I have watched for decades as bus service in the various communities where I've lived has struggled to maintain existing levels of service, with an occasional, tentative move toward increased service. Ridership remains low, and this perceived lack of demand is taken as reason enough to leave things alone. Of course, it's a self-defeating arrangement, where no one who has a choice wants to leave their car at home when the transit option is so much less convenient. I would love to see City Bus here in Santa Rosa get serious about providing a level of service that would really get people away from driving alone. Of course there's a whole litany of problems that need to be solved to get there, and describing those problems and some possible solutions is my main motive for doing this blog.
There are several big changes we could make to City Bus that could be real game changers. The status quo is a system where the buses shut down for the night around 8 pm and run at 30- or 60-minute intervals, pretty sad for a county seat with a population of 170,000. Let's run the buses until at least 10 pm, and double frequency of service. And let's add some cross-town routes so one doesn't have to transfer between lines downtown to travel the length or breadth of the city. Let's install shelters at every stop, with technology to inform waiting passengers how long until the next bus arrives.
This will all cost a ton of money, of course. Right now, with gas selling for half what it cost a year ago, is a great time to talk about paying for these improvements with a substantial local gasoline tax.
Thursday, January 29, 2015
Monday, January 12, 2015
Happy Thoughts
I started this blog as a place to kvetch about what's not right in my new home, Sonoma County. But being the positive, upbeat person I naturally am, I need to take a break from all the whining and share some positive items.
- In my last post, I dreamed up what I thought would be the single most valuable addition to Santa Rosa's infrastructure to make the city a friendlier place to cyclists and walkers. I proposed the incredibly original idea of a bike/pedestrian bridge connecting Santa Rosa Junior College with Codding Town Mall on the opposite side of Highway 101. As a naive newcomer to Sonoma County, little did I dream this very idea has been in the works for some time, complete with a 200-page feasibility study, cost over-runs, and apparently plenty of political controversy. I learned about this in casual conversation with co-workers the very day after I posted my pipe dream. Let's do it, Santa Rosa!
- One indicator Santa Rosa is headed in the right direction in providing bike infrastructure: Many of the older commercial areas I visit are totally lacking in bike racks. But the newer big shops at Codding Town, namely Target and Whole Foods, each have big ol' rows of racks right outside, conveniently close to their main entrances. Kudos to Codding Town!
- The City of Santa Rosa does provide an outlet for any of us who want to rant in public about non-motorized transportation before a captive audience. It's the Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Board, and their next meeting is this Thursday, January 15 at 4 pm in the City Hall Annex, 90 Santa Rosa Avenue, Conference Room 7A and 7B. Be there!
Wednesday, January 7, 2015
California Über Alles
From Jerry Brown's inaugural address this past Monday:
Well, that all sounds pretty good to me. Except the bit about "reducing carbon is compatible with an abundant economy." Contrast that claim with Naomi Klein in her recently published This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate:
Finally, neither California nor indeed the world itself can ignore the growing assault on the very systems of nature on which human beings and other forms of life depend. Edward O. Wilson, one of the world's preeminent biologists and naturalists, offered this sobering thought:
"Surely one moral precept we can agree on is to stop destroying our birthplace, the only home humanity will ever have. The evidence for climate warming, with industrial pollution as the principal cause, is now overwhelming. Also evident upon even casual inspection is the rapid disappearance of tropical forests and grasslands and other habitats where most of the diversity of life exists." With these global changes, he went on to say, "we are needlessly turning the gold we inherited from our forebears into straw, and for that we will be despised by our descendants."
California has the most far-reaching environmental laws of any state and the most integrated policy to deal with climate change of any political jurisdiction in the Western Hemisphere. Under laws that you have enacted, we are on track to meet our 2020 goal of one-third of our electricity from renewable energy. We lead the nation in energy efficiency, cleaner cars and energy storage. Recently, both the Secretary-General of the United Nations and the President of the World Bank made clear that properly pricing carbon is a key strategy. California's cap-and-trade system fashioned under AB 32 is doing just that and showing how the market itself can generate the innovations we need. Beyond this, California is forging agreements with other states and nations so that we do not stand alone in advancing these climate objectives.
These efforts, impressive though they are, are not enough. The United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, backed up by the vast majority of the world's scientists, has set an ambitious goal of limiting warming to 2 degrees Celsius by the year 2050 through drastic reductions of greenhouse gases. If we have any chance at all of achieving that, California, as it does in many areas, must show the way. We must demonstrate that reducing carbon is compatible with an abundant economy and human well-being. So far, we have been able to do that.
In fact, we are well on our way to meeting our AB 32 goal of reducing carbon pollution and limiting the emissions of heat-trapping gases to 431 million tons by 2020. But now, it is time to establish our next set of objectives for 2030 and beyond.
Toward that end, I propose three ambitious goals to be accomplished within the next 15 years:
Increase from one-third to 50 percent our electricity derived from renewable sources;
Reduce today's petroleum use in cars and trucks by up to 50 percent;
Double the efficiency of existing buildings and make heating fuels cleaner.
We must also reduce the relentless release of methane, black carbon and other potent pollutants across industries. And we must manage farm and rangelands, forests and wetlands so they can store carbon. All of this is a very tall order. It means that we continue to transform our electrical grid, our transportation system and even our communities.
I envision a wide range of initiatives: more distributed power, expanded rooftop solar, micro-grids, an energy imbalance market, battery storage, the full integration of information technology and electrical distribution and millions of electric and low-carbon vehicles. How we achieve these goals and at what pace will take great thought and imagination mixed with pragmatic caution. It will require enormous innovation, research and investment. And we will need active collaboration at every stage with our scientists, engineers, entrepreneurs, businesses and officials at all levels.
Taking significant amounts of carbon out of our economy without harming its vibrancy is exactly the sort of challenge at which California excels. This is exciting, it is bold and it is absolutely necessary if we are to have any chance of stopping potentially catastrophic changes to our climate system.
"Surely one moral precept we can agree on is to stop destroying our birthplace, the only home humanity will ever have. The evidence for climate warming, with industrial pollution as the principal cause, is now overwhelming. Also evident upon even casual inspection is the rapid disappearance of tropical forests and grasslands and other habitats where most of the diversity of life exists." With these global changes, he went on to say, "we are needlessly turning the gold we inherited from our forebears into straw, and for that we will be despised by our descendants."
California has the most far-reaching environmental laws of any state and the most integrated policy to deal with climate change of any political jurisdiction in the Western Hemisphere. Under laws that you have enacted, we are on track to meet our 2020 goal of one-third of our electricity from renewable energy. We lead the nation in energy efficiency, cleaner cars and energy storage. Recently, both the Secretary-General of the United Nations and the President of the World Bank made clear that properly pricing carbon is a key strategy. California's cap-and-trade system fashioned under AB 32 is doing just that and showing how the market itself can generate the innovations we need. Beyond this, California is forging agreements with other states and nations so that we do not stand alone in advancing these climate objectives.
These efforts, impressive though they are, are not enough. The United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, backed up by the vast majority of the world's scientists, has set an ambitious goal of limiting warming to 2 degrees Celsius by the year 2050 through drastic reductions of greenhouse gases. If we have any chance at all of achieving that, California, as it does in many areas, must show the way. We must demonstrate that reducing carbon is compatible with an abundant economy and human well-being. So far, we have been able to do that.
In fact, we are well on our way to meeting our AB 32 goal of reducing carbon pollution and limiting the emissions of heat-trapping gases to 431 million tons by 2020. But now, it is time to establish our next set of objectives for 2030 and beyond.
Toward that end, I propose three ambitious goals to be accomplished within the next 15 years:
Increase from one-third to 50 percent our electricity derived from renewable sources;
Reduce today's petroleum use in cars and trucks by up to 50 percent;
Double the efficiency of existing buildings and make heating fuels cleaner.
We must also reduce the relentless release of methane, black carbon and other potent pollutants across industries. And we must manage farm and rangelands, forests and wetlands so they can store carbon. All of this is a very tall order. It means that we continue to transform our electrical grid, our transportation system and even our communities.
I envision a wide range of initiatives: more distributed power, expanded rooftop solar, micro-grids, an energy imbalance market, battery storage, the full integration of information technology and electrical distribution and millions of electric and low-carbon vehicles. How we achieve these goals and at what pace will take great thought and imagination mixed with pragmatic caution. It will require enormous innovation, research and investment. And we will need active collaboration at every stage with our scientists, engineers, entrepreneurs, businesses and officials at all levels.
Taking significant amounts of carbon out of our economy without harming its vibrancy is exactly the sort of challenge at which California excels. This is exciting, it is bold and it is absolutely necessary if we are to have any chance of stopping potentially catastrophic changes to our climate system.
“Our economic system and our planetary system are now at war. Or, more accurately, our economy is at war with many forms of life on earth, including human life. What the climate needs to avoid collapse is a contraction in humanity’s use of resources; what our economic model demands to avoid collapse is unfettered expansion. Only one of these sets of rules can be changed, and it’s not the laws of nature.”
I think Naomi's version of the truth is more unvarnished on this point.
Tuesday, January 6, 2015
Highway 101: Santa Rosa's Great Divide
The worst crime against the people of Santa Rosa has to be the design and construction of Highway 101 through the city. It's not necessarily a bad thing that there's a major freeway dividing the city east and west, but the way it was done shows total disregard for pedestrians and cyclists. Only if you assume everyone is traveling around the city in a private automobile does the design appear to make some sense.
I would define a standard by which any freeway crossing should be designed. It should be a place where one would feel safe biking the route with a twelve-year-old child, or walking it with an elderly relative. If we're not building this way, we're doing things seriously wrong. By that measure, the only places I would care to cross Highway 101 in all of Santa Rosa are, from south to north, the Earle Street pedestrian bridge, the Prince Memorial Greenway (a creekside urban gem that should be replicated a dozen times along Santa Rosa's section of 101!) and the street crossings at 4th, 5th, 6th, and 9th streets.
So that's a paltry half-dozen decent crossings, with all but the Earle Street bridge squeezed together in a half-mile downtown stretch. This leaves miles of Santa Rosa to the north and south of downtown with no user-friendly crossings. College Avenue and Steele Lane I'm willing to take on alone, though I find them unpleasant and somewhat dangerous with the freeway on- and off-ramps to contend with. Forget about taking young or old companions through those on foot or on bikes.
Solutions? I would make it a priority to develop more Earle Street-style bridges, that would cross not only the freeway but the adjacent frontage roads such as Cleveland Avenue and Armory Drive. As a first goal, let's come up with a way for people to walk between Santa Rosa Junior College campus and Codding Town mall without having to cross any major streets.
Let's take a minute to consider the bigger picture. California has a codified plan saying we shall reduce the state's greenhouse gas emissions to 80% below 1990 levels by 2050. In real time, we're way above those 1990 levels and climbing, despite a brief dip during the economic downturn a couple years back. If we're serious about reaching that goal, we have to make BIG changes, and start making them soon. Transportation-related emissions make up over a quarter of the greenhouse gases produced in this country. We have to turn Santa Rosa, and every city in California, into a place where it's truly more attractive and economic to get out of your car than to drive around. We have to reinvent every big and little aspect of how we design, build, maintain, and fund our cities and their transportation infrastructure. This is what's driving me to write this blog, and all my schemes and dreams are aimed at making these changes happen.
I would define a standard by which any freeway crossing should be designed. It should be a place where one would feel safe biking the route with a twelve-year-old child, or walking it with an elderly relative. If we're not building this way, we're doing things seriously wrong. By that measure, the only places I would care to cross Highway 101 in all of Santa Rosa are, from south to north, the Earle Street pedestrian bridge, the Prince Memorial Greenway (a creekside urban gem that should be replicated a dozen times along Santa Rosa's section of 101!) and the street crossings at 4th, 5th, 6th, and 9th streets.
So that's a paltry half-dozen decent crossings, with all but the Earle Street bridge squeezed together in a half-mile downtown stretch. This leaves miles of Santa Rosa to the north and south of downtown with no user-friendly crossings. College Avenue and Steele Lane I'm willing to take on alone, though I find them unpleasant and somewhat dangerous with the freeway on- and off-ramps to contend with. Forget about taking young or old companions through those on foot or on bikes.
Solutions? I would make it a priority to develop more Earle Street-style bridges, that would cross not only the freeway but the adjacent frontage roads such as Cleveland Avenue and Armory Drive. As a first goal, let's come up with a way for people to walk between Santa Rosa Junior College campus and Codding Town mall without having to cross any major streets.
Let's take a minute to consider the bigger picture. California has a codified plan saying we shall reduce the state's greenhouse gas emissions to 80% below 1990 levels by 2050. In real time, we're way above those 1990 levels and climbing, despite a brief dip during the economic downturn a couple years back. If we're serious about reaching that goal, we have to make BIG changes, and start making them soon. Transportation-related emissions make up over a quarter of the greenhouse gases produced in this country. We have to turn Santa Rosa, and every city in California, into a place where it's truly more attractive and economic to get out of your car than to drive around. We have to reinvent every big and little aspect of how we design, build, maintain, and fund our cities and their transportation infrastructure. This is what's driving me to write this blog, and all my schemes and dreams are aimed at making these changes happen.
Monday, January 5, 2015
Climate Protection
Now I live in a county where "Climate Protection" is part of the name of both a non-profit organization and a government agency, so this particular term bears some discussion. Are we talking about protecting the climate from us, or ourselves from the climate?
During a staff meeting this morning, I had an epiphany on this question. The contemporary discussion of response to climate change revolves on two separate but related courses of action: mitigation and adaptation. Mitigation means working to halt or reduce the causes of climate change. Adaptation recognizes some inevitability in climate change and seeks to stave off the worst of the consequences.
So now I think we can frame climate protection thus: mitigation is protecting the climate from us, while adaptation is about protecting us from the climate.
During a staff meeting this morning, I had an epiphany on this question. The contemporary discussion of response to climate change revolves on two separate but related courses of action: mitigation and adaptation. Mitigation means working to halt or reduce the causes of climate change. Adaptation recognizes some inevitability in climate change and seeks to stave off the worst of the consequences.
So now I think we can frame climate protection thus: mitigation is protecting the climate from us, while adaptation is about protecting us from the climate.
Saturday, January 3, 2015
Day Zero
Introduction
I moved to Sonoma County in mid-2014. There's a lot to like here, including a high level of environmental awareness in the community. Still, I see so much untapped opportunity every day to help Sonoma County better live up to its green aspirations.*
OK, that was an attempt to be diplomatic and polite to the many Sonomans who have given me and my wife such a warm welcome to our new community. But honestly, I find myself screaming silently inside my head almost every day: What were the planners, developers, and engineers thinking when they laid out the streets and developed the public transit of this car-crazy place!? I know many of the most egregious features of the built landscape here are a legacy of decisions made many decades ago. But still, some of the infrastructure seems to me so dysfunctional it should be treated as a public safety emergency by today's leaders.
I'm launching this blog to share ideas and make connections with people who might be thinking similar thoughts to those I mutter under my breath as I bike, walk, and bus my way across Santa Rosa each day. Please let me know what you're muttering about.
More as a note to myself than anything, here are a few topics I'm hoping to cover in the near future -- with maps, photos, and other fun features!
* I'm fortunate to get to work on those green aspirations every day through my job with the County's Energy and Sustainability Division and my volunteer work with the Sonoma County Trails Council. But I want to make it clear that what I write in this blog is strictly my own thoughts and is in no way endorsed by either of those organizations.
I moved to Sonoma County in mid-2014. There's a lot to like here, including a high level of environmental awareness in the community. Still, I see so much untapped opportunity every day to help Sonoma County better live up to its green aspirations.*
OK, that was an attempt to be diplomatic and polite to the many Sonomans who have given me and my wife such a warm welcome to our new community. But honestly, I find myself screaming silently inside my head almost every day: What were the planners, developers, and engineers thinking when they laid out the streets and developed the public transit of this car-crazy place!? I know many of the most egregious features of the built landscape here are a legacy of decisions made many decades ago. But still, some of the infrastructure seems to me so dysfunctional it should be treated as a public safety emergency by today's leaders.
I'm launching this blog to share ideas and make connections with people who might be thinking similar thoughts to those I mutter under my breath as I bike, walk, and bus my way across Santa Rosa each day. Please let me know what you're muttering about.
More as a note to myself than anything, here are a few topics I'm hoping to cover in the near future -- with maps, photos, and other fun features!
- Highway 101: Santa Rosa's great divide for the car-less
- Pedestrian-unfriendly landscapes: a case study on Steele Lane
- City Bus: really? 60 minutes between buses and no service after ~8pm?? In a city of 170,000?
- Imagining a great leap forward in public transit
- Pedestrian-favoring infrastructure: on-demand street crossing
* I'm fortunate to get to work on those green aspirations every day through my job with the County's Energy and Sustainability Division and my volunteer work with the Sonoma County Trails Council. But I want to make it clear that what I write in this blog is strictly my own thoughts and is in no way endorsed by either of those organizations.
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