SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT: On Hiatus Until Jan. 1, 2012

Traversatility is on hiatus, and will re-launch on Jan. 1, 2012, bigger and better than ever. In the  meantime, check out the archives for traversatile news and views.

Transit TUESDAYS: NoCal Line Proposes Linking East/West SF Bay Sides

No ETA yet on a new Northern California commuter rail line in the south San Francisco Bay area that will link Silicon Valley and the Peninsula (i.e. Palo Alto/Menlo Park, etc.) and the East Bay at Union City, via the existing Dumbarton bridge path. More information at Dumbarton Rail Committee.

TRANSIT Tuesdays: Seattle, Detroit Move Transit Plans Forward

Something called the "East Link" is getting attention, as Sound Transit considers using eminent domain in Seattle suburb Bellevue to plan a new light-rail line.

In other news:

*And, transit projects such as light-rail, in Maryland, would benefit from a proposed 15% increase in the state's gas tax.

*Detroit is considering a network of high-speed bus lanes to set the stage for more regional transit (in the birthplace of the automobile.)

*New Jersey Transit is partnering with Google to accept payment via the Google Wallet application, which is available on some cell phones, including Sprint's Nexus 4G-enabled phone.

WHEELS Wednesday: Copenhagen, L.A. Add Bike Options

Get ready: you can soon take your bike on more buses in....Copenhagen, Denmark. A Danish transit agency is expanding that option. In the U.S., a number of agencies allow this, including L.A.'s MTA buses. In Los Angeles, bike lanes are being studied for York Blvd., a major artery in northeast L.A., connecting the Eagle Rock and Garvanza/Highland Park neighborhoods. L.A. is also asking for federal bucks to extend the L.A. River Bike Path.

Meanwhile, in Seattle, officials are asking folks to get out of their cars, while the mammoth Alaskan Way Viaduct is closed to allow for construction work; bicycles are an option, they say.

MULTI-MODAL Mondays: Baltimore, Boston, and L.A. Projects Get Fast-Tracked

Ultra-cool Streetsblog details federal fast-track status for new transit projects, including: some funds for a connection between LAX and the Crenshaw transit line, in L.A., bicycle and pedestrian lanes along the Whittier Bridge in Boston, and a new east-west light-rail line in Baltimore (a.k.a. the "red line"). The new status expedites the federal approval process to potentially provide federal monies for the projects.

WHEELS Wednesday: Everything's Up to Date in...Indianapolis

In the American Midwest, the Indianapolis Bike Hub YMCA, a.k.a 'The Indy Bike Hub' is now open for business--part of a multi-million dollar renovation of historic City Market in the Hoosier State's capital. The combination of YMCA and bicycle transit center--with showers and lockers--is supposed to spur bicycle commuting in the small, flat, but transit-poor and sprawling, Indiana city.

MULTI-MODAL Mondays: Illinois, Norfolk Hubs Rising; Portland Planning Tool Unveiled

American metropolitan area as different as those of Virginia's Hampton Roads/Norfolk area and Bloomington-Normal, home of Illinois State University, are constructing multi-modal transit centers--in the case of Norfolk, that includes the first downtown rail station built in the last half-century. It will serve a recently-opened light-rail light that now connects Norfolk to Virginia Beach, as well as Amtrak.

This month, Portland, Oregon's transit agency unveils its online multi-modal trip-planner, which it claims is the first open-source planner around--perfect for anyone to add information and travel advice to, presumably.

FLEET-FOOT Fridays: New Subway Lines See Light at Tunnel's End

New lines and more walkable areas are the theme of new mass transit lines going up around the world. Boston's transit agency is building the Assembly Square station on the Orange Line, serving a blighted part of East Somerville (which would have been less-blighted if small, but vocal opposition hadn't driven a proposed IKEA away and out to the car-dependent suburbs).

New York is continuing to build a subway under Manhattan's Second Avenue, but train trips are five years away.

In Toronto, new stations are being built on the Toronto-York Spadina line, extending the line from Downsview to Vaughn Corporate Park. Still no direct service to Toronto's International Airport--not a real priority unless you're worried about the carbon footprint of the airport and its impact on global-warming.

Oh, and if you happen to be heading to Xi'an, China, perhaps to see the Terracotta Warriors, the city just opened its first subway line.

WHEELS Wednesday: Online Cyclist Resources....

Great resources for bicyclists--commuter, leisure, anything--online: BikeRadar is a great resource for all things cycling, as is Cycling News. Meanwhile, Road Cycling is more race and leisure oriented. Road Bike Review offers more product-oriented information.

MULTI-MODAL Mondays: Bicycle Commuting Round-Up

Top bike commuting town? The home of Oregon State University, in the Willamette Valley town of Corvallis. Not even Eugene, with its legendary environmental activism could top Corvallis in a recent poll. Meanwhile, bicycle commuting increased 22 percent in Seattle, while doing little in Portland, Ore. to change car-dependency.

FLEET-FOOT Fridays: Air-Rail Links Keep Growing...Ever so Slowly

*Bangkok: Airport-to-city rail service will improve at Bangkok's five year-old international airport, Suvarnabhumi, including more rail cars and better service, various government agencies are claiming.

*Albuquerque: Hey, did you know you could get from Albuquerque's airport to the city, and to places like Santa Fe and Sandia with a quick bus/rail connection? Well, at least you can do this on weekdays. The Rail Runner train operates between New Mexico's capital, and Belen, south of the Albuquerque, Monday through Friday. How about weekends?

*Washington, D.C.: Patch reports that the Washington, D.C.-Dulles International Airport rail link is slated to open in summer, 2017.

*Madrid: The Spanish capital's speedy commuter rail link between its airport and the major downtown train terminals has been operating for over six months; it's 25 minutes from the airport to Atocha and 11 minutes to Chamartin, the big Madrid rail stations. This supplements a subway link with many more stops.

*South Bend, Ind.: Notre Dame fans (and students) will be pleased to know they can make an in-terminal connection between planes at South Bend Regional Airport, and the South Shore train service to Chicago--service has been cut in half to adjust for a single-track situation west to Michigan City, before double-tracks take over the rest of the way. Maybe double-track that stretch to bring us into the 21st century?

Rail service from London's Heathrow to Reading, and from Scotland's Inverness Airport to Aberdeen, as well as onward rail connections from Brussels airport to Paris, are all under discussion. Los Angeles? Not so much--it's on the drawing boards, but is way down the list.

WHEELS Wednesday: Bike-Sharing Shifts Into High Gear

Bicycle-sharing programs are taking off. There's one starting up in Chicago, the Sun-Times says. Bike-sharing already exists in Denver, Colo.. Here's a blog about bike-sharing.

And, Boulder, Colo., home of the University of Colorado, is experimenting with the "Bus Then Bike" program, that provides bike lockers near bus-stops, so bicyclists can bike to the bus, but not have to take their bike on the bus that has limited rack space, or chance locking it up against a tree or post near the bus-stop, unsure whether it will be safe during their time away.

FLEET-FOOT Fridays: Get Walking...Don't Trail Behind!

Trails, urban and rural, along with extensions, improvements and expansions, are sprouting all over. 


The Captain John Smith Chesapeake National Historic Trail is under National Park Service development around the eponymous bay, although parts of it already exist under other federal, state and local designations--untangle the information knot here and here. New trails and improvements continue in Paso Robles, Calif., And the Permanente Creek Trail extends over the 101 freeway in suburban Mountain View, Calif.

Meanwhile, Colorado Springs, Colo. pundits contest its low walk-ability ranking, bested by places like Oakland, Calif. Click through city scores at walkscore.com.

Get more trails info from The Urban Trail Conference (NYC), American Trails (national U.S.), the American Hiking Society, the Rails-to-Trails Conservancy, and the National trail systems, in the U.S., the UK and Canada.

WHEELS Wednesday: Tune Up Your Ride

Keeping your bike working properly is important--whether you commute with it, ride for pleasure, or take part in races. Here's an overall tune-up run-down in text and pics from a Connecticut bike shop. About.com offers a text primer on the subject. And, here's a video tutorial on tune-ups from BicycleTutor.com (membership fee).

MULTI-MODAL Mondays: Hub Dreams and Doubts Abound

One of the Minnesota Twin Cities--state capital St. Paul--is building a giant multi-modal transit center downtown by renovating its historic Union Depot railroad station, but there are doubts about its efficacy as a hub of productivity, growth and activity. The transit center will be connected to the light-rail line, now under construction and scheduled to open in 2014, which will link the state's capital burg with its larger twin, Minneapolis. Of course, it will only have a fighting chance if it's a true hub...for local buses, light-rail, Amtrak, bicyclists, and intercity buses (those are part of the plans).

Will it connect to bicycle paths? Will there be bike lockers? Will there be adequate signage designed to international standards that clearly display where all the various transit modes are located, and show clearly departure and arrival times? 

Stay tuned.

(Perhaps the good news in all this is that the opening of the light-rail line will connect St. Paul, by rail, and via the existing light-rail line from downtown Minneapolis, with MSP, reducing the carbon footprint of one of the largest airports in the Midwest)

Meanwhile, in the lower Midwest, Indianapolis is doing some soul-searching about how to how to improve public transit, after the bus system cut routes and trips. A Hoosier Transit Hub is still some years away.

FLEET-FOOT Fridays: Transit Wheels Grind Slowly in South's Hub

Some rights reserved by kla4067

The wheels grind slowly on the multi-modal hub-building front, with many municipalities hearing the message of greater efficiency and productivity, lowering carbon-footprints, while building a bulwark against inevitably rising energy costs...but unable to prioritize this sort of infrastructure for fiscal, political and bureaucratic reasons.

Case in point: Atlanta, Georgia. It's got MARTA, a regional rail system that--unlike so many other major cities in North America--serves not just the international airport, but the actual main airport terminal (much like Chicago's O'Hare set-up). Still, Amtrak is exiled to a postage-stamp some miles from downtown, and Atlanta lacks a central square, bay, river-crossing to mark its exact center of gravity, although several are candidates. Comes the plan...an idea to link MARTA with city buses and 'other transit' in a years-away hub. Will that 'other transit' include Amtrak, or Greyhound? How about bicycles?  It would make sense...but sense--and urgency--is what this process lacks.

One can hope...

WHEELS Wednesday: Big Easy Named a 'Bike-Friendly' Town

Top Bike-Friendly Communities in the U.S. include New Orleans, LA, which received a bronze designation (third place, much like the Olympics). The BFC label denotes "a commitment to improving conditions for bicycling through investment in bicycling promotion, education programs, infrastructure and pro‐bicycling policies," according the organization that hands out the awards, the League of American Bicyclists.

See if your town's made the list; click here for the full roster of BFCs.

MULTI-MODAL Mondays: The Reno(novation) of Transit in Reno Continues

From the Amtrak Station in Reno, NV you can hop almost any city bus at the hub across the street, or hop on your bike and use bike lanes to the University of Nevada-Reno, the casinos, the whitewater kayaking park along the Truckee River, or dozens of other places in the "Biggest Little City in the World."

Public transit and bike lanes are in evidence in Reno, NV: Fourth St. Station is a massive, modern bus hub in downtown Reno, catty-corner from the Amtrak Station--a restored Union Pacific-built depot. Bike lanes pass by the station. Now, if only Greyhound would relocate--presumably in coordination with the city--to join local bus, rail and bike transit, Reno could unify more completely its laudable transit efforts.

FLEET-FOOT Fridays: CalTrain's Bike Car Beats AmTrain's, For Sure

Heading back from a meeting in Silicon Valley on CalTrain, I found the spaciousness of the bike storage space--plus the racks, impressive. Room for bikes like this would have saved yours truly from the famous 5 hour wait last summer at Oceanside, Calif. for a train back to L.A. that could take me...and my bike. Amtrak's measly four bike spaces on the Surfliner can't compare....

WHEELS Wednesday: Funky Vegan Bicyclists Tour Western U.S.

 Coyright ramblingroadshow.com

It sounds very granola (and who doesn't love home-made granola?), but, candidly, I can't think of a better way to bring bike culture to the country: The Dinner & Bikes Tour is, "traveling the western states this September to tell stories and show movies and bicycle culture while serving up tasty gourmet vegan food," according to their site. Even if you're a carnivore, it sounds like a whole lot of fun. You can read more about it here (with a map and tour sked), and here (with an interesting window in SF bike infrastructure.

MULTI-MODAL Mondays: Taking the Pulse of U.S. MuMo Efforts

The News...Last month, officials broke ground on a new multi-modal transit center for San Francisco to replace the Transbay Terminal--one day, the terminus for Caltrain/high-speed rail coming from Peninsula. Blue-skying, yes, but efficient, if expensive. Cheaper to build the whole thing around existing Caltrain station at 4th and Townsend--big power-politics feed into this whole issue.

What Else? Still, there's some progress, big and small: Boston renovated its South Station railroad terminal within the last decade to accommodate a central bus terminal next to it. D.C. intercity buses can be found within walking distance of Union Station, the rail station. Los Angeles gets a "B-" for incorporating local bus service, and airport buses, into its moderate semi-renovation of Union Station, via the creation of the Patsaouras Bus Plaza--now if only they could bring Greyhound over there, too...it's an idea.


New York City and Chicago are challenged, in part by multiple railroad terminals, sheer size, and the densely built environment.  Philadelphia, which triumphs with its Euro-style commuter rail system (similar to Paris' RER or the London Overground) that goes through downtown--rather than terminating there--and out other sides of the city, still can't combine intercity buses and trains.

And the Winner is...: You would think New Orleans--corrupt, humid, and focused on flood-control, jazz, history, food, and public drinking--would not be among the elite list of cities with multi-modal transit centers. You would be wrong: New Orleans Union Passenger Terminal has hosted Amtrak and Greyhound together for several decades.


Laissez le bon temps rouler, indeed.

FLEET-FOOT Fridays: Ride Las Vegas

Although I didn't have time to complete a circuit in Las Vegas, while here, I was able to do some research for a future trip to Sin City. **

A small network of lanes, routes and bikeways does exist. You can ride safely around Vegas, but most of the lanes and separated bike-ways are not connected in a manner that would allow for cross-city, or loop travel. This map shows what exists, thus far. It's worth checking out what kinds of provision for bicyclists do exist here.  And, given the flat terrain and dry air--albeit pretty polluted from the traffic--you should have a decent ride on a weekend. N.B.: Buses tend not to have front-load bike-racks; some do. As well, given the traffic and style of driving here, I would avoid bicycle routes, and stick with streets that sport dedicated lanes, or even a separated path.

**ADDED 9/4/11: Here's another interesting item...Las Vegas funds a full-fledged Bicycle Transit Center. In addition. Also, you can take a marked route--much of it via dedicated bicycle lane--all the way from downtown to Red Rock Natural Conservation Area, where there is a loop. Check out the map above.

WHEELS Wednesday: The Truth About Truing

Thinking about how I forgot my patch kit, and hoping that I won't need it on my trip, led me to thinking about bicycle wheels in general....

What do you do when your bicycle wheels are wobbly? Most people ignore the problem, or turn it over to their local bike shop. The solution is to straighten it, or 'true' the wheel, i.e. make its rotation perfectly correct, or true to the path it should take when spinning. I've seen many variations on this, and I even got a mini-lesson at the Bike Oven in L.A. The reality is, you can do this yourself--it's easier if you have a bike stand. But it can be done without one. Online videos are tremendously helpful, including this one from an Atlanta bike shop that defines terms, and these, Part 1 and Part 2.

MULTI-MODAL Mondays: BART Not That Smart; OAK Link Not A-O.K.

On the one hand, the well-worn path via inexpensive ($3) "Air BART" shuttle bus from Oakland (Calif.) International Airport (OAK) to the nearest BART/Rapid Rail, the Coliseum/Airport Station, works predictably and efficiently. Buses are capacious, schedules are frequent, drivers are professional, and there's room for luggage. Given that it's four miles, and multiple traffic lights, from terminal, buses make it in a relatively fast 12-15 minutes.

On the other hand, (Re: my recent trip from OAK to Millbrae/Burlingame...)...signage and communication remain, ahem, challenged:

*There is no clear signage at the BART station indicating that a regular stored-value BART system card, can also be purchased for the Air BART bus. Signs above the ticket machines note "Air BART" but little information beyond this. Station attendants repeat information about Air BART verbally, in lieu of adequate signage. There's also no indication at the station about frequency of bus service.

*There is no indication at OAK that you could use a BART card -- if you had one in your wallet, as I did not see a BART ticket machine in eye-range. 

*There is no indication that Coliseum/Airport BART Station is an overpass and short walk away from Amtrak's Coliseum/Airport station, served by Capitol Corridor service (San Jose-Sacramento)...nor is there any indication that the Air BART bus could be used to access this latter station, via the BART station.

*There is no indication, for those who are visiting (and it stands to reason that many visitors use this BART station), which platform/direction at the station is the correct one to head toward downtown Oakland or downtown San Francisco. You must look at the map, know what to look for, and deduce where you must stand to board the correct train.

*BART uses a nonsensical platform numbering system, with one platform labelled "1" and another labelled "2" (but what's the logic? It could be the other way around. Correct signage protocol would place terminal names with arrows below the station names along the outer walls (i.e. <<DUBLIN/PLEASANTON<<Montgomery St.>>DALY CITY/SFO/MILLBRAE), and this would be repeated along the length of the station outer walls. 

*It remains a challenge to see station names from a given seat on a given train. There are not enough outer wall station signs, and lighted station identification signs suspended from the ceiling are often unlighted, and they are not close enough together to guarantee a seated passenger can see any station sign. Barely audible train-driver announcements of the station, once arrived, are infrequent, inconsistent and not repeated at all. 

FLEET-FOOT Fridays: A Very Ferry Friday

Some rights reserved by pdstahl

                                                                                                                                                     Governors Island Ferry, NYC

Some rights reserved by Ed Coyle Photography
Hong Kong Harbor

Some rights reserved by Draco2008
Tyne River, South Shields, UK

Some rights reserved by Will Merydith
Bainbridge Island - Seattle Ferry

WHEELS Wednesday: Repair Your Bike for Free (or Almost...)

Why let the recession torpedo your bicycling? The bicycle repair co-operative is ascendant, with many large cities--and a few small ones--sporting these oases, where the budget-challenged (these days, that's most of us), can repair their bikes with trained volunteers, obtain free or low-cost parts, buy re-conditioned bikes, and donate their time. Many bike clubs also sponsor repair clinics.

Some rights reserved by ubrayj02

Examples of co-ops include The Recyclery (Chicago), Bike Oven (L.A.), The Bike Kitchen (L.A. and in S.F.). In NYC, Recycle the Bicycle has three locations (!); Five Borough Bicycle Club offers many classes and services. Bike Parts swap meets are another resource for repair and instruction: the Bridge Storage Swap Meet, in Richmond, Calif. (BART/Amtrak accessible), near Oakland, is monthly.

BTW, these venues almost always pop up near established commercial bike shops--and the symbiosis seems mutually beneficial. I'll be updating and expanding this list for perma-links on TraVERSatility. Google or Bing "free bicycle repair."

MULTI-MODAL Mondays: the 411 on L.A. Transit System Information...

Copyright Free. First Published 1974 by  AIGA and U.S. DOT

Rode bicycle over to Universal City Red Line Metro Station, to take it under the hill to do my standard circumnavigation of Griffith Park (via Franklin>Hillhurst>Los Feliz Blvd.>L.A. River Bikeway>Victory>Riverside). At Universal, a confused group of Japanese teens tried to navigate the rather unhelpful ticket machines menu to obtain stored-value cards (I forgot to take a picture of the group, sorry!). Finally, an L.A. Metro maintenance guy showed up, opened up the machine, ascertained it was empty of cards, and waved them onward.

Their questions about how to get to the popular Hollywood/Highland stop (which is just one stop south), led me to muse that signage and fare/payment information in these stations, for this system--and many others--is really sub-par. (By the way, there seem to be no "station pages" on the Metro website, dedicated to each station in the rail system; I know I've seen them, but they are not easy to find online...). Therefore:

TraVERSatility Principle #1: If we're to get more people using transit, we have to get more information about transit to the people.


Admittedly, changing station signage and machine menus is harder and more expensive than moving information around on the Web. But, in a system so heavily used by visitors--especially international ones--the economic impact of improving communication remains important. The more we know about where to go...the better off we'll all be.

FLEET-FOOT Fridays: Virgin's List of Bike-Friendly Cities

I'm hoping this isn't an old feature, but the Virgin family of airlines suggests 11 of the most bike-friendly cities in the world: they include...Amsterdam; Berlin; Copenhagen; Basel; Barcelona; Portland, Ore.; Davis, Calif.; Boulder, Colo.; Sandnes, Norway; Trondheim, Norway; San Francisco, Calif.

My guess is that one could add Olympia, Wash., Berkeley, Calif., maybe even Sacramento, Calif.; one or two other cities around the San Francisco Bay Area, and a few of the state capitals and university towns, like Ann Arbor, in the American Midwest, along with some in t. I was a little surprised to see Vancouver, B.C. not included--and I'm not sure whether it would qualify or not.

WHEELS Wednesday: Essential Biking Gear for Commuters, Others

So what do you absolutely have to have when you bicycle, especially as a commuter? I would argue that a spare tire tube and tire patch kit are important--and also easy to carry, because they take so little space in a backpack or computer bag. But why listen to me? Resources advising you on this abound online, including at at About.com, at GetRichSlowly, and even at manly-man Gear Patrol.

Cooler weather will be here eventually in the Northern hemisphere, and you can learn about what you'll need for winter cycling here. And if you just want to know about essential safety gear--and the laws governing them--a law firm offers this very serious primer.

MULTI-MODAL Mondays: What Else Could CA High-Speed Bucks Do?

I'm the biggest fan of rail and high-speed rail. It's critical that passenger rail infrastructure--heavy, light and in-between--be built as soon as possible to encourage related development, and the shifting of transportation patterns away from car-dependency. Doing so would help the environment and our economy. These projects should be integrated with the road system, and encourage bicycle use.

HOWEVER...too often rail projects are used to bolster struggling, small and isolated communities that fail a basic test of passenger rail effiicacy: is there enough population density to support the line to some extent, and to have an impact on congestion and environmental problems? If development and zoning rules are altered, will enough future development around the line justify its existence when judged against some or all of the aforesaid test?

One great example of this is the CA high-speed rail project, which in just a few years has seen costs double. This is never a surprise when publicly-funded projects are being built: developers and construction interests know they can  seek additional public funds through bonds, guilt political leaders into continuing funding "for jobs," and other manipulations. The tax base funding these projects is not going get up and move--although some do--to avoid paying for the project. Hence, costs inevitably--and 'surprisingly'--rise. As well, isolated communities, or those struggling economically, lobby heavily for these lines.

The $14 billion that the initial 164 miles of CA High-Speed rail would fund between Bakersfield, with its 350,000 people, and Merced, a college and farming town of almost 80,000 people--both towns are more than 100 miles from nearest major population centers--could be used to address the environment-killing, economy-crippling congestion in both the San Francisco Bay Area and Los Angeles (combined population: 20 million-plus), spurring the kind of economic growth that would ultimately benefit the state, and smaller communities.

*$14 billion (let alone the hundreds of billions to complete high-speed rail) could integrate L.A.'s rapid-rail, buses and commuter rail in a way that benefits the 16 million people (more than 25 times the number of people in the initial phase of rail) of Southern California, many of whom can't get to jobs or school, very easily.

*$14 billion would fund the building of 'through-rail' connections in downtown L.A. that allow rapid-rail and commuter rail to go into and out of downtown L.A., increasing by light-years the efficiency of the entire massive system.

*$14 billion would fund rush-hour one-way improvements to major east-west arteries in Los Angeles--one of the few large cities in America that does not do this--which have been delayed for decades (although mostly over political concerns).

*$14 billion would link LAX, one of the worst polluters in the nation's collection of airports, with populations centers via rail, thereby reducing its carbon footprint by millions of tons of emissions per year in reduced combustion-engine trips to the airport complex.

*$14 billion would fund the completion of a network of off-road bikeways and on-street bike-lanes that would be the envy of America--and is taking shape now in ways big and small--and another leg of economic stability for the area.

*$14 billion could upgrade the existing rail line from Santa Barbara to San Diego, eliminating grade-crossings and double-tracking sections that are single-track,along with improving signaling systems, and rolling stock (along with providing more bicycle-friendly coaches on weekends for both the Pacific Surfliner and Metrolink service).

Stay tuned...

FLEET-FOOT Fridays: Online Cycle Route Planner

There's a real shortage of accurate bicycle-route maps and information online, although Google now offers a beta-version bicycle-route planner (access through Google Maps>Get Directions><<Bicycle Icon>>).

Meanwhile, A UK-based cycling website--Cycle-Route.com offers a nifty cycle-route planner, with a few U.S. cities and regions covered. You can also share your routes. Check the entire site here.

WHEELS Wednesday: Bicycle Signage Improving

As anyone who's ridden a bike through an urban area knows, route signage can be pretty thin in places. Moreover, general signage for, about, riders, is pretty poor. Now comes a new regime of signage from bicycle-forward municipalities, such as Berkeley, Calif. These signs make an attempt to treat riders as needful of information about their route and traversal of roads as car-drivers--including mileage to destination, route direction and other helpful info-bits.

How is your town, city or county doing in this regard?

NatGeo Map Tool Gives Google Earth A Run for Your Eyeballs

I was quite taken aback while traipsing virtually through the National Geographic* mapping section online to find their nifty flagship web map tool is quite robust. While it doesn't allow the "Flying Nun" (or Earl the Angel from "Saving Grace" or Bill the Vampire on "True Blood," if you like) flexibility of Google Earth, it's "bird's eye view" functionality is quite impressive, and much crisper, photographically-speaking, than said "... Earth" tool--famously hard on disk-usage and video cards. Using NatGeo, I flew down over Cadiz, Spain and got a nice close-up of Railway Station and the Old City...in living color.

In any case, try the tool here.

*I was a little troubled by the choice of web-sponsors on the NatGeo site--namely, Coca-Cola. I'm not crazy about Coca-Cola as a sponsor, given my no-refined carbs blog, Factually Food, but I choose my battles. And, truthfully, 'Coke' makes products other than sugar-loaded soda....

MULTI-MODAL Mondays: L.A. Still Far Behind on Fare Policies

Although L.A. Metro has lowered the cost of a day pass for its stored-value card users (called TAP), and recently revamped the way it calculates the monthly and weekly stored value fees (they've started the clock of month and seven day passes from the time of purchase rather than from the beginning of the month and week, respectively), the Los Angeles rail and bus agency continues to charge basic rail riders by each line ridden--unless you buy a day pass. Of course, this Byzantine calculation puts it behind virtually every other major metropolitan transit system in North America, most of which charge a flat rate for unlimited use, or charge by the mile.

The good news? Rush-hour restrictions on taking bicycles on trains are now a thing of the past--you can ride with your bike at any time.

Someday....

WHEELS Wednesdays: Bike Slots Upped on L.A. Rail Net

Metrolink, the L.A.-area commuter rail network, is enlarging the number of spaces that can accommodate bikes, with customized rail cars, the LAist blog reports. The railroad will put two customized rail-cars able to hold 18 bikes on the rails as part of a pilot program, says LAist. Now, if only Amtrak would try that on the packed Surfliners running the L.A.-San Diego route...

MULTI-MODAL Mondays: Examining Traveler Behavior

Delft University of Technology, in The Netherlands, is studying multi-modal travelers' behavior in Dutch cities, and while it's a little hard to read, it provides some insights into travel decision-making. Meanwhile, "EU-funded scientists are piloting a service that will allow people to determine the best way of making journeys in cities. As well as helping individuals find the most efficient route and travel mode, the systems should cut congestion and lower the environmental impacts of road transport, Green Car Congress reports.

The pilot cities are: Brno, Czech Republic; also, Bucharest, Florence, Oslo, Munich, Vienna.

If that's not enough, the city of Albuquerque, N. Mex., offers a Travel Training Program to help riders figure out how their entire transit system--ABQ Ride, Rio Metro and the New Mexico Rail Runner Express--works together.

FLEET-FOOT Fridays: Circumnavigating the San Francisco Bay Area

I'm headed up north to the San Francisco Bay Area. I've always wondered whether one can circumnavigate the Bay via bicycle. I know that you can do pretty well, using transit and bikes. Although I won't have a chance on this trip to do such a trip, there are plenty of resources.

While there is an organization that advocates for a complete, dedicated, bike and pedestrian trail encircling San Francisco and San Pablo Bays (i.e. the Bay Area), that trail--The Bay Trail-- is not finished. It's a mish-mash of dedicated trails, bike lanes, marked streets, and unmarked and unimproved (for bike use) streets and trails. That said, it's fairly extensive and you can view the entire 'trail' here.

If that doesn't work for you, the southern two thirds of the Bay Area are lined with rail lines. From San Francisco south, along the west side of San Francisco Bay, to San Jose, CalTrain offers commuter rail service. Heading up the east side of the Bay, Amtrak runs from San Jose north through Oakland to Martinez, where you can bike across the Carquinez Strait and continue around San Pablo Bay, via Vallejo and on into Marin County, before heading south to San Francisco. As well, BART, the area's rapid-rail network, runs from Fremont, on the east side of the Bay, a few miles north of San Jose, up to Oakland.

WHEELS Wednesdays: Road-Builders Make a Play for Transit Funds?

The American Society of Civil Engineers (road builders, basically) claims in a report that "deteriorating infrastructure" could cost America $3.1 trillion in lost productivity and economic growth. Smells like a play by the construction and road-building lobby to make a play for a shrinking pie of transportation money, in the hopes that they can throw the force of budget cuts on to public transit, Amtrak, bicycle-friendly improvements and the like. Decide for yourself. The Huffington Post published a lengthy piece about the original report here.

Here's an idea: Mandate carbon-emissions reductions for airport ground transportation on pain of losing federal improvement funds, and see how fast cities like L.A., that are light-years behind in linking the airport to the transit system, move to finally get serious about reducing combustion-engine traffic to and from the airport.

MULTI-MODAL Mondays: Lanes, Trains and Automobiles

Everyone is talking about the Los Angeles mayor's directive to build out a 1,680 mile bicycle path and lane network, the Daily News reports. Some folks are still wondering where the rush-hour car-lane projects for major east-west arteries Olympic and Pico Boulevards went, which might reduce congestion and carbon emissions, but that doesn't seem like a priority because the mayor didn't break his elbow driving in rush-hour traffic. He broke it while bicycling. Hey, whatever it takes.

However, it's appropriate that L.A. have a great bike network: much of L.A. is flat, and many arteries are quite wide--and so can support a shrinkage of car lanes to support a bicycle lane.

Metro already lifted a ban on bikes on trains (yes, L.A. has them). Now, if Amtrak would add extra space for bicycles on its weekend Surfliner service between L.A. and San Diego, bicyclists by the scores might not get stuck at intermediate stations. A year ago I spent a very chilly four hours at Oceanside's capacious train station, waiting through three trains to finally find space. Ahem....

FLEET-FOOT Fridays: Meta-Travel Searches--Many Are Clicked; Few Are Useful

The best 'search-of-searches' travel planners--sometimes called meta-travel planners--allow a search across varying modes of travel, from self-propelled to transit, even when offered by unaffiliated agencies or companies. So, for example, a search for schedule and fare information from a point on the one side of a city, such as London, New York or Denver, would bring up all of the information required using any and all modes (rather than just buses or just rail or just bicycles).

A superb example is London's Journey Planner; this is 'best of breed' when it comes to meta-searches. Not only does it search across travel modes (including bicycling routes to and from stops or stations), it also lays out the travel route via visually, via text and with additional clickable PDF maps for vicinity of each change of line or mode of travel. 

By contrast New York City's trip planner (offered by the transit agency, versus an umbrella group) does not include ferries, bicycling information, nor New Jersey Transit, one of the largest transit provides in the nation. HopStop does a little better, allowing searches across the region, but still allows only one combination-mode search (bus and rail), leaving you to run the same search over for each mode, and then do some combining on your own.

Close on London's heels, the San Francisco Bay Area offers Transit511, which better than the Big Apple's, but still doesn't include bicycles in its travel modes, and requires a complicated check-off of the plethora of transit agencies. Still, it's not bad.  The search outcome is well-presented, with maps for each mode or line change (although it's not as intuitive or user-friendly).

WHEELS Wednesdays: Bike-Sharing Gains Ground

Here and there, bike-sharing continues to gain ground. The well-known Paris, France program, called Velib, is popular. In Cambridge, Mass., according to Wicked Local, and in Newcastle, U.K., bike sharing is being initiated with some support. Long Beach, N.Y., a Long Island suburb of New York City, has approved a program, as well, Long Beach Patch reports. If you find a central bike-sharing reference...post it!

MULTI-MODAL Mondays: Aviation Blvd. Green Line Station-Wilshire/Western

This was a much easier ride than I thought -- and it only totals just under 20 miles. Start at the Aviation Blvd. Green Line station. Elevator down; escalator will send you to a bike-unfriendly exit. I'd love to see them repair the bike lane on Imperial Hwy., which is basically shot. But, it's a nice ride along the beach, past Vista Del Mar, and then a quick lunch stop in Marina Del Rey, at the Riverside shopping complex.

The bike path along Ballona Creek is excellent; the bike lane along Venice Blvd. is quite wide. I also took in the Eat Real shindig at the Helm's Bakery in Culver City on my way to the Wilshire/Western Purple Line Station.

FLEET-FOOT Fridays: How Does Vegas Compare?

Here's an interesting comparison, from the Las Vegas Sun newspaper, of Sin City and comparably-sized cities with regard to their transit options; let's hope they extend the casino-friendly monorail to McCarran International Airport someday to make Las Vegas earth-friendly, as well.

WHEELS Wednesdays: Progressives Whine About Bike Lanes?

How far behind is the U.S. in accommodating bicyclists? Way behind, according to this Yale piece. And The Atlantic magazine studied the issue and found it was, essentially, college towns that were friendliest toward bicycles. And--as Al Gore might say--another several million tons of pollutants head into our atmosphere, while we fight about it -- even in progressive Park Slope, Brooklyn, where normally progressive urbanites want to help the environment--just not in their neighborhood.

MULTI-MODAL Mondays: The Hubbub's About Transit Hubs

Transit hubs are the latest thing; from Anaheim in southern California to Greensboro in North Carolina, hubs to aggregate transit, taxicab, auto and bicycle transportation are being built by the scores. Driving these mostly publicly-funded projects is a need to make transportation more efficient, and less costly to both the environment and travelers' wallets.

Home to Disneyland, Anaheim also sees frequent train service via Metrolink and Amtrak, at its train station, across from the Angels baseball team's stadium. The massive construction project opening in just two years will expand the footprint of the station many times over, and provide a place for area buses, cabs and carpools, to meet train riders.

Greensboro is rehabbing an older building downtown to serve as its hub. Amtrak sends two trains a day through the city.

Other cities building hubs include Burbank, Calif. (airport), Calgary, Alberta; Kalamazoo, Mich., New York City (World Trade Center); St. Paul, Minn., Cincinnati, Ohio, and Nashville, Tenn.

SPECIAL: Mobile Bus Times Texted to Your Phone in L.A.

New apps help you find out when you're next bus is arriving. Here's one for the Android market in L.A. And, look for the blue "Next Stop" signs at L.A. Metro bus stops; type the stop-number on the sign, and text it 41411, to get the next bus time arrival. Cool!

WHEELS Wednesdays: New York's Gettin'em; Canada's Gettin' Rid Of'em

Guess which city is welcoming bike lanes? And guess which one is set to remove them? If you guessed some European or Canadian city for the first one, and a U.S. one for the second question....well, you'd be wrong.

New York City, according to DNAinfo.com (the Ameritrade founder's nifty news operation) is adding bike lane's to busy First and Second Avenues in Manhattan--the capital of traffic congestion (and Calgary; San Mateo, Calif., and Salem, Ore. are also adding lanes). Toronto, of all places--progressive, flat, Canadian--may be removing lanes on busy Jarvis Street, InsideToronto.com reported.

MULTI-MODAL Mondays: L.A. - The Ballona Creek Bike Path

Needless to say, the number of dedicated bike paths/bikways in the LA. Basin is fairly limited, relative to total roadway mileage. But, that is slowly changing. One of the bike-paths that has been around for a few years is a little far from my place in Burbank--it's the Ballona Creek bike-path that runs along the (mostly) concrete-sided path of Ballona Creek from near downtown Culver City, rougly10 miles to the ocean, where the creek spills into the sea, between Marina Del Rey and Playa Del Rey, two seaside neighborhoods quite close the Los Angeles International Airport (LAX).

The hope for this day-trip was to make it all the way from Burbank, via subway and bike, to the ocean, and then, using the beach trail to skirt LAX, grab the metro rail at Aviation Blvd. back; however, as is often the case in the summer in Los Angeles, once I got within a half-mile of the beach, the coast began to fog over, and the temperature plummeted by about 20 degrees, from a pleasant 85 to a less pleasant 65, plus a stiff breeze, making it feel even chillier. Normally, I wouldn't care, but I was dressed very lightly for the higher San Fernando Valley temps.

The trip began with a quick bike ride to Universal City station, a speedy seven-minute ride under the hill to Hollywood, and a series of streets recommended by the L.A. Bicycle Coalition to Venice Blvd., on which I traveled along the capacious Venice Blvd. bike lane, southwest toward Culver City. One lovely salad from Trader Joe's later, I resumed the finding the Ballona Creek trail -- even if you don't have a map, it's easy: just head south from downtown CC toward the Baldwin Hills--you can't miss them, as they loom over CC. The creek runs along the northern edge of the hills. However, there are specific access points to the bike path--you must enter at one of those access points: I entered at Duquesne, and rode southwest about 7 miles to Lincoln Blvd. (Route 1)--at that point, afternoon fog drove me back.

Turning around, I headed back the way I came. But at Venice Blvd., and Hauser Blvd., I turned north on Hauser into the Miracle Mile section, then headed east on Wilshire Blvd., for a very bumpy (slow lane is horrible condition) ride to Wilshire and Western, where I grabbed the Purple/Red Line subway, back to the Universal City.

Notes: Do not use Wilshire when traveling east west--choose a parallel street to the north or south--most of which go all the way through. Wilshire is not that busy on a weekend, but the slow lane is full of patches and potholes, and you may break your bike...or your back. The creek trail is charming and flat, and eventually goes near/through what remains of coastal wetlands. It's as pleasant a ride as you will find, off the beach, in developed L.A. Excellent benches, rest areas and nature/historical signage along the way make this a worthwhile route to travel. You can, of course, put your bike on one of the numerous bus-lines that cross this route, and shorten the total length and time of the ride.

FLEET-FOOT Fridays: Tour de France Stage 1

Too cool: the official site for the Tour de France provides up-to-the-minute information about the race, plus maps and more. If you want to know how this famous race fits into the 'grand tours' international racing scheme, click here, and scroll down to "Grand Tours" section. The race runs in stages, all over France.

One theme of recent transit spending--better late than never--is funding links from central business districts to airports, which are a huge source-point of carbon emissions from all those taxis, buses and cars feeding airplane passengers to the terminals--as well as taking them away to the ground destinations.

So, it's not surprising that the feds are handing out $1.58 billion to 27 transit projects, including a light-rail link from downtown Denver, CO to its airport--reducing the carbon footprint of that massive facility, the Environment News Service reports. Other projects including a New York rail connection from Long Island commuter lines to Grand Central station (the lines now go to Penn Station), further work on connecting DC to its Dulles International Airport, and a Minneapolis-St. Paul light-rail connection, which would (by implication) connect Minnesota's capital city to the Twin City's airport (MSP) via an existing link that runs from downtown Minneapolis to MSP.

By the way, rail links to LAX's (busiest airport on the west coast of North America) terminals are not even in the planning stage.

TRIPS Monday: Venus or Venice Blvd.? Both Are Hot as Hell

Faced with yet another temporary closure of a portion of the metro Blue Line in L.A. for Exposition Line construction, yours truly chose not to bike/shuttle bus the gap in pursuit of a beach bike ride in either Long Beach or the South Bay. Rather, I decided to see how far I could get in biking to the Westside beach area, with very little time available to me on Sunday. I used this L.A. County Bicycle Coalition map to find the the best, quietest, least traffic-filled route on a very sunny, hot afternoon, as well as this L.A. Metro Bike Map:  this map.

First Leg (train): Universal City metro to Hollywood and Highland....helped very nice mother and daughter British tourists, and took train one-stop to Hollywood.

Second Leg (surface streets...Hwood to Venice Blvd.): Exit and head west/south on Orange to De Longpre; west on DeLongpre two-three blocks to Sycamore; left/south on Sycamore a long way through beautiful pre-World War II apartments territory to 4th St.; right/west on 4th to Cochran, a few blocks down; left/south on Cochran to Venice Blvd....and that's as far as I got. Turned around and returned home. Hot and tired, and needing to get home to walk dogs, I made the trip back to home...

Third Leg....To Be Continued...Next time: proceed right/west/south on Venice Blvd. to the ocean.

FLEET-FOOT Fridays: Size Yourself and Map Your Path

When I want to size myself for a new bike I use this handy interactive tool.

Meanwhile, the number of cool mapping sites and tools are exploding. MapJack mashes the street-view functionality of Google Maps with the two-dimensional map itself, in a split screen that allows you to get both views at once. Very helpful; they cover a few U.S. locations like Vegas and San Francisco, along with some big cities in Canada--the bulk of their coverage is in Sweden, Thailand and Puerto Rico...go figure. The World Sunlight Map appears to be working, and is updated; run by a quirky group, but who cares...it's really interesting!

Dicey, but worth a look: Frappr appears to be a beta search engine that digs up mapping tools and maps; no other information available. Try it at your own risk.This site allows you to see campgrounds within a proximity to a U.S. location you choose.

WHEELS Wednesdays: A Special Report From LaneLand

Bicycle lanes continue to attract eyes: a University of Massachusetts think-tanker says they create more jobs than other kinds of spending (for building them, or the echo?) Still, lane miles grow. Burbank, Calif., re-did roughly three miles of Verdugo Ave., converting from a four-lane arterial (with parallel parking), to a two-lane, with bike lanes. Here's the master-plan.

LaneLand is still in turmoil, though: The Commercial Appeal, Memphis, Tenn., reports business owners along that cotton-trading hub's Madison Ave. don't cotton (sorry...) to a "road diet," which shrinks the four-laner to two, for bikes. They object that they started their businesses on a four-laner (and your point is what, exactly, given cars can't all park at the store-front?). TBD....

MULTI-MODAL Mondays: Griffith Park Loop

Sunday, I finally got back on my bike after patching my tire using this video from InTown Bikes in Atlanta (thanks); I'd already bought a patch kit and a new tube, but I didn't remember how to patch the old tire (I saved the new tube for later).

The trip: I biked over to Universal City Metro Red Line station, and took my bike two stops to Hollywood/Vine station; then I biked east on Hollywood Boulevard to Bronson, north on Bronson to Franklin, right near the Scientology Celebrity Center. In the little strip mall on the northeast corner of Bronson and Franklin is a little organic takeout place called Locali. I got a yerba mate tea and some sort of oat bar, ate that and continued onward. This is in Franklin Village, and there's a cool gift and magazine store, and some other cool stores--it's worth a look, if you ever get over there: Franklin a few blocks east of Gower, on the north side of the street.


I biked east on Franklin to Los Feliz Village, where I turned north on Vermont, observing a fender-bender aftermath on Vermont. Up to Los Feliz Boulevard, down to the L.A. River Bike Trail, north on that to the end at Victory Boulevard. Then, I biked north on Victory to Riverside, left/west on Riverside to Chavez St., up Chavez to Alameda, and back to Hollywood Way and the media district.

Fun!

Bicycling THURSDAYS: Used Bikes

After my Fuji Crosstown hybrid, circa 2000, was stolen last December, I proceeded to acquire three different used bikes.

The first, a very small Mongoose mountain bike, needed a lot of work, and after adding brakes and a shifter at the Bike Oven in Highland Park, L.A., I realized it was the wrong bike for me. It still needs better tires, and I'm used to a much bigger bike, even though I'm 5'4".

The second bike I acquired was a gorgeous Motobecane, year unknown, which lacked working brakes or a shifter, or a derailleur, but has a wonderful frame.

The third bike was a used MGT/MKS(or something), a heavy 12-speed Japanese racing bike that I got for free from a friend, because she bought herself a new bike. However, after leaving the front tire at a friend's outdoor parking lot elsewhere, I had to cannabalize the Motebecane's front wheel for that bike.

The hope is that I will finally get back to the Bike Oven, cannabalize parts from the Mongoose and the Japanese racing bike, and turn the Motebecane into a working bike. This weekend? Maybe....

HyPOTHeTrip WEDNESDAYS: Lake Loop

Credit: U.S. NOAA

So, the basic plan is: Start in Chicago, head up to Manitowoc, Wisc. by train and bicycle, hop the ferry across Lake Michigan to Ludington, Mich., and then bike to Amtrak at Holland, Mich., which takes you back to the Windy City. I'm frankly, not sure how many days this would be: assuming each of the two, roughly, 90-mile bicycle stretches (Milwaukee>Manitowoc/Ludington>Holland were divided into two days each, with one night at one of the two ferry termini, and factoring in the availability of trains, this could be as little as a three-day, two-night excursion, or as much as a five-day, four-night trip.


From Chicago, head on Amtrak to Milwaukee. There, a combination of trails will lead to--research shows--the Ozaukee Trail, which is a dedicated bike trail. Ultimately, this takes you near Manitowoc. Either you decamp here for the night, or grab the 12:55 a.m. ferry, and sail in the moonlight to Michigan. Once there, you can either hit the ground biking, or decamp again for the night. Holland is almost 100 miles south of Ludington, and it looks as if you can either follow the lakeshore, or head inland where you will find, a) the 22-mile Hart-Montague Trail State Park, a linear bicycle-friendly park/rail-trail through farmland, and b) a possible place to camp: the Huron-Manistee National Forest.

It's a very pretty part of Michigan. Who knew? I guess folks are grumpy there because of the long winters--but this is a summer trip. Once in Holland, Amtrak conveys you back to Chicago. Great side-trips might be Wisconsin's Door Peninsula, just north of Manitowoc, and Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore, just north of Ludington. Have at it.

TIPS+COOL SITE Tuesdays: U Need UNESCO

Ban Chiang - from Tourism Authority of Thailand

The folks who try to keep tabs on the heritage of planet earth, regardless of borders, offer a really cool interactive map to the nearly 1,000 sites designated as World Heritage Sites by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). Some are near transportation, like the Generalife in Granada Spain. Others are more isolated and might require multiple buses, and long walks to access, such as the Ban Chiang Archaeological Site in Thailand.

MultiModal Mondays: Airport Stop Providential, Just Not For the Atmosphere

"Our father never did anything half so well as to cut off your mother's head," Queen Mary Tudor (Kathy Burke) tells her half-sister, the future Queen Elizabeth (Cate Blanchett), in Shekhar Kapur's 1998 film, "Elizabeth." The same could be said for how we view Amtrak as part of an integrated multi-modal transportation system. Headless wives, or half-funded transportation systems...which is more dead?

Case in point: last Monday was the sixth-month birthday of the T.F. Green Airport rail stop, just outside Providence, RI. The idea was to offer the busy, heavily used northeast corridor the same convenience and carbon-footprint-lowering effort there, as farther south at Newark Liberty Airport and Baltimore-Washington International Airport--Amtrak stops to convey travelers en masse, rather than en car(bon). No such luck in Rhode Island and Providence Plantations (the state's official name, BTW). There, funding fell short of making the proper track to Amtrak's specs, and so Boston's MBTA commuter rail Providence line is serving the station alone...for now.

The problem with cutting off one's nose--or one's wife's head--to spite one's face, or one's enemies, is that, once the deed is done, there's no one around for companionship, no one to raise the kids, and things run very inefficiently, while everyone jockeys for power. By the way, after six wives, and innumerable military actions, the treasury was bare, by the time Elizabeth got to the throne. It took her decades to fix things; let's hope it doesn't take decades to create a transportation system that provides a real alternative to individual-servings combustion-engine locomotion.

Big Easy Makes Travel From Train/Bus Station Easier

New Orleans is running a streetcar line (i.e. light-rail) from its inter-modal train and bus terminal, the New Orleans Union Passenger Terminal, to the Central Business District and Canal Street, via Loyola Ave. The big groundbreaking came this past week, featuring wonderfully inarticulate comments ("streetcars are coming back") by U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood. Nevertheless, linking the city's ground-transportation hub with its CBD and other tourist destinations, such as the French Quarter and the Garden District, appears to be a priority, and is a highly traversatile decision, IMHO, that encourages fewer taxi rides, more density along transit routes--and perhaps will lead to more bike lanes. No word on whether you can take your bike on these puppies...


View Larger Map

NEWS: East Coast Greenway Expanding, Hiring

Talk about Traversatile! The East Coast Greenway--the biggest, longest trail you've never heard of--continues to elongate and grow, rivaling its better known competitor, the Appalachian Trail (ATC).  And they're hiring, apparently, at their headquarters in Durham, NC. The Greenway organization is attempting to plan, map, build and actualize a 2500-mile long trail from Maine to Florida, using both new and existing routes, rail-trails, roads, separated paths and much more. And, it's meant to be a path for many modes of low-impact transportation, from horses to recumbent bicycles to bikes to skateboards to walking.

Now, if only there was a West Coast Greenway.....Hmmmm.

Seattle is Traversatile!

- from soundtransit.org

Hey, what you can look forward to in 2016, besides a really contentious American presidential campaign and the Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro?* Well, Seattle's Sound Transit is opening a link from its Sea-Tac Airport line to the University of Washington, with another connection out to Redmond, Microsoft's 'emerald city,' by 2020. And Sound Transit has an extensive bicycle program, with lockers and rules about taking your bike on various conveyances. *(BTW, Rio's transport plan can be found in this IOC city bid analysis doc.)

BICYCLING/SUBWAY/LIGHT-RAIL: Burbank to Long Beach

MODES:  Biking, Subway, Light-Rail

Last week, I went down to the Long Beach bike path along the ocean, my usual way: I took the train from the San Fernando Valley, using the underground Red Line, and changing in DT L.A. at 7th/Fig. for the Blue Line...except for one little problem: Expo Line light rail construction shuts down the Blue Line between its terminus at 7th St., and Washington St. station in a light-industrial area south of DT.

Having experienced this before, I had a choice: I could put my bike on the shuttle bus to Washington Sta., or bike south about 2 miles through DT to Washington, thence to hop on the Blue Line light-rail to DT Long Beach. I chose the latter, as I have done in the past - it's not the prettiest stretch of road, but it's flat, and -for L.A. - lightly trafficked on a weekend. It lengthened a usually 90 minute trip to almost two hours, but having left around 9:00 A.M., I was in Long Beach before 11:00. The good news is I spent zero on gasoline. Consider that I traveled more than 60 miles round-trip for $6.

- from City of Long Beach website

The ride on the Long Beach Pedestrian Bikepath, streets through Naples, and Seal Beach, was rather short. Typically, I try to make it to Huntington Pier, and back - almost 40 miles round-trip. This time, I rode to Seal Beach, and back - barely 15 miles around-trip. Next time...

Notes: technically you are supposed to ride with your bike in designated areas on the trains; most people ignore this. However, the designated areas are easier to ride. On Red Line trains, the baggage/wheelchair symbol offers a car with fewer seats and more floor-space. On Blue Line trains, the center of the each car is articulated, and provides a rather shallow alcove for you and your bike.