. If you don't, not only will this entry seem curious (if not completely unhinged), but so will reality.

If you're still curious about what this might mean for, well, everyone on earth, ( join me as I point out landmarks on the road to simplicity. )


X-posted to talk_politics.

Co-worker VeloBusDriver turned me on to yet another boner popped by our nation's nemesis General Motors: GM ads that mock bicyclists and pedestrians.


Embiggenate the shame of cycling.

It gets worse. As if this ad (which ran in UCLA's student paper) weren't enough, GM tried to apologize in a very, very ham-fisted and obviously untruthful way. Mark Degnan, Director of Local Advertising and Marketing, actually wrote, "It was not our intent to make light of a healthy lifestyle and cycling." I ask you, people, if that ad doesn't "make light of a healthy lifestyle and cycling," what exactly does it do?

A little digging in the comments revealed that, at least a day after Mark published his official "apology," GM was still running banner ads which I think are even worse. This little number to the left was, according to a commenter, an intro to a feature that allowed people to toggle between different GM pedestrian-splashers currently on the market . . . at the GM College Discount web site. Showing cyclists to be shamefully un-date-able is one tactic; showing pedestrians to be worthy targets of driver derision borders on goading hate speech.

I got the title for this entry after I described it to The Wife. She has admittedly far more experience dealing with corporate culture. She notes that this kind of "taking the lead" in "making a difference" talk is pretty common in meetings everywhere. I countered that all of us differ on what steps can be considered forward leading and which just carry the walker backward. Why? Each of us has in our heads different definitions of utopia and hell. Your utopia might very well be my idea of hell.

People who gather together every day and interact with each other every day form a society of their own. They can reinforce each other in ways that might very well seem alien to those outside the culture, even contrary to devices designed to catch errors and correct them. General Motors, formed of people, is no exception. Are we in agreeance?

When someone in a board meeting suggests an ad campaign mocking cyclists because focus groups show that cycle riders (especially in LA, where the paper ad ran) would rather drive, someone else in that group (probably in Detroit, one of the least pedestrian and cyclist-friendly cities in our nation) thought that was a fine idea and green-lighted the campaign. After all, whatever sells more cars the better, no matter how despicable the idea might seem to non-auto industry people.

Why, I bet these ads were run by some of the same people who thought those kooks over at the electric car division were tilting at windmills with their wacky wiz-bang battery cars. Those EV-1s, some of the most advanced modern electric cars every produced commercially, got exactly what GM corporate culture thought should come to them.



Crushed, just like the naive hope of every pedestrian and cyclist that General Motors will ever, ever change.

In 2008, the price of fuel skyrocketed. All of the people barely able to afford their new and overpriced McMansion out in the boonies suddenly couldn't afford to get to work. Foreclosures followed. They continue. Until home prices get down to pre-bubble levels, they will continue.

Some were able to hop on a bus to work. Ridership at work skyrocketed, even after raising the fare for the first time in 9 years.

Then, the fallout really hit: by late November of 2008, ridership — and, more ominously, traffic — dropped. The economy nearly tanked. Refer to any number of documentaries on what happened.

Since then the sales tax and property tax funding for transit has been dropping at the same time the price of bus fuel has held fairly steady. It has finally come to this: either the King County Council approves a two-year $20 per year surcharge on car licensing, or service will be cut to Holy Shit! levels, meaning 17 percent of the Metro bus system. Really, download and peruse that linked PDF. The number of canceled routes should scare anyone who has ever ridden a bus in or near Seattle.

Last night, hundreds came to voice their concerns. They were not happy. More are expected at the next gathering, scheduled for Burien.

This is, as I mentioned in December, what the Gas Ceiling looks like. The economy can't afford fuel, so it tanks. Just as it recovers, fuel spikes again, leading to another economic downturn. Fuel prices always run just ahead of inflation.

What scares me most about this current kerfuffle, though, is the fact that the County Council is proposing a two-year surcharge fee for plates. They expect it will tide the transit system over until the promised recovery returns and boosts tax revenues back to pre-bust levels. Translation: They are in complete denial. What is needed immediately is, yes, a quick infusion of cash; but what is needed for the future is a restructuring of the taxes that fund transit, a new paradigm that gives public transit enough money every time the price of fuel rises.

The trouble is simple: How does one explain that necessity? To what history can one refer to cite precedence? After all, we have been extracting fossil fuels in growing earnest for 200 years now. The voices that could have guided us regarding sustainable development have been dead silent for centuries.

Lenny loves to tell stories about his old Barracuda. One, I just realized, helps to illustrate the potential -- and more than a few problems -- with biofuels. ( Click here. You know you want to. )

. . . There's something you should know. The buses are running late, sometimes very late. The King County Council wanted to do "something" about its massive budget shortfall, but didn't want to do anything that might piss off voters (you know, like cut the services that eat up the budget). They tried something that affects Metro and many Sound Transit runs -- reduce the amount of time drivers get between runs to recover their schedule. It's called "recovery time":

Central to the idea that efficiencies can be found in schedules was and is the claim that King County Metro buses spend too much time in layover/recovery mode. That is – the time between trips that buses use to catch up to subsequent legs of a shift if running late. These periods are also when drivers get vital rest, restroom and meal breaks. Some – but not all – layover/recovery time is designed to be “down time” for the driver to prepare the bus for the next trip (change signs, search for lost articles, change transfers, inspect the coach), and to have a bit of personal time in what is often a long, grueling day. The King County Council – acting on recommendations from the audit – decided that drivers have had too much of this “down time” compared to other transit systems, and ordered the purchase and implementation of Hastus software. . . .

As more and more routes and runs are re-worked according to the Hastus metrics – more and more buses are routinely (or worse – unpredictably) running late.

There's a reason we in King County have more "down time" between departures: our area's traffic is all but unpredictable. Those "breaks" are historically necessary. Schedule a bus too tight and a series of red lights can easily make it run late for the next departure. Add a passenger in a wheelchair or even one with a simple question or request, and you're very late. Throw in the fact that you're often running during rush hour, sharing the road with too many other cars for all to move quickly (if at all), and forget it. The schedule becomes as fictional as the budget.

This is something I hope the Council will realize soon enough -- that when one tries to nickle and dime a system into budgetary compliance, the system is weakened. Weaken anything enough and it will break, usually at the points already the most fragile. Because they attempt to use the schedules as published to get to and fro, people are missing work and appointments. This will continue.

Thought you would want to know, just in case you need to get, well, anywhere.

. . . but not to your own facts.

After a year of use, red light cameras have failed to deliver the promised safety benefits in Baytown, Texas. The Houston suburb activated the majority of its cameras on July 13, 2008. Since then, the number of accidents at eight camera locations has increased 40 percent, contrary to predictions from city officials. The increase in accidents has not been in minor "fender benders," as is frequently claimed by photo ticketing advocates. Rather, the number of collisions resulting in an injury jumped 75 percent. Rear end collisions increased 39 percent. Results from comprehensive, independent studies elsewhere in the country have yielded similar results.

(I had to emphasize.)

I've got other examples of where the facts don't conform to the popular opinions, but this one jumped out at me. Maybe putting in 13 hours a day at work this week got me thinking a lot about traffic patterns.

In a couple of entries under the "transportation" tag, I've kvetched about GM in the past. This tasty number comes to mind. Well, PRI's This American Life has answered a lot of my nagging questions about how GM came to become such a sprawling crap factory in their recent episode, NUMMI.

It turns out that GM had the opportunity to learn from Toyota's success way back in 1984, but only a fraction of their workers embraced the lessons learned from that venture. If you've ever wonder why the quality of American-built cars suffers to this day, you really must hear this story.

I just got off the phone with The Wife's folks. It turns out a local hot story about a beating in our Downtown Seattle Transit Tunnel has just gone national. As part of their traditional call to catch up, they wanted some explanation for what they saw on the news. While explaining things, I realized you readers out there might want a bit of perspective from someone within the organization that runs the tunnel.

It's no surprise, really, that this story went national and viral. There's video! Of a beating! And Guv'ment employees LETTING IT HAPPEN!!! Hell, read how the AP piece run by MSNBC chose to open the story:

SEATTLE - Three unarmed security guards were following orders last month when they stood by without intervening as a 15-year-old girl was badly beaten in a downtown Seattle bus tunnel.

(Emphasis mine.)

Really, all they had to add was "just" and those employees would have been branded Nazis standing trial at Nuremburg.

This whole episode is making me ragey. Why? Because it was so very avoidable. First, let's ask why were those employees are in the tunnel in the first place. From the AP article, we learn: "The guards' duties include helping customers and reporting suspicious objects, disruptive behavior and equipment problems." That last, "equipment problems," needs to be further emphasized.

Happily, I posted an entry outlining the equipment problems these guards were later hired to mitigate. Here's the situation. The tunnel was modified a few years ago to allow for both light rail and buses. Sadly, the modifications for the light rail meant compromises had to be made for the buses:

Most of the mods involved carving out the roadbed and re-leveling it. Trains ride higher than buses. Were the bed to remain constant, train riders would have to step down from and step up to the rail cars. Given that trips and falls constitute the greatest danger in transit agency liability, this change of elevation was deemed unacceptable. However, again, what was good for trains doesn't work for the bus. This change now puts the new hybrid low-floor floor level below the curb. . . .

What happens when people on the platform get too close to the curb when buses approach? Ah, now the fun begins. Buses are equipped with mirrors mounted just ahead of the front door. With no platform -- that is, standing on a surface equal to the bus -- the very top of my head can touch the base of that mirror. Were a bus moving when I was standing there, I might get a very minor bonk on the noggin. I stand at six feet.

That means that on a typical curb, folks between 6' and 5' 9" would be in danger of conking the mirror. It's something we drivers keep in mind when approaching the curb, I can assure you.

In the new tunnel, the conking goes to anyone 5' 6" or taller. Furthermore, remember, the bus needs to be closer to the curb than on the downtown surface for reasons I mentioned above. Combining this curb nearness with the fact that far more people stand over 5' 6" than over 6', that statistical likelihood of conking Shoots Way Up. Bonking a head, even brushing it a little, constitutes an accident.

Furthermore, in most stations where trains run passengers waiting to board traditionally crowd the edge of the platform. This makes the bus mirror situation critical.

In the days and weeks after the station opened, changes were made to mitigate accidents this poor design situation caused. A yellow strip a couple of feet from the edge was installed as a no-stand zone. To emphasize the importance of not standing there, very loud and very clear announcements flood the stations at all times warning against standing within that zone until buses have come to a complete stop. And additional personnel were trained to stand watch in the tunnel and personally remind people not to stand to close to the edge. At first, Metro used its own supervisors to stand this watch duty. The contractors shown in the video "not intervening" were trained and hired later.

That's right, people. The guards in the DSTT are there not to keep the peace, not to protect passengers from sudden attack, but primarily to protect waiting passengers against injury from a design situation that should never have been allowed to happen.

And that's what the news has been talking about not at all.

Look, it's all about the bottom line. Would we all love for police to be stationed in the tunnel stations? Probably. The sad fact, though, is that the stations are (like transit stations the world over) strangely safe places. Very little crime happens there relative to the crime on the street above the stations. Why should trained law enforcement personnel waste their precious time and the taxpayers' resources ($90 an hour for an off-duty police officer, verses $17 an hour for a non-intervening contractor are numbers I've heard batted about) to stand by and protect people against violent crime and other incidents that statistically happen at far greater frequency elsewhere? As brutal as this attack was, it was also very, very anomalous.

Here, though, I get even madder. Look what Metro's head, Kevin Desmond, is saying in the AP article:

Olympic Security is working up a proposed contract revision that could include additional training and new guidelines on how and when guards should intervene, Desmond said.

"They are highly motivated to make changes very quickly," Desmond said. "I am motivating them, and they have a reputation to keep."

Other options include hiring armed guards.

Unarmed guards could put themselves and others at risk if they intervene in certain situations. But this incident was largely a fight between two teenage girls, and there does not appear to be any indication that the larger group would have become involved if the guards broke it up, Desmond said.

"If I was there on the platform I don't know that I would have stood there," he said. "It's their job to be down there. The people at Olympic Security had the same human response: 'Why didn't we step in to protect the girl on the ground?'" (Emphasis mine.)

Desmond, you mendacious cretin. You weren't there. You weren't being paid a pittance to watch the tunnels primarily to guard heads against flying mirrors that you were probably responsible for okaying. And you weren't as a result given very specific instructions not to intervene in other situations. So why, if only to deflect attention away from your office, are you insinuating that these "guards" did anything wrong at all?

Shame on you. You are doing nothing less than throwing those contract employees under the bus.


Update, February 24, 2010: On that last sentence, I called it! Under the bus the guards have officially been thrown:

King County Metro Transit is planning within the next few days to replace
Olympic Security, the firm whose guards called police but didn't intervene
while a girl was kicked in the head at Westlake Station Jan. 28. . . .

Though crime is generally low inside the Seattle transit tunnel, video of last month's
assault angered people here and around the country.

He said after the briefing that "in a matter of days" he'll announce a plan,
involving another security firm in the tunnel.

For nearly five years, Olympic's unarmed security guards have been under
work rules to avoid intervening physically. Now they are getting a few hours
of additional training, while the county has assigned armed King County
sheriff's deputies to tunnel stations. (Emphasis mine.)

I emphasized that sentence to reinforce the injustice these poor guys are suffering. Don't do what you're told, and you'll be punished. Do what you're told, and you'll be crucified.

Mendacious cretin.

Remember just a few weeks ago Warren Buffett bought BNSF outright? The press blather was predictable: "Our country's future prosperity depends on its having an efficient and well-maintained rail system."

Last night, though, while discussing an oil-poor future, my economist friend mentioned an alternative situation for buying the rail: electrification.

From The Journal of Commerce:

Earlier this year, BNSF Railway’s chairman, president and CEO, Matthew K. Rose, said he was in talks with transmission line companies that want to install new power lines in the railroad’s right of way. And he said BNSF was exploring whether that could help the railroad convert large parts of its sprawling western network to electricity.

Industry sources indicated other large carriers were looking at the same options, as Congress and the Obama administration push to upgrade the capacity of the U.S. electricity grid and tie in more alternative power sources including wind energy farms.

My friend also sent me a post from a rail site (sadly, one locked down to members only) which said:

If the wind- and solar-power crowd are really able to create some critical mass in their plans for mass conversion to such energy generation, transmission corridors for new high voltage lines are going to become necessary in the West. The battles for these rights-of-way are already starting to brew in several places in the West. . . .

Single steel pole towers, which are more easily situated on a railroad right-of-way than the old wider-footprint lattice-work towers, are now capable of handling up to the 765,000 volt lines being discussed for transmission from potential wind and solar fields in the West. . . .

Combine this observation with Buffett's planned wind farm facilities and one sees a definite business plan shaping up.

Buffett started as an oil man. He knows what's coming: Fuel shortages leading to ever higher fuel prices. Electric rail lines -- fed by the power lines sharing the corridor -- give him an incredible advantage, if he can get the major routes powered in time. And because he bought the rail outright, he won't have to dither about with quarterly stockholder reports. This means he can take his sweet time electrifying without worrying about "enhancing shareholder value" every few months.