Economic Punishment for the Ignorant

*[Tulsa] Guy comments that he never takes the bus because he isn't poor. I tell him his attitude is emblematic of a third-rate city and needs rethinking.

--From the Bulleted Summary of the KC Siege.

And, nearly a year later, CNN carries a story on how Tulsa and Oklahoma City were rated second-to-last and last in a survey by NGO Common Current of "Major U.S. City Preparedness for an Oil Crisis."

And now the researchers and the transit authority and the citizens are shocked that "urban professionals" are entering mass transit vehicles of their own free will. I wonder if buses in Oklahoma even have air conditioning yet.

In the article, OK City Manager Jim Couch points out that his hometown has 627 square miles. That's more than twice the land mass of New York City. Wikipedia puts the population of OKC at 1.2 million (bigger than I thought) and NYC at 8.2 million. What's wrong with this picture?

Unless we develop better ways to power these overprivileged sprawl cities, they're going to become the ghost towns of the 21st century. One plus may be that their low population densities will help them be reclaimed by nature, while the New Yorks and San Franciscos of the country continue to thrive.

These cities can't say they didn't see it coming, and they did nothing to equip themselves for the reality they were doomed to face.

On Transit in New York City

From the City's Wikipedia entry:

Public transit is overwhelmingly the dominant form of travel for New Yorkers. About one in every three users of mass transit in the United States and two-thirds of the nation's rail riders live in New York and its suburbs. This is in contrast to the rest of the country, where about 90% of commuters drive automobiles to their workplace.

TIE MBTA FUNDING TO THE GAS TAX!!!

The T is continually bankrupt because it is funded by part of Massachusetts's dwindling sales tax receipts. This press release details the issues facing the agency. A world-class city deserves better funding and better service.

By the way, drivers: I'd like you to subsidize the public transit I use. I'm sick of funding roads I choose not to drive on.

Hats off to the MBTA.

I've now been carless for over a year, and the improvements I've seen as a casual T rider continue to impress me. With many kinks gone, the automated fare collection system seems a success. The new New Flyer buses are a joy to ride. The T police have been making excellent use of the news media to deter "quality of ride" crimes like these. There are new, easy-to-read neighborhood and bus maps in every station I use. New ads in subway cars and buses explain how to take advantage of these improvements and others, like bike racks on many buses.

I know what you're thinking: wait 'til winter. Yes, we'll see if things are the same then. There are always challenges, and with the T's declining, obsolete, and sales tax-linked funding, it's hard to meet them. But I've been around Boston for 8 years now, and these improvements are the most drastic yet. The Grabauskas administration seems to be getting [some] things done.

I'm hoping that things can continue to improve and that the Patrick administration can succeed in linking the T's funding to the gasoline tax.

The MBTA's "service optional" service strikes again.

It was Saturday night, and I was having a hard time mashing potatoes with a meat tenderizer. So I decided to go to the shiny Kmart in Assembly Sqaure and get a real masher.

Now, I work from home and choose not to to own a car. That shouldn't be a problem, because the MBTA's No. 90 bus literally runs door to door, from my home to the shops at Assembly Square. The beleaguered agency's $466,000 new website announce that on this Saturday evening, the 90 bus would pick me up outside my home at about 7:35pm and then retrieve me from Kmart at about 9:05.

Nope. Even though the 90 runs across Somerville (the most densely populated city in New England, with almost 80,000 residents on four square miles), to the Sullivan Square transit hub, to the shops at Assembly Sqaure, to the Wellington transit hub, it only runs once an hour on Saturdays. It doesn't run at all on Sunday. And even when it's supposed to run, it doesn't run. So whether you're one of the hundreds who work in the big boxes or a normal person who works on weekdays and shops on weekends, you can't get there from here. Sorry, buy a car.

When I saw the schedule last night, I thought I was experiencing a rare case of luck. I went outside at 7:30. The bus came by, at 7:43, going the wrong direction. I waited another twelve minutes for the bus to go to Davis Square, turn around, and come back. It was about 20 minutes late, but I could live with that. Sure, it was 30 degrees out, but like a first-class citizen of America, I was basking in the glow from a Dunkin Donuts and reading American Psycho.

The bus driver was a friendly, young woman who admitted she was running really late. Since there were only a half-dozen patrons for the time I was on board, I got to the store quickly. I found all the junk I needed at Kmart. Bike pump, sheets, picture frames, and even a potato masher. I went outside at 9:10, just in time to see the bus going by in the other direction. By the bus driver's own admission, the bus should have been back through in ten minutes--after turning at Wellington. The temperature was dropping fast, and naturally, I was the only person at the bus stop.

After a half-hour of waiting for the bus to come back, I called a cab. The bus should have been there at 9:05. The cab came at 9:45. Just before it arrived, the parking lot security guy who had passed me a half-dozen times stopped his SUV to tell me that he didn't think any more buses would be coming.

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The MBTA likes to suggest that low demand is the reason why buses run so infrequently on weekends. However, in my home neighborhood in New York City, the MTA proved the opposite case: if you build it, they will come. Retailers learned this decades ago, but the MBTA can't understand it.

When the College Point Retail Complex opened in eastern Queens, there were no nearby bus routes, just parking lots. The MTA created a new bus route, the Q20A, offering service every 10-20 minutes on Saturdays and Sundays as well as a direct connection to the Number 7 train. For those not living on the subway, the MTA also extended the extant Q76 bus to terminate at the retail center. Now, two buses provide seven-day service to both workers and shoppers. They are always packed to the gills, providing the MTA with even more operating revenue.

By comparison, Somerville's shops at Assembly Square have hourly bus service from 7a-10p on Saturdays (theoretically), but no service at all on Sundays.

Just about a mile away in Everett, the Gateway Center, which closely resembles the College Point development, receives hourly service from the No. 97 bus from 10a-7p on weekends. How could any working stiff depend on that?

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The MBTA doesn't even claim to offer frequent or sufficient weekend service. But the truly sad part is that it can't even deliver the paltry services it promises. There is plenty of evidence about weekend bus problems plaguing shoppers south of downtown Boston, too.

It really bothers me how much a potentially great city (or collection of cities) is held back by its inferior transit system. I can buy a car or get out, and I think I'm going to get out.

Yesterday's Commute

MBTA 88 bus to Green Line at Lechmere to Blue Line at Goverment Center to Airport. Massport shuttle to JetBlue A320 to JFK. Port Authority AirTrain to MTA E train at Jamaica to 6 train at 51st to Grand Central.

Then, F train from 42nd to Roosevelt Ave. E train to Jamaica, AirTrain to JetBlue E-190 to BOS. Massport shuttle bus to Blue Line to Green Line at Government Center. Green Line to Lechmere, 88 bus home.