Addition to the lexicon

Perhaps it is time to formalize the meaning of transitarian. A blog in Los Angeles devoted to the "Los Angeles Public Transit Lifestyle" mentioned transitarian:

A transitarian is so enamored with transit, so invested in the good that comes from leaving the car at home, that he takes light rail ... and then walks nine blocks in the rain to get to an important appointment ... . [Edited to remove local references.]

A transitarian, therefore, often resembles a drowned rat, his jacket soaked through, his slacks wet from midthigh down to his squishy-wet shoes. But inside, beneath that wet exterior, is a proud transitarian ... .

I like that abridgment of this post. But that version -- and the original post -- lack an important facet of the meaning of being a transitarian: Choice. A transitarian chooses to leave that car at home. A transitarian exchanges the convenience of a car for the knowledge that doing so will make a difference. One person here. One person there. Another person and then more.

Making the choice to take transit just one day a week for a year would prevent 55 pounds of pollution from being emitted into our air, according to the Sacramento Metropolitan Air Quality Management District.

It all starts with each individual's choice to act.

"We need to be the change we wish to see in the world"

-Mahatma Gandhi

Back in the back of the bus

Richard Brautigan's "certain happiness sighted when your bus comes along" was welcomed this morning after a week at the suburban ranch harvesting "Honey, Do..."

Back to work means back to the bus. And that's probably the best demonstration of what is wrong with the transit options in suburban areas served by Sacramento Regional Transit. Outside of commuting to work and the odd special event -- Jazz Festival, Mather Air Show, Raley's Field baseball -- there's little reason to leave the car at home when "Honey, Do ..." calls.

This morning I took my customary seat in the first elevated row in the back of the newer bus. In the front, three women occupied the seats immediately inside the door. As the bus continued on its route the matriarch of the three resumed her conversation with the driver. It was a very animated conversation, with the occasional hand gestures from the driver when the bus was stopped.

I have no idea what the topic was. The woman and the driver were talking in Russian or Ukrainian or Bulgarian or some language transplanted to Sacramento by the breakup of the former Soviet Union. As the saying goes, it was all Greek to me.

The matriarch did all of the talking for the three. It could have been grandmother, mother and daughter. Certainly they were family.

So engrossing was the conversation that the women forgot to remind the driver of their stop at Butano and Sam's Club. When everyone finally realized the mistake, the driver pulled over. The matriarch rose and stopped at the door. She turned and shook the driver's hand.

A woman anxious to get to the next stop pulled the stop request cord.

"Stop requested," announced the bus.

There was more talking as the matriarch and driver said their goodbyes. The two other women stood silently.

The anxious woman pulled the stop request cord again.

Once the three women were on the sidewalk, the driver gave a final wave. The women waved back. The driver then closed the doors and the bus traveled the half-block to the next stop, where the anxious woman anxiously departed.

I went back to my book, welcoming a return to my routine.

Painting Regional Transit green

As any student of art will tell you, blue and yellow, when combined, create green. Something similar happens when commuters combine with Sacramento Regional Transit's blue and yellow fleet.

Consider this green fact the next time you are driving down the street and see one of RT's blue and yellow buses: "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.

Or consider these green factoids from the Center for Transportation Excellence: If one in five Americans used public transportation daily, carbon monoxide pollution would decrease by more than all the emissions from the entire chemical manufacturing industry and all metal processing plants in the United States. Overall, public transportation generates 95 percent less carbon monoxide, 92 percent less in volatile organic compounds and about half as much carbon dioxide and nitrogen oxide per passenger mile than passenger vehicles.

All of this green has a direct effect on public health. The Surface Transportation Policy Partnership reports:

"About one in twenty Americans, or nearly 15 million people, suffer from asthma. Asthma ranks among the most common chronic conditions in the United States, causing over 1.5 million emergency department visits, about 500,000 hospitalizations, and over 5,500 deaths per year. The prevalence of asthma has been increasing since the early 1980s for all age, sex, and racial groups.

"Over 113 million Americans live in cities with polluted air. It has long been known that poor air quality triggers asthma attacks, but recent research shows that poor air quality may actually be causing asthma. Findings released by the University of Southern California in February, 2002 indicated that healthy children with prolonged exposure to smog (ozone, nitrogen dioxide, and small particulates) developed new cases of asthma. The most active children, those playing team sports outside, were three times more likely to develop asthma than their counterparts in areas with cleaner air. Motor vehicles are responsible for one-third to one-half of the smog in most metro areas.

"Asthma is the number one reason children visit the emergency room and miss school."

Increased use of transit and other steps to reduce vehicle congestion can have an immediate, measurabe effect on public health. During the 1996, Olympics in Atlanta, the city made 24-hour transportation available, added buses, closed streets to cars and implemented flexible work schedules in a concerted effort to improve traffic conditions to accommodate the spectators. A health study conducted before, during and after the Olympics examined the effect on asthma attacks.

"The study showed the result of these efforts was a remarkable decline in ground-level ozone and other air pollutants, which reduced the number of emergency rooms visits for asthma during and shortly after the games," according to another factoid from the Center for Transportation Excellence.

Transit is not just for the poor and disabled. The green created by combining commuters with Sacramento Regional Transit's blue and yellow is good for everyone and deserves broad community support. It certainly deserves more support than the governor and state lawmakers showed in the state budget.

Lifesaving value of transit

Want to stop the war? Ride the bus.

OK. That's a bit of a stretch, but everyone can agree that if America were to reduce its reliance on foreign petroleum supplies, national security would benefit.

In January of this year, the American Public Transportation Association released "Public Transportation and Petroleum Savings in the U.S.: Reducing Dependence on Oil," a study prepared for the association by ICF International, a global consulting firm that specializes in the connection between transportation and energy.

Sacramento Regional Transit's local system is part of a national effort that, according to the report's executive summary, "reduces U.S. gasoline consumption by 1.4 billion gallons each year. In concrete terms, that means:

• 108 million fewer cars filling up – almost 300,000 every day.
• 34 fewer supertankers leaving the Middle East – one every 11 days.
• Over 140,000 fewer tanker truck deliveries to service stations per year.
• A savings of 3.9 million gallons of gasoline per day.

"These savings result from the efficiency of carrying multiple passengers in each vehicle,
the reduction in traffic congestion from fewer automobiles on the roads, and the varied
sources of energy for public transportation."

The study goes on to explain that "if public transportation services were expanded so that ridership doubled, the total national fuel savings from public transportation would double to 2.8 billion gallons per year, or more if improved coordination between land use plans and public transportation could replace even more car travel."

And if those benefits aren't enough motivation to leave the car at home and ride the bus to work, the report explains that riding transit helps households save money. A household with two adults and one car that uses public transit saves an average $6,251 every year, compared to an equivalent household with two cars and no access to public transportation service. When you consider that the average household spent $5,781 on food in 2004, it's obvious that using transit can save bread and buy it, too.

The savings come first from just driving less. "The average household in which at least one member uses public transportation on a given day drives 16 fewer miles per day compared to a household with similar income, residential location and vehicle ownership that do not use public transit – a savings of hundreds of dollars a year," the report noted.

In addition, a household with just one car instead of two saves $5,586 a year, which is the annual average cost of operating a vehicle in 2006, according to American Automobile Association.

Which begs the question: Why did California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and state lawmakers feel it was useful to cut state funding of transit? What sort of a future does the governor, who professes such concern for global warming, envision for the state? He wants Hummers running on bio-diesel, but what value is that if the transportation system is gridlocked?

California can do better. We need a vision of a better tomorrow.

Commenting on RT's proposed cutbacks

Date: Wed, 8 Aug 2007 12:48:45 -0700
From: "John Hughes" 
To: servicechanges@sacrt.com
Subject: Commenting on RT's proposed cutbacks

Please include the below comments in the record of the public hearing
scheduled for Monday, Aug. 13, at 6 p.m. in the RT Auditorium at 1400 29th
Street.

*  *  *

Sacramento Regional Transit's proposed service cuts don't affect the No. 82
bus or the No. 30 bus or light rail, all of which I use regularly to get to
and from work. The cutbacks don't even affect the No. 1, No. 80 and No. 84,
which I sometimes rely on.

Doesn't affect me. Must be OK then. Good job, RT!

But it is not that easy.

Transit is a critical piece of the puzzle of the region's transportation
picture.

Take a little here to make ends meet. Take a little there to shave costs.
Cut back some more and then some more, just a little bit each time. And then
one day everyone wakes up and finds what's left isn't worth saving, and at
that point it will all collapse.

Cutting transit isn't going to make anything better.

From what I have read of the documents justifying the changes, management
has singled out the least productive runs for cuts. I am willing to accept
that the proposed cuts are the least damaging of the options considered, the
best of a bad deal forced on the district by state legislators too cowardly
to face their own real budget problems.

I have a request to make of the board: More must be done to emphasize
transit's broader role in the community. The vision guiding transit must see
beyond mobility for the poor and disabled to the greater environmental
benefits that accrue with a feature-rich transit system. Only with a broader
base of riders, those who choose to leave their cars at home and ride
Sacramento Regional Transit, will RT find the resources to expand.

Thank you,

John Hughes
Sacramento, Calif.

RT documents available

Here are the documents related to the FY 2008 service reductions prompted by the state budget cutbacks in transit funding.

1. FY08 Service Reduction Analysis and Candidate Refinement IP

• Attachment 1-Equitable-Distribution
• Attachment 2a-Regional Activity Centers-WEEKDAY
• Attachment 2b-Regional Activity Centers-SATURDAY
• Attachment 2c-Regional Activity Centers-SUNDAY
• Attachment 3- Route Productivity

2. CEQA study

3. CEQA exemption

The "Honey, Do..." harvest

I'll be at my suburban "Honey, Do..." ranch harvesting another crop this week. These things grow faster than zucchini. Last week, there were none; this week, I've got "Honey, Do..." everywhere. From a seed of an idea to burdensome fruit before the ink dries on the paper.

Anyway, since my bus travels will be less regular I'm going to focus here at RTrider on a personal project, a rare "I Want To Do..." This week I am going to explore why a healthy transit system is good for the whole community.

Means of Escape on the bus

Finished reading Philip Caputo's 1991 memoir "Means of Escape" while riding the bus.

Caputo worked his way from suburban reporter to foreign correspondent in a career with the Chicago Tribune. He had a degree in English and no journalism experience when he joined the paper.

I picked up "Means of Escape" when I was moving bookshelves from one room to another. I have Caputo's "A Rumor of War," which describes his experience as a Marine lieutenant in Vietnam in 1965-66, and his "DelCorso's Gallery," a novel that explores the life of a photojournalist during the same period that Caputo worked for the Chicago Tribune.

Caputo explains in the preface that this is not strictly an autobiography: "There is too much fact in this book to properly call it a novel, too much fiction to call it reportage. Nor is it a fully drawn autobiography -- a partial self-portrait, rather. The rest is a picture, often highly impressionistic, of events I lived through as a foreign correspondent in the Middle East, Vietnam and other places between the late sixties and the late seventies."

The book is structured as a series of short stories covering his career in chronological order. It is not history. It lacks the bigger picture insights that can be provided with hindsight. He talks about the journalist's role as writer of the rough draft of history, but offers surprisingly few examples. Instead, this is a book about Caputo and his life, and it is clearly influenced by this later career as a novelist.

There's plenty of action. The most graphic and dramatic work covers his time in Lebanon, first as a prisoner of the Popular Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine and finally in 1975 when he was shot and seriously wounded in a random attack by gunmen. His stories detail the horrors of war and the senseless acts of barbarity committed by people who have become little more than beasts. He also offers exotic travelogues such as his search for the last traditional Bedhouins, but I found little in the book about the job of being a foreign correspondence, or the importance of the role he sought to play.

After retiring from the Tribune and settling in Florida to write novels, Caputo took one last foreign assignment, a job for Esquire magazine to write about resistance fighters in Afghanistan battling Russia's modern war machine with World War I era Enfield rifles. His experience there seems to apply equally to his entire career after his experience in Vietnam:

"As I sat, cradling my Gunga Din rifle, an old feeling crept into me: that quickening of the senses and perceptions created by a synthesis of fear, excitement, and hope. I saw then, in one burst of insight, the fundamental reason why I had come so far at such great risk. I was still the escape artist, a kind of Houdini. I was not a fugitive from ordinary life on this journey but from ordinary death. With no knowledge of how to face it or how to live with the awareness of it, I had fled its dreary angst for the thrill of the close call and the near miss, the cleansing, cathartic terror of being shot at without effect. Who knows, maybe I was trying to preserve some illusion that violent death was the only kind; if I could evade it, then I would live forever. But come which way it would, by bullet, disease, or old age, there wasn't a soul with the velocity to escape it."

Reading a memoir about an award-winning foreign correspondent in a time when the newspaper industry is melting before our eyes added a tinge of melancholia to my appreciation for what Caputo accomplished. What will journalism be like when there are no deep pockets to pay for the extra effort necessary to dig behind the press releases handed out by the media managers?

Budgets and service cuts

Sacramento Regional Transit has announced a series of proposed route changes in anticipation of a cutback in state transit funding.

According to RT's press release:

The State budget expected to be approved calls for a $1.3 billion loss to public transportation, which will result in a $14 million annual loss to RT and a $1.6 million reduction of bus service. In anticipation of this budget shortfall, RT has implemented cost saving measures and internal cuts to offset further reductions in service.

The full press release is available here.

A fuller explanation of the proposed cutbacks is available from RiderShip for the Masses on this page.

A public hearing will be held Monday, Aug. 13, at 6 p.m. in the RT Auditorium at 1400 29th Street (at N Street). Comments must be received by 5 p.m. Wednesday, Aug. 8. Submit comments to RT Planning Dept., P.O. Box 2110, Sacramento, CA 95812-2110

Half an anniversary

Traffic badminton. Among spectator sports its closest cousin would be crowd watching from a bench at the mall, only less intense.

Standing at the curb waiting for my bus, I watch a shuttlecock as it crosses in front of me and flies into the distance and then watch as another shuttlecock makes the return trip. Left, right, left, right, back and forth, back and forth.

I watch the people encapsulated in the shuttlecocks, swatted into motion by the hidden forces that propel morning commuters out of their beds and off to work.

This is my half anniversary. I've been watching traffic badminton now for six months. That's 3 1/2 dog years.

I can't imagine going back to solo commuting. Not only am I more relaxed when I arrive at work, but I have read 17 books while riding Sacramento Regional Transit buses and light rail. I would like to find a way to convince more people of the joys of riding transit to work.

This morning I watched a man attempt to read the newspaper while he drove his car. He had his left hand on the wheel and was holding the paper in his right. In the brief time he crossed my path, the guy took his hand off the wheel so he could turn the page, then looked up at the road and then down at the paper, returning his left hand to the wheel. I waited for the sound of the collision at the all-way stop in the distance, but apparently he made it through the intersection without incident.

I wanted to tap on the glass and suggest to the guy that he could do all the reading he wants riding a bus to work and not endanger a single person with his reckless disregard for proper vehicle operation.

Instead I boarded my bus and had a very uneventful commute to work.