Making Sacramento Regional Transit look good

Let's take personal responsibility.

My primary care physician is with UCDavis Medical Group. His office is just three blocks from where I work at 21st and Q. That's a choice I made some years ago, before I was such a transit fanatic. I liked being able to walk to the doctor's office.

Today, I was at my doctor's office, and he decided I needed to see one of the UCDavis ophthalmologists at the Medcenter on Stockton Boulevard. And, as if by magic, the ophthalmologist's office said come on over right then, and they'd work me in.

So there I was with my car at home. I want to rely on Regional Transit, and rely on Regional Transit I did.

I walked back to 21st and Q, where several buses have stops. Two of the lines I knew went by the Medcenter -- the No. 38 and the No. 50E express. The 50E is on a 15- or 20-minute schedule (until cutbacks take effect next year) but I didn't know if its limited stops included the Medcenter. The No. 38 is a 30-minute bus, but I didn't know when the next one would be along.

Got questions? Call 321-BUSS.

OK. I know I have not been kind to the 321-BUSS people. They deserve some credit for being there. Yes, the automated voice said it would be two minutes to talk to someone, and it took four minutes. Yes, callers are subjected to the worst hold noise I've ever encountered. It is a frightful thought to imagine anything worse. But when I told the lady I was at 21st and Q and wanted to get to the UCDavis Medcenter as soon as possible, she told me the No. 50E goes there, and it would be along at 12:42, which was less than 10 minutes away.

The 50E arrived on time and I was walking to the ambulatory care center at the Medcenter by 12:53.

And just to underline the benefits of taking RT, when the doctor got through with me I couldn't see to drive my car if I wanted to. The bright sun stuck daggers in my dilated eyes. I walked most of the way back to the bus stop with my eyes closed.

People make choices where they live. Personally, I think people who work downtown and choose to live in Roseville deserve what they get. They have no one to blame but themselves when they discover that a long commute only gets longer when you try to fit transit into the equation.

I will try to hold back the smugness oozing from me. Sometimes stuff just works. And sometimes personal choices make it work even better.

Bus driver appreciation day

I like riding the bus more than light rail. It is more personal. And when you get a bus driver who clearly enjoys his work, then your day just looks brighter.

Today I was in need of brighter since I was on my way to the dentist. I had taken the 82 to Sacramento State and I was waiting with about a dozen other riders as the No. 30 unloaded a bus full of students. From the curb, I could hear the driver chatting with each rider as they left, telling them to have a nice day, stuff like that. Finally, the last student left the bus.

"OK. Let's do this," the driver said, and motioned the waiting riders aboard. Everyone received a cheerful "Good morning" in exchange for the fare.

As I settled in the rear of the bus I caught pieces of a conversation between the driver and a student headed for the A. Warren McClaskey adult school. The driver was not only patient, but even cheerful. That, I thought, was a test of driver quality.

After a minute or two wait to get on schedule, the bus headed downtown.

"Sunday at 2 a.m. turn your clocks back one hour," the driver announced. "Monthly pass holders and students with stickers, the end of the month is coming up. You have one grace day to get your November pass. That's Thursday. Friday you will have to have a November pass or sticker. Students with discount stickers and semi-monthly pass holders get no grace day. You will have to have the November passes on Thursday."

The Daylight Savings announcement was a nice surprise, but even more so was the rest of announcement. In all of the bus rides between February and October, I've never had a driver explain the rules for renewing monthly passes.

As the bus approached each stop, the driver announced the intersection. This was an older bus without the robot lady to make the announcements. I couldn't tell if the driver just had an excellent voice that projected all the way to back of the bus or he was using the PA system. Most of buses have really lousy PA systems that garble any effort at communication. Much as I appreciate the effort, I prefer silence to unintelligible noise.

Everyone boarding received their "Good morning," and departing passengers were treated to "Here you go, buddy. Have a great day."

I pulled the stop request as the bus turned from J Street onto Alhambra.

"Alhambra and K. Safeway and B of A," the driver announced.

I left the bus from the back as more lucky riders boarded from the front. It was a nice way to prepare for my teeth cleaning.

No good fortune goes unpunished

I wanted to write something today about Sacramento Regional Transit's new Transit Master Plan update process. The RT board held a workshop on the topic last week, and tomorrow RT officials will meet in the morning with a bunch of people called "stakeholders."

This seemed like a good time to explore my ideas on what would make transit something more than an entitlement of the poor and disabled.

And then I noticed the little stream of liquid with tiny chunks in it coursing back and forth in one of the grooves in the floor next to my seat in the light rail car.

Today, had started out rather optimistically. I should have realized the warning.

My bus arrived five minutes early at 65th Street station, which made it possible for me to dash from the bus and catch the train downtown, cutting 15 minutes from my regular commute.

But no good fortune goes unpunished.

I caught the movement of the unidentified river out of the corner of my eye as I was reading my book. Looking up, I followed the stream to its headwaters -- well, really stomach waters expelled from some head. Whatever. Someone had barfed, and by the time I noticed it no one was taking credit for it.

Today I find it harder than, say, last week to imagine enticing what RT calls "lifestyle" riders to join me on the train. Why would anyone want to leave their car for this?

Perhaps RT could take some of the stakes from the stakeholders and give them mops. Maybe RT could put "transit sickness bags" in pouches in front of each seat. Just a thought.

I will admit this is only the second time in nine months that I have had to ride with the aftermath of someone puking on a light rail car, but it strains my transitarian enthusiasm.

A waste of a free ride

The bus stopped, and the doors opened. A woman grasped the handrail with her right hand and with her left planted her cane on the step. Pulling on the railing and leaning on her cane, she made her way slowly onto the bus. Her progress had a fragile tentativeness that made her appear much older than she looked.

She stopped beside the fare box and leaned on her cane. In her right hand she held a crumpled dollar bill. She tried to insert the bill into the green sign taped over the fare box.

"Thank you, Sacramento," said the sign. "Today's ride is on us." "Us" was Washington Mutual.

The woman made another attempt to slot the money into the slotless sign.

Today, Washington Mutual celebrated what a wonderful bank it is with a free for all on Sacramento Regional Transit.

Giving up on the fare box, the woman tried to hand the dollar to the driver.

"Rides are free today," the driver tried to explain.

The woman is a regular rider. She attends the Winterstein Adult Center. The center offers free classes for people who want to learn English.

After a moment of obvious puzzlement caused by this change of routine, the woman accepted that no one wanted her dollar. She pivoted on her cane and shuffled carefully to the nearest seat.

On my regular bus, which runs from American River College to Sacramento State and on to the 65th Street light rail station, two-thirds of the riders -- maybe more -- have monthly passes. WaMu's free rides had no meaning for them. Most didn't even notice the sign.

Since hearing of this free-ride offer yesterday afternoon, I have been trying oh so hard not to look into the mouth of this gift horse. I don't want to be rude or sound ungrateful, but RT passed up a golden opportunity to invite commuters to try its service for a day.

"Check us out," RT could have told the community. "There is an alternative to solo commuting on crowded freeways."

Instead, RT gave less than 24 hours' notice. The Business Journal web site and several other sites that routinely publish unedited press releases announced the free rides, but the other news organizations paid no attention, at least none that I could find. Nothing appeared in The Bee to alert people who don't regularly ride the bus.

It is simply not feasible that WaMu's offer to give transit riders a free ride at its expense was a surprise to RT. Every light rail ticket machine, every fare box, every light rail car and every bus had notices about WaMu's "Thank you, Sacramento" offer, signs that only existing riders were likely to see.

Why did RT give away this opportunity?

Ride RT free on Oct. 25

Sacramento Regional Transit today announced that everyone gets to ride free tomorrow, Oct. 25.

On Thursday, October 25, 2007, WaMu will pick up all bus and light rail fares for Sacramento Regional Transit District (RT) commuters. An estimated 105,000 Sacramento transit users will be able to ride for free between the hours of 3:50 a.m. on October 25 and 12:50 a.m. on Friday, October 26, 2007, courtesy of WaMu.

One of the nation’s leading banks for consumers and small businesses, WaMu was recently named “Highest in Customer Satisfaction with Retail Banking in the West/Pacific Region” by J.D. Powers and Associates. The Sacramento Regional Transit District buyout is part of WaMu’s broader “Thank you, California!” campaign currently underway statewide. WaMu operates more than 30 retail bank stores in the Sacramento area.

The full press release is available here.

I suppose it would be considered a dental examination of a gift horse if I mentioned the short notice. So, instead, I'll just say,

FREE RIDES FOR ALL! 8-)
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Unmet transit needs

Sometimes a picture really is worth 1,000 words.

The Sacramento Area Council of Governments is in the midst of another round of hearings, requesting input, asking people to gripe about how transit doesn't meet their needs.

Here's mine: I want to be able to take transit to the Safeway store at the intersection of Fair Oaks and Manzanita. The picture below offers 1,000 words about my unmet transit need.

It is actually worse than it looks since the No. 10 and No. 9 community bus routes offer very limited service. When they are not available, the route uses the No. 82 to No. 23 bus at Watt and El Camino. That bus goes east on El Camino to Fair Oaks, increasing the trip time from 49 minutes to more than an hour.

There are a number of ways to submit your "unmet transit need" example to SACOG:

• Mail your comments to:
  Sacramento Area Council of Governments
  Attn: Barbara Bechtold
  1415 L Street, Suite 300
  Sacramento, CA 95814
  
  
• Email: transit_needs@sacog.org
  
  
• Phone Comments: (916) 340-6275
  
  
• Fax Comments: (916) 321-9551
  
  
• Online Comment Form: www.sacog.org/transit/comments.cfm

As a supporter of transit, I feel a need to offer a postscript to this post. I may not be able to get to the grocery store closest to my house, but that doesn't mean I can't shop for groceries conveniently from the No. 82 bus that goes by my house. As the map below shows, getting to Raleys at Watt and Marconi is a very real option. Driving takes about 5 minutes and the bus just 12 minutes.

Google Transit comes to Sacramento

Above is a screen capture of what Google's interface with Sacramento Regional Transit's on-line trip planning data produces. This service went live Monday. It is still in the testing stages, but it is fully functional.

Go to google.com/transit, click on Sacramento, enter a starting address and a destination. It is just like using Google Maps. You can even click between the transit option and the route if you are driving.

The difference between RT's infoweb.sacrt.com and Google Transit is the difference between the original, text-only computer adventure cames and the modern interactive software.

This is going to be my first choice for trip planning.

Douglas Adams's Starship Titanic on the bus

In the late 1990s, Douglas Adams, author of the famously popular "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy," was working with friends developing an adventure game that used state-of-the-art (for late 1990s) graphics and a natural language parser to create an interactive adventure story. It was called Starship Titanic.

Adams considered writing a novel about the Starship Titanic, but his publisher insisted that it be published at the same time as the game. He didn't have time to do both and so he focused on the game.

And then Terry Jones arrives. Wikipedia summarizes Jones as "a British comedian, screenwriter and actor, film director, children's author, popular historian, political commentator and TV documentary host." And, at that time, the voice of a parrot in the game Adams was creating.

As Adams explains in the introduction to the book, "When Terry saw all the graphics and character animations we had been creating over the previous months, he became very excited about the whole project and uttered the fateful words 'Is there anything else you need doing?' I said, 'You wanna write a novel?' and Terry said, 'Yeah, all right. Provided,' he said, 'I can write it in the nude.' "

And the humor of Terry Jones' book "Douglas Adams's Starship Titanic" is stark naked.

The book is just as much fun as Adams' "Hitchhiker" series. I was particularly found of the Yassaccans, an industrious folk known throughout the galaxy for their dependable construction work. And peace-loving, too.

A black rage swallowed Bolfass whole, and the next moment he had swiveled out his SD handgun and blasted the three newcomers to cosmic dust -- their bodies exploded in a supernova of entrails and mangled flesh that quickly reached white-heat and, happily, burned out before they could bespatter or stain the beautifully hand-lacquered walls.

Lucy was aware of a violent cacophony of noise and her eyes were whited-out by the most piercing light. She screamed, grabbed onto The Journalist, and fell in a faint upon the floor. It was that terrifying.

Bolfass grinned and blew away the smoke from his SD handgun. His anger assuaged, he twirled the gun on his finger and slipped it back into its holster.

It has to be explained at this point that the Yassaccans were a peace-loving, kindly race -- dedicated to craftsmanship and sober industry. Many of them, however, were also prone to blind, blood-lusting rage when confronted by certain things, such as sloppy workmanship or a disregard for fine handcrafting. In the distant past these rages had led to terrible destruction of life and property, and since the moods went as quickly as they came, they had also led to unendurable remorse for many thousands of these otherwise benign and caring folk. The Yassaccan scientists had, therefore, developed the SD weapon, which, unlike the sort of hardware most military scientists come up with, was designed to reduce death and destruction rather than increase it. The Simulated Destruction weapon -- or SD gun -- gave the user the momentary impression of having wreaked the bloody revenge that his crazed fury craved without actually doing any damage. It always surprised and stunned the enemy, but that was all.

As one might expect from a book whose origins flow from the development of an interactive story, the plot sometimes devolves into a manual for the game:

At that moment, The Journalist suddenly burst onto the Captain's Bridge.

"The ship's on automatic!" he panted. "But the central intelligence core is missing some of its parts. We can't control the ship unless we can locate all the missing bits of the system and get them back into place!"

Still, it is a fun read. If you like Douglas Adams' books, you will enjoy Terry Jones' effort.

Missing my bus

"I am not allowed to call the dispatcher until the bus is 15 minutes late."

I've worked with computers for many years and even dabbled in programming. When a computer reports that information I am requesting is unavailable, I don't argue. But it just seems more personal when a guy at the other end of the 321-BUSS line tells me he can't explain what's become of my missing ride to work.

It's 8:20 a.m. The No. 82 bus was scheduled to leave American River College at 8:04 a.m. It is just 2.2 miles from the route's starting point to my location at the Engle and Miradera bus stop. The next stop up the street is the first timing point. The No. 82 was supposed to reach that stop eight minutes ago.

What I want to know is whether the bus is delayed or simply not coming. For all I know, some accident or road construction nearby could have forced a rerouting of all of the No. 82s. I have a reason for needing some information.

I really don't like 321-BUSS. I hang up, and check my schedule to decide when the bus will be a full 15 minutes late.

At 8:27 I call 321-BUSS. A recorded voice tells me my wait time will be -- pause for effect -- one minute. And I wait. And I hate that hold music. And I wait.

At 8:33 a woman comes on the line and I explain that the No. 82 is now more than 15 minutes late. She disappears for a moment and then returns:

"That coach broke down," she says. "So you will have to catch the next one at 8:42."

There's no bench where I've been standing since 8:08, so I decided to walk the three-tenths of a mile to the next stop. I keep looking over my shoulder, fearful that a rogue bus will overtake me.

As I approach the stop I can see an obviously anxious bus rider waiting at the stop. She's pacing back and forth as I approach.

"Did you see a bus?" she asks.

"It broke down," I explain. "The next bus should be along at 8:42."

"I need to be somewhere," she complains. "I've been here since 7:30 a.m."

As we were talking the No. 82 bus arrived two minutes early.

I started taking the bus on Feb. 1 of this year. I've taken the bus to work every day that I've worked with one lone exception when it was necessary to haul my son's moped to a garage in midtown.

The bus has never been more than a few minutes late.

One breakdown in so many rides is a pretty good percentage, maybe even admirable and worthy of praise. The guy who answers my e-mails to CAD@sacrt.com, says that Sacramento Regional Transit averages about 509 bus runs on each weekday. Since Aug. 14, just 10 buses have broken down due to mechanical reasons.

You could even argue that if I had driven to work all of those days, I would have experienced at least one day when a traffic tie-up delayed me at least a half-hour.

But when your commute relies on someone else, you feel more vulnerable, the everyday slights just hurt more. Sort of like talking to a guy at 321-BUSS who insists he can't call dispatch and find out what became of my bus until it is at least 15 minutes late.

The "beeping" bus

The No. 82 bus I take to work is never late.

Today it was late.

When the bus finally arrived, I boarded and took my customary seat in the first elevated row in the rear of the bus. The driver was talking on a phone. Since drivers don't normally chat with friends while driving the bus, the phone in the driver's hand was suspicious.

Eventually the driver put the phone away and drove to the next stop. The bus pulled to the curb, the doors opened and then everything went black.

Well, the lights went off inside the bus as the driver shut down the coach.

The driver was busy with stuff in front of him but he wasn't going to bother his passengers with the finer details of what was going on. Sort of like a doctor who is trained not to say "Oops!" during a surgery.

After more than one passenger inquired about the delay, the driver finally explained:

"We have an emergency flashing. If we don't correct it, we'll have fifteen thousand police surrounding us."

When a passenger suggested we could all participate in a re-creation of the movie "Speed," the driver said, "No, we don't want that."

The passengers were disappointed at the lost opportunity to make an exciting movie of their commute, but then the bus started and we were on our way, leaving the disappointment behind at the stop.

Then the bus went, "Beep-beep, beep-beep."

The driver's fingers responded with a choreographed sequence of pokes at the bus computer touchscreen.

In the early space explorations, animals were sent into orbit and monitored. In order to tell what effect the trip was having on the animal, they were trained to pull a certain lever when a light came on. If they answered correctly, they were rewarded with a treat.

The driver took his treat -- silencing the beeping bus -- and we continued on.

Back at the Sacramento Regional Transit's operations center, the progress of the bus and its driver were logged, and fifteen thousand police were told to stand down.