Blog Entries of Note...

Image via Wikipedia

From Streetsblog San Francisco:

SF School District Encourages Students to Bike

School district officials are putting in new bicycle racks and plus giving students a brush up on bicycle safety.

San Francisco Should Take Cues from New York and Just Try It!

New York is turning a section of busy Broadway at Times Square into a pedestrian area.

From the California High Speed Rail Blog:

Grade Separations Done Right

In California the NIMBY's are coming out of the woodwork because of the High Speed Rail Project. One is picturing the elevated line looking like an ugly freeway through the area.

Tight Squeeze At Transbay Terminal?

Like so many projects, the new Transbay Terminal in San Francisco could be at capacity very quickly and may not have the provisions to expand.

From Transit Miami:

Action Alert: Miami-Dade’s Million Dollar Bicycle Infrastructure Push

Miami may get improved bicycling infrastructure.

From the Overhead Wire Blog:

Preserving Affordable Housing Near Transit

Looking at some ways to insure that there is affordable housing near transit.

Connecting the Dots

Issues with the Fremont to San Jose BART extension

From the Cap'n Transit Blog:

Feds relax restrictions for light rail

Maybe the Obama administration will bring some sanity back to the FRA.

Route Changes...

Picture: the late route 32 at its layover at 3500 East and Bengal just a block from my wife's office that she can longer get to by transit.


Route Changes

It is that magic time again called Route Changes which will take place on December 16th.

There is nothing really earth shattering about the changes but here is some interesting tidbits.

Route 9: The portion along 1100 East is gone and the route will travel directly down 900 East. This restores service along the entire portion of 900 East to 6200 South.

Route 228: Here is the biggest shocker: the route will travel Murray-Holladay Road to 1300 East and then return to Cottonwood Mall just like the old 52. Now who could have expected that? After all, I took bets that the people behind Cottonwood Mall would scream bloody murder because they don't want the bus down their precious little street.

Of course the bad thing is, once UTA starts giving into the NIMBY's, when will it stop?

Route 307 and 320: Guess what? Coordinated every 10-minutes service from Vine to Downtown!! It's about time instead of having the buses on top of each other.

Now what UTA needs to do is dump having separate schedules for the two routes and combine them in one folder since it's a waste of money having two folders. Then show the combine 10-minute service in the schedule. Next promote having every 10-minute service in bold letters on the front of the timetable (of course make it clear that it is during rush hours only reverse commuters SOL).

While full time service still needs to be restored at least this is a step in the right direction to creating more market matrix service.

A Victory for the Draper NIMBYs...

Image via WikipediaUTA's quest for federal TRAX funds prompts new impact study

Once again I have to point out that NIMBY group run by Summer Pugh is out to lunch. Anyone who thinks that TRAX should be heading down Station Street and cross 123rd South right by the Interstate 15 clearly has not thought the project out.

This is clearly a greedy NIMBY group who doesn't want what is best but what they want and screw everyone else.

Draper NIMBY Idiots...

Utah Supreme Court to settle Draper TRAX fight

You can tell the people at "Citizens for Responsible Transportation" just hate the thought of big evil TRAX in their neighborhood that they can't even connect the dots and figure out the advocating the State Street route makes them look stupid. Of course all they care about is making sure that TRAX doesn't use the old UP line despite the fact that the line makes the most sense.

For those who actually believe that State street would be a good route for TRAX, I dare you to go to the intersection of State and 123rd South during most hours of the day and see the traffic nightmare created by bad planning and picture adding a TRAX line to the mix.

The UP line makes the most sense...

New 30-Foot Buses-Where should they be?

The UTA is now recieving its purchase of the Opus 30-foot bus. These buses are designed for routes that do not have large amounts of ridership or for areas with tight turns and such.

So far UTA has assigned the buses to Ogden and to routes 1 and 2 in Salt Lake. They will also be assigned routes 442 (which will now interline with route 2) and route 23. However I have already seen these buses running route 7.

In one way assigning the buses to routes 1 and 2 make sense. They travel through the avenues and they do have some narrow streets and tight turns on these routes. However, in another way it makes no sense to assign these buses to this route. I have ridden these routes several times and almost every time I ride them they have a large load. Because these routes service LDS Hospital they attract a large amount of people traveling to the hospital in both visitors and employees who ride the bus. In fact, I have seen 40-foot buses run with standing loads on these routes so they will probably have to pass people up with the 30-footers. Relief will come somewhat from reroute route 3 and will give riders more options to reach the hospital.

In fact the question needs to be asked, considering the ridership on these routes are the 30-footers being assigned to this route because of the geography or because of NIMBYism. It seems like in the recent round of changes such as to route 40, the UTA is giving into well off NIMBY's and stabbing their regular riders in the back. Hopefully UTA will not become like Metro in Los Angeles that will do anything a whiny NIMBY wants no matter how much damage it does to bus or rail service.

UTA has needed smaller buses for many years but went by the philosophy of not wanted too many different types of buses. However, this train of thought is quickly loosing favor as transit systems realize that they have to have different buses for different purposes.

Hopefully as UTA gets more of the new buses it will start assigning them to routes that truly should be using them such as the 90/94, 24, 33, 14 (although now interlined with the 20 it won't work), 222, 345, 46 and others.