New Name and expanded focus...

For those arriving on this page today expecting to see Transit In Utah...surprise this blog has a new name to go along with some change in focus in the next few months and some changes in my personal life.

As I mentioned a few months ago I tried to expand the focus of the blog from covering happenings in Utah but also covering areas of interest across the United States and Canada especially in the cities I have good familiarity with such as Southern California, the San Francisco Bay Area, Utah, Las Vegas, Charlotte, Portland, Spokane and Seattle.

I might move the blog to a different platform once I study more on the different options and I have registered the follow url: http://www.urbanplanningandtransportation.com which is directing to this page at the present time and the forcible future.

The main reasons for these changes is that there is going to be a major change in my personal life over the next 4 months. While I have kept my personal life and this blog separate since its inception, this blog is actually driving some of the changes in that life.

While I do have a degree in Business Management (a two year degree) and tons of experience, the last few years have been difficult. Before I attended Railvolution in October, I was thinking of returning to school but was torn because Utah schools would not accept most of my credits so was looking at moving back to Spokane where my credits were earned. However, our first choice was to move to either Portland or Seattle and after talking to Portland Community College I found out they would take my existing credits which is great since I only need a few classes to get a transferable degree.

From there I plan to apply and attend Portland State University to get degrees in Urban Planning and Economics.

In May I will traveling up to Portland in order to find a place to live. My goal is to find a place with easy transit access to the PCC campuses and PSU. There is some other changes going to take place in March that is going to affect the type of apartment I can find. I hope you enjoy reading of my adventures of trying to find a place to live that meets these requirements.

In my years doing this blog we have seen a lot of changes both good and bad both in Utah and across the nation. I hope to make it back down to Salt Lake in August for the opening of the new TRAX lines since I have been watching progress on the these lines since they were first proposed but am not sure at this time.

To my regular readers, I hope you will continue enjoying this blog, I plan to continue providing observations on urban planning and transportation.

It's Been Five Years!!!

Image via Wikipedia

It is hard to believe, but it was five years ago today that I started Transit In Utah.

We have seen some good times in the last five years with the opening of Front Runner, the first of what we hope will be transit oriented development, plus the ground breaking and construction of several new light rail lines.

On the other hand we have seen the problems caused by the many problems with the economy (which we don't seem to learn our lessons from), the subsequent cutting of services due to the downturn in revenues and distractions of organizations such as the bus riders unions that have been popping up despite the damage done by the most famous of bru's in Los Angeles.

Of course our local bus riders union seemed to put on a few dog and pony show's courtesy of the anti-hunger organization but otherwise has been a non-factor.

When I first started this blog I had no idea where I was going to go with it and to some extent I still have no idea where it might evolve. I have toyed with the idea of changing the name and focusing more on general issues instead of being Utah based. This may still come to pass as my work and life may take me to other pastures in the future.

However, I also believe there is so much to learn from what other systems are doing and is being proposed so I am probably going to start talking about some of the issues, problems and successes of other systems. This will especially be true of areas that I am very familiar with such as Los Angeles, Portland, Seattle, Spokane, and Charlotte.

In the last five years I have had the pleasure of reading many excellent blogs about transit. Because they are done by people with lives beyond the blog like I do, some of them have faded into the night while others are going strong. I always hate to see when of the writers I like decided to hang up the keyboard because I think we loose something when an excellent writer moves on.

I just to mention a few of the blogs that I regularly read and give them a nod for the work they do. I am not doing them in any particular order, just the way they are bookmarked on my computer which is not exactly alphabetical.

First up is the Cap'n Transit Blog out of the New York metropolitan area. Over the time I have been reading this blog there has been some great postings about coordinating services and other important issues.

Another blog I regularly follow is the Orphan Road blog out of the Puget Sound Region. Another Seattle based blog is the Seattle Transit Blog.

More great information can be had at the Streetsblog network. There is several now but I ones I most often reference is the original in New York, plus the ones in Los Angeles and San Francisco.

Out of the Miami area is the Transit Miami blog. Before I traveled down to Railvolution which was a held in Miami a few years ago I was able to catch up on many issues down in that region and check them out.

A great blog that focuses on development and transit issues in the Denver area is the Denver In-Fill Blog.

A couple of blogs I have discovered more recently is Human Transit and Transport Politic.

Finally we have the Transit Sleuth blog. Adron who runs the blog recently moved from Portland to Seattle and is changing over his services which means I have been missing it for the few weeks. He has excellent incites in transit issues from a Libertarian point of view.

Hope you take a look at this excellent blogs.

Well its been five years and I have no idea where this blog will go in the next five years but I am sure it will be a ride :-).