Let's follow Sweden's example

Expanding bus service won't take nearly as many cars off the road as congestion pricing will. Sweden is the latest example.

Audio of Transportation Commission workshop, 7/24/07

Audio of Berkeley Transportation Commission Bus Rapid Transit Working Group public workshop to discuss impact of BRT on southside of UC Berkeley campus. Audio edited to remove inaudible portion when small groups were meeting. 1 hour, 47 minutes, a 51.4MB MP3 download. Listen.

Audio of Transportation Commission meeting, 6/21/07

Audio from last night's Transportation Commission meeting, 3 hours and 12 minutes, a 92.5MB MP3 download. Listen.

Bus Rapid Transit EIR meets the Berkeley public

EIR, meet Berkeley. Berkeley, meet EIR. Audio from last night's Planning Commission/Transportation Commission/Downtown Area Plan Advisory Committee meeting, about 2 hours, a 57.5MB MP3 download. Listen.

Revenge of the bollards

Jeremy Wagstaff: "The UK city of Manchester has introduced something called 'retractable bollards' (non UK folk may call them posts) that sink into the ground when an approved vehicle approaches...the only problem is other drivers." Great video.

Cool site shows next BART trains overlaid on Google Maps

I study Web site "mashups" but I don't know exactly how this site was created, or how it's maintained. But it's COOL! It overlays the BART stations on Google Maps and then pops up a list of the next trains coming to each station, and where they're headed. I'm sure this is based on BART's printed schedules and not real-time information. But wouldn't it be cool if BART created something just like this where the info was updated every few minutes?

Casual carpool attempted carjacking

A guy in a casual carpool from Hercules to San Francisco tries to carjack the car. This story may drive a few people back to public transit.

AC Transit introduces TransLink

AC Transit introduces TransLink to Transbay Riders. Speakers: Victoria Wake (AC Transit marketing and community relations manager), Lisa Fine (AC Transit senior marketing representative), and Ken Rhodes (AC Transit customer services manager and TransLink project manager). Recorded November 14, 2006. Listen. (51:29)

Berkeley Candidates: District 8

Broadcast-quality audio from Tuesday night's Willard Neighborhood Association Candidates' Forum. District 8 pits incumbent Gordon Wozniak versus challenger Jason Overman. Listen.

Berkeley Candidates: Mayor

Broadcast-quality audio from Tuesday night's Willard Neighborhood Association Candidates' Forum. The Mayor's race pits incumbent Tom Bates versus challengers Zelda Bronstein and Zachary Running Wolf. (Another mayoral candidate, Christian Pecaut, did not participate in the forum.) Listen.

Berkeley Candidates: District 7

Broadcast-quality audio from Tuesday night's Willard Neighborhood Association Candidates' Forum. District 7 pits incumbent Kriss Worthington versus challenger George Beier. Listen.

Parking should cost more in Berkeley

I'm not the only one who thinks so.

Welcome to Berkeley: We're full

...of cars. that is. But there are more on the way, courtesy of an expanding Caldecott Tunnel. What's wrong with this picture?

Podcast: NextBus meets AC Transit riders

Last month, NextBus briefed the AC Transit Task Force and Transbay riders at their monthly lunchtime meeting in San Francisco. NextBus is a service that provides information about future bus arrivals. I made an audio podcast of the meeting, available in two parts, here and here. Recorded Feb. 14, 2006.

Berkeley red light camera warning phase begins

Those new digital cameras going in all over Berkeley are being turned on this Friday, May 27. For the first 30 days, the city will send out warning letters. After that, red-light runners can expect to receive minimum $331 penalties in the mail.

These cameras are not perfect, and it'll be interesting to see how long it takes for the first court challenge to occur -- either on the accuracy of the cameras, or (especially in Berkeley) on privacy grounds (this is a town where putting RFID chips in library books has ignited a firestorm). There are also lots of email spammers out there offering to sell folks something to put over their motor vehicle's license plates to thwart cameras from getting a clear image of the plate.

Is public safety worth it? I think so. It might also keep intersections clearer and thus facilitate the movement of buses around town. We'll see.

BART moves toward daily parking charges in the East Bay

A welcome development: BART will hold a public hearing Thursday on implementing daily parking charges in some or all of its East Bay stations. Too bad it took a fiscal crisis.

More details here.

BART plans fare increase, may add more parking charges

Yesterday BART posted a preliminary budget for 2006. The budget proposes an expected 3.7% fare increase. The current proposal does not include any new charges to park at BART parking lots, but at a public hearing on April 28, the BART board will consider adding such charges at six unnamed stations. The preliminary budget states: "New Paid Parking Programs under consideration include: Single Day Reserved and Reserved Parking Area Expansion/Daily Paid Parking at six stations/West Bay Long Term/Airport Parking."

BART staff is projecting the system will run a deficit of $30.4 million in Fiscal Year 2006. Currently, to close that gap, staff is proposing eliminating 115 positions, half of which are currently vacant. No reduction in train frequency is proposed except perhaps in the West Bay "depending upon the outcome of discussions with SamTrans," but train lengths may be shortened according to BART load factor policies.

In addition to the public hearing April 28, BART will discuss the budget during its administrative committee meeting on April 14. It will consider approving revenue enhancements, such as parking charges, on May 12. Finally, on June 9, the board will adopt the final budget.

More information available at http://www.bart.gov/news/press/news20050401b.asp. The preliminary budget document is downloadable as a PDF at the bottom of this page.

Did Supremes embolden TSA?

Perhaps the Supreme Court emboldened the TSA to order Amtrak personnel, starting November 1, 2004, to randomly check IDs on board trains. I'm thinking back to this June 2004 story:

The Supreme Court on Monday upheld a state law that makes it a crime to
refuse to tell the police one's name when stopped for suspicious behavior.

Or is it possible that the Supremes now would have to throw out the TSA Amtrak directive as unconstitutional under the fourth amendment, because there's no supicious behavior test, just random checks?

This Amtrak mess should be a cause celibre for the Libertarian Party, but they're strangely silent on the issue.

Amtrak random ID checks: Outrage, and finally, press notice

The day after my father's passing, I was made further distraught by being randomly selected to produce I.D. "or else" on board Amtrak, on a short trip between Oakland and Santa Clara. I'm glad my father didn't live to see the United States impose the sort of Communist-state "your papers please" confrontation that typifies many bad old movies, and is precisely the sort of thing he enlisted in the Army, to fight in WWII and Korea, in order to prevent.

My anger was compounded by discovering that the TSA directive that implemented the random checks was secret, and the further the realization that the press had ignored the story, and continued to do so.

I took two steps. First, I posted to an Internet newsgroup, ba.transportation, where rail advocates supposedly congregate. There, Richard Silver, executive director of RailPAC, the Rail Passenger Association of California, said that my concerns meant I was being more anal than he was. In other words, what's my problem with a little more security?

The black-helicopter crowd at ba.transportation then began to rail against FasTrak, having to produce I.D. when checking in at the airport, or when buying Amtrak tickets in the station, for that matter. But a FasTrak transponder can be placed in a provided mylar bag to avoid detection outside of a toll plaza. And everyone understands why the airlines are checking all I.D. What I want to understand is why random checks on Amtrak make us safer, and exactly why catching bad guys on Amtrak is as important as it is on board airliners. Sorry, the TSA directive is secret. How about a little discussion, debate, discourse? At least the discussion at ba.transportation has continued for several days.

Next, I sent email to Dave Farber's Interesting People mailing list, where a discussion about secret TSA directives was already underway. Dave found my email interesting and posted it on November 16.

Lo and behold, on November 17, the Associated Press runs a story about the random ID checks on Amtrak.

I'm appalled at any passenger association which itself is not appalled by this new infringement on the fourth amendment (and the negative impact it will have on rail ridership), and to the traditional "fourth estate" for missing one of the biggest civil liberties stories of the year, until (apparently) a lone blogger beat them to it.

Picking up the pieces

I'm not even talking at all about the presidential race. Roy Nakadegawa's defeat by Bob Franklin for the BART District 3 seat is a blow for quality public transportation in Berkeley. Franklin, now certainly beholden to the unions who financed much of his campaign, will be distracted carrying their water into upcoming bargaining talks. Meanwhile, the initiative to charge for all parking at Berkeley BART stations will be fully shelved. About the best thing I can say is that the whole experience made me sit up and look around for more resources regarding disclosure of local campaign financing. Here's one I learned about this weekend at Bloggercon III. Unfortunately, it only delves down into the U.S. Congressional races -- no more local than that. (You can query the data they do have by zip code, which is fascinating.)

Now, imagine an army of bloggers, posting all the financing data for all the races in local districts everywhere, much as I did in the BART District 3 race. Chris Nolan thinks it's an interesting idea. So does Staci Kramer of the Online Journalism Review. (Both of whom I talked to at Bloggercon.)

With few newspapers publishing any campaign contribution data, and practically no one bothering to interpret the data so you know (as I attempted to communicate) what the data means, this is fertile ground for bloggers to cultivate, maybe even as a source of income.