OnFootBlog.com

I’m going to stop posting on here for a long while. Possibly forever.

When I first started this site, my employer was the Annapolis Capital, a wonderful paper that (at the time) had no running or transportation blogs. Now, however, I work for the Baltimore Sun, which within the last year has launched both a wonderful transportation blog and, more recently, a very nice running section. Since these vastly outdo my blog in terms of quality and quantity, I’m happy to say that it’s now quite redundant.

That said, I’d still love to see you at a Friday meetup, as those will continue.

September 9 was planned as a big day for Dubai.

The government folks in Dubai were set to launch both a new record-holding skyscraper and a major piece of the transit system today.

And then they weren’t set to launch them both anymore after all.

But it still looks like it’s going to be a nice rail system, complete with wi-fi and other splendid tricks. It should go a long way toward repairing a perceived weakness in the city, which has long been viewed as less pedestrian-friendly than some other cosmopolitan metros. Details on the new trains can be found here.

The team, led by TND Planning Group, will release its plan for area around the proposed red line stop on Monday at the Southeast Anchor Library, according to the Baltimore Sun. The Highlandtown area is located between Patterson Park and  Greektown. The most popular red line proposal involves light rail running from Woodlawn to the Johns Hopkins Bayview campus.

I was ready to sign up. Really.

Altcar.org, the home of Baltimore’s new car-sharing program, shows well enought that it isn’t the same system everybody else uses, but it nonetheless has some neat features — card-swipe entry, reserved spots, low rates and an apparent lack of extra charges for gas/insurance. It’s even got an all-electric fleet.

It’s that last bit, however, that burst my bubble: Tesla motors this ain’t. Unlike George Clooney and Arnold Schwarzenegger, Baltimore’s program didn’t opt for high-voltage roadsters that go 0-60 in under 4 seconds. The program didn’t even opt for reasonable electric sedans.

No, altcar decided that there’s nothing sexier than trundling along in a lightly disguised golf cart. Maximum legal speed: 35 mph. Many experienced bike commuters can literally pedal faster than that, and with all MTA buses now sporting bike racks, altcar doesn’t give them much reason to switch modes.

It’s not a big surprise that this is partially funded by ExxonMobile, (which has been way cooler since they started using a CamelCase name). They get free touchy-feely press for their role in the organization, and at the same time, they can continue to tacitly push the idea that electric cars are best left to carrying circus clowns dressed as firemen.

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One extra note: Lest I leave out a relevant detail, Johns Hopkins and zipcar have their own deal, independent of the rest of the city.

I tend to be skeptical whenever I hear the phrase “nine out of ten.” I think many other people are too. If you can’t quote me a percent, I would rather just hear that, for example “more than 80% of surveyed people chose brand X.”

With that skeptical prelude out of the way, let it be noted that the American Public Transportation Association sent a release today saying that nine out of ten transit agencies are raising fares. The release goes on to say the usual stuff — government should spend more to fund a public service that’s every bit as necessary as publicly funded roads, transit riders are being punished for making a responsible choice, bla bla bla.

While I agree with a lot of that stuff, there must be some way of getting a bit more out of existing transit budgets. Some smarties out there must know a few dozen ways.

To get the ball rolling, here’s a freebie: For those systems that still use paper passes, put a box in each bus or train car offering a chance at a free weekly pass in exchange for a little personal data and some purchase preferences on the back of a used bus card*. That data can then be used by marketers who pay for the data (and by the transit agency, which can target information at tough-to-reach riders). This avoids an Orwellian slippery slope by keeping the information collection voluntary and meatspace-based while also vastly improving the audience figures that advertisers can get — a big step up from the simple, impression-based “eyeballs for cash” model that most transit systems use for bus-side and shelter advertising.

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*Note: I fully realize how ironic it is that I start this post by trashing selective research, then flip around and encourage selective research. But if companies are willing to pay for it, this scheme might be worth a try, especially if it saves a transit route or two from cancellation.

Along with the usual onfootblog Baltimore Friday running groups, there’s something special happening tomorrow in the city.

Check out this site for more information on biking to work in Baltimore for bike-to-work day 2009.

For people who live in the Hampden, Station North, Roland Park or Druid Hill areas and work somewhere near downtown, it’s pretty easy.  The Jones Falls Trail and an abundance of bike lanes (plus some shared, hashed bike routes) get rid of a lot of the hassle. Other areas of the city can be spotty, though I know that the Pigtown/Carroll Park/Gwynns Falls Trail corridor is also developing nicely for bikes.

As usual, dress safely and don’t over-exert. Good luck!

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One more note: This is the first yearly iteration of bike-to-work day for which all MTA buses will have bike racks.

With Washington adding another circulator route, the fine people at Greater Greater Washington have posted a composite that adds selected bus lines to the well-known metro map.

An added side benefit of this is that it will likely get more people to MARC stations — meaning more constituents putting pressure on lawmakers for weekend rail service between Baltimore and Washington. I’m not holding my breath, but it’s always a nice thought.

Baltimore City Paper’s Michael Byrne this week highlights the status of the ICC as one of America’s seven “highways to nowhere,” as recognized by Infrastructuralist. Byrne makes note of the project’s budgetary impact. From the article:

A key piece of evidence is a report released by the Coalition for Smarter Growth, which examined five alternatives to the ICC, ranging from completing the proposed Purple Line and adding bus service along the corridor to adding express-bus services and creating High Occupancy Toll lanes on highways. Three of those options were found to reduce traffic on existing arterial roads in the corridor and cost less money.

( Read full article >> )

I have to wonder whether the studies took contractual obligations into account. Closing a project after a massive construction project starts (as some advocate for the ICC)  is rarely cheap, assuming failsafes were correctly put into place.

The Obama stimulus package is due to give the MARC system more than $10 million for improvements, the Baltimore Sun reported today. From the article:

The projects, to be announced today by 2nd District Democratic Rep. C A. Dutch Ruppersberger, include $3 million to improve elevators and the heating and cooling system at the station at Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport. The congressman also is expected to outline plans to spend $4 million for new canopies and windows at Penn Station and $400,000 for work at the MARC storage facility at Martin State Airport … More >>

Not all is happy this week in Charm City Transitland, however.

A blog posting at Baltimore Inner Space highlights the recent choice of the Baltimore Development Corporation to build a development in East Baltimore that, in the words of the blogger, makes no effort to exploit the potential for a transit station.

Or ‘A good excuse to post a brief history of something that won’t exist for awhile’

I couldn’t help noticing over the weekend that there was a significant lack of happiness and joy in local media regarding the proposed casino at Arundel Mills. Witness:

Lovable, cantankerous writer #1 – Parsing things in terms of potential traffic jams.

Lovable, cantankerous writer #2 – Parsing things in terms of the Mafia. Or something.

Possibly lovable but anonymous editorial ‘we’ - Parsing things in terms of budget numbers.

So what can I add to all of this? I would hardly say that there’s much new material for me to suggest in terms of the casino debate itself (much more of which is out there if you care to look). No, it would be much better if I could put this in the context of some much larger regional development pattern.

I was just thinking along those lines (”What should I do today? Gee, I would love to write about a regional development pattern in the Howard / Anne Arundel area”) when a tasty can of expansion on Snowden River Parkway arrived like (canned) Manna from Heaven. Between that, the casino and a planned third lane on the BW parkway, there’s plenty of expansion to talk about in the region.

All of this is a great excuse to talk about what isn’t getting built yet — specifically, MTA’s planned Yellow Line.

The Yellow Line, a 28-mile route proposed construction between Towson and Columbia, was part of a larger plan originally set out in 2002 by the administration of then-governor Parris N. Glendening. This plan included the currently promising Red Line as well as literally dozens of miles of other construction. As with the Red Line, the Yellow Line did not have a specific type of train listed in its definition, with the Glendening team chosing to leave the specifics of train (or even rapid bus) technology to later studies.

The idea of serving this market with rail goes much farther back than the Glendening administration. MARC and Amtrak go through both counties, and commercial railroads have served the area for most of the industrial era. One of them even appears to have used the yellow look before. Since Columbia is a rather new community, however, the dense intraurban networks that served other parts of the area in the early 1900s never really seem to have taken root in Howard county, railroad museums aside.

Back to the modern era: When Glendening was ousted by Robert Erlich Jr., rail construction was at least temporariliy ousted by roads. The IHC became the more fashionable building project to talk about, and trains took a back seat for awhile. This focus away from expansion was probably a good thing, as it allowed some basic, much-needed fixes to be made on the original light rail line.

Meanwhile, yellow line fans patiently left it alone (or maybe played with it a bit on their fantasy maps) and didn’t think much about it, putting emphasis on plans that were more realistic in the short term — namely, pushing for the Red, Purple and Silver lines in Maryland and Washington (and Virginia), respectively.

Eventually, Erlich was in turn pushed out of office, supplanted by Martin O’Malley. While O’Malley’s role has yet to play out, the combination of a democratic governor and a stimulus-hungry president may well push certain projects forward.

The yellow line, however? Don’t bet on it being built anytime soon.

Just to put this project in its proper place on the timeline, the downtown loop that would make the Yellow Line functional is on the second tier of priorities, behind not just the initial Red Line construction but also any possible extension of Baltimore’s Green (Subway) Line to Morgan State University. As Spence at the BaltimoreFuture blog states, this would put the second part of the yellow line — the part that goes beyond Dorsey Station to eventually hit Columbia Town Center — very, very far beyond the calendar range of reliable forecasts.

And that’s my very short history of the Yellow Line, as it were.

Next week’s fantasy animal: The elusive North American tusked mountain shark.