M1EK's Bake-Sale of Bile

The acronym is for "Bike Commutes I Have Known And Loved".

I was impelled to get going again by witnessing a lady trying to keep her bike on about one inch of pavement on the uphill shoulderless windy part of Bee Caves this morning on my drive to work. Stay tuned for #3, brave soul; there's really no need for you to ride on that ungodly stretch.

Same format as before.

Bike Commutes I Have Known And Loved #2: Central Austin (Clarksville) to Northwest Austin (183 corridor) - four different offices in four years for S3.

Timeframe: June 1998- December 2001

Rough sketch of first half of route (the common part)

Common second part of routes to first, third, fourth offices (Bull Creek/Hancock to Mesa/Hyridge)

Second part of route to second, temporary, office (Spicewood Springs)

Final part of route to first office (Jollyville/Oak Knoll)

Final part of route to third office (Riata)

Final part of route to fourth office (Centaur)

Background: This is kind of a long one - S3 had one office when I started; were in negotiations to move to a nicer newer one but got stalled out by an acquisition which ended up pushing us into a temporary sublease for six months or so; and then when Via acquired S3, many of my coworkers left and I worked from home for a year, only to return to a temporary office in a building leased by Centaur (another of their companies) until S3 closed that office in December 2001, and I had to go find work in the middle of the dot-com bust (hooray!). All three share a common first third or so, and two are virtually identical, so they're all grouped together here. The Riata commute was the one I actually made into the slideshow you see pictures from throughout this and the previous article.

Bike used: Mostly my old touring bike (since stolen) that I acquired for $200 used from austin.forsale.

Distance/Time: 10-15 miles each way; much longer in the morning due to hills - on days I biked all the way in on the longer versions, about 90-100 minutes. Trip home was 45 minutes or so.

Showers: Only the Riata office. For the mornings, I did the bus boost sometimes, and other times relied on cooler weather and the bathroom washcloth trick.

Route and comments:

By this point, I was becoming more comfortable asserting my position on the road, which is good since Jollyville didn't yet have bike lanes.

First segments: To Bull Creek/Hancock: See first commute.

Second segment: Either up Shoal Creek or cross Mopac: The trick on all these commutes is where you shift from one good corridor (Bull Creek / Shoal Creek) to another (Mesa). There's four crossings of Mopac which are accessible from here; I'll briefly touch on them and talk about where I used them.

1. Hancock: No on-ramps, which is nice, but a lot of debris, and requires a lot more hills if you are going particularly far north on the Mesa corridor. I used this crossing for the 2nd commute, at our temporary sublease on Spicewood Springs west of Mesa.

2. Far West: A lot of novice cyclists take this one because the crossing TO Mopac is on a bike/ped bridge over the railroad, but then you're dumped right into on-ramp traffic. I didn't like this one as either a novice or an experienced cyclist.

3. Spicewood Springs: Great downhill, but awful uphill - big hill, lots of traffic, ramps. Not recommended outbound. I used this one on the way home almost all the time.

4. Steck: Best choice for uphill - least hill; most shade; least traffic (still have onramps to deal with, but they're less busy than the other two choices). Downhill not so great - lose momentum at a 4-way stop.

A quick hit, since I'm about to go to bed early with a raging ear infection while on a business trip to scenic Huntsville, AL. This is a comment I just posted on Cap Metro's blog in response to the announcement that they're shooting again for "rapid" bus on the only good rail corridor in the city.

Rapid Bus continues to be a complete waste of time and money - our council members were right to put the kibosh on it the last time through. Investing this much money on a half-baked solution for the most important transit corridor in Austin is stupid, especially since this particular solution won't actually work here (too many times the traffic backup goes far beyond the light immediately in front of the bus in question).

In other cities, and in a smarter Austin, we'd be seeing packed light rail trains run down Lamar and Guadalupe by now. There is no way rapid bus can provide enough mobility benefits here to be worth a tenth the investment you're going to dump into this dead-end technology; and I hope our council members cut this program off again.

It's time to demand that the residents of Austin, who provide almost all of Capital Metro's funds, get some rail transit rather than spending our money providing train service to suburbs like Cedar Park that don't even pay Capital Metro taxes. Rapid bus is an insult to the taxpayers of Austin, and it's not going to be rapid.

I urge each and every of the ten readers of this crackplog to write to your city council members and ask them to stop Capital Metro from spending money on this ridiculous project - if CM feels like spending some money serving Austin for a change, there are far better projects on which to do it.

Posted by m1ek at 09:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (8) | TrackBacks (0)

The acronym is for "Bike Commutes I Have Known And Loved".

I've been meaning to write a series of these for a long time for posterity's sake, but the combination of a recent bout of stupidity in the comments at austinist and recent economic conditions have reminded me to get going.

Here we go with #1.

Bike Commutes I Have Known And Loved #1: Central Austin (Clarksville) to North Austin (IBM)

Timeframe: 1997-1998

Rough sketch of route

Background: After spending my first year in Austin living in an apartment behind IBM on Gracy Farms and riding with a friend down to Town Lake and back many weekends, I bought a condo in Clarksville and decided I'd bike to work more seriously (I had done it occasionally from the apartment - although it was so short it was kind of a waste of time). At the start of this period, I was still a borderline novice - I would shy away from busy streets and cling to hike/bike trails whenever possible.

Bike used: the old no-shock mountain bike (only one I still have in 2008). I bought the used touring bike right before I quit IBM in the spring of '98.

Distance/Time: About 11 miles each way. In my typical physical condition at the time, the morning commute would take about 1:15 (75 minutes); the afternoon commute about 45 minutes.

Showers: Yes. IBM has a locker room in one of the "pink buildings" (east side of Burnet).

Route and comments:

When I first started this commute, I used the Shoal Creek Hike & Bike Trail up to 34th/38th. That proved to be dumb after a few trips; I found a much shorter and actually safer on-road route, detailed below.

First segment: To 35th: Get on West Lynn in Clarksville heading north. (Pictures are from 1999ish commute to S3, which comes later in the series). Cross Enfield at nice signalized crossing. Enjoy shade and picturesque mansions to end of West Lynn at Niles; turn left and head down to Hartford (one 4-way stop at Pease); then go up Hartford across Windsor (light). Hartford eventually bends and turns into Jefferson. Head up Jefferson and pass two busy 4-way stops for Westover & 29th; speed humps after that; but still a very civilized and shady and flat route up to light at 35th, where it opens way up.

At this point, my original idea was to get on Shoal Creek as quickly as possible - because I was still uncomfortable with bigger roads. I'd actually take a turn before arriving at 35th; heading down 34th and then through Seiders Springs Park to where Shoal Creek Boulevard starts at 38th; but this adds a big hill or two to the trip and a lot of time. Based on a recommendation from the austin-bikes list, I ended up with the approach below instead, which was far superior.

Segment #2: 35th to Shoal Creek: The trick here is that Jefferson crosses 35th and then hits an intersection at 38th where you can hop on Bull Creek Road, which appears to take you out of your way to the northwest, but is actually a faster and easier route overall. After crossing 35th, turn left at the next light to start up Bull Creek. Pass through light at 45th to end of road at Hancock. Turn right on Hancock, go down hill across the creek, back uphill; turn left at light on Shoal Creek. This particular spot was scary to me at first, as it requires one of the basic intermediate cycling tasks - taking the lane and then moving left to turn, although traffic was pretty light, but also required doing so on an uphill (unless I had maintained enough speed from previous downhill, I was usually going pretty slow by the time I got to the light).

Segment #3: Shoal Creek to almost 183: During the timeframe for this particular commute, Shoal Creek still had its original, pre-debacle, configuration: 7-ish foot wide bike lanes that occasionally had parked cars. (Note that in the slideshow, the striping is actually gone). At the time, I didn't really know any better and would stay in the bike lanes - failing to assert proper positioning to safely pass parked cars - but there weren't quite as many back in the late 1990s. Shoal Creek was a pretty good long route at this time - you always had or could obtain right-of-way at intersections (either 4-way stops or lights) all the way up to 183. When I first did this commute, I'd ride straight up to 183 and then sidewalk all the way past Burnet; but I later learned a route through the neighborhood which took me to the 183 frontage road much closer to Burnet, which is too convoluted to recall here, but this map of the area would probably suffice. Even as an experienced cyclist, I'd walk my bike across 183/Burnet; there were places I'd ride on the frontage roads, but this was not one of them.

Now, we leave the nice pictures behind.

Segment #4: Cross Burnet/183 and get on Metric. Easier said than done. There's a fairly convoluted on-road route which could accomplish this which involved Steck, Ohlen and some backtracking, but at the time I did this commute, I'd rather be an occasional pedestrian than ride on some of those roads (Steck may soon become 3 lanes with bike lanes rather than its existing 4 narrow lane configuration, which would make that route much nicer). From last segment, walk bike along 183 frontage past strip mall to 183/Burnet light; cross Burnet and 183 eastbound frontage; cross under 183 to south side of northbound frontage; walk bike down that side to end of Metric; walk bike across to Metric Blvd. (Actually, Metric didn't go all the way through when I started this commute - but it did by the end). On some of this route, you could actually ride (interior paved areas under the overpass), but it's kind of dodgy on a road bike due to debris.

Segment #5: Up Metric to IBM. The southernmost stretch of Metric Blvd, from 183 to Rutland, was built during a brief time where the city actually put bike lanes on all new arterials - and is pretty darn nice. Crossing Rundberg, you get on a much older section of road, but there's still plenty of space - super wide right lanes thanks to excessive freight truck use of this roadway. Some hills which are moderately difficult for the novice. There's lights at Rutland, Braker, and Kramer, before you get up to Gracy Farms, where you want to turn left. Gracy Farms is 4 lanes and undivided but fairly low traffic, so even the novice me was comfortable taking the lane (especially downhill in the morning) and heading in the northwest corner of IBM off Gracy Farms.

Bus boost possibility: You can pick up the #3 shortly after segment #1 by heading over to 38th/Medical Parkway; but it only takes you to Braker, and is a pretty slow trip. Google Transit has this trip at 26 minutes which seems a bit low compared to my experience. This bus runs every 20 minutes and is heavily used - likelihood of the bike rack being full is pretty high. See other bike commutes for much better bus options.

Ratings:

Overall conclusion: A good starter commute for the most part, although a better bus boost would have been more helpful. Some mornings I didn't have the time to spend to go all the way up there and take a long (low water-pressure) shower, so a bus-in-the-morning; bike-in-the-afternoon plan like I did at various other offices would have resulted in more days on the bike. As it was, I averaged 2 days a week in spring/summer/fall; only about once every other week in the winter.

Posted by m1ek at 12:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

So you may have heard me talk about the new suburban office. For a while, we were trying to keep making a go of it with just one car - my wife driving me in most days and picking me up sometimes; other times me taking that hour and 45 minute trip home with a long walk, 2 buses, and a transfer involved. I tried to work from home as much as possible - but the demands to be in the office were too great; and we couldn't sustain the drop-offs and the long bus trips.

Well, we relented. Just in time; I got my wife to agree on a color and we now own a second Prius - this one obtained right as the waiting list shot up from zero to many months (ours was ordered; but there was no wait beyond that so it took about 2 weeks - arriving right as the house exploded so ironically I ended up working exlusively from home for a few weeks longer anyways). Do not argue with the M1EK on the futurism/economics predictions is the lesson you should be taking away from this.

So that's the intro. Here's the microeconomics lesson.

Assuming $4 gas, the trip to work in the car costs $1.56 according to my handy depreciation-free commute calculator. The morning drive takes 20 minutes. The afternoon drive more like 30.

The transit trip costs $1 (although soon to go up to at least $1.50). That means I save $0.56, at least before the fare increase, right? Not much, but every bit helps, right?

Well, the transit trip takes an hour and a half in the morning; an hour and 45 minutes in the afternoon; and I can't afford that much extra time anyways, but even if I could, it would be placing an effective value of 23.1 cents per hour on my time, which seems a bit, uh, low.

So it's gonna take a lot more than $4/gallon gas, sad to say. You might be seeing some marginal increases in ridership around here, but only in areas where transit service is very good and where people should have been considering taking the bus all along. And there's no prospect for improvement - the reason bus service is so bad out here is because Rollingwood and Westlake don't want to pay Capital Metro taxes, although they sure as heck enjoy taking my urban gas tax dollars to build them some nice roads to drive on. In the long-term Cap Metro plan, there may be a bus route on 360 which would at least lessen the 30 minute walk/wait involved, but that could be a decade or more - by then we'll probably be getting chauffered through the blasted alkali flats in monkey-driven jet boats. Not gonna help me.

Also, those who think telecommuting and staggered work schedules are more important than pushing for higher-quality transit and urban density can bite it, hard. If even people in my business often get pressure to come into the physical office, there's no way the typical workaday joe is going to be able to pull it off in large enough numbers to make any difference.

Posted by m1ek at 10:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

They've just started up an effort called Capital MetroBlog. Expect to see me there from time to time -we'll see how transparent they intend to be if/when they start talking about commuter rail.

Posted by m1ek at 09:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

In the past, you've seen me point out the hypocrisy of two or three folks heavily involved in the McMansion Task Force for living in homes which violated the expressed spirit, if not technically the letter, of the ordinance. The spirit being "out-of-scale houses (McGraw) and/or homes which 'tower over the backyards of their neighbors' (Maxwell)".

Somehow, I missed this.

Laura Morrison chaired this task force - and lives in a home which, according to TravisCAD, is worth $1.4 million and has 8,537 square feet. Pretty big, but I had previously assumed it fit well within the 0.4 FAR required by McMansion. Yes, this is a big old historic house, but that's not the metric of the ordinance (it doesn't say "big houses are OK if they are stunners", after all). Also pretty expensive for somebody whose negative campaign ads try to paint Galindo as the rich candidate.

A few days ago, though, I was alerted by a reader that Morrison's lot is actually too small -- but she's not subject to the ordinance anyways, because according to said reader, her lot is zoned MF-4 (the McMansion ordinance only applies to single-family zoning). A little history here: the Old West Austin neighborhood plan (which I worked on in a transportation capacity) allowed landowners to choose to downzone their lots from multi-family (most of the area was zoned that way after WWII even though existing uses were houses) to single-family (SF-3) if the property was still being used that way. Apparently Morrison passed on this opportunity (many others took it up; I remember seeing dozens of zoning cases come up before City Council on the matter).

So let's check it out. Unfortunately, TravisCAD doesn't have the lot size, but Zillow does.

Home size: 8537 square feet
Lot size: 20,305 square feet
FAR (before loopholes): 0.42

Caveats: I do not know if Morrison is using the property in ways which would be comforming with SF-3, but I found it very interesting that her ads are attacking Galindo for building duplexes which actually comply with her ordinance yet the home she herself lives in would be non-compliant in a similar scenario, or require loopholes to comply. It's often referred to as a "converted four-plex", and the owners' address is "Apt 9", which may suggest continuing multi-family use, which would also be evidence of hypocrisy given her stand against any and all multi-family development in the area except for a few cases where that plan mentioned above quite effectively tied her hands. Either way, Morrison clearly broke the spirit of her own ordinance and her own activism against multi-family housing, and anyways when you write the ordinance, as she did, it's really easy to make sure your own property is just barely compliant. You notice that you're right over the edge; so you exempt attached carports, for instance, which, oops, you just happen to have!

Again, I can't believe I missed her the first time around - her hypocrisy on this ordinance is more odious than that of McGraw and Maxwell combined. I apologize for my lack of diligence on this matter.

(Hey, BATPAC: yes, your latest cowardly anonymous attack on me did indeed motivate me to finally take the time to write this! Good show! And I feel very confident that my readers find your accusation that I "like Republicans" to be one of the funniest things they've read in quite some time!)

Posted by m1ek at 12:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

I'm way late on this and way short of time - so this is necessarily brief.

The Austinist covered this race in more depth and asked smarter questions than did anybody else (thanks, Shilli). Here's Cid Galindo's answers. Laura Morrison gave answers to their questions which sound sustainable, too but here's why Galindo ought to be your choice if you care at all about sustainability and affordability (not to mention environmentalism and transit):

1. Laura Morrison has opposed essentially all density anywhere in the city. Cid Galindo supports urban development which is not only sustainable for its residents, but will lower tax bills for everyone else in the long-run. The few projects Morrison lists as not opposing were cases where her hands were tied by the Old West Austin Neighborhood Plan (which I worked on), which called for mid-rise mixed-use development along those corridors (before the VMU ordinance existed). This plan was written before she obtained a position of power in the NA; and had been enacted by the City Council before she had a chance to do anything about it. She can't claim credit for these, because she couldn't have stopped them if she had tried. She did, however, try to stop Spring, 7Rio, and supposedly was even responsible for the suburban front design of the Whole Foods, burning all the hard-earned political capital of OWANA in the process. The City Council now, in my observation, rightly views my old neighborhood association as a no-to-everything joke that can be safely ignored.

2. Laura Morrison was the leader of the task force that developed the McMansion Ordinance. This ordinance's primary effect is to discourage secondary dwelling units like garage apartments and duplexes - the only true affordable housing left in central Austin. Although the Planning Commission acted on input from me and others to try to remedy this effect, the City Council was fooled by Morrison's group into ignoring the thoughtful Planning Commission recommendation. Galindo, according to press from the other side, voted against the McMansion Ordinance - which is absolutely the right position on this matter if you care at all about density and urbanism.

3. Laura Morrison is supported financially (maximum donations) by Jim Skaggs. Yes, that Jim Skaggs - he and his wife have donated the max to both Morrison and BATPAC (which in turn supports Morrison). Her base of support among the old ANC crowd is full of folks who claim to be pro-transit, but if you scratch them a bit, you find a lot of Skaggs poking through. People who will tell you they want improved bus service before building rail, which, of course, is the same thing as letting Skaggs take half of Capital Metro's budget for more freeways, since the buses are already being run as well as they can given current roadway design and population density. These folks don't care, of course; they don't bike or walk or use transit - they drive. Galindo's positions on transportation aren't much better defined than are Morrison's, but density supports rail in a virtuous circle, unlike the negative feedback loop the Skaggs/Morrison crowd prefers with lower density and highways.

4. Those policies will encourage more sprawl over the aquifer than the current state of affairs; while Galindo has a reasonable plan to lessen already-allowed development there (transferring development rights to new 'town centers' that can use the height and density in a sustainable fashion).

That ought to be enough - but keep in mind when you hear negatives about Galindo that many of the same things apply equally to Morrison. For instance, it's hard to think of a more traditionally Republican stance than her take on density and transportation - which is, of course, why people like Skaggs like her. And it's hard to credit attacks on Galindo for supposed family wealth when she hasn't had to hold a real job in quite some time despite living in a huge house on a big lot in Old West Austin.

Vote Galindo in the runoff. Tell your friends. It's critically important.

Posted by m1ek at 10:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

[08:53] mdahmus: Can I misinterpret that as "the company urgently needs you to check out the hydrology at Schlitterbahn tout suite"? Because man, is it hot, and man, do I need a vacay.
[08:54] <unidentified cow orker>: it's hitting the 100s there isn't it?
[08:55] mdahmus: did the last few days, maybe not today (a refreshingly cool 98)
[08:55] <unidentified cow orker>: got up to 90 here yesterday, high 80s to 90 for the next few days before the next front comes in
[08:55] mdahmus: I'm hoping this means june/july turn wet - there's only so much hotter it can get before thunderstorms start happening, right?
[08:55] <unidentified cow orker>: I am very much looking forward to swimming and getting out in my kayak
[08:55] <unidentified cow orker>: yes. I believe thundstorms will break out in iraq any day now, in fact
[08:55] mdahmus: they'll appreciate that. awesome.
[08:56] <unidentified cow orker>: maybe we should deploy space heaters out in Iraq and then it will rain and everyone will be happy
[08:56] mdahmus: I like the way you think, mister.
[08:56] mdahmus: Perhaps we could send over our mothballed fleet of SUVs to warm up the local microclimate with their exhaust. Everybody wins!
[08:57] <unidentified cow orker>: good idea, I like the way YOU think
[08:57] mdahmus: How many mothballed SUVs would it take to build a mile of rail, I wonder?
[08:57] mdahmus: OR OR OR!
[08:57] mdahmus: SUVs linked together = new train!
[08:58] mdahmus: (could even still run on rubber tires; MY NEW BRT TREATMENT NOT FOR STEALING!)
[08:58] <unidentified cow orker>: just put those rail wheelsets on the bottom, like rail maintenance pickups have
[08:58] <unidentified cow orker>: speaking of building rails, I saw some article this weekend about the rail companies begging for federal money to expand rail capacity, more double tracking, etc
[08:59] <unidentified cow orker> good news: rail execs predict lots of growth.
bad news: they are going to try to make us all pay for capacity while they reap the profits

Posted by m1ek at 09:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Think the media was just helpless - that they did their job the best they could? Think that everybody believed Saddam had WMD?

You're wrong.

One media outlet did their homework. Don't let the apologists tell you nobody knew better.

Even a few of our senators exercised their constitutional responsibilities at the time. Like my old governor, then senator, Bob Graham, who, despite being weird, was consistently right on this issue from day one - and the media never has any time for him on it. Like Barack Obama, who was right from day one, and right for the right reasons (not like the Kucinich idiots who wouldn't have even attacked Afghanistan).

It was possible to avoid this stain on our national honor. Some (Clinton, McCain) should not be allowed to get away with abrogating their responsibilities back when it could have made some difference.

Posted by m1ek at 09:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)