Orphan Road - Blog entry - Comments

Dear God, let it stop. That

serial catowner — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 16:35:20 -0700

Dear God, let it stop. That was not a tunnel. That was a railroad bridge over a highway. I don't know when people started calling it a tunnel, but it certainly wasn't in the first ten years it existed.

I'm inclined to think the state DOT started calling it a tunnel so people who didn't know what it was would visualize some kind of improvement when they tore it down.

Hmm.. If this Nissan

nickb — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 12:48:54 -0700

Hmm.. If this Nissan innovation is increasing fuel consumption what is it worth? :-D

At the moment I think every vehicle should be outfitted with monitors that provide current and historical MPG usage.

One of the interesting

serial catowner — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 10:31:17 -0700

One of the interesting things here is that we have four communities interested in streetcars who can barely talk to one another.

First, and most important in today's dynamics, are the urban movers and shakers who don't know much about streetcars except they seem to work. In the process of learning how and why they work, they may end up knowing more than most of us. Or not.

Second, we have TC Mits- the common man in the street. For one reason or another (but probably not sentiment, in today's America) s/he thinks streetcars would be a step up from buses. Improbably, the ignorance of TC Mits (that streetcars are fast rail vehicles) is actually closer to the mark than the assertion by some local transit fans that streetcars are not light rail- streetcars become light rail when they run on light rail ROW, and vice versa.

Thirdly, we have modern rail transit advocates who, judging from blogposts, don't know or care that much about the history of electric transit.

And fourthly, we have the now declining species of the trolley fans, juice jacks, traction buffs, and electric rail fans. They built models, they published books, they restored trolleys and hung wire- because they had ridden and loved electric traction.

In a not-unrelated development, the Center for Wooden Boats can now be reached by a ride on the streetcar. This institution, old and young together, restores and builds wooden boats that the public can rent and use on Lake Union. Classes are taught, children and the disabled are helped to participate, interns are supported, festivals and regattas are held, and anyone who gets that close to the water gains a renewed interest in keeping the water clean.

There's a lesson in there someplace.

Right now, not on Market St,

EvergreenRailfan — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 11:25:59 -0700

Right now, not on Market St, but they are working on it. They have a short stretch of private right of way though. They also have another line that is ready to go, the E-Embarcadero line, but they do not have a turnaround loop. The PCC was a mostly single-ended car. with few built as double-enders, and MUNI had some of those, but they are among the ones out to bid for repairs. 5 Double-enders is all they need to get the E-line running with minimal service. They got a New Orleans Car in their fleet, two in fact, one that was bought from a museum, the other that was on loan from New Orleans.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F_Market_&_Wharves#Route

Great links, thanks.

Frank — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 09:50:13 -0700

Great links, thanks. Doesn't the F-line sort of have its own right-of-way?

Oops, a double post, sorry.

EvergreenRailfan — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 00:27:45 -0700

Oops, a double post, sorry.

At least it is not a re-hash

EvergreenRailfan — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 23:03:34 -0700

At least it is not a re-hash like what the San Francisco Chronicle did about the F-Market and Wharves line. It still is one of MUNI's best performers despite the odds stacked against it that keeps OTP down. It runs on Market St, on the surface, it's a streetcar, and it's still popular.

http://blog.streetcar.org/2008/08/what-have-we-learned.html

http://blog.streetcar.org/2008/07/how-the-fline-came-to-be.html

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/08/05/BADT1251IF.D...

http://blog.streetcar.org/2008/08/chron-fline-too-popular-for-ow.html

The F-line draws more riders than the Cable Cars.(MUNI Charges more for the latter, and they use the excuse that only tourists use them)

Toll booths by 2010, not

EvergreenRailfan — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 00:20:20 -0700

Toll booths by 2010, not going to happen, especially a toll plaza like this one. Tacoma Narrows Bridge, could not tell if all the booths were manned in this photo, the Jersey Barrier is in the way. I do remember their was a line going through it later, and there were several booths open that night, then again, it was Thanksgiving, and WSF was all messed up, it was just as they took the elderly boats out of service. More people were going around that day than taking a ferry.

http://i25.photobucket.com/albums/c62/RanierBusrider/TollPlaza.jpg

True, although we have other

Frank — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 20:01:37 -0700

True, although we have other agencies here as well, like Community Transit, bringing people in from up North. But you're right in that KC Metro is the main agency in the region.

It helps that there are

EvergreenRailfan — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 18:06:33 -0700

It helps that there are other agencies as well that serve areas outside of the WMATA zone, connecting outer counties with the Metro, and a good network of commuter rail, MARC's trains stretch to points North of Baltimore, and into West Virginia. VRE should go to Richmond, but it does not. What I like, is with the big MetroRail network, rail carries more riders than the bus, yet I am sure some rail critics will use that as proof it is at the expense of the bus. One of the stops I visited on the Red Line while I was there, was Silver Spring, and that station, is bus city. Montgomery County Ride-On, and WMATA buses, in addition to the Red Line, and a MARC train.

Chris, I work for a 'large

BenSchiendelman — Sun, 10 Aug 2008 09:59:03 -0700

Chris, I work for a 'large software company' and have access to pretty much the best the US has to offer. I'm marrying a French woman. Having been present when she's done doctor visits? Her care is better. By a long shot.

Not to mention that as long as 50 million or more Americans aren't covered, you can't say squat about our system. Health is a public good. The cost of those 50 (or is it 60?) million uninsured Americans is far greater than providing for them. Our system isn't built to make cost effective choices for the group, only for the individual.

Ha ha, I've been an RN, with

serial catowner — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 14:33:19 -0700

Ha ha, I've been an RN, with a BS, for 25 years. I've had plenty of time to think about how well we're doing what we do.

Even today, a full half of what doctors do has no scientific justification. Shannon Brownlee had a great post this morning about that and some reactions by doctors.

I thought the substance here was pretty plain, but as Chris has apparently missed it I will repeat- when we had visibly the best standard of living in the world, there wasn't a lot of reason to change things. Why rock the boat?

But those days are gone, and plenty of people are now thinking maybe we should change things, even if it means we have to go to the effort of governing ourselves. After all, the French and the Dutch and the Germans do it, and they work a lot less than we do to get results that are just as good.

And we will use our government to build rail transit and renewable energy, or find ourselves stranded by AGW and the End of Oil, like some poor whale that swam up the wrong river. In short, a major change in the direction of a current of American history that has carried us in one direction for 200 years.

Chris -- you should qualify

Frank — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 12:59:25 -0700

Chris -- you should qualify that. Some Americans have access to the highest level of care. Tens of millions do not. And it's not realistic to bracket this as "another issue altogether." The reason why these millions of Americans have no care is precisely because we spend 16% of GDP -- far more than any other developed country -- giving too much, overly expensive and wasteful care to those who can afford it.

See Sharon Brownlee's book, Overtreated, or Jon Cohn's book, Sick, for the substance and context you seek.

But this blog is not a health care blog. There are plenty of others that cover this issue better than we can.

That's some serious

chris — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 11:53:30 -0700

That's some serious doom-and-gloom without any real substance or context. I work in the Healthcare IT field and as Americans we have access to the highest level of care. Granted, the level of access is unequal and that is why we are so far down on those lists you hold so dear, but that's really another issue altogether (and some would argue, not even an issue.)

Honestly, I can't make any

serial catowner — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 07:56:33 -0700

Honestly, I can't make any sense of the maps- whichever of the colors you assume to represent "affordable" doesn't seem to work- and in any case, affordable for whom? Mercer Island, for example, is turquoise, but there are obviously people who can afford to live there. In any case, whichever color you assign, the map doesn't change that much in the example offered- certainly not more than the difference I would expect a sharp buyer to find in the marginal area between affordable and not affordable.

For my own part, I would buy a roadmap and use a felt-tip marker to put a dot on each major potential employer- and I sure wouldn't trust any on-line tool I've seen to get that right.

I understand that younger people might be more inclined to use a computer (to a man with a hammer, every problem...) but, in view of recent events, I'm also inclined to think that may be one way we've become so, shall we say, "highly leveraged".