What does it take to keep bad drivers off the road?

How easy is it to get a license in CA? A bus driver in a fatal crash had a history of arrests, tickets, had his license revoked, just got it back, had a history of substance abuse and then was put behind the wheel of a bus.

The articles states:

• Watts was arrested as he lay critically injured in his hospital bed. His mother said he had wrestled with drug and alcohol problems, was jailed several times on drug charges and had smashed a car carrying a friend into a tree a few years ago, though neither was seriously hurt.
• He was a longtime truck driver, but had been unable to find a trucking job since being released from jail on a domestic violence charge six months ago, his mother said.
• Chaney Mae Watts said she believed the crash came on her son's first day behind the wheel of the bus after several training trips watching the owner drive. She and her husband told their son they were uncomfortable with him driving a vehicle that carried people instead of cargo.
• "He wasn't the best driver," she said. "He knew we didn't want him to drive."

The DMV has struggled with the problem of licensing most recently setting some tougher standards that appear to target seniors involving a revised vision exam as well as memory and reflex assessments. However its had a problem keeping people with a bad record and impaired driving record off the road. In addition many people with revoked licenses still drive so the question remains what other form of electronic monitoring can be used on bad drivers.

Commuter benefit small token of real problem in bailout bill

Why does the LA Times think auto makers will face an either or demand situation for gas guzzling planet toasting SUV vehicles? Won't higher fuel prices, declined home value, reduced 401k, declined job markets, and other economic pressures put a damper on spending for larger items?

Instead of reading the front page they write: Falling oil prices could prove a blessing or a curse to automakers. When fuel costs were soaring, firms retooled their lineups to emphasize small and efficient vehicles. If prices continue declining, they could be unprepared for renewed demand for SUVs and trucks.

This nonsense reflects the conventional thinking mired in the age of dinosaurs, of drilling, of building with a wish-we-could-afford-green attitude, of nature as property to hand off to corporations. Going to a meeting on a bicycle should mean not spreading asthma and cancer for the kids of the other attendees. But more likely than not a homicidal attitude will pervade- knowing how I drive I think its crazy that you biked here.

Congress naturally is the place where the employees of the fossil fuel industry hand out the free market prerogatives for a toxic planet to burn and a motorcide intensive warfare state. The credit bill bailed out the fossil fuel industry. Here's how:

What sprawl did was extend the area where banks could function. The result was exponentially larger consumption of resources like water and wetlands and deterioration of both the commons and the resource basins (like air) and their ecological services. For example rice harvest in CA was delayed this year because smoke from the fires stunted growth. Even in sparsely populated areas fire departments were restricted by sprawl to "save lives" instead of keeping large tracts from burning.

Housing has collapsed on the outskirts of the driving economy, like Modesto, Merced and even the suburbs of Sacramento- the new ghettos. Gas prices by raising budgets 25% pushed stupid negatively amortized keeping-up-with-the-jones families over the edge on the outer rings of sprawl nation. And as these home compete in the foreclosure market, and future gas prices and related food and energy prices rise, the effect of increased poor quality inventory, will continue to be felt in declining home values.

So if a H.R. 1424 bailout is to occur it should change the way we get around in the fossil fools economy. The Senate Bailout Bill, signed by W, of W (MD) fame included a commuter benefit for Bikers of $20/mo. Instead of being seen as pork, $20 to bike makes sense since its a minor incentive (a penalty with a gas tax ladder for example would have been better) for connected communities via zero CO2 transport. With Bluemenauer and Obestar in the house who in the Senate found enough brains to put section 211 in? Hopefully the employer will cash out the $20/- to the employee. The reduced parking demand should (another incentive that could have been written in) reduce the parking ratio allowed employers to make higher uses of land.

$20 per biker per month is a small start to ridding us of a fossil fuel destroyed future because the time for solutions is now.

Modal equality through traffic calming.

Modal equality is the ability of walkers and bicyclists to get safe, healthy, accessible, pleasant, and efficient (SHAPE) access on a road network similar to automobiles. We can SHAPE up with traffic calming.

Bicycle Boulevards close streets to automobiles, with chokers and diverters, in order to reduce the volume and speed of traffic that peds and bikes contend with. Another approach to reduced auto traffic is to close the intersection itself, since that addresses a crossing network for bikes and peds. Closing 25% of intersections to automobiles will allow other modes like walking cycling and boards to gain access across a city. It will save 50% of the revenue (Half of Belmont's projected road repair bill from auto usage is $15M) and improve throughput- since the direction of traffic on remaining streets is known and can be optimized- like one way roads- eliminating the delay from intersection second guessing. The remaining public works revenue can be better targeted since the options are reduced.

Braes Paradox said that additional roads, or network options, add anarchy into a network. The result is increased congestion. Physicists Hyejin Youn and Hawoong Jeong, along with computer scientist Micheal Gastner, looked at the price of anarchy caused by self-interested drivers and showed that closing off roads improves throughput.

Design elements like roundabouts, for the optimized network, reduce options for collisions, resulting is saved time and money for drivers. Time magazine writes Carmel, Ind., is driving in circles. Since 2001, the Indianapolis suburb has built 50 roundabouts, those circular alternatives to street intersections that have become a transit fixture in much of the rest of the world. Because roundabouts force cars to travel through a crossroads in a slower but more free-flowing manner — unlike traffic circles, roundabouts have no stop signals — in seven years, Carmel has seen a 78% drop in accidents involving injuries, not to mention a savings of some 24,000 gal. of gas per year per roundabout because of less car idling. "As our population densities become more like Europe's," says Mayor Jim Brainard, who received a climate-protection award this year from the U.S. Conference of Mayors, "roundabouts will become more popular."

Headway unrealized until we slow down

We are in this planet toasting pickle because planners have designed cars into our forests, food, water and health systems. Now as a resource depleted planet asks for urgent solutions these same planners say we need to make transit an attractive alternative to get drivers to use it and stop generating green house gases. 30 minute headways are not really attractive. An axiom among transit planners is that 15 minutes is the maximum if you are going to seriously attract drivers. Transit systems must start a drive to double their service level to achieve the sort of ridership and other social benefits (air water health) we know them to be capable of delivering.

This expert way looks at headway (how fast a transit system goes between stops) and keeps the system in all its planet toasting glory and bring transit and other disadvantaged modes up to toasting par. Separated routes for bikes, grade separation for transit, etc to equalize headway with speed which surprising means more energy. But we end up with funding and NIMBY issues which result in incomplete systems and the O'Toole criticism of unfunctioning modalities stealing from drivers.

Another way is to take away planet toasting headway from drivers and share it with other modes. Road diets, bus only lanes, headway via intersection closures to automobiles for bike boulevards, fifteen and twenty mile per hour neighborhood and collector streets plus 25 mph arterials in the city limit, 50% of intersection closed to automobiles with pocket parks and play grounds that allow bikes and peds through in a system of traffic calming that's linked to the landuses of children and returns a sustainable return on investment of $2500 per resident in reduced road repair and stormwater mitigation, PAYD, unbundled parking, etc. are the types of solutions that share headway and cost across modes making choices more appealing.

This is not say that we end up like LA which proves that drivers can handle a infinite congestion, i.e. nothing the experts say for workable transit will work if autos continue to see expanded capacity. We need to realize that we in this mess because the experts don't know what they did and how to fix it. By slowing down traffic we can improve VMT (x=vt) and improve throughput since the carrying capacity is raised. It just takes a minute longer to go between freeways. But by seeing equivalent headway between modalities drivers can see an option that will have real financial consequences in the choices they make.

Landuse control for transit agencies

We regulate a lot of bad things- for example there is no gun range by your house, no paint manufacturer. We also don't regulate a lot of bad things like pesticides. Or cars which not only kill people and poison the air but now eat our food (ethanol), starve our soil (cellulosic), burn our forests (sprawl), and are threatening to drink our water (hydrogen).

Just because we don't regulate a bad thing does not mean its good and needs continued funding.

On the other hand its in-effective long range planning when we use federal funding sources with their insidious requirements like designed-in-racism-in-sprawl. Since the gas tax funds transport, cars get built into the cycle of generating revenue. Our MTC plans are then hobbled- for example crossing streets prevent effective grade separated Caltrain times and toxic traffic slows down buses and stunts children. Without going for a connected and whole transit system we end up with a discombobulated mess; primarily because none of the landuse changes to make it successful are thought through and implemented. Universities, for example, control the landuse decisions around the campus and can appropriate property, like San Carlos Ave and El Camino from the city and state. Transit agencies should control the landuses within a 1/4 mile of the STATION FRONT for a slow system like Caltrain and two miles for HSR. Without these landuse controls other modes have a hard time competing and getting access with cars and become sitting duck for the O'Toole's. And why walking, which is our signature form of transportation on this planet, ends up being called alternate transportation. Instead of bonding to raise matching funds for federal dollars we should bond or tax for a complete system and eliminate gasoline since it doesn't fund anything that's controlled locally.

Negligence more relevant in crash cases.

This car versus car case in the LA Times report, on a possibly unfair conviction, is laced throughout with an exposition of more prosecutions, in driving crash cases, where participants end up with fatal injuries. The reporter writes that acting with negligence can get manslaughter charges. I wonder what a bicycle or pedestrian crash specialist attorney would say? Looks like cyclists and pedestrians want a finding of negligence or gross negligence from the drivers actions, relative vehicle speeds, and likelihood of injury from the vehicle types. If any of these factors play into the definition of negligence. The article says that crash based "criminal prosecutions is rising, in part because the state has aggressive legal standards and in part because, prosecutors say, advances in accident investigation technology allow them to more precisely understand the causes of fatal accidents."

The article unfortunately disproves that statement and Ralph Vartabedian the writer exhibits quite a bit of hyperventilation implying that everybody can be in a crash and get prosecuted; contrary to the overwhelming data from NITSA, DMV, and insurance institutes which says that crashes are caused by negligent drivers who are characterized as having two or more points against them. The rescheduled Pedestrian Safety & Advocacy Conference will be discussing issues like this- see Challenge Area 3, 7, and 8.

Standing out from the mostly maudlin crap in here, "one veteran accident investigator Robin T. Harrison said. "I have spent my life doing accident reconstruction, and the police regularly lead the charge in lousy accident investigation."" So maybe this would be good piece to talk to the local police chief about too since crashes and driving (gasoline) make up a big portion of their underfunded budgets.

Caltrain Bicycle Master Plan, bumped bikes.

The Joint Powers Board for Caltrain heard the Bicycle Master Plan report. In it Caltrain reported that bikes were 8% of ridership. Drive and parked car was 27%, Drop off pick up was 9%, Walking was 29%, transit was 19%, and the free shuttle was 8%. There was no sense of 21st century issues like the cost, co2, pollution especially PM10, and congestion burden for each of these modes.

For example Caltrain maintains 300 spots at its Belmont and San Carlos Stations at a cost of $15.7M dollars that cannot be developed for other uses like mixed use housing and retail which could bring revenue into the agency. This is relevant because the agency receives public dollars to offsets a huge loss in fare box recovery.

The public benefits for the subsidy are that
- transit users reduce congestion (Someone on the JPB once said that 10% ridership on all the transit properties was what was necessary to relive congestion on the roads.)
- transit users reduce pollution to help CCAG meet its air quality requirements and qualify for federal funding through.

Both MTC and ABAG have said we cannot meet out PM10 goals by 2035 even after the most stringent alternatives for vehicles and fuels have been adopted. And clearly with 55% of CO2 coming from transportation primarily single occupant vehicles something needs to happen.

So setting aside the $15.7M cost fixed internal cost for a parking lot, which is clearly not recouped at the $1/- per day rate in the poorly occupied parking lots (with the free shuttle about 75 cars use the lot in Belmont), and the $5k cost of 25 bike lockers and racks, one has to look at the other benefits in the shares of the modal groups getting to Caltrain.

At 8% of trips the bicycle groups far outpaces the other modal shares except for walking. This means that only 37% of trips come from low cost, low CO2, zero congestion, and zero PM10/pollutants modal shares. That means for the transit authority two out three trips have a huge public non-benefit only one of these trips meets the purpose of Caltrain funding.