Doing everything possible to discourage transit

It is amazing that anybody rides transit in California. It seems transit agencies are doing everything possible to encourage people to even be able to access transit. In Sunnyvale, a functional dirt path provided direct access to the station platform. With the entrance closed, prospective passengers must now walk about 4-5 additional blocks and cross 4 active train tracks. And even more ridiculous was their reason for closing it - an ADA complaint.

The ADA was used as an excuse for limiting access. I wonder if the same could be done for freeways. We could file an ADA complaint that a freeway ramp is not accessible to those in wheelchairs, and have it shut down for a few months. Or maybe even a road - many lights do not have adequate cross time for handicapped people. The roads should be closed for community meetings until those could be resolved.

But ADA was not all - parking was used as another complaint. I've been to the neighborhood north of the station, and seen tons of abundant street parking. Yet, people are complaining that others are actually using this street parking. Welcome to Sunnyvale, a place where parking spaces could easily outnumber residences, and where everyone wants their spot to be all to themselves.

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Message from Caltrain regarding Sunnyvale, CA station:

Thank you for your comments concerning the closing of the fence on the east side of the Sunnyvale station. ADA proponents recently made an official complaint stating that the hole in the fence was a de facto entrance - which it never was - and therefore had to be made ADA compliant. On the other hand, neighbors have complained about Caltrain passengers parking their cars along Hendy and in adjoining streets. The Sunnyvale Department of Transportation and Traffic will be holding community meetings concerning this issue - probably in April - to try to come up with a final solution. Meanwhile Caltrain will be keeping the fence closed.
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Caltrain Customer Relations Specialist

San Jose and office vacancy

A recent article discussed the high vacancy rate of downtown San Jose office space (roughly a quarter vacant). One concern mentioned was the cost of parking - San Jose is one of the few places other than San Francisco and Palo Alto that charge for parking.

San Francisco is served by extensive public transit. Palo Alto has decent transit, and a large number of cyclists and pedestrians. San Jose has... well extensive car-centric infrastructure, and not much that is appealing. Public transportation is limited. Sure there is a light rail, but 15 minute service? And where does it go? A few park and rides and other business parks.

GPSActionReplay

GPS Action Replay is a cool tool that has some simulated replay like the dot racing (though it looks like only one at a time.) However, it takes a little while to get used to. It is written in java so it can be run locally on most any platform.

http://users.info.unicaen.fr/~mathet/gpsar/ or www.gpsactionreplay.com

motionbased.com

mostionbased.com has some cool functionality for analyzing GPS track logs. The dot racing is a really good way to see the slow points in a commute.

However, it does have some issues. Since it is a web app, you have to upload everything to view it. The entry can get downright tedious. (Need to manually mark everything as cycling, road, transportation, and give it a name - it doesn't import the track names.) And they only let you run your 10 most recent tracks unless you pay. Furthermore, the dot racing seems to croak if you give it too many dots. It would be really nice to see that functionality in a standalone app. Maybe I'll have to work on writing one.

The Pedestrian afterthought

On San Tomas, south of El Camino, a big sign says "Pedestrians Prohibited". A few feet past that sign is a bus stop.

At Fair Oaks and Arques, a sign on the sidewalk says "sidewalk closed, use other side". One problem - there is no sidewalk on the other side of the street.

On Fremont between Hollenbeck and Sunnyvale Saratoga. There is a median, however, there are plenty of turning cutouts. Even though there are turn lanes for eastbound traffic, none of these lanes lead to the school or churches on the north side of the street. The one that does actually go somewhere is blocked off. The only crosswalk is at Sunnyvale Saratoga. However, there are plenty of signs at the other good places to cross, saying "pedestrians, use crosswalk". So, its ok for pedestrians to go on a half mile detour, but not for cars to go more than a 1/4 of that distance before turning around.

U-Turns and 'landscaped medians'. There are plenty of 'parks' that are only accessible by motorists that have the misfortune of breaking down in the left name. Central Expressway has a large median. Sunnyvale-Saratoga, Fremont, and many others. In many cases, a narrow sidewalk is sandwiched between a wall and the street. The median could provide a refuge for crossing. However, there is often a raised surface to intentional make it difficult. And the intersections also get plenty of u-turn traffic, also posing a hazard. If they got rid of the median and instead had a landscaped parkway between the sidewalk and street, and a small pavement median in the middle, the pedestrian environment would be greatly improved. But that might encourage people to use walking as a means of transportation.

Oakmead improvements

At Oakmead and Arques I noticed a little white outline in the bike lane. Doesn't look like a loop detector, but it seems to trigger the lights properly. Yeah! The days of waiting endlessly for a car to show up are now over.

Something about Mary

Mary north of central is in office park land, so, of course, there is a large lawn median, thus requiring uturns to get to and from office parks, but hey, the median provides a nice refuge as you walk across from an office to lunch (and is one of the few green spots in the sea of asphalt.)

Mary is the only street in Sunnyvale that has a grade level intersection with both central and the railroad tracks. You would almost think it is a major street. And then you get to the El Camino intersection. As I was traveling on Mary I saw from a distance that the light was red. D'oh. It would probably turn green and complete its cycle before I got there. So I slowed down... But the light remained red. I got there. I waited and waited. Wow, even worse than one of the Lawrence lights... Ok, so maybe it isn't a major street.

Mary is primarily a residential street south of the Caltrain, and more so south of El Camino. However, that doesn't stop others from wanting to keep traffic on somebody else's street. Just south of El Camino, a street is marked as "not a through street". And some funky raised surface was there, to make it difficult to make a right turn on the street. (Oh... And it happens to get in the way of cyclists. But hey, its not much worse than a dark black miata.) So it looks like too many cars were going down one residential street to get to another residential street, so some residents got mad, and now force more cars to go down another section of a residential street.

...probably not in the original location

The Sunnyvale Historical Society is raising $1.6 million to reconstruct the "Murphy House". It was occupied by the founder of Sunnyvale, though it was demolished in 1961 for the building of central expressway. http://www.sunnyvalesun.com/sv-coverstrip2.shtml (this week only)

Winds and poorly timed lights

Heavy winds. Luckily I'm traveling at a 90 degree angle to the direction. So half the trip is a headwind, and half a tailwind. I tried to stick to slow local streets for the headwinds, and fast streets for the tailwind. Not sure how well that worked.
Ended up going down Wolf for a good chunk of time. The timing could definitely use some work. After crossing El Camino, the first light just turned green as I got there (however it caught all the faster-moving cars.) Then the Old San Francisco light was reaching the end of its red cycle as I got there. Extremely long cycles, yet red for the through traffic. Evelyn was the weird one. It turned red for both directions as I got there - but didn't really give any of the cross traffic a chance to go before turning green again.

Congestion by design

Last night I discovered another 'great wall of Sunnyvale'. On El Camino between Wolf and Fair Oaks there is a wall separating the businesses on El Camino from the houses on the other side. You wouldn't dare want to let people walk 20 yards to get a gallon of milk when they could drive two miles instead. Lovely way to increase traffic congestion.

The light timing hall of shame:
sunnyvale-saratoga at Remmington
Wolf at Old San Francisco. (Wolf at Evelyn also seems really bad - but I'm almost always going down Wolf.)
Both seem to have rediculously long light cycles. The traffic moving through these long cycles does not justify the long length. (The traffic actually sputtered through in a few minor bursts - caused, to a great extent by the shorter cycles of other lights. The cycles could easily be shortened without any negative impact on travel throught the areas. If the lights were shortened and the other lights synchronized, traffic capacity and travel time could both be improved - while at the same time providing improved cross-street access.
At Wolf and old San Francisco, I saw a man easily cross Wolf against the light. Traffic was low and there was not a problem. I've also seen people cross streets like Lawrence in areas where there are not lights. Its dangerous, but the 'real' pedestrian crossing could be a mile detour - a long distance on foot. Why not give the cars an easy mile detour? Or just add lights for them. Freeways are there to provide long distance travel. Local roads should be the domain of everyone that doesn't travel on the freeway.
Alas, they don't seem to get that here. Expensive public transit projects never seem to make a dent in congestion. And why should they? They attempt to attract passengers with free parking at the origin. However, that means that they must arrive at a new parking lot at the destination. Hmm... And then the solution is to have buses at the destination. However, they don't necesarily go where or when people want to go.
Even if there is a stop close to the origin and destination, there still is the slow speed of transit, and the high cost make it less appealing: If you have to drive to the transit station, you still have all the fixed costs of car ownership, and are only saving the incremental costs of driving a few extra miles. (And because most of car emissions occur during the 'cold start', the transit usage may not to much at all to reduce air pollution.) And then there is the matter of walking the short distance to and from transit. Sidewalks may or may not exist, routes meander, and long lights favor cars. And then there is the long parking lot that must be traversed to get there...

Biking in the rain

Today I got soaked during the bike ride in to work. The rain was actually worse before I left. It let up before I left for home. Now I just need to remember to keep an extra pair of shoes at work (rather than bop around in socks all day.)

On the bright side, I had good luck with lights, and seemed to hit mostly green lights (except, as luck would have it, on some minor side streets like Manet - luckily they have really short cycles.)

On the way home, I took Lawrence to El Camino. You just can't go slow on Lawrence.

In the morning I ended up doing Central from Commercial to Oakmead. I just missed the Oakmead left turn. However, by the time I moved over to the lane for a pedestrian style left turn, I got a green. A short cycle on an expressway. What a blessing.

The server is down here at work. So, it's time to start creating something.

A nice bicycle ride through the cold weather does a great job of clearing up the sinuses. The cold and physical activity work together well. Unfortunately, an hour after stopping, congestion comes back.

I was planning on going slow today, but, the red lights ended up leading me down El Camino to Lawrence. And once on the expressways, you just have to pedal hard.