Kari, they talked about that incessantly on the news all day yesterday. Almost as good as being there. Um.

Heh.

Yah... every time I came out of the home office to get away from slogging through database stuff via sluggish MS Office Remote, they were still standing in the same spot, breathlessly speaking the same words, same stories, same meaningless blather. Hour after hour of this shinola!

A girl wants a nice ten minutes of some crummy soap or summit, not more 1001 Snowflakes from dawn to dusk, innit. Heheheheheh. Just checked my rig - have not uncovered it since it started to fly, there are nine inches of fall on it. Nice. Hate to disturb a sleeping snowfield.

I've seen a lot of these in my fifty four years here.

1964 we had a big one and a fast thaw with major flooding.

Around 1980 we had a huge ice storm. Accumulations of four inches of ice took down trees all over town and people were without power for days or weeks.

I think the last big one was about five or six years ago. I remember we had just gotten the driveway of our office building on NE 33rd dug out when the snow plow went by and put a three foot pile right back where we had cleared the drive.

"Bitter cold, high winds chill Midwest"

Anyone want to try to tell us that global warming is about to destroy the earth?

A number of solar scientists think it likely that we are entering a 30 year cooling phase. Some argue that it will approach the "little ice age" in coldness. Think ice skating on the Thames and probably the Willamette.

Of course AL Gore still argues that we need to shut down most of our energy sources & thus cripple our standard of living. While raking in millions from promoting global warming.

Thanks JK

Really makes you appreciate having a western ocean. Now, if it could just reassert itself... What's it waiting on, Xmas?

I left a five gallon fermenter of boiling water to cool on the balcony and had to dig around to find it this morning. Anyone need a five gallon ice cube?

Haven't done it since I lived in the "lake effect" snow belt, but this is getting to the point that "snow forts" are becoming a distinct possibility. I've seen some substantial snowpersons today. I'm a ittle surprise with the lifesized character of many that I've not seen the kind you get in snowier climes, fully clothed and anatomically correct. Dig out the halloween costume and go ape!

Anyone want to try to tell us that global warming is about to destroy the earth?

Not at all. Stupid humans are destroying the earth; thanks for the reminder!

Or is this protest from an "anatomically correct snowman" that they do exist in Portland?

Jenni, you're about right, this is starting to take on the proportions of the 1968 snowstorm. The big difference is that 1968 came on very quickly, over 3 days or so, while this one is taking longer to hit.

I was in the Eugene area at the time, and Eugene got around 3 feet. IIRC, PDX got 1 1/2 to 2 feet. We've not had anything comparable since then.

This stuff also needs to melt slowly, or we're going to have some major flooding of 1964/1998(96?) proportions.

Snow is one thing, ice storms are another. My oak tree is now splintered. My neighbor's shed destroyed from a falling branch. My friends without power in the dark and the cold. All you romantics who love this weather, try coming to Salem. The ground is an ice skating rink. Older people are frightened to death of being one fall away from a broken hip and impoverishment and death in a nursing home, and trapped in their homes, unable to get groceries.

The area could certainly use a better transit system then the one we now have to deal with.

"We don't care! We don't have to. We're Trimet."

"We don't care! We don't have to. We're Trimet."

My favorite comeback to their last two marketing slogans, "Because how you get there matters" and "Tri-Met, see where it takes you" are "Because when you get there matters" and "Tri-Met, see where it gets you", respectively.

That said, it's better than any other I've seen in the country at this sized city or larger. I say that if you get the union to voluntarily purge the 15% that are bad apples, and Information Technology work was done with the same public scrutiny, record keeping and competitive bidding as hard engineering and construction, Tri-Met could be positively righteous. That last bit could put many budgets in the black and stimulate the economy at the grass roots if it were done at various levels of government.

If it's any consolation, Bill, I haven't been able to enjoy the snowscape for fear that we'll lose power and one of my crap XP boxes will leave a mess that'll burn another week (not to equate the issues you mention, of course).

But the list of main road closures is a bit of a shock:

No, no, that's the list of temporary snowboard park openings!

Try living in SE Portland half way between Powell and Division. No bus is going to pick you up on the corner. You have to walk 1/2 a mile to get to one. Add the weather problems and maybe age and you have a significant issue.

The problem with Trimet is not the workforce. It is management and especially those at the very top. The Board of Directors and the politicians who set policy and who along the way have stamped out any new ideas and closed the market

As a liberal I support openess and that includes openess in the marketplace, but the transportation marketplace is closed.

TLG

My wife and I just moved to Sabin last month, and have been really excited to see how many young families were out playing in the snow the past few days. My favorite to date: an older dining room chair attached to two skis making its way down the hill. Sled in comfort and high style!

As of Monday at 11:30 am, Eugene has NOTHING. No snow on the ground, regular unfrozen drizzle falling.

Last week, Monday through Thursday, did its best to keep the dull times off, with a lot of snow and glassy-ice roads, but we've had a warm pocket all weekend. Not that I'm complaining, mind you.

The weather in the Eug has 'improved' immensely.I am just worried about my Xmas travels (Salem on Eve and Oakridge on Day). While this is a trek we make every year, I suspect this years journey will be more interesting than normal.

As for Tri-Met as someone who came from Eugene to PDX and back down to Eugene and have spent considerable time in Salem (part of the family lives there). People in PDX don't know what they have. Mind you, no matter how good things are there is always room for improvement but try living the public transport lifestyle in another area and you would realize how awesome Tri-Met is in comparison.

Stultifying, Self-Referential, Post-Modern, Musing Alert:

Karol, I hear ya. Hopefully you will be able to choose NOT to sit in an airport or such, utterly squandering your time and the story of this year's holiday.

I was a feral creature out in the world for most of my life; the one who worked on the holidays without dolor or sentiment, out in the mix and on her feet.

You probably have good family to miss - I did not have good family to miss, but we still feel the pull of what we had for gatherings, eh? My son and I have often done as my mother did - gather together others who are alley-wandering artists, and make a crazy, slightly out of control xmas or tgiving. The last one we had featured his gf's mother who was now a fundegelical but, as the evening progressed, showed that she was actually a Reformed Party Girl, as she sat at the knees of the visiting Scouser who knew the entire Beatles songbook inside out and proceeded to sing it that way from about nine pm to four ayem... and the jazz singer who snored thunderously and now is making it nicely in LA; and the potatos did not turn out right, but everything else was pleasing.

The kids crawled around under the boney bare branches I pulled from the wetlands, affixing butterflies and birds in the crabbed, clawlike branches. The Scouser single-handedly finished off the litre of hard liquor he brought, he and his friend. That was friendly -- they brought their own grog and drank themselves, not me, out of house'n'home...

It was not rowdy or sloppy, merely unlimbered, moment to moment and gently, forgivingly sloshy at times.

Another holiday, in SF, I found myself seated on a park bench with a silver-haired gentleman and an old Chinese. Sharing dried fruits, nuts for our Thanksgiving morning in the silvery, blowing light of the day. Golden Gate park, near ninth. I did not feel the scarcity of necessary excision of self from psychodymamic. I felt the marvelous possibilities in emptiness, space, the blanked.

It may not be the way you want it to be - but an occassional foray into the art of making it art can be a nice business. Last year, when I rebelled against it, we became the vehicle for my sister, just about to Cross Over, to give her final Thanksgiving. She was a feral cat rescue kinda lady, shacked up in a glorious old Portland home with sixteen cats of great namings... and when we somehow were not-invited (unusual in our network), she immediately set about lavishing us, feral kitties, with a very odd, final Thanksgiving. And so it is we were placed where we were meant to be, only understood after the fact.

This year, I finally opted to repatriate to family. I have forty cousins-their spouses-their children-their grandchildren waiting for us at Neskowin, having gently asked for our presence for more than four years of holidays. So accustomed to not-relating, I forgot at each holiday time that I had family patiently waiting to know me, know my son. It finally clicked this year!

Enter The Snow.

I finally surrender again to the dream of Good Family, and nature decides to monkeywrench my surrendering.

Hope you find an authentic rendering of this year's connections, Karol, something to baste the cockles of your heart and provide for a memorable moment in time.

@Marshall:The weather in the Eug has 'improved' immensely.I am just worried about my Xmas travels (Salem on Eve and Oakridge on Day).

Forget about Salem. I live at the lowest level in Salem and it is a wreck here. If we get any more ice, there may be no power in Salem at all. Or any trees for that matter.

We had about 3 inches over night(on top of 1 inch of ice) and it is still snowing....

Steve Maurer: In economics, an externality is a beneficiary of a particular service who doesn't specifically pay for it. In the case of bus service, this means: Steve Maurer: 1) all the people who don't have to wait so long in traffic because there aren't as many cars on the road, JK: The effect is negligible because the average bus carries 9 people. Many times there are more people in cars behind the bus being delayed by buses than there are on the bus. Especially since it has become Trimnet policy to have buses stoop in the middle of the travel lane. (Before you attack this statement, notice all those turnouts on Powell that have been removed - that is Trimet policy.)

Steve Maurer: 2) the taxpayers who don't have to pay for road expansion, JK: Again, Trimet does not carry enough people to relieve road congestion and in some cases contributes to congestion. It does relieve congestion in downtown and the rich downtown business owners should be the one to pay - no the whole region.

Steve Maurer: 3) the people who don't have to breathe quite as much smog, and JK: Buses emit more smog than 7 1/2 cars, the number of cars those 9 bus riders would be in.. This increases pollution, compared to those people being in cars. See PortlandFacts.com

Steve Maurer: 4) the gas customers who get to buy fuel without as much competition (and therefore, lower prices). JK: Buses do not save energy, thus they do not reduce demand for fuel. Compared to small, efficient cars, buses are a big energy waste. (Note that you get one little seat on the bus, so the valid comparison is to a one seat car, not a SUV.) See PortlandFacts.com

Steve Maurer: But as I already said before, all a private service can do is charge the primary customer, the person being bussed. This sets the price too high, setting up a Tragedy of the Commons situation. JK: Actually it sets the price properly - the user pays. The problem is that taxpayers are giving government run transit users a free ride for 80% of their transit bill. Transit users are effectively on welfare.

Steve Maurer: We solve that problem with public bus service supported by congestion taxes. JK: What problem? Peoples freedom of movement? Tranist is slower, more costly, used more energy, and is less convenient than driving. There is a reason that people abandon transit as soon as they can afford a car. The great transit vs. car battle was fought isn 1920-1930. Transit lost. Live with it. Do not expect a different result from doing the same thing again almost 100 years later. It makes you look like you are trying to live in the past.

Steve Maurer: You have an opinion that the public administrators of Tri-Met are somehow incompetent. You need to give specific examples for you to have any credibility on this. JK: 1. Shoveling money to the builder of the new WES cars. 2. Actually, just building WES which is so un-efficient that it failed even the Fed’s ridiculously loose cost effectiveness test. 3. Giving money to builders of TODs. 4. Building light rail, which costs more than buses, is inoperable in freezing conditions and ice. (Note that not only the Airport MAX was shut down, but Interstate ave was also shut down by the weather. Buses were preforming OK in place of MAX.) 5. Trimet’s false claim that MAX will do better in adverse weather than buses. That was used to fool the people into voting for MAX, It is obviously not true.

Lets not be fooled into wasting more money (another BILLION) to burden Vancouver with MAX across the Columbia. It will be a disaster with the coming climate change to a cold cycle. Probable for 30 years, like the last one and the one before that.

Steve Maurer: Random uninformed whining is a hallmark of Republicans, not Democrats. JK: That is laughable! It is you guys that are constantly whining that people refused to waste tine and money on transit, whining that people are reluctant to make AL Gore rich with “solving” the non-man caused non-problem of climate change. BTW, I am NOT a Democrat OR a Republican. They are both to full of control freaks - they just have different targets of their control.

Thanks JK

Posted by: Jefffrane | Dec 22, 2008 9:43:23 AM

t.a. try this app for the iPhone: http://pdx.transitapp.com/

Written by a kid, incidentally, and apparently works great on the iPhone.

Mobile trip-planning is in the works; it's part of the development associated with the new map-based trip planner. It will be text only. And in a browser, at least, you can bookmark any stop once you've selected the Stop ID number. The URL is based specifically on that stop.

I stand corrected on the IT culture, as there seems to have been something of a "palace revolution" since the times upon which I was commenting. Glad to hear it. I'm not aware that non-sourced, open competitive bidding is there, though, and most levels of government haven't gotten to that level, yet, so, perhaps I can claim this as the exception that proves the rule?

Steve Maurer writes: "I'm pretty sure there is no law against starting your own private bus service, TLG. The problem with private firms is that they have no way to charge people for externalities."

TLG replies: There are plenty of laws on the books that prevent private companies from getting in the transit market. While I don't have my files in front of me I can assure you that the laws are there.

Steve Maurer writes:"You have an opinion that the public administrators of Tri-Met are somehow incompetent. You need to give specific examples for you to have any credibility on this. Random uninformed whining is a hallmark of Republicans, not Democrats."

TLG wrote: "The problem with Trimet is not the workforce. It is management and especially those at the very top. The Board of Directors and the politicians who set policy and who along the way have stamped out any new ideas and closed the market"

Steve I did not use the word incompetent.

They are very good at what they do when it comes to stopping new ideas and stopping competition. They are protecting their iron rice bowl.

Fact is about four years ago I wrote to just about every politician in the area as well as members of management at Trimet. Only one bothered to reply and then I had to push to get an answer. Another was extremely rude when I asked about a response.

TLG

Jamais Vu, re; cleaner air... . Check out DEQ's air quality index page. By the figures indicated there, today seems pretty clean relative to other days in the month, though Monday the 15th seems to have been cleaner. I know basically nothing about that this kind of thing though. With the snow, it definitely seemed very white out today. With people staying home and a lot of planes staying out of the air, there has to have been less pollution.

Steven Maurer: JK, you state that the "average bus carries 9 people". . . .More likely than not, it was pulled out of the ass of either you or some right wing radio hack you listen to, in absence of all evidence. JK: Well said and quite articulate for you. The number came from trimet: (trimet.org/pdfs/publications/bus_max_stat08.pdf): (PDF Page 3, FY08) Bus Passenger Miles = 225,211,008 Bus Vehicle Miles = 26,227,524 Do the division: 225,211 / 26,227 = 8.59 passengers per bus

Lets check the units: Bus Passenger Miles / Bus Vehicle Miles = Passengers / Vehicle.

Steven Maurer: Now here are some actual facts. Several years ago, Tri-Met did a study that showed that their buses take 21 cars off the road. JK: Please reconcile that claim with the average of 8.59 passengers per bus. You don’t suppose Trimet stretched the truth? AGAIN. Also include that fact that the average car has 1.2 - 1.6 people in it.

Steven Maurer: In fact, the only reason why mass transit is slower on our most congested routes than traffic during rush hour is because of the presence of mass transit. JK: Agreed - transit does slow up traffic.

Steven Maurer: I use light rail to commute, and I often whisk by the typical parking lot that the Sunset Highway becomes over the hill. Add a bunch more cars, and it would be a parking lot most of the time, like it is in the Bay Area. JK: Of course, had we spent a BILLION dollars on highway improvements on the Sunset, instead of the toy train, it would be uncongested today.

Steven Maurer: I must also point out that mass transit is well known to be far more fuel efficient per passenger mile. JK: Get some real numbers an get back to us. In the meantime you might learn something from this (be sure to follow th links to the government data sources.): portlandfacts.com/Transit/BusVsCarTEDB.htm

For instance Federal Governemnt data shows (portlandfacts.com/Transit/Bus4160.htm): Average light rail = 3,228 BTU/passenger-mile Average Transit Bus = 4,160 BTU/passenger mile. At 125,000 BTU/gal, that is equivalent to a car the gets 38.7 & 30.1 MPG with one passenger. The average USA car carries 1.6 people, so that is equivalent to a car that gets 24.2 & 18.9 MPG. Trimet reports different numbers (if you want to believe them.) Still can’t beat a small efficient car: Since you get one little seat on transit, it is fair to compare to as small a car as you can find. Lets guess 60 MPG. That is 2083 BTU/vehicle-mi; 1301 BTU/passenger-mile.

Let us know what you find.

Steven Maurer: That you pretend this isn't true shows that you're pulling the same, typical, tired, Republican stunt of making up shit to pull out of your ass to bolster your ignorant arguments. JK: In view of the above, that statement appears to fit you perfectly.

Thanks JK

Average light rail = 3,228 BTU/passenger-mile Average Transit Bus = 4,160 BTU/passenger mile.

Bike = Fat Friggin' ZERO BTU/passenger mile.

So you must think supporting that infrastructure is very necessary, as none of the alternatives work, by your numbers. Let's bring it down to an image. You're throwing trash out the window as you go along. How much carbon is that? A pound/mile? Two? Obviously taxes to support bike and pedestrian infrastructure, and land use regs that plan self-sustaining areas must be a big priority, no? Or are you saying that no one needs to do anything? Sit back and eat and blather on about your plans for democracy in the middle-east.

Bike = Fat Friggin' ZERO BTU/passenger mile. If you care, care about that.

Actually, there's a net gain as I pass you, JK, and fart in your general direction.

Zarathustra Bike = Fat Friggin' ZERO BTU/passenger mile. If you care, care about that. JK: Actually that is not correct. You can find information about the energy (Btu/calories) consumed by exercise like bike riding. Try Google.

Thanks JK

Steven Maurer: My goodness, billy, it appears you didn't just pull everything out of your ass. A right winger who actually argues facts. Amazing! JK: Don’t call me a right winger. BTW, most people get a little less arrogant when they have been shown to be wrong on just about everything they said. It takes a real fool to remain as arrogant as you.

Steven Maurer: You've tried to pull a switcheroo, substituting convenient national numbers (1.2 to 1.6 people per car and BTU figures) for actual known commute figures for the local area, but I won't let you get away with it. JK: Get away with what? You brought up “not just internationally, but intranationally”, so I gave both local and national numbers.

Steven Maurer: We're talking about how to efficiently reduce commute congestion. And that's where your numbers don't work. JK: Actually you were talking the alleged benefits of transit and I pointed out your errors. And how mass transit does little to reduce congestion and actually increases it in many cases; does not save energy; does not reduce the need for road expansion and does not reduce pollution.

Steven Maurer: Internationally, commute "rush hour" traffic tends to have the majority of single passenger vehicles (there hasn't yet been an Oregon local study to prove it,. . . JK: You really should study PortlandFacts.com. There you would have found a link an Oregon study: OREGON DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION - TRANSPORTATION DEVELOPMENT DIVISION, TRANSPORTATION DATA SECTION - CRASH ANALYSIS & REPORTING UNIT which has a table including the number of occupants per vehicle by city in Oregon. Portland is 1.27. Sorry for remembering this as 1.2. Of course using the real number of 1.27 will make the data even less favorable to your claims. See PortlandFacts.com/Cars/Docs/2005_PsngrVhcl_Occ_Rates_Pop10K.pdf

Steven Maurer: So do your economics. Adding a billion dollars to the Sunset would indeed make an 8-lane California-esque freeway. But that's it. JK: And it would cure congestion with money leftover to cure other congested roads. (Road building costs about $5-10e6 per lane mile. A BILLION gets you around 130 lane-miles, so you can see that there would be plenty leftover after adding two lanes to the Sunset and 217 where the right of way is already owned by ODOT.)

Steven Maurer: Did you notice the price tag associated with the proposed new bridge to Washington? 4.2 billion dollars. That's only one project. JK: Actually that price includes wasteful light rail. Strip out light rail and un-needed interchange improvements and you come in close to a BILLION. You can find the whole 5000 page report on the Columbia Crossing web site or on Portland Facts.com.

Steven Maurer: And we're not even beginning to count the costs that your preferred solution - adding hundreds of thousands of cars to the region - would impose on local streets and building ordinances to put in parking. JK: Who do you imagine would be in those “hundreds of thousands of cars.” It sure would not be former Trimet riders because there were only 77,685,600 Originating Rides in FY2008. Divide by 2 then by 365 and you get only 106,418 people and by 1.27 for people per car and you get only 83,749 total number of cars on the road if every person ended up in a car. In case you think that is big number, take a look at the number of cars on Portland roads (2001 data): Banfield 160,000; Sandy 24,000; Powell 61,500; Burnside 17,000; Morrison 15,000; Madison10300; Division13,600; Sunset 143,500, W Burnside26,550; Or you could just look at bridge crossings: Fremont 57,650; Broadway 14,550; Steel 9900; Burnside 20300 ; Morrison 22,300; Hawthorne 14,450 ; Marquam 65,900; Ross Island 32,200

You will notice that the total Trimet ridership is not particularly large compared to a single freeway. You must also consider the cost of Trimet at about $400 MILLION per year (not counting LRT construction or buses ripping up our roads.)

Steven Maurer: Not to mention that your fantasy assumes that bus riders somehow magically find a way to suddenly all own Priuses they can't afford. JK: Trimet costs $4700 per person ($400e6/84e3 people) on a yearly basis. That amount would come close to buying a Prius for every daily rider over a period of time under the expected life of the car. Of course a more valid comparison would be to find a one seat car to buy.

Steven Maurer: Using them, you can average in places where public bus systems really don't make sense (like rural regions), to "prove" they're suboptimal where they do (suburban/urban areas). But it doesn't wash. JK: 1. So look up the Trimet numbers and get back to us instead of complaining. 2. In case you don’t know Trimet serves rural areas too.

Steven Maurer: But hell, if you really think traffic jams are the most wonderful thing in the world, move to Sao Paulo. JK: Naw, just move to one of the cities that Metro is trying to replicate here in Portland: LA or NYC. If we wanted to live in those cities, like Metro seems to think, we’d move there.

Thanks JK

Posted by: billy | Dec 23, 2008 11:01:24 PM

Zarathustra Bike = Fat Friggin' ZERO BTU/passenger mile. If you care, care about that. JK: Actually that is not correct. You can find information about the energy (Btu/calories) consumed by exercise like bike riding. Try Google.

Thanks JK

Ah, you're the "white guardian"! The issue is about pollutants, is it not, or are you just ensuring the proper use of all energy in the cosmos? Address the other points or shaddap!

I want to know, how many pounds of carbon trash are you tossing out the window as you move along? Answer the factual matters responsibly or be labeled an environmental terrorist. We don't accept jokes about bombs at airports; how is your rhetorical dithering any different?

Zarathustra: Ah, you're the "white guardian"! The issue is about pollutants, is it not, or are you just ensuring the proper use of all energy in the cosmos? JK: You said: Zarathustra Bike = Fat Friggin' ZERO BTU/passenger mile I said: Actually that is not correct. You can find information about the energy (Btu/calories) consumed by exercise like bike riding. JK: What is your problem?

Zarathustra: I want to know, how many pounds of carbon trash are you tossing out the window as you move along? JK: CO2 is actually vital to life, It is not a pollutant. It is not trash. Without CO2 plants would die, followed shortly by mankind. CO2 was many times the current levels in the distant past and plants loved it. Unfortunately natural processes are locking up this CO2 and eventually the world will run out of CO2 and life on Earth will end. Burning fossil fuels will delay this.

Since you are so concerned about CO2, perhaps you know were to find the peer-reviewed proof that CO2 can cause dangerous warming? (I have been unable to find it.)

Thanks JK

find the peer-reviewed proof that CO2 can cause dangerous warming?

That would be Venus, with the CO2 that is in our rocks in that planet's atmosphere. Must be a great place for life. Wonder why it perfectly fits the biblical description of hell?

You also aren't addressing that as you deforest the uptake mechanisms don't respond in a linear way. As you heat, less can dissolve in the oceans and form new rock. The argument isn't only that you're changing the levels, but the behavior of the mechanisms that deal with it.

I don't accept your overall logic, either. No proof that there is CO2 related warming is a null result, not the positive statement that it's making things better. A conservative position would be to not conduct an experiment on the atmosphere until that is better understood. The arguments about economic impact have been used to justify every short-sighted use of any natural resource that someone's really wanted at the time. It's situational morality, which isn't conservative either. Until you define an explicit stance on all that, as opposed to simply nay-saying any progressive proposal, people will infer that you expect to use anything to its exhaustion for any human activity, period.

That would be Venus, with the CO2 that is in our rocks in that planet's atmosphere. Must be a great place for life. Wonder why it perfectly fits the biblical description of hell? JK: So show us the peer reviewed paper to prove that will happen on earth. Must include realworld measurements, not play station conjectures with new forms of statical analysis.

Zarathustra: You also aren't addressing that as you deforest the uptake mechanisms don't respond in a linear way. As you heat, less can dissolve in the oceans and form new rock. The argument isn't only that you're changing the levels, but the behavior of the mechanisms that deal with it. JK: I am only addressing man’s CO2 because that is what the warmers are using to try to dictate energy usage and thus every aspect of modern society.

Zarathustra: I don't accept your overall logic, either. No proof that there is CO2 related warming is a null result, not the positive statement that it's making things better. JK: “No proof” is just an apparent statement of fact. Does that bother you? If so, cough up the proof.

Zarathustra: The arguments about economic impact have been used to justify every short-sighted use of any natural resource that someone's really wanted at the time. JK: And who benefits from natural resource usage - all of us through lower cost of living = higher standard of living.

Zarathustra: Until you define an explicit stance on all that, as opposed to simply nay-saying any progressive proposal, people will infer that you expect to use anything to its exhaustion for any human activity, period. JK: Only unthinking people who jump to unwarranted conclusions.

Thanks JK

If you think that CO2 is nectar, why were you arguing what produces less in the first place? Pure sophistry.

WHERE THE RUBBER MEETS THE ROAD: there is no open thread to offer up things that are positive that may be of interest to the readership. So, given that this is about altruism and what we choose to drive and how we spend our money on what we drive, servicing it, buffing it, cozening it to an image of ourselves.... I offer this link to you to look at.

ALSO - will email them and suggest they connect their blog to ours.

http://junkycarclub.com/

Steve Maurer: And Buses, MAX trains and streetcars saved the region 6.7 million hours of rush-hour delay JK: Of course you know that the TTI numbers are theoretical, calculated from formula.

6.7 million hours with a regional population of, say, 1 million, that is 6.7 hours per person. That can’t be per day, so it must be per year: 6.7 /365 = 1 minute per person. WOW!

Or we couold look at the cost of saving that 6.7 million minutes via Trimet: about $400 MILLION per year, or $60 per minute saved. Building roads would be cheaper.

Steve Maurer: But we're not finished there. You assume that all the Originating Rides can be accounted for by dividing by 365 and by 2, meaning that there's rush-hour on Christmas, a laughable assumption. JK: First, weekend ridership is not that far below weekday ridership, so that 365 does not produce a really big error. Probably less error than already in Trimet’s numbers. Second, you divide by two to get the number of people since people usually make round trips.

Steve Maurer: Plugging in more reasonable numbers, by dividing the number of bus miles 225,211,008 by the average number of auto miles driven per day (29), JK: Dividing annual system bus-miles by daily auto-miles/person gives annual system bus miles/daily personal auto miles What the hell is that supposed to be? If it is a attempt to show how many cars would be off the road if ALL BUSES WERE FULL ALL THE TIME, then it is pointless as that is impossible. Also you cannot compare daily auto miles with annual bus miles.

You got a complete BS numbers like your 7,765,896 autos to replace buss. There are only about 100,000 transit round trips (even less riders.) That is over seventy cars for each rider! Do you actually believe this crap? (Hint: look at your result to see if it seems reasonable. Seventy cars for each transit rides does not pass that test.)

Steve Maurer: 5 square miles just for those vehicles in the metro area. JK: Of course this is complete BS, because it is based on each transit rider taking using over SEVENTY CARS - laughable.

Steve Maurer: our breezy attempt to pretend the expense in the Portland Vancouver bridge also doesn't wash. The rail links account for no more than a fractional part of the proposal, JK: The official line is that the cost is about equal parts bridge, interchanges and transit. The DEIS is more or less consistent with that statement. (That is not to say either is correct as light rail has a long history of cost overruns. See PoarlandFacts.com) You are wrong again.

Don’t you ever get embarrassed at being wrong on every single point that you bring up?

Thanks JK

Yes, corrected, JK is not a right-winger. Maybe a budding Libertarian, which process can be quite painful and give rise to fits. It is a rare spot of humor how/that Steve noticed that.

As to my question about NASA and Obama... He is making an attempt to pull them more to the fore...

Texas. Before open container laws riding a bike on a Saturday morning was like navigating a mine field. My favorite eternal irritation on bad planning laws for alternative v motor vehicles was an office I worked at in Houston where everyone went across the street to lunch, and there was absolutely no way to do it on foot. Every lunch everyone in a 13 story building would get in their cars and drive across the street.

This is the same building that sent a memo around on New Year's Eve saying the were going to turn the air conditioning off the next day, unless anyone objected.

Anyway, JK, were you overstating your point in the heat of argument, because I'm still confused about the CO2 is good bit. If that was the initial assumption, why debate the numbers on individual transit modes?

Personally I would like to see a similar shift in vocabulary, like the one from "global warming" to "climate change", with "green house gas additions", rather than "CO2". I'm much more worried about about CH4!

Thanks for the reference Steve to JK's campaign/platforms. Either he's not a Libertarian or I just left the party!

"More liberal than a progressive"?!!!??! Cite some facts to back that one up. How about more trogloydyte than Dick Cheney dressed as Fred Flintstone!

Steve Maurer: The rest of the facts I dug up having to do with time the bus system saves drivers in the Portland area, you seem curiously silent on. JK: I replied:

6.7 million hours with a regional population of, say, 1 million, that is 6.7 hours per person. That can’t be per day, so it must be per year: 6.7 /365 = 1 minute per person. WOW!

Or we couold look at the cost of saving that 6.7 million minutes via Trimet: about $400 MILLION per year, or $60 per minute saved. Building roads would be cheaper.

What more do you want?

Steve Maurer: Hardly being "wrong on every single point". JK: Err, well, just what did you get right? (You probably should quit reading so much stuff from the left wing or at lease read a little on the other side and then look for the actual facts.)

Steve Maurer: Again, who am I to believe? A guy with a lot of time on his hands crunching the numbers on only a tiny part of the overall picture, or professional traffic analysts from that Mecca of automobile traffic, Texas? JK: You could try looking up the data and seeing who is right. Quit letting others think for you.

Steve Maurer: Your solution to get rid of our public transit, leaving people unable to drive (for dozens of legitimate reasons), is simply a non-starter. JK: Quit distorting my position (your second in this message.) I do not advocate leaving anyone who is unable to drive. My thoughts will give then faster, safer and more convenient service.

Steve Maurer: you: 1) fail to factor in the expense of miles of maximum-capacity parking lots and garages impose on businesses, 2) fail to explain how you're going to get all the easements to take landowners' properties to widen public streets to keep traffic from seizing, and 3) explain how you would distribute these "free" vehicles to the current bus ridership fairly. JK: I don’t recall giving any specifics. However road capacity is not a problem outside of downtown. Trimet simply does not relieve congestion as I previously explained. It actually increases congestion in some cases.

As to free vehicles, let me give you a hint: Trimet has an annual average cost of $4000 per daily rider. Multiply that by the 20 year life of a car, and there is about $80,000 per daily rider to buy a little car, supply fuel, insurance and maintenance. (A double check on this “back of the envelope” calculation is the fact that Trimet costs almost $1 per passenger-mile while driving a car costs around 25-30 cents.) I would guess that there is plenty of money to buy cars for the needy, provide transit-stamps for those needy unable to drive and, of course, let the upper class bureaucrats and lawyers riding MAX into downtown pay their own way.

Steve Maurer: If you just want to defund public transit, and keep people stuck at home, you should say so.
JK: Again you lie about my position (third time here) - you are starting to sound like a transit hack, probably a Trimet employee.

Thanks JK

1950's book, "How to Lie With Statistics".

You'll see it now and then at discount book sales. Buy it! Besides being a great overall way to think about stat in general, it's got the best opening disclaimer for all "you can't publish that, you'll teach people to be crooks" kind of arguments. Bottom line, the argument was that the criminals already know the techniques, that you're only teaching innocents so that they can defend themselves.

Steve Maurer: You take the significant time savings the study finds, and then try to pretend it isn't important JK: No pretend. It isn’t important. When you get a crude number of ONE minute per person, a large error may mean that the real number is 2 minutes. Bug deal.

Steve Maurer: In fact, according to that logic, if the population doubled, but all the new people took mass transit, JK: That is not the case we were discussing.

Steve Maurer: It's nice for you to tell me that road capacity is not a problem, JK: I didn’t say that, I said that transit does not reduce congestion (except to the core area) in present day Portland.

Steve Maurer: And even when traffic is flowing smoothly, it is clearly very near maximum capacity. I'm not a traffic engineer, but I know enough to know it has much in common with fluid dynamics. Near capacity, all it takes is a little more pressure to create a state change from moving "liquid" traffic to a "solid" jam. JK:That is why we need to increase road capacity. It is cheaper than transit and it actually works.

Steve Maurer: So tell me, how do you get the blind, the alcoholics who have lost their licenses, the people holding down poverty-wage jobs, all to the places they need to go without a public transit system? JK: They are a tiny minority of transit users, so it should not be a problem to give them aid, perhaps taxi vouchers. Most Trimet users have cars available and choose to use public welfare for their transportation. Of course, you only need to help the needy, not well off people wh don’t/can’t/won’t drive.

Steve Maurer: I am actually rather curious as to what you are proposing. JK: I am not making a proposal, just some observations calculated from Trimet’s BusMaxStats08.pdf: 1. Trimet costs about $1 per passenger-mile. 2. Trimet cost per daily rider is about $4700 per year. 3. Trimet users average annual miles = 4800. 4. Driving a car costs about $0.20-$0.25. See PortlandFacts.com 5. Driving a car 4800 miles/yr should cost much less than $4700/yr

To say the least, there appears to be some room for cost savings.

Thanks JK

JK: They are a tiny minority of transit users, so it should not be a problem to give them aid, perhaps taxi vouchers. Most Trimet users have cars available and choose to use public welfare for their transportation. Of course, you only need to help the needy, not well off people wh don’t/can’t/won’t drive.

So, since I gave my car away, how would you have me get to work? I can buy one outright, cash. Does that make me a less desirable employee? A social pariah? Would you discriminate in hiring against someone that didn't own a car and could? That's a real situation, too. So, do you? Be glad I don't have one...

People that talk about how destructive the Palin bunch are to the GOP have no idea what a "party loyalist" can do to destroy their own cause. You are truly a most extreme example of the species. Steve, I don't know why you argue with him. I'm a pretty typical Libertarian and all the ones I've met to date would run in horror from this guy's platform. I have never met a person more likely to totally castrate the left more. If you want them to see the Dems as progressive, or just shut up and not be a prob., JK should be on your payroll!

.. I'm still waiting for everyone who is so irritated at this Jim Whoeveritis... to quit talking to him! :)... I can't READ his posts. You all are definitely better at gulping Grandma's Spring Tonic than I am!

Posted by: rw | Dec 28, 2008 3:13:54 PM

.. I'm still waiting for everyone who is so irritated at this Jim Whoeveritis... to quit talking to him! :)... I can't READ his posts. You all are definitely better at gulping Grandma's Spring Tonic than I am!

"A little poison now and then: that makes for pleasant dreams. And much poison at the end for a pleasant death," says Zarathustra through Nietzsche.

I'm shocked you would propose the "quit talking" bit.

O yah, Z, I believe I have now twice diagnosed a quick and collective fix to your collective Jimmy Dyspepsia - you know who he is, you know he is of equivalent force and fixed fortitude as the Kershner crowd (and did I really read that he also was banned? Ehhh?) - so just quit engaging him if you really hate his circular guts so bad, ehhhh.

Steve Maurer: If you are not making a proposal, what exactly the purpose of all this whining? JK: I’m pointing out problems - that is the first step to improving things.

Steve Maurer: And this constant pretending that problems don't exist doesn't cut it. That's classic GOP ostrich-head-in-the-sand behavior. JK: And you are typical of uninformed progressives that think they know everything. You don’t - see the next item.

Steve Maurer: We don't have a local number, but in Washington DC, 44% of transit users come from households that don't have a car. Another 33% come from one car households (the man goes to work with it, mom shops for groceries using the bus). That's 77%. JK: Wrong again. We do have a local number: Most riders (71%) are choice riders: they have a car available or choose not to own one so they can ride TriMet. From Trimet’s factsheet.pdf on their web site. You said 77% Trimet says 29%.

Steve Maurer: And honestly, JK, if people could afford to drive, why would they take the bus? JK: At least we agree that public transit is a crummy replacement for a car. Please help make Metro understand this, so they can start solving congestion, instead of building toy train sets.

Steve Maurer: Only the poor have more time than money (not that they have much time - they just have no money), so that's who the buses serve. Don't try to pretend otherwise. JK: Don’t you think someone can figure out how to help them better and at less that ONE DOLLAR per passenger-mile (FOUR times the cost of driving)? That is my main point.

Google wheels to wealth for one proposal.

Thanks JK

So, since I gave my car away, how would you have me get to work? I can buy one outright, cash. Does that make me a less desirable employee? A social pariah? ... And honestly, JK, if people could afford to drive, why would they take the bus? Only the poor have more time than money (not that they have much time - they just have no money), so that's who the buses serve. Don't try to pretend otherwise.

Am I pretending or of no account? When I used to ride the bus to work, every single person on it had a car except me, and that was before the gas hike (like they care anyway). And everyone that rents can't wait to buy a mortgage. A pox on both your houses.

Steve Maurer JK. Again, you compare apples to oranges in the statistics you find. "Choosing" not to own a car is not the same as owning one, and when that "choice" involves deciding between paying for gas and paying for heat (or paying for college), it's not as much of a choice as it may seem. JK: Gee, Trimet didn’t make that distinction. They wouldn’t leave a false impression, would they?

Steve Maurer However, solving local traffic congestion is harder than it looks for a very simple reason: money can't buy right-of-way that doesn't exist, unless you use government force. JK: FIRST, we need to quit reducing road capacity. Second there are a lot of ways to increase capacity without widening the right of way. Then roads are one of the few valid reasons to use eminent domain (light rail across the Columbia proposes lots of getting new property.)

Steve Maurer . . the county insisted on him having a certain number of parking places for it based on the number of drivers in his expected clientele JK: On the other hand, you can tell a neighborhood with apartments because all the nearby streets are full of parked cars - the parking requirements are not high enough in those places.

Steve Maurer . . . it costs nearly the same to drive a fully loaded train as it does an empty one, ... JK: And that cost is much higher than buses in almost all cases.

Steve Maurer Wheels to wealth, from the Cascade institute, didn't offer a proposal. JK: They are a policy think tank. The loans are offered by two groups in Oregon:

Metropolitan Family Services (in Portland) Central Oregon Partnership

Thanks JK

Steve Maurer: If you have stats on us somehow reducing road capacity, I'd like to hear it. JK: Removing a driving lane to install bike lanes. Installing bike boxes Placing bus stops to force the bus to stop in the middle of a driving lane. Converting one-way couplets to two way streets (also increases accidents.)

Steve Maurer: Things like improving interchanges (which you claim isn't necessary for the Oregon/Washington bridge) JK: The Washington side interchanges are on the CRC projects list and most people agree that they are not critical at this point. Might be nice to upgrade, but not a serious problem.

Steve Maurer: I'm worried that, even with the bus service you don't like, the growth of the region is not going to keep up with population growth. JK: I hope you realize that transit use has been on a long term decline since the 1920s (except WWII). The reason is prosperity has allowed people to choose something better - the car. The only proven way to increase transit use it to reduce people’s standard of living. Like we just saw with gas price increase (or jam people into tenements like New York) Interestingly most of the lower driving was NOT transferred to transit.

Steve Maurer: From my perspective, putting underutilized rail right-of-way on line is a smart way to mitigate the problem in the medium term JK: Even smarter is to build a road in the same space to serve more people at lower cost. (remember that the US26 & I84 light rail lines carry a number of people about equal to 1/3 of one lane of freeway when you account for those that were previously in buses.)

Thanks JK