Second Saturday on the train (continued)

For the second month, the wife and I drove to the Watt/I-80 light rail station and boarded the train at the Roseville Road station to go to Second Saturday festivities in midtown Sacramento.

Yes, it would be better if Sacramento Regional Transit ran its buses late enough to allow us to leave the car at home, but riding the train is certainly far better than trying to find a parking space. (And it gives me an excuse to blog about the trip.)

The wife and I walked from the 8th and I light rail station to J Street and then spent the evening walking the length of J Street with the occasional detour or two to K and I.

We had a wonderful dinner at Chicago Fire. The thin crust "traditional" pizza was great. The Greek fries and the baked artichoke appetizers were excellent.

Second Saturday may officially be an art walk -- and we do enjoy the galleries -- but what's really great are the bands. We particularly enjoyed these two:



Project Hideout



XMR, the Xavier Altimiras Blues Band

I'm taking these videos with a Nikon Coolpix camera. The sound sucks. Both bands deserve better.

Second Saturday on the train

So the wife and I took the train downtown this time. Last month, we rode the bus from home. But taking the bus means leaving midtown for home by 8 p.m. to catch the last bus home. By driving to the Watt and I-80 park-and-ride lot (about four miles from our house) and taking the train, we were able to stay much later. In fact, the last train leaves downtown after midnight.

I love the art on the side of the Convention Center at 13th and K streets. The late afternoon sun provided some dramatic lighting.


The Convention Center was hosting the 7th Annual All American Tattoo Festival. And, of course, that means a lot of bikes. I loved this bike.

The Second Saturday Free Shuttle was a neat idea. The shuttles ran in a circle around J and L Streets between 29th and 16th streets. Suggestion: RT should offer "free" rides in its "Downtown" service area.


Now you can't have an art walk without art that walks.

And, of course, Second Saturday isn't complete without live music. Here's a band playing next to the News and Review building on 20th Street.

Imagine that -- Hare Krishna without the saffron robes and shaved heads.

And right next to the Hare Krishna band were several Obama supporters registering voters. I found the juxtaposition amusing.


On the way to the train home, we walked past the Memorial Auditorium. This photo nicely captures the recent renovation work.

The wife and I had amazing good fortune with the train. We drove to the Longview Road exit on Interstate 80 without knowing when the next train would arrive. We parked our car and walked to the station and sat down. I got out my schedule and discovered the train would arrive in two minutes. The same thing happened on the way home. We walked to the Cathedral Square stop and sat down. Again, the next train was due in just two minutes.


When the wife and I were in midtown, we ran into a friend of the kid. He and his date had driven down. He said it took 45 minutes to find a parking spot. Even with the extra walk to get to and from the train, light rail certainly beats trying to park in midtown during the Second Saturday Art Walk.

Second Saturday on the bus

Today was National Train Day and Second Saturday, the perfect storm for things to do in downtown Sacramento. Unfortunately, I completely forgot that the train festivities only ran until 2 p.m. The wife and I didn't board the No. 82 bus for downtown until 1:30. By the time we arrived on light rail at the Amtrak Station there was no sign of National Train Day.

So we were too late for National Train Day and early for the Second Saturday festivities, which run from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. Nevertheless, we wandered around and the wife found all together too many excuses to buy things. By the time we headed out of town on the No. 30 bus heading for Sac State we had two full bags of stuff.

We had an interesting experience on that ride to Sac State. The No. 30 was running late, and I asked the driver if he expected to get to Sac State by 8:18, when the No. 82 was scheduled to depart.

"Not a chance," he said. And then he picked up his radio and called dispatch and asked to have the No. 82 wait for us. I've heard drivers do this before, but I've never requested it myself.

After checking with dispatch, the driver let us know the No. 82 would wait for us. We were very happy with that news. If we missed the connection, we would be sitting at Sac Sate for an hour until the next No. 82.

As it turned out, the driver was able catch up with his schedule enough to get us to Sac State before the No. 82.

Here are some pictures from the day:

We've come to consider the No. 82 as our personal bus, taking us from our front door to points across the great suburban wasteland of unincorporated Sacramento.

The wife waiting for the train.

You know you are old when you go into a "vintage" store and keep saying, "I remember that . . ."

I was fascinated by the wedding party I saw walking across L Street to take pictures on the Capitol steps.

...

Once we reached Midtown, we ran into a parade with floats . . .

And marchers . . .

And mayoral candidates . . .

And even group of drummers from Sacramento High

The wife and I are going to do this again. The weekend bus schedule requires that we leave before 8:30, but that still leaves lots of time to see some art, hear some music and have dinner. And, of course, the ride down and back on RT is "free," courtesy of our monthly passes. Not a bad deal.

The green Prius pimps

Last Monday, The Sacramento Bee's Scene section launched a weeklong "Shades of Green" series of articles:

Going green is going mainstream, even as the debate about global warming continues. Many of us are changing our lifestyles in everyday ways, from the cars we drive to the cleaning products we use to the way we garden. This week, Scene explores this cultural shift and offers ideas for small changes you can make, too.

For seven days, the front of the Scene section and much of the very limited space inside was taken up with various "Shades of Green."

And where did riding Sacramento Regional Transit play into The Bee's "Shades of Green" report? An afterthought among "5 green tips":

Do you have Prius envy? It’s no wonder: Toyota’s hybrid Prius (and the Honda Civic Hybrid) average 51 mph on the highway. While you’re waiting to buy one, try riding public transit or walking, and save the change for that new car.

At least in "Readers share tips for going green," transit gets an honorable mention. Toshiye Kawamura of College Greens said:

I take care of my 97-year-old dad, and I go back and forth to his house on light rail and the bus. I always choose to take the bus or train whenever possible because it is much less stressful and you meet some very nice people in transit.

Just what is it about the environmental movement and supporters of all things green, that they can't see transit as an option?

Sunday's Scene belabored the obvious when it pointed out that switching from driving a GMC Yukon to driving a Prius would help the environment. But taking transit would help even more. "If you leave your car at home one day a week, you prevent 55 pounds of pollution each year from being emitted into our air," according to the Sacramento Metropolitan Air Quality Management District.

Over in the East Bay, AC Transit is proposing a bus rapid transit line that would run from the Bay Fair BART Station in San Leandro to downtown Berkeley. According to the report in Sunday's San Francisco Chronicle:

The $400 million bus rapid transit project would look a lot like light rail, with elevated stops in the middle of the street and dedicated lanes free of cars. Buses would run every 10 minutes and sail through intersections. ...

Buses would run in center lanes, stopping at elevated platforms in the middle of the street. Each stop would be about a half-mile apart so that buses could go faster and bus drivers would have the ability to turn stoplights green using GPS technology. Each stop would have an electronic sign informing riders when the next bus is scheduled to arrive.

And yet the proposal is opposed in Berkeley, a city that has adopted a city ordinance that requires a massive reduction in the city's contribution to global warming.

Driving a Prius is not the only green transportation option, and the sooner environmentalists stop pimping for Toyota and start acknowledging transit's potential, the sooner real progress will be made.

Back to the future (continuted)

The Sacramento History blog has posted the second part of its series on Sacramento's Streetcar Suburbs. The tale of real estate investor Edwin K. Alsip and plumbing and tinware seller Leonidas Lee Lewis and the Central Street Railway they founded to serve their new Oak Park neighborhood certainly makes this transitarian long for those bygone days.

Imagine if today's developers of, say, Placer Vineyards were equally enlightened. The Oak Park neighborhood probably had a density similar to Placer Vineyards' proposed three housing units per acre.

Instead, we have neighboring Sutter County suing because Placer County's planning process didn't take into consideration the traffic mess such a low-density project would create.

What if the Township 9 project on Richards Boulevard in the city of Sacramento were the model for Placer Vineyards? A development with 36 housing units per acre might generate enough transit ridership that even a modern developer and businessman would see the advantages.

**sigh**

Sorry, I can only maintain that much optimism for so long before reality comes crashing back down. I have genuinely enjoyed my first six months of relying on Sacramento Regional Transit to get to and from work. Sure, I'm fortunate to live on a popular bus route and work at a location near a light rail stop. There must be more people in Sacramento in similar situations who could leave their cars at home, even if just one or two days a week. One or two more riders here, a couple there and pretty soon you are talking crowds. I certainly hope the recent decline in ridership is a temporary reaction to the rate increase.

Trying **puff puff** to remain **puff puff** optimistic.

**sigh**

Back to the future

The Sacramento History blog offers an interesting take on the origin of transit in Sacramento. In the post entitled Sacramento's Streetcar Suburbs, the author explains:

Despite the contemporary image of public transportation as primarily a means for the working class and poor to get around, streetcars (along with other early public transit methods like steamboats, steam railroads and omnibuses) were originally intended for the middle class.

Perhaps this offers a historical answer to the RTDriver guy's rant.

B.S.

I looked down at my feet. I feel it necessary. I checked the sock color match. I don't know why I bother. I wouldn't have time to return home to fix any errors prompted by my rush to catch my morning bus.

Immediately in front of my shoes I noticed a hand-painted message on the curb.

"B.S.", it declared. And if any doubt remained, the message was punctuated with an arrow pointing at me.

I don't know why I had not noticed the message before. The white paint didn't look particularly fresh, but it didn't look faded or worn either -- a timeless message.

As I puzzled over whether to take the message personally, I noticed that across the street was an identical message -- "B.S." -- but with the arrow pointing away from me and toward the sidewalk on that side of the street. No one was standing there.

It all seemed an amateurish relative of the "art" I have found stenciled on the Midtown sidewalks during my afternoon walks. The artists in this suburban wasteland don't have the opportunities of the lawnless hoards of the city. No, here one is more likely to find street art limited to the coded messages telling ditch diggers an area is free from underground utilities.

"B.S.", indeed.

When the bus stopped I boarded and took my customary seat in the elevated section at the rear. I took out my notepad and scribbled my B.S. thoughts and then I took out my book and read for the remainder of the trip to work.

Back to the future

Ever on the lookout for further evidence of the great value of the Transitarian Diet, I was amused to read The Bee's story in the Business section today about the new vogue of building homes with detached garages. The photo caption explained:

Builders and civic officials hope the arrangement will boost home affordability and encourage more walking.

I suppose walking from the garage to the house would constitute "more walking," but judging from the photo we're still talking about communities that require two-car garages.

For 14 years, I lived in a Sacramento County development built in the mid- to late-1940s for workers at what was then McClellan Air Force Base. My house, like most in the neighborhood, had two bedrooms and one bath when it was built. All of the homes came with an attached one-car garage.

Today, as I ride light rail along the R Street corridor and as I walk around midtown, I pass a number of new condo projects that feature units with one car garages. It's back to the future.

Before I became a transitarian, I would never have considered a house with a single-car garage. Now, it seems like a no-brainer.

Old habits, new priorities

The 82 bus pulled to a stop at the 65th Street station five minutes early at 9:18 today, just in time to catch the train downtown.

Since catching that train put me 15 minutes ahead of schedule, I got off at 29th Street and walked down R Street toward the 23rd Street station. I wanted to check on the progress of the residential complex being built on R Street next to the tracks.

A Feb. 27, 2006, Bob Shallit column in The Bee described the "Alchemy at R Street" project as a "Pedestrian-friendly project with 'pop' planned on R Street corridor." Shallit's column explained that the complex that stretches along the light rail line from 27th to 26th streets will include "15 town-house and work/live rental units along with a ground-floor cafe in one building, and eight detached for-sale homes, ranging from 900 to 1,200 square feet."

As I walked and sipped the coffee I had prepared before I left home, I was thinking about the front page article I read in this morning's Sacramento Bee. The headline announced, "Rising gas prices spark grumbles but little change in driving." The story's lead example was a guy who commutes from Gold River to Tracy.

There's nothing much short of high-speed rail that might make a commute from Gold River to Tracy a transit experience. And high-speed rail is about as likely as changing the habits of a guy who is willing to devote that much of his day to his solo ride to work.

But what if you could get more people to see the benefits of downsizing and moving closer to work? You're not going to raise four kids in a 1,200 square-foot home with a single-car garage. But what about a young couple or an empty-nest pair? From the front of the Alchemy at R Street complex you can see the Safeway store tower in the distance at 19th and R streets. The complex is two blocks from the 29th Street light rail station and its multiple bus line connections.

The whole R Street corridor is turning into a transitarian's dream.

I've got three, maybe four years before I'm an empty-nester. Perhaps by then I will have convinced the wife to become a transitarian. Maybe I could trade becoming a vegetarian for her abandoning her fixation with large swaths of suburban lawn.