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  #541  
Old Posted Mar 4, 2012, 7:09 PM
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Originally Posted by llamaorama View Post
How does this work out?

It sounds fun and libertine reading it but then in reality I'm not so sure. Sure I can see Mad Men types riding in a special bar car buying drinks sold on board, they still have that in Connecticut on the New Haven... but BYOB?

Not sure if I want to sit next to a urban camper enjoying 40 ounces of the finest Olde English from a paper bag. Of for that matter a belligerent yuppie douchebag after a third round of wine tasting.
I knew it was allowed on Giants trains, but I didn't know about regular service. The Giants trains are fun because everyone brings their own drinks and parties on the way there. Regular service I can only see a bunch of alcoholics sneaking drinks to and from work.
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  #542  
Old Posted Mar 5, 2012, 10:35 AM
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Well, yea, there's no doubt that alcoholism plays a huge role in the drinking habits of Metra and MTA riders. I don't know if banning it is gonna solve any problems, though. I've never seen anybody get drunk on the train, nor have I ever seen anyone drinking liquor (only beer or the occasional wine).
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  #543  
Old Posted Mar 5, 2012, 12:18 PM
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I took Caltrain to my Alma Mater's game in San Jose, there was a group of us consuming a fair amount of alcohol and the train staff were quite pleasant and happy with us being on the train. We chose a near empty car so as to not disturb other passengers. We were drunk but not messy.

I was on a train from London to Paris last week where a group of English people got pretty noisy and drunk on the train, it was pretty frustrating but there's not much you can do about it. I think drinking alcohol on trains will be tolerated in most trains.
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  #544  
Old Posted Mar 7, 2012, 6:50 AM
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Muni planning to ramp up 8 routes



Muni plans to significantly speed up eight of its most heavily used lines as part of a long-delayed service improvement plan.

Through a combination of traffic-signal upgrades, stop consolidations, lane modifications and parking restrictions, Muni has projected travel times on the eight lines could be reduced by up to 28 percent. Routes include the N-Judah, 14-Mission, 30-Stockton and 5-Fulton.
...
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  #545  
Old Posted Mar 7, 2012, 9:58 AM
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Saw on the news that they might have to remove the recently opened $125 Million HOV lane on 580 to accomodate the Livermore BART station. I wonder why that was never considered before they built that HOV lane as rumors of BART to Livermore have been swirling for years.
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  #546  
Old Posted Mar 7, 2012, 10:24 AM
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Wooot! I'm stoked the N is being upgraded in terms of service! It's my most frequently used route so that just makes my life that much easier!
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  #547  
Old Posted Mar 14, 2012, 3:24 PM
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This fantasy map was posted on Muni Diaries.

It was made by Jake Coolidge
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  #548  
Old Posted Mar 14, 2012, 4:12 PM
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I have seen that map, cool, but quite a pipe dream.

Good news on the upgraded service. I hope they reduce the number of stops on the N Judah to speed it up a bit. Near my house, there are 4 stops within about 8 blocks, it's just not necessary. I hope they also trigger traffic lights and give trains the right of way. Cars carrying one person should not get to proceed ahead of trains carrying 100s.
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  #549  
Old Posted Mar 14, 2012, 4:24 PM
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Fun dream

Though one line that I'd add long before many of his other lines is a west-side north-south line through SF. Probably also a Van Ness (or thereabouts) north-south line and another in Oakland too.

He seems to be focused mostly on expanding suburban park-and-ride/freeway duplication lines, where I think the system would gain a lot more usefulness with just a couple more short urban lines.
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  #550  
Old Posted Mar 14, 2012, 4:46 PM
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San Jose BART extension starts work in April (SF Chronicle)

San Jose BART extension starts work in April

Michael Cabanatuan
San Francisco Chronicle
March 13, 2012

“South Bay officials marked the beginning of the end of their long struggle to build a BART extension to San Jose by receiving a $900 million federal funding agreement that will allow construction to start next month.

"This is a celebration," said Michael Burns, CEO of the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority, as dozens of Silicon Valley leaders gathered in the glass rotunda of San Jose City Hall to see Burns and Therese McMillan, deputy administrator of the Federal Transit Administration, sign a document guaranteeing the federal contribution to the $2.3 billion project.

"For years, many doubted we could bring BART to the Silicon Valley," Burns said. "They said it was too hard. They said it was too expensive. They said it would never happen. But we're well on our way to delivering the impossible…”

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/articl...BACN1NJMLG.DTL
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  #551  
Old Posted Mar 14, 2012, 9:16 PM
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State lawmaker urging $1.5 billion for early Caltrain electrification
Will Reisman
SF Examiner Staff Writer
03/14/12

State Assemblyman Jerry Hill is trying to energize Caltrain’s trackway electrification by urging regional and state officials to come up with $1.5 billion to have the project done by 2019—more than a decade earlier than currently planned.

Electrification of the rail system, a longtime goal of Caltrain, would allow trains to run faster and more frequently. Trains also would be quieter and less damaging to the environment.

Funding has always been lacking, but Hill, who represents the Peninsula, said a financial plan can be hammered out to combine regional sources with state bond money.

To do this, the California High-Speed Rail Authority would have to contribute $750 million in bond funds. Under Proposition 1A, the voter-backed initiative to provide high-speed rail with $9.95 billion, money was set aside for local “connectivity” projects. Hill said that source would be ideal for the Caltrain work.

Under the lawmaker’s plan, the remaining $750 million would be cobbled together by the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, the Bay Area’s lead transit financing agency.

Work on the project could begin next year and be completed by 2019, Hill said.

However, the governing bodies of both the rail authority and MTC would have to sign off on the proposal.
....

Caltrain electrification

*$1.5B Cost of plan

*70,000 Daily Caltrain passengers projected under electrification

*45,000 Current daily Caltrain passengers

*90 Percentage of Caltrain emission reductions under electrification

Sources: Caltrain, Assemblyman Jerry Hill
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  #552  
Old Posted Mar 14, 2012, 10:17 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by San Frangelino View Post
This fantasy map was posted on Muni Diaries.

It was made by Jake Coolidge
Lovely. Id definitely vote yes on a proposition to pay for that to happen.
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  #553  
Old Posted Mar 15, 2012, 10:16 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Gordo View Post
Fun dream

Though one line that I'd add long before many of his other lines is a west-side north-south line through SF. Probably also a Van Ness (or thereabouts) north-south line and another in Oakland too.

He seems to be focused mostly on expanding suburban park-and-ride/freeway duplication lines, where I think the system would gain a lot more usefulness with just a couple more short urban lines.
Agreed. There was another dream scheme that had a better North-South line in SF. This where I struggle most in SF, getting N-S pretty much anywhere in the city. The Central line on Muni is going to help, but Van Ness should have a line, and so should the mid Richmond to Mid Sunset Districts.
Keep dreaming Eric!

Happy to hear about SJ BART getting started. And I'd love to see Caltrain go electric.
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  #554  
Old Posted Mar 15, 2012, 4:47 PM
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Six Ideas for Saving Bay Area Transit


March 14, 2012

By Egon Terplan

Read More: http://sf.streetsblog.org/2012/03/14...-area-transit/

Quote:
.....

Having taken on a study of the issues with the TSP, the Metropolitan Transportation Commission should now take ownership over implementing many of the good ideas to come out of the process. The following suggestions show how to fix transit by improving funding, speeds, fares, competition, information and maps.

1. Change the funding of transit operations from guaranteed revenue to incentive pay for more riders.

Transit operations should be funded in ways that create an incentive for adding riders, as well as for making the most cost-effective improvements. For example, if the MTC offered to pay transit operators a $1 incentive (or bounty) per new rider, an agency that increased ridership by 1 million trips in a year would get an additional $1 million from the MTC. This would encourage transit operators to consider the immediate impact on ridership when allocating service.

2. Establish a regional fare policy that does not penalize customers who transfer between systems.

In general, bus systems have little financial incentive to coordinate schedules with train systems. And the rail systems have no requirement to help pay for the local bus systems, even though they are getting additional riders and fares from these bus systems. This doesn’t make sense. The Bay Area needs a regional fare policy. This is complicated but certainly possible to implement with the Clipper Card as it is rolled out to all agencies. One approach would be for regional rail agencies like BART and Caltrain to pay a bounty to the local operators who deliver passengers to their systems. For example, if a passenger takes a local bus from Martinez to the Concord BART station, BART should share some of the paid fare with County Connection, the local operator. The end result could be better service to passengers, because the local agencies will benefit if they do the right thing — like coordinate schedules, adopt reasonable transfer tariffs and extend their hours of service.

3. Establish a new regional capital investment program that invests in speed improvements on key transit corridors.

Improving transit speed and service requires investments in things like dedicated lanes for buses, signal priority and other operational improvements. When streets are designed for auto speeds, transit suffers and costs go up. MTC is already proposing a new $30 million pilot program for prioritizing transit on existing city streets to speed service. This annual program is a good start and should be expanded.

4. Create a tenured, independent regional transit analysis office to collect and distribute objective information and performance metrics.

Just as we have a legislative analyst in Sacramento and San Francisco, we need an independent transit analysis office to both improve the public’s comprehension of the challenges facing transit systems and provide transit operators with clearer information on how and where their particular system should improve. There is already a lot of transit information out there. But there is no office with tenure and structural improving Bay Area transit.

5. Allow transit operators to pick up and drop off passengers within each others’ service territories.

Today, transit bus operators all have distinct service territories. These territories are monopolies to the extent that one operator cannot pick up or drop off passengers in a territory controlled by another. Operators should be able to pick up and drop off passengers in each other’s service territories. (This would, however, require changes to state law.)

6. Produce a single transit map for the Bay Area and move toward common branding.

While merging many of the Bay Area’s transit systems is impractical and not likely to achieve significant cost savings, making the entire region feel more like a single system could achieve many of the same results. The Clipper card is one step in the right direction. Creating a single transit map for the region would be another. A further step would be to move toward common marketing and branding. This approach has been taken in Melbourne, Australia, where there are numerous transit operators but the public face of transit is a single brand: Metlink.

.....



While inflation increased by 39% from 1996 to 2010, unit costs (the cost to operate a transit vehicle for one hour) grew by more than double that for Muni, SamTrans, Golden Gate and AC Transit and faster than inflation for all other major transit operators except Caltrain.






This chart reflects the overall trend that ridership and service are not keeping pace with costs.






Operating buses and light rail in mixed traffic means that traffic increases and congestion have very real impacts on transit speeds. And slower service means less service or significant increases in costs to maintain the same service.






By shifting from a guaranteed funding stream to a bounty paid by the MTC, operators will have a direct financial incentive to increase ridership. Growing ridership is one of the key goals for improving Bay Area transit.

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  #555  
Old Posted Mar 15, 2012, 7:27 PM
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Making the Streets of San Francisco Easier to Park On (NY Times)

Making the Streets of San Francisco Easier to Park On

By MICHAEL COOPER and JO CRAVEN McGINTY
Published: March 15, 2012
NY Times

"SAN FRANCISCO — The maddening quest for street parking is not just a tribulation for drivers, but a trial for cities. As much as a third of the traffic in some areas has been attributed to drivers circling as they hunt for spaces. The wearying tradition takes a toll in lost time, polluted air and, when drivers despair, double-parked cars that clog traffic even more.

But San Francisco is trying to shorten the hunt with an ambitious experiment that aims to make sure that there is always at least one empty parking spot available on every block that has meters. The program, which uses new technology and the law of supply and demand, raises the price of parking on the city’s most crowded blocks and lowers it on its emptiest blocks. While the new prices are still being phased in — the most expensive spots have risen to $4.50 an hour, but could reach $6 — preliminary data suggests that the change may be having a positive effect in some areas.

Change can already be seen on a stretch of Drumm Street downtown near the Embarcadero and the popular restaurants at the Ferry Building. Last summer it was nearly impossible to find spots there. But after the city gradually raised the price of parking to $4.50 an hour from $3.50, high-tech sensors embedded in the street showed that spots were available a little more often — leaving a welcome space the other day for the silver Toyota Corolla driven by Victor Chew, a salesman for a commercial dishwasher company who frequently parks in the area..."

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/16/us...ark-on.html?hp
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  #556  
Old Posted Mar 16, 2012, 10:17 PM
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Muni to Switch to All-Door Boarding on July 1
Aaron Bialick
sf.streetsblog.org

Starting July 1, feel free to board any Muni bus by the back door, as long as you pay.

The SFMTA says it plans to implement all-door boarding on the entire Muni system, expanding the existing policy from light rail vehicles (and cable cars) as a simple, low-cost way to speed up boardings and reduce fare evasion on its buses. Agency staff say Muni would be the first transit system in North America to do so.

To make the transition, the SFMTA plans to hire fare inspectors, launch a media campaign to inform riders, and potentially install ticket machines at bus stops. SFMTA spokesperson Paul Rose said the agency has installed Clipper Card readers on back doors in preparation for the change, and more details will be presented to the agency’s Board of Directors at a later meeting.

The transition could speed up travel times substantially. Muni buses currently spend an estimated 15 to 30 percent of their time letting customers get on and off the bus. On some of the most congested lines, many passengers already board on the back, either to skip the long line or to avoid paying the fare.

An all-door boarding system, also known as proof-of-payment, decriminalizes that practice while using random fare inspections to eliminate the sense of security for fare evaders who’ve made it onto the bus, thereby encouraging them to pay.

“We want to have the right level of fare inspection so that we create an expectation for anybody riding on our system that any point, they may be asked to show proof that they’ve paid for their ride,” said SFMTA Director of Transportation Ed Reiskin at a town hall meeting this week. “We don’t want to inadvertently send the signal that Muni’s free.”

The fare evasion rate on Muni’s light rail lines, which have used random fare inspections for more than a decade, is less than half the rate on buses, according to a 2009 study by the SFMTA. On some bus lines, more than 15 percent of riders don’t pay, and that number jumps to 55 percent for people who board on the back. Overall, Muni loses an estimated $19 million to fare evasion every year.

Expanding all-door boarding was a key recommendation from SFMTA staff in the Muni Transit Effectiveness Project.
....
A StreetFilms video about Muni all-door boarding from March 2010:
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  #557  
Old Posted Mar 17, 2012, 2:30 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by llamaorama View Post
How does this work out?

It sounds fun and libertine reading it but then in reality I'm not so sure. Sure I can see Mad Men types riding in a special bar car buying drinks sold on board, they still have that in Connecticut on the New Haven... but BYOB?

Not sure if I want to sit next to a urban camper enjoying 40 ounces of the finest Olde English from a paper bag. Of for that matter a belligerent yuppie douchebag after a third round of wine tasting.
it works quite well on Caltrain - never seen a problem. mostly businesspeople having a beer, young groups sharing a six pack of whatever. done it myself a few times, usually something bought at or immediately adjacent to the station.

it would *not* work well on a higher-frequency, more urban, more multinodal system like bart, muni, or heaven forbid the NYC subway. you could simply ride from station to station getting loaded and transferring long before the big waits at the end of the line, without ever getting wet or cold.
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  #558  
Old Posted Mar 19, 2012, 3:08 PM
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Interesting Article in SPUR's online magazine The Urbanist

First, let me apologize for all the fantasy maps I've been posting lately. I promise, this is the last one.
Quote:
The Reality, A Possible Future
One mapmaker's vision for a single integrated Bay Area transit map. What a comprehensive regional transit system might look like.

Read More...




ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Brian Stokle is an urbanist who specializes in cartography and transportation planning. You can see more of Brian's map work on his blog Urban Life Signs: urbanlifesigns.blogspot.com.
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Last edited by San Frangelino; Mar 19, 2012 at 3:58 PM.
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  #559  
Old Posted Mar 19, 2012, 6:39 PM
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I'm so, so, so happy to see people are talking about creating an integrated transit map for SF. It's one of the worst things with a fairly easy fix in our mass transit. I remember when I first moved here, it was like two months until I figured out where the F train went.
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  #560  
Old Posted Mar 19, 2012, 9:04 PM
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With rising gas prices, Capitol Corridor train ridership jumps 11 percent
By Bill Lindelof
Sacramento Bee
Mar. 16, 2012



Rising gas prices are prompting people to ride the rails between the Bay area and the Sacramento region.

In February, Capitol Corridor train ridership increased 11 percent over the same month a year ago.

"We continue to be pleasantly surprised with our February ridership results," said Bob Franklin, chairman of the Capitol Corridor authority.
...
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