Jimmy

The first thought I can remember having this morning was, and I kid you not, “little Jimmy gets a gold star for correctly identifying that sound as an alarm clock!”

While this was a more coherent thought than my normal first memorable thought which is usually something along the lines of “kill the noisy thing! Kill the noisy thing!” (hey, at least I knew what the noisy thing was this time, right?) it’s still not any less disturbing.

I have no idea why I was putting myself in the shoes of a preschooler when that’s not evening what I was dreaming about, perhaps it was all the little preschoolers who came to our door last night trick-or-treating (my city does two nights of trick-or-treating). Whatever the reason, I find these types of waking thoughts an annoying by-product of not getting enough sleep.

Running late now for class….

Cheers!

-j

I’ve only used them for less than 2 hours since I set them up this afternoon, but these speakers have already earned my undying love for good sound quality at an amazing price (I have yet to make a ThinkGeek purchase that I dislike, actually). I don’t generally do product pimping, but these are some darn good speakers.

That is all. It’s past my bedtime now.

Cheers.

-j

ETA (noon 10/30): on the topic of my love of ThinkGeek: I got the “I’m Blogging This” t-shirt that you see me wearing in the picture on this site from ThinkGeek and a while back I sent them a screenshot of this blog for their “customer action shots” section and they posted it! This obviously means I’m famous. Or something.

OK, crappy post title, but yeah, it’s true. And it’s also true that I’m a lazy slacker. But here are some things you might like to know:

• I’m planning on standing writing in solidarity with those brave folks who are undertaking the 50,000-word challenge this November in National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) by taking part myself in NaBloPoMo (National Blog Posting Month)! I know writing a blog post a day (average word count: 200-300 words?) is nothing like writing a novel in a month (average daily word count: >1666.67 words), but since I’m not the novelist type (I much prefer my screenplays, thanks very much) and I could use a kick in the ass to post more often here, I thought I’d grab on to some of the creative energy that will be flowing around me (several of my friends will be “NaNoing”) and try to post daily on here. This will hopefully set a standard I can continue in the ensuring months as well as increase my blog traffic. It’s a win-win-win if I can stay dedicated to it.
• The TiA (Transit in America) series is still in the works. I got sick over the last couple of days and before that I had a bunch of stuff keeping me busy, but I hope to have some more parts of that series up soon.
• I’ve signed this blog up with the We Campaign, which I think means they’ll be e-mailing me news and stuff to blog about. This is total heaven for a lazy blogger like myself. So look for We-inspired content every now and then, I guess.
• Comment if you have any other ideas about things I should post about during November! I’m planning on writing up a couple of movie reviews, plus some tech reviews, but I need ideas! So if you’re a regular reader or you just stopped in for the first time: give me some ideas. I might or might not use them.

That’s probably about all.

Cheers.

-jimmy

Here’s part 3 (local/urban transit by bike) of my TiA (Transportation in America) plan; finally we’re actually getting into the meat of it! *grin*
If you haven’t read the two “intro” posts and are wondering what this is about, I encourage you to read part 1: Introduction/The Problem and part 2: Overview of the 3 Part Network.
I work on each section whenever I have time between school work and family events, so the next section (local/urban transit by electric and hybrid vehicles) will probably be completely by mid-week sometime. Stay tuned.

————

The Local/Urban Transit Networks in my plan use three main types of transportation:

• Walking/Biking: in this post
• Electric and Hybrid Vehicles: in part 4
• Podcars: in part 5

I’ll treat each of these points separately before knitting them all together at the end. I’m going longer than I thought I would on each topic, so I’m posting walking/biking on it’s own and will post about Electric and Hybrid Vehicles, Podcars and the overall system later.

Walking/Biking
I should say right up front that I’m not the type of person who believes that we should all ditch our cars and walk/bike everywhere within 10 miles of home. I think that dreaming of creating a world in which 100% of people do that is a waste of brain cells that could be better used trying to come up with transit solutions that a majority of Americans will actually agree to participate in. With that said, I do know that there are people who enjoy walking/biking and would do more of it on longer trips if there were specific walking and biking paths separate from city streets (I am one of those people: I get to 60% of my college classes by biking the half mile to campus and would probably go more places in town by bike if there were paths made specifically for it).

So we come to the concept of bike paths (for the sake of brevity and the fact that I’m focusing more on biking than walking because it’s a more widely used mode of transportation I’m going to be referring to walking/biking paths simply as bike paths from here on out) and greenways (the two concepts are similar but different: greenways are basically bike paths with vegetation around them; bike paths are, as you would expect, any path that’s built for bike travel and includes bike lanes on city streets): corridors set aside for foot and bike traffic to flow freely without having to compete with the cars and trucks and buses on city streets. Light rail is [generally] given corridors separate from city streets (subways are a prime example of this), as well as Podcars (see later in this series). Biking and walking are good, healthy forms of transport for urban settings, but to fully maximize the number of people using this form of transit we need to give walkers and bikers there own paths and corridors.

I purpose that urban planners start making bike paths and greenways a normal part of the planned urban landscape (perhaps spaced a half mile to a mile apart) and bike lanes a normal part of every major city street. It’s probably unreasonable to assume that it’s possible to install bike paths or greenways to that density within already crowded urban centers, but I purpose that all new developments in the suburbs should make bike paths and/or greenways an integrated part of every new development no more than a half mile apart (insuring that nobody will only have to bike on a city street for more than a quarter mile to get into the bike path/greenway system). (Within already built neighborhoods the installation of bike lanes on existing streets will have to do in most places, but I imagine that if urban planners got creative enough they could find ways to squeeze new bike paths and greenways into the middle of urban settings, for example along rivers or old railroad corridors [I should give credit where it’s due to the many cities around the country that are already doing this]).

If urban planners started treating bikers and car drivers equally in terms of resources and respect I think we would seem many, many more people choosing the bike over the car for trips of 2, 5, 10 or even 15+ miles for some people (the local city government in Boulder, CO seems to be doing just this as they’ve spent 15% of their transit budget the last several years on increasing bike traffic and they strive to create a system that’s “equitable for all users,” a stance that’s increased the percentage of commuters that bike to 21%). More than just new paths and lanes, though, bikers specifically need places to park their bikes once they’ve reached their destinations and, for professional workers, a place to shower and change before work.

Cities in Europe are leading the world in terms of biker-friendliness and we could do to follow some of their examples. Paris, France, for example, has started a low-cost bike rental program that has been a huge success (I haven’t actually tried it, but I saw the bike stations when I was in Paris last December and the whole system looked easy and smooth to use). We all know that Americans are more attached to their cars than Europeans, but we do seem to like our bikes as well, and, if done right, I think a bike rental program like Paris’ could work in most US cities. Bike paths and greenways connecting every part of a city, bike rental programs, bike parking and showering facilities located around town for those that own their bikes would all help to make our cities cleaner, quieter and healthier.

(After I finished writing the section above my dad sent me a link to a N.Y. Times article about how bike use on college and university campuses is increasing nationwide [you may need a free NYTimes account to read the article]. This is an encouraging first step; now we need to get these students to continue to use their bikes after they graduate and, more importantly, we need to make it as easy to use the bikes around cities as it is on campuses.)

Stay tuned for part 4: local/urban transit by electric and hybrid vehicles sometime in the next few days.

Enjoy!

-jbh

I elected to spend the evening (when I wasn’t talking with my family or watching TV and eating pizza) working on the next post in my Transportation in America (TiA) series rather than do the C++ homework the professor encouraged us to do before Monday (it’s actually due on Tuesday) or study for my chem exam tomorrow that covers 6 chapters and I’ll only have 5 hours to study for (mind you, I never do the reading so I haven’t read more than a few words from those 6 chapters…this is perhaps a recipe for failure, but we’ll see). I finished the section in my latest TiA post (Local/Urban Transit) on new bike paths, and it came in at a page long…single spaced…Times New Roman…10 point. That’s why it took several hours, I guess. I’m putting much more work and thought and time into this TiA document than I ever do for school papers. I get a pretty big amount of satisfaction out of that fact, actually.

But speaking of school, I have class at 9am tomorrow, followed by studying chem, followed by class at 3pm followed by doing C++ homework followed by dinner and class at 6pm, followed, probably, by more C++ homework at 9pm so I should probably go to bed now in order to get just under 6 hours of sleep in prep for my 12+ hours of work tomorrow. Something isn’t quite right with that ratio.

Speaking of ratios, I’ve decided to take the math class that I want to take rather than the one required for my major next semester. Because I am my own person. And because I’ll have 2 other chances to take that other course.

Bed now!

Cheers.

-jbh

Here’s part 2 of my series of posts on Transit in America. Sorry about the delay, I meant to post this several days ago, but life got in the way and it took me until now to finish writing it.

If you haven’t already read it, I encourage you to go and read the first post in this series that provides some background for this post. Otherwise read on to see the overview of my vision for Transportation in America called the Three Part Network (version 0.1 [a.k.a. ‘draft 1’], there will certainly be changes down the road).

In thinking about this post and what I wanted to say in it I was wondering if it was really necessary to overview the whole idea before just getting into the details. I was trying to figure out if it would be overkill to write an entire post summarizing something that I’m planning on explaining in more depth soon anyway. Then I remembered Rule 37: “There is no ‘overkill.’ There is only ‘open fire’ and ‘time to reload.’” So with that little issue cleared up, let’s “open fire” on this issue, shall we? (I apologize if my dark sense of humor offends some of you that were reading this post just to see some college student’s take on Transit in America without side topics interjected into it. It won’t happen again.)

The plan is organized into three parts as follows:

• Local/Urban Transit Systems. This covers forms of transit for getting around at the neighborhood level (less than a quarter mile), the urban area level (100+ miles) and every level in between. This will, of course, include current (in almost all locations) transit technologies like our street networks and sidewalks, etc, but also include new (to many places) forms of transit like Podcars, more light rail in certain places, more bike paths/lanes and replacing all gas-powered vehicles with gas-electric hybrids and all-electric vehicles. A change in urban planning strategies is also needed to put more emphasis on making room for walking and biking paths and Podcar guideways (e.g.: more emphasis on “alternative” forms of transit and less on roads).
• Regional Transit Systems. These systems would cover 20-500+ miles and are used for shuttling people and light cargo between local/urban transit systems in the region as well for quickly moving people and light cargo across large urban areas. Technologies used for this purpose include the state, US and interstate highway systems for the travel of hybrid and electric cars, trucks and buses; the current freight railroad system (with upgrades); and new systems like a high-speed version of the local Podcar system and express light rail systems.
• National Transit System. This system is used for transporting people, light cargo and freight distances greater than a few hundred miles, connecting regional systems in different parts of the country to each other. The backbone of the human and light cargo transport system is a new super high-speed rail system capable of average speeds over 200 miles an hour. Other transport technologies used for this system include the current interstate highway system, current airport system and current freight railroad system, all with moderate to substantial upgrades and improvements. I also purpose a system for light cargo and mail based on the Podcar system but with speeds much, much higher and no options of human transport.

So there we have it: the Three Part Network in a nutshell. The plan is to upgrade existing/current technologies to 21st Century standards while also introducing new uniquely 21st Century technologies to help handle the load put on the overall transportation system by a growing and active population while also addressing issues of sustainability and cost.

Next post: Part 3: Local/Urban Transit Networks.

Cheers.

-jimmy

I’m in a really noisy room so it’s kinda og hard to hear the teevee, but I they keep jacking the volume, so it’s OK, I think.

9:07pm: Re: Obama’s answer re: the current crisis: um, Obama, good thought, but we tried giving the middle class a “tax break” this summer and it didn’t work. What we need is to COMPLETELY overhaul the system, reinstating a lot of the oversights and regulations that were removed over the last several decades.

9:13pm: Shorter McCain: let’s try some more Reaganomics!

9:14pm: Obama: if you really go through the federal budget “line by line,” you won’t get ANYTHING ELSE DONE. Don’t lie to us in such obvious ways, please.

9:16pm: is McCain really for “wind, solar, etc”? That’d be nice.

9:18pm: good luck governing in that way, Sen. McCain, where you veto every bill with pork in it that crosses your desk. What happens when a bunch of pork is stuck into your most favorite bill of the year?

9:20pm: *pwn* McCain. Nice line. “Sen. Obama, I am not Bush.” I like that.

9:21pm: darn right “Americans are hurtin’ tonight”, we’re darn sick of having two sub-par choices for president!

9:22pm: Obama, Howard Dean’s pet candidate, there is NO WAY you can talk your way out of McCain’s assertion that you’ve never stood up to the leaders of your party.

9:26pm: Sen. McCain: 3 words: waste of time. I think more than 3 debates would’ve been nice, but 10 is totally over the top.

9:27pm: nice job pretending to cry, Sen. McCain.

9:28pm: I wouldn’t call this a “vigorous debate,” Sen. Obama. Boring/annoying, sure.

9:30pm: Bob: dumb question. Can we get back to some more issues-based Qs, please? This arguing about arguing about negativity is annoying.

9:33pm: Obama: how do you define knowingly working with a former leader of The Weather Underground? He was a terrorist. You knew that. That doesn’t make you a terrorist, but it was really f-ing dumb of you to work with him if you ever wanted to get into politics in the future, and doubly dumb to not just come out and come clean about it once you were running. Pretending it’s not the case is what’s pissing off the voters and it’s why this is still an issue around you. Wake the f up and start acting like someone in your position should. You too, McCain: stop inturupting your opponent, you’re acting like a jerk and we don’t want to vote for a jerk.

9:40pm: nice pushback, Obama, but it still doesn’t make up for the fact that it’s TOO LITTLE TOO LATE.

9:40pm: slippery slope singing the virtues of a man so much more qualified to be president than you, isn’t it, Obama?

9:42pm: and Sarah Palin is a roll model to extreme conservatives, everywhere….

9:45pm: my sister: “especially since they’re BFFs” in regards to why McCain thinks Biden is qualified to be president.

9:47pm: shorter McCain: you don’t unilaterally renegotiate with counties…unless they’re Venezuela.

9:49pm: this is interesting, the whole room got really silent when this topic started. Apparently Midwestern college students are very interested in energy issues? (And more interested than hearing the candidates argue about who lied when….)

9:51pm: McCain, did you just call Obama a lier when he didn’t even lie? Please, keep the accusations of lying for when someone actually lied.

9:59pm: I like the sound of both health care plans, now finish them, you idiots. You call those health care plans? These are just the start. Go back to the drawing board. Now.

10:00pm: John looks confused. So much for that line of argument. Assuming it’s true that Obama said that in the last debate, how could the McCain team have let John go out there without knowing that?

10:03pm: I wonder how this Joe guy feels about being the example that McCain keeps bringing up? Get a new example, McCain. Haven’t you met any other people on the trail?

10:09pm: a little bit of fear mongering there, Obama? Roe. v. Wade hangs in the balance of this election? [sarcasm]Nice.[/sarcasm]

10:20pm: this is boring. Maybe that’s just ’cause I get free tuition at my school…?

10:27pm: “very healthy discussion,” McCain? Healthily boring maybe….

10:29pm: shorter Obama: “vote me, I’m not Bush!”

I’ve been mentioning for a few days that I was planning/outlining/proofreading this series of posts on Transportation in America. Basically I’ve been a transit policy wonk for several years and recently started mentally knitting all my different ideas for how to improve transit in America together into one coherent whole, and I thought “why not post it on my blog?” since it seemed like I was ignoring this poor blog and its readers. So here’s post #1: Introduction/The Problem. Comments are welcome as this is nowhere near the final version and I’d love feedback from other transit policy wonks about things I might be missing, etc.

I love transportation. Both the policy of it and the actual modes of transport; from the personal automobile to the Podcar, from freight trains to Maglev trains to private jets to 500-passenger jumbo jets, from electric cars to electric bikes to non-motorized human-powered bikes, I love all forms of transit! From global air traffic guidelines to local placement of bike paths, from bike rental programs to interstate highway construction, I love transit policy!

I know I know, I’m a huge geek and policy wonk, but that’s why I’m writing this!

You see, I’ve been educating myself on transit policy in America for several years now and I’ve come to a conclusion (a conclusion that you’ll find many other people coming to, as well): our national, regional and local transit systems are fundamentally broken in the USA. Walk with me through a simple through experiment:
You wake up one morning with the blues concerning your current location. You roll out of bed and check your savings account and find you have enough money for a little cross-country trip (I know, not likely in these economic times, but bare with me here) you have quite a few vacation days built up at work and you decide to head to the opposite coast (if you’re in Kansas it could be either coast!) for a little vacation. Now the beauty of living in America is that you have several options for how you can make this trip.

• The first thing that probably pops into most people’s minds is that you could fly. This option involves getting yourself to the nearest city with a commercial airport at least 60-150 minutes before your flight, most likely flying to a bigger airport, waiting for a few hours, then flying to your destination airport, unless your destination is a tiny airport, in which case you’ll need one more transfer. From there you need to either use some form of public transit, rent a car or have someone pick you up to get to your final destination. Depending on how many flights you have, how far you’re traveling and if the time change is in your favor or not, this could take anywhere from less than half a day to a very long day.
• Another option that people don’t think of very often, but more and more are thinking of if current ridership numbers are any indication, is to take the train. You don’t need to be in a city to catch a train like with airplanes, but train stations are just as (if not more) hard to find as commercial airports. If you choose to take the train on your trip you have the same issue of how to get yourself to the nearest station as you had with the airport. And since a lot of train stations are just a glass box by the tracks with no long-term parking like airports have you have the added issue of needing someone else to drive you and drop you off at the train station, where chances are good you’ll be left waiting for a train that’s late. On a lot of trips you’ll have a layover in Chicago where a majority of train lines start/end. If you’re traveling cross-country this approach will also take about 2-3 days as the average speed of passenger trains in the US is somewhere around 40-50mph.
• A third option is driving. We’re the country that invented the personal automobile and we’ve built a state-of-the-art 50,000-mile highway system to prove our love for cars. Road tripping, for many people, is really fun. What you lose in time (driving takes roughly 4x-8x the amount of time flying does when you factor in security lines and flight transfers) you gain in the trill of seeing this amazing country from the inside out. I think most people would agree that the 46+ hours it takes to drive from coast-to-coast is the only downside worth mentioning, but I’ll mention the cost of gas and lodging (or the cost on your back of not lodging/sleeping in your car!) as downsides to this, as well. In our fast-paced world, it seems the only reason to actually take a “flyable trip” by car instead is if you really enjoy taking road trips and want to make it part of the trip to spend a little more time getting there.
• Another option is to take the bus. Bus stations are less sparse than train stations, but I think we all know the downsides of this mode of transport? Journey times are comparable to driving or training, and it’s less personal than driving and less…”romantic” than training.
• I’m sure there are more possible ways to get from point A to point B (hey, walking and biking are good ways, but kinda not so much when you’re traveling cross-country), but I’ll leave it at that for now. My point is this: flying has become a huge hassle with over-crowded airports, harried security personnel, airlines cutting costs to the point of seriously cutting passenger comforts and over-crowded skies making flights late in parts of the country. Our national passenger rail system is a national disgrace and is stuck in the early 1900s. Our interstate system was once great but is falling into disrepair and is also getting over-crowded nationwide not to mention growing concerns about CO2 emissions from driving plus our country is so large that driving is not very feasible for most trips anyway.

That’s the central theory that I’m basing the rest of this series of posts on. America’s transit systems are broken, but we can repair them. To that end, I’ve created what I see as the idle system for transporting people, light cargo and heavy freight in the United States. My plan upgrades current systems where needed and proposes new systems in places that I see a void. It’s called the Three Part Network for transport of people and goods and it consists of 3 parts (no kidding?): National, Regional and Local/Urban transit systems.

Next post: Part 2: Overview of the Three Part Network.

P.S. I have class in 37 minutes so I’m not going to dig up sources for all the info/statements/assertions contained above, but if you have any questions about anything PLEASE comment and I’ll find a source for the information I presented. Who know, you might even catch me in a mistake. Thanks.

Look for a couple of big posts tomorrow (Wednesday) evening: first, assuming I have access to wifi where I’m watching, I’ll be live-blogging the final Obama/McCain debate starting at 9pm EDT. Second, assuming I have time to proof-read it, I’ll be posting part 1 in a series about Transportation in America and my thoughts on it(read: it sucks and needs to be fixed, and here’s my idea…).

So don’t despair and think I’ve died or anything, dear readers! (I doubt you were doing that, but anyway…*grin*)

Cheers!

-j

It’s 3am (…and somewhere in the world something is happening…but I don’t care) and I have no thought (OK, a bit of a thought) of going to bed. Fall Break is a wonderfully intoxicating thing (not that I’m breaking the HU lifestyle contract or federal laws concerning the age limit of the legal consumption of alcohol or anything…). It’s the last night of break and I’m taking full advantage of it by staying up into my golden hours of the night. Last night at 3am I decided I want a Gulfstream G550 jet; tonight I’m crafting the outline for a series of blog posts detailing my vision for the perfect national transportation system and doing a little extra credit homework. Tomorrow will probably involve doing some 3D modeling homework over at the university and generally being sad that break is [nearly] over and hopefully fleshing out the first post in the aforementioned series. Wednesday evening I will most likely spend over at the HU Student Union Building watching the Obama/McCain debate at a Student Senate sponsored event and also live-blogging the debate on here. (So if you’ve seen and liked my political ramblings on here in the past and want to see my take, or offer your own opinion, during the debate tune in at 9pm ET on Wednesday).

I have a chem lab exam on Thursday (boo) and other small assorted homework assignments due during the 3-day week later this week, but all-in-all this is turning out to be a nice, slow-ish week. I’m probably just happy because it’s 3am (I love the middle of the night) and I finally feel like I’m shaking (for the most part) this sickness that’s been invading my sinuses for the past 1.5 weeks.

I should actually hit the sack pretty soon.

Cheers!

-j