Recharter the San Mateo County Transit District - Samtrans

Seeking contributors for recharter support

2011-11-13T19:54:00.000-08:00

Cue the Raffi song: Five little sandpipers went out to play...

      Using the links column on the right side of this blog, plus emails to authors I have reviewed in this blog I have asked a number of people to support a rechartering project.

      I have received several positive responses. I am very grateful for the responses.

      After a day of regret that I have retitled my blog and sought to involve real thinkers and authorities in the field of public transportation and urban design I get to work now.

     This is a very emotional event for me. I have had a couple of intense dreams. This morning the dream was riding bicycles with my son in Baltimore. "Here we go, I say." We ride our bikes down a quarter mile downhill stone staircase. Then we go to a cafe where an obnoxious waiter serves me a tepid cup of the most tasteless coffee I ever drank.

This blog was previously titled "Put carts on the public bus."

Time to get more aggressive on CO2 emissions reductions

2011-11-09T00:27:00.000-08:00


The guy taking the picture, idling along burning 11 lbs. of gasoline every 22.7 miles.

"World Emissions of Carbon Dioxide Outpace Worst-Case Scenario"

So says the Slashdot news item.

Recharter the local public bus system with a larger mission: "To organize and promote transportation in the region in a manner that reduces CO2 emissions."

I think I need to start communicating with http://www.transformca.org/ . What I need to do is get this transportation advocacy organization thinking about altering the charter and purpose of the local bus system provider.

Note my earlier post about the mission of the San Mateo County Transportation District.
http://lessco2essay.blogspot.com/2010/10/questions-for-transit-agency-board-of.html
Here is a phrasing effort by me, a negative statement reflecting on the revenue is not sufficient to meet costs operating problem that removed private organizations from the role as public bus system operator:
http://lessco2essay.blogspot.com/2010/02/how-to-move-forward-on-bus-system.html

Take a gimlet eyed look at the semi-rural suburban transit problems of places like El Granada and Half Moon Bay, California. Look at the interlock between the pressure to keep the existing job and pay the mortgage and the difficulty of switching to a shorter commute new job even though the pay is less.

Really now, here are 5,000 to 30,000 people that are not going to move to San Mateo, and surely not to San Francisco, and surely not to Sausalito to have the idyllic dense urban life described by Stewart Brand.

See earlier book review of Mr. Brand's http://lessco2essay.blogspot.com/2009/11/review-whole-earth-discipline-by.html

Ride sharing can use cell phones to dynamically arrange rides

2011-04-06T23:45:00.000-07:00

A $20 cell phone, a 20 year old VHF walkie talkie ham radio and a walker's hat.

I have been a member of the San Mateo County 511.org Ridematch service since 10-15-2007.

Over the period of 3 1/2 years I updated my registration 3 times and I have never found a ride match.

Last night, 511.org called me to do a Ridematch service user survey.

For my part, the survey was a hasty event where there is not enough time for me to say my thought and develop an idea or proposal for a better way 511.org should work.

First, let me explain how I estimate the 511.org ridematch software program works.
Second, list the program weaknesses.
Third, how we should use cell phones and bridge toll transponders to rapidly prototype a more aggressive and more economically sound ride match system.

I will post this and continue later...

Here is a predecessor post

important-technical-refinements-to.html

Values projected in a 1980 National Geographic ad selling the Honda Accord

2011-02-13T23:41:00.000-08:00


Click on the image to enlarge the image.


Compare what this ad sells to the previous Cadillac ad.

Values projected in 1980 in a National Geographic magazine ad selling Cadillac cars

2011-02-09T22:06:00.000-08:00


Click on the text above to read the words without side boxes.

Relaxation of the social matrix to reduce energy consumption and CO2 generation

2011-02-06T23:53:00.000-08:00


Honda timing belt. Lets look at the costs of different approaches to fixing the CO2 emissions problem.

Consider these three approaches to reducing energy consumption and CO2 emissions reduction by changing my trip to work.

1. The "no-social change linear approach". Switch to a car that gets much better gas mileage.

Case study: The commute drive is 43.2 miles per day. Gasoline sells for $3.50 per gallon. I will use a gasoline price of $7 per gallon to account for road taxes and vehicle maintenance in addition to gasoline.

The existing car gets 21.7 miles per gallon, car value is $1000.

A high mileage car (Toyota Prius) has a car value of $12000 and it gets 42.0 miles per gallon. I will assume I sell the existing car, so a Prius will show a cost of $11000 in the formula.

What is the number of miles either car must be driven such that the cost of the car plus the cost of the gasoline is equal?

Formula: $1000 + k($7/21.7) = $11000 + k($7/42.0). Solving for k = 64,138 miles.

Checking each car using the cost per mile for each.

Existing car costs $.323 per mile driven. $1000 + 64,138 x .323 = $21,716.55.

The Prius car costs $.167 per mile driven. $11,000 + 64,138 x .167 = $11,000 + $10,711.

For this 43.2 mile daily commute, the 64,138 miles of driving takes place in 1485 commute trips. For a 250 day work year, that is ~5.9 years, for a 150 day (public school) work year that is ~9.9 years.

2. The "enhanced information systems approach". Reduce energy and CO2 by 20% by accepting a rider every day. This action requires a high information content rider finding system. I happen to drive right past a Junior College campus. I should be able to easily pick up a rider for at least 1/2 of my daily commute.

Minimal example with 1 rider for 1/2 of the daily commute:

This solution requires cell telephones that have global position sensors (GPS) and the ability to run multiple applications that gather time and location data and transmit that data to a ride-share coordinating application. The solution also requires a payment scheme to provide payment to the driver and coverage of the additional risks of sharing a private vehicle with riders.
The new cost added by this approach is a cell phone of the "3G" type that has a global positioning sensor, can run a ride-share application to match a ride with a driver. Assume the phone cost is $150 over 2 years and there is a $25 per month data charge. Both the driver and the rider need a phone. The phone detects the ride sharing event and the phone application organizes a payment transfer from the rider to the driver.

We will count up the cash cost for the term of one month with four weeks and five commute days per week. We will assume the ride sharing effort provides 1 rider paying 1/2 the cost of the ride and the rider only rides for 1/2 of the daily commute distance. Cost of driving alone:

Same 43.2 mile (round trip commute).
Same vehicle cost of $7 per 21.7 miles driven. = $.3226/mile
Same daily commute cost of 43.2 miles x $.3226/mile = $13.9355 per day
The monthly cost for 20 single commute round trips = $278.7097 per month.

Now, add a rider who pays 1/2 the cost for riding about 1/2 of the commute distance:

The rider pays 1/4 of the monthly cost above = $69.6774/month
3G cell phone price over 24 months= $150/24 = $6.25/month
3G cell phone data plan charge per month = $25/month
The monthly cost for 20 1/4 distance ride share trips = $100.9274 per month

Now, figure the driver's cost with a rider provided by the "3G" cell phone service:

The driver's single commute cost, from above = $278.7097/month
Deduct the rider's payment = -$69.6774/month
Add in another 3G cell phone = $31.25/month
The monthly cost for ride-sharing driver 20 commute trips = $240.2823

The effective passengers miles per gallon resulting from ride sharing. No allowance made for the increased vehicle weight. The ride-sharing benefit is about 20% decrease in gallons of gasoline per passenger mile.

No rider = 21.7 miles/gallon
One rider 1/4 of the time => 1.25 x 21.7 = 27.1 miles per gallon

3. The "relax social employment requirements and restructure organizations approach." This is energy conservation by relaxing the qualification rules under which people are employed.

Instead of driving 21.6 miles to the particular site where I do my work, perform a kind of annealing or stress relief process to the fabric of society and make it possible for me to qualify for entry into many different fields of employment when I can show completion of a 4 year liberal education, and about a semester of online study and about a semester of vocational classroom or laboratory work.

To be continued: On my way to work, I drive past 5 potentially similar employment settings. I also drive past at least another 5 employment settings where I could work if I had 2 semesters of post BA junior college preparation. To be completed: For this case, lets say that based on my present employment I have an employment radius of 21.6 miles. Lets say an employment radius is related to the area of the circle defined by that radius. A radius of 21.6 miles means I qualify for a job in the resulting area, which is 1,465 square miles. Suppose we anneal the social employment rules so I qualify for a job in 1/2 of the present area. The new employment radius is 15.274 miles. Suppose the only benefit is I drive fewer miles every day. How many trips at the shorter distance are required to save energy after I pay the cost of 1 semester of online study and 1 semester of night college?

Readers: I miss you. Where is the dialog?

2011-01-01T22:56:00.000-08:00


When I take work photos, the dog moves in. He enjoys getting right in the middle of what ever I am focusing on.

It has been 15 months since a comment was posted to this blog. I see 7 or 8 visits a month from the web tracking software.

I welcome any posted messages. Thanks.

How to organize for a political push to restructure copyright and patent law?

2010-12-29T20:13:00.000-08:00


Looking at things from a high level view. Shows much work is needed.

Advocating for changes in copyright and patent law is basically a sharks versus minnows problem. The sharks are the relatively few businesses who are able to write laws and lobby for their passage. The minnows are the 200 million plus people who buy material covered by copyright and patent protection.
At the level of Federal law, the sharks have been winning by arguing for and lobbying for broader laws and longer terms of copyright and patent protection.
I write here about the problem by cutting it into three parts. One part is “How do you organize the minnows.” Part two is: “How do you argue for less restrictive copyright and patent laws? Part three is: “What law do you write and what do you ask elected representatives to vote for?”

On the problem of “How do you organize the minnows?”

I recently discovered an article that shows how and why an organization effort could plausibly employ a social network site like Facebook. The kind of action group that is plausible is: A loose social network.
The article title is “Small Change Why the revolution will not be tweeted.” by Malcolm Gladwell, published in The New Yorker magazine, October 4, 2010.
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/10/04/101004fa_fact_gladwell

Copyright and patent reform needs to be a non-partisan movement.
As an issue for the large numbers of “minnow” advocates, this will be a relatively small commitment activity that does not require the intense friendship and hierarchical structure of the American Civil Rights movement. The Malcom Gladwell article above eloquently disassembles the presumption that a Facebook type advocacy program can create a disciplined, hierarchical organization. Instead of an institution, a Facebook advocacy program tends to create a loose network.
The hundreds of thousands of reform advocates need a set of winning arguments.
Money and rhetoric: In the absence of a better rule of thumb, the lobbying and campaign donation dollars deployed needs to match or exceed by a factor of two the lobbying and campaign donation dollars spent by the “shark”advocates. The movement needs a well documented estimate of the shark lobby hours and dollars and shark campaign spending and a matching tally for the “minnow” advocates.

Unless something changes, let's assume that money talks in politics. The movement needs both money and quality talk. The copyright and patent reform activity needs both a coherent rhetorical argument and matching donations.

On the problem of “How do you argue for less restrictive copyright and patent laws?”

There are many instances where copyright and patent protections are an encumberance and annoyance. For instance:

German Kindergartens Ordered To Pay Copyright For Songs http://idle.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=10/12/29/169253

Several legal arguments are of great importance to the development of an effective advocacy argument. Some thinkers are:

Richard Stallman and the Free Software Foundation.
- http://shop.fsf.org/product/free-software-free-society-2/
Lawrence Lessig, law professor and copyright lawyer.
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Lessig

The intellectual property and entertainment industries have a very strong argument for more restrictive copyright laws. The advocates for stronger laws and longer terms of protection claim the stronger laws are needed to prevent illegal copying and unpaid distribution of copyrighted works.

It seems to me that the counter arguments should be rhetorically organized using ideas developed by George Lakoff. Mr. Lakoff proposes that metaphors built around the “strong father model” regularly get a strong acceptance response from American people of the conservative persuasion. One book by Mr. Lakoff that summarizes this idea in a political context is: Don't Think of an Elephant! Know Your Values and Frame the Debate. See this Wikipedia article for a summary:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Lakoff

On the third problem of “What law do you write and what do you ask elected representatives to vote for?”

One good discussion is:

Six Steps to Digital Copyright Sanity: Reforming a Pre-VCR Law for a YouTube World

http://www.publicknowledge.org/node/1244

My recent private citizen thoughts have been like this:

In the area of patents, I think we should explore removing the process of patent accumulation and cross licensing as a business practice of excluding small businesses. I suggest that cross licensing agreements create industrial oligarchical relationships. Legally regulate patent licensing so there are only two prices for a patent license. One price is the institutional license. The other price is the “capped per embodiment” license. Capped per embodiment means that in a physical object or computer program, all the patents taken together can not exceed 2% of the wholesale price of the object or program. The point of patents as named in the U.S. Constitution is to advance the useful arts, not exclude businesses from engaging in the best practices.
In the area of copyright, I think we should again, put a licensing model into the law. For copyrighted objects that can move over the Internet there are two licensing fee models I feel we should explore. One, a fee based on the limit of hours of attention that the recipient of data downloads experiences. Two, a fee based on a tax added to storage media when sold. Then payment to copyright holders based on a sample and audit of user storage media for copyright tags and serial numbers prepended at the head of every downloaded file of copyright material.

A proposal for autonomous vehicle technology in California

2010-11-07T00:48:00.000-07:00


Surfer's beach El Granada, California in the early afternoon.

Dear Governor Elect Jerry Brown,

        Please write me back if you would like me to develop this idea further.

        The idea is to develop and implement autonomous vehicle technology (AVT) in California.

        The computer side of a project like this needs a software design and a hardware prototype. The vehicle will have a kind of computer that reads sensors and sends control signals to the vehicle. This device presents a self describing interface. The autonomous vehicle computer connects to this interface. The interface tells the computer about the car and what this specific car can and can't do.

       Instead of every make and model of automobile and truck having different and unique autonomous vehicle operation features, I argue that the car and the autonomous vehicle computer should be separate units. One advantage of partitioning the system is the autonomous vehicle programs can be tested on a simulator. Second, autonomous vehicle computer software can be written to optimize different objectives. An autonomous vehicle could run a commuter collision avoidance program and a ride sharing program too. A socially useful program would be an impaired or distracted driver program that helps a vehicle operate safely even if the driver is impaired by alcohol.

        The political side of this project needs somebody who can make the following points:

        We need 1 new chapter passed in the Vehicle Code.

        We need the drunk driving law enforcement establishment to put autonomous vehicle technology to work completely stopping drunk driving deaths.

The California government has two roles in this scheme:

        The first role for California government is to implement vehicle code and other laws to use the technology. One immediate field for laws enabling AVT use is in drunk driving accident prevention.

        The second role for California government is to bring together the makers and designers of autonomous vehicle technology (many of them are in the State now) to quickly roll out on California roads AVT technology.

        One California specific political purpose is to assist in the growth of California businesses furnishing the computers, sensors and programs required by autonomous vehicles.

        A second political purpose is to use AVT technology in California to facilitate the better use existing vehicles and roads with a higher load factor, lower CO2 emission, lower pollution and greater safety.

        I see one short term way a project like this can benefit California:

        Autonomous vehicle technology can provide a great reduction in injury and deaths due to drunk driving. The zero tolerance alcohol law has been estimated to reduce teen age binge drinking by 12%.

        A very simple use of autonomous vehicle technology with existing cars is to stop the car if the driver is drunk. A basic autonomous vehicle control setup could cost $3000.

        In California, the drunk driving problem has about 1700 fatalities per year, 28,000 injuries per year and 200,000+ DUI traffic stop events per year. These are 2008 numbers taken from:

        http://www.redondo.org/civica/filebank/blobdload.asp?BlobID=17520

        A second benefit to the State is autonomous vehicle technology can lead to many innovations in transportation. As the sophistication of the vehicle control adapter increases, layers of benefit appear.

An autonomous vehicle computer with just a GPS and a cellular data phone could do real time paid and insured ride sharing. This could raise the commuter miles per gallon by a factor of 50% or more with existing vehicles.

An autonomous vehicle computer with basic vehicle control and basic sensors could do coast between stoplights and stay in lane. The vehicle could avoid blind intersection, speed and fog related collisions.

An autonomous vehicle computer with more vehicle control could avoid cats, possums and deer. It could do self parking and . The driver could let go of the steering wheel. Public buses could run sometimes without an expensive operator driving the bus. Vehicles could caravan in groups.

Commercial vehicles are a huge market for AVT because commonly the labor cost of the driver equals the operational cost of the vehicle at around 35 mph. Long haul trucks run as fast as possible to minimize labor cost. With AVT technology, a long haul truck could be operated at the slower lowest fuel use and least pollution emitted speed.

An AVT computer could be used on a bicycle to enable the rider to reach every traffic light at the best time.

Thank you Governor Brown for reading this email.

What to do to move ahead to low CO2 emission low energy auto and bus transportation ?

2010-10-19T22:49:00.000-07:00


Automatic traffic cameras on a pole make money for the city. Why not switch to autonomous vehicles that don't break traffic laws?

My vehicle, a 1993 Dodge V6 van has around 249,000 miles and I have a really bad leak from the water pump. It is Tuesday night and I can't realistically work on the car until Saturday because replacing the $40 water pump is an 8+ hour job. (Home mechanic repair projects take longer than professional mechanic repairs.)

This state of affairs has caused me to ask three questions:

Is there for sale a reasonably priced low CO2 and low energy solution to replace my tired piece of 20th century automobile machinery?
Can I build an electric motorcycle or electric car with present day parts to do my present commute?
Can I reasonably ride the bus to work? Even for just 4 days?
Can I find a ride sharing arrangement for tomorrow morning?

The answers are: Question 1 is, apparently not. Question 2 is not right away. Question 3 is last time I looked the bus ride was >2 hours. Question 4 is "I doubt."

What are the reasonable changes that can be made today to improve the lame choices available?

Changes to the California American automobile economic and technical framework:

The goals are:

Make not-driving as economically rewarding as driving.
Raise the load factor of many vehicles on the road by means of ride sharing.
Create a technical solution to drunk and distracted driving by bringing autonomous vehicle control technology to the existing fleet of vehicles.

Modify the automobile liability insurance and vehicle tax structure to make the cost of driving a car mostly linear where there is very little charge applied to a vehicle which is parked and not driven for a whole day.

Provide a vehicle information and control interface, like a USB jack. Provide a "pay and drive" device that logs the use of the car and communicates the use to the insurance provider and state. This "pay and drive" device would be a small computer, a GPS receiver and a data transmission cell phone. The pay and drive device would be attached (as by a usb connection) to the vehicle computer and dashboard instruments of the car. When the car is driven, then the pay and drive device deducts a daily insurance and daily license charge from the owner's prepaid account.

The result is the car owner is literally free of car insurance and license charges every day the vehicle is not driven.

Connect the automobile to a cell phone device that runs applications. Create a ride sharing application that would enable a specific vehicle to accept a rider when the vehicle is being operated in a repeating commute pattern.

Create the legal and financial structure for ride sharing to reimburse the ride provider and provide insurance and a measure of personal safety.

........................ Continue .......

Questions for a Transit Agency Board of Directors Member

2010-10-14T22:18:00.000-07:00


A bicycle rider on Devil's Slide, Highway 1, San Mateo County. Photo taken through a side view mirror. At least 100 cars passed the cyclist as he pedaled uphill from Pacifica

Questions about what are the limiting factors the Board of Directors has struggled with over the past year.

What are the boundary lines or limiting factors that the Board of Directors winds up engaging with?

Of these following items, how would you rename the items and then which are the biggest factors:

Other transit agencies with other transit activities removing SamTrans funding.
Difficulties arranging drivers and staff to do new projects.
Restrictive terms of Federal and State funding
Problems getting bus stops and cooperation of cities and city traffic engineers.
Business closures and changes in the need for specialized transit service.

I would like to ask you to tell me about one or two transit service developments that the Board of Directors have considered that might change the basic productivity or patronage ratio of the public transit institution.

What are some projects the transit agency has tried that involve cooperation with private transportation organizations like taxi and charter bus services?

Has the Board of Directors developed a request for more freedom of operation from the State?

Has the Board of Directors discussed seeking changes in the SamTrans State enabling legislation and changes in the State anti-dumping and anti-trust laws to enable cooperation with private transit providers?

What are some of the technical innovations the Board of Directors is working on?

Has the Board of Directors explored modifying buses for autonomous operation? If equipped for autonomous operation, one bus driver could lead a caravan of 3 or 4 buses for a heavily traveled section of road.

Has the Board of Directors explored creating an electric bus using ultracapacitors and frequent recharging at bus stops?

Has the Board of Directors explored forming a business and technology partnership with a non-profit foundation and several local Colleges to initiate a local technology leap with business formation possibilities?

Has the Board of Directors explored schedule and route innovations using methods of operational research, network theory, game theory and topology?

Has the Board of Directors explored operating it's own cell phone and data network? This would facilitate electronic payment, trip coordination, and work-while-you-ride value exchange.

Has the Board of Directors explored lobbying the State to create an automobile insurance and licensing fee structure to facilitate the decline of the California automobile population into a "drive occasionally" status.

Has the Board of Directors explored doing a marketing study and service prototype to characterize the service parameters required to effectively allow freight carts on the public bus?

A kind of energy and economic advancement plan

2010-10-12T22:51:00.000-07:00


A tempered glass sliding door, shattering and about to drop out of the frame

You can read a document like an economic recovery plan as a statement from a person about what that person knows, sees and values in his society and life.

Here is my list of the "really big problems".

No reasonable economic recovery plan can directly address these items. These problems need to be divided into smaller units and the equilibrium shifted so the nation will drift in the right direction.

The United States has undergone a 40 year period of increase in the price of single family residential homes. The price increase appears to have peaked and receded to dollar amounts common in the years 2000 to 2006.
The United States (in October 2010) is in a state of high unemployment.
It appears that large numbers of unemployed persons in 2010, when they do become re-employed move to lower wage work and sometimes part-time work.
There appears to be a 30 year trend of de-industrialization in the United States. Except for food, many items one might buy in a department store or hardware store or auto parts store are made off shore, and most commonly, in China.
The reciprocal benefits of lowering trade barriers, eliminating protected industries, and seeking "free trade" are not resulting in a surge of high value American made products being sold over seas.

We have had a good solid 50 years of conservative politicians saying the United States government will be made insolvent due to rising expenses caused by entitlements.

Namely the Social Security system, the Medicare health insurance system for older people, and welfare support for children, orphans and the disabled.
There also is a chorus of complaints that American public elementary and secondary education is yet another "entitlement" that costs too much and produces too few educated people.

In the transportation area, we have another series of problems:

The car - bus dialogue is caught between the same service and cost problems that have existed since privately owned public transportation systems began economically failing before World War II.
Gasoline presently sells for (On October 9, 2010, Pacifica, California Shell station) $3.19 per gallon and there is no visible change in the vehicle mix or commute habits of Californians I see. At best, there is a modest increase in usage of the public bus.
While I see internet advocacy, there does not seem to be any major movement to reduce the Carbon emissions resulting from automobiles driven by individuals.
As an individual, I am caught in a relatively high commute CO2 emission situation, and I don't see any pathway opening to do my existing job with a shorter commute or a much cleaner commute vehicle.

In the military area, the nation is still caught in a high expenditure situation.

The September 11, 2001 Twin Tower and Pentagon attacks have created a strong philosophical agreement between the American military and a group of religious fanatics. Both sides agree that military force is the only way to dispute the ideology voiced by the fanatics.
The vulnerability of these 6th Century AD religious fanatics to non-force based marginalization is simply forfeited. We have no significant social presence, literacy or intellectual presence in their culture.
On our side, the American military operates a very high energy consumption activity.
Some critics suggest that the military actions we are engaged in will continue for ten more years at least (that is 2020).

So these are the broad problems to be addressed in an economic recovery package?

How to write an economic recovery plan

2010-10-05T21:52:00.000-07:00

The light is green as traffic in Burlingame, California speeds past the waiting red light camera.

Here is an example of an economic recovery plan:

http://philip.greenspun.com/politics/economic-recovery

Here is a case study of the kind of employment and life problem that should be addressed by an economic recovery plan:

http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175304/tomgram:_andy_kroll,_the_face_of_an_american_lost_generation/

An economic recovery plan is a description of a course of action that will affect the life of a group of people in America.

Your plan needs one or more structural axes. Examples are changes in a tax, a subsidy or some other kind of financial encouragement.
Your plan needs to describe an area of cost and an area of benefit.
What beliefs or folklore does your plan benefit?
What popular delusion does your plan engage with?
How is your plan going to alter the status quo?
Who are the groups that are at the center of your concerns.
What is an example of a single person who will typically benefit from your planned action?
Are you going to recreate a state of affairs from a time in the past?
Are you going to create a new future?

Natchez Transit System on PBS News Hour

2010-09-30T21:26:00.000-07:00

With 248,000 miles, the car gets harder to keep running - when will the transportation revolution arrive?


Lightweight, high power, one wheel. Really now! Demonstrated at the 2010 Dream Machines Show, Half Moon Bay, California.

     The PBS Newshour public television news program, on September 30th, carried a story about the city of Natchez, Mississippi telephone transit service. That city has a Department of Adult Services and Public Transportation.

   The story profiled the two sides of the transportation service.

   Natchez Transit runs buses that come to people's houses to pick them up. Sometimes the pickup is in 15 minutes.

   To tell the Transit side of the story, the director of the service was quoted.
".SABRENA BARTLEY, director, Natchez Transit: I do not have to tell you how important that transportation is in the community."

   To tell the conventional criticism of the service, a car dealer was quoted.
" CARL ROGEL: A bus system in this area is never going to be profitable. So, not only are we spending the initial $4 million of the stimulus money; you know, someone is going to have to support that system, and that someone is going to be the taxpayer."

   The reporter, quoting a local paper, noted the individual per-ride cost of the service.

" MILES O'BRIEN: The editorial board at The Natchez Democrat is also skeptical. They did some math and warned that, at about $20 a ride, taxpayers may not be getting the most bang for their buck."



http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/business/july-dec10/stimulus_09-30.html

http://www.natchezdemocrat.com/news/2010/aug/10/natchez-transit-system-be-featured-pbs/

Review: Crash Course the American Automobile Industry's Road from Glory to Disaster

2010-07-15T19:50:00.000-07:00

This is a 1949 Cadillac reworked by a San Jose craftsman into a one of a kind dream machine.

It was shown at the Dream Machines car show, April 2010, Half Moon Bay, California.

Crash Course, The American Automobile Industry's Road from Glory to Disaster by Paul Ingrassia. Published by Random House Inc., New York, c. 2010.

Crash Course is a narrative of the development and decline of the American auto manufacturing business from the end of World War II to the bankruptcy filing of General Motors which started on Monday June 1, 2010 at 6:03 am at U.S. Bankruptcy Court, New York, New York.

The author, Paul Ingrassia is a long time journalist covering the American auto industry. He was the Detroit bureau chief for The Wall Street Journal. In 1995, with Joseph B. White he wrote "Comeback: The Fall and Rise of the American auto industry."

Is there a conflict that the author published a book in 1995 about an apparent business recovery and the same author publishes a book 15 years later describing the crash of the same American automobile industry? No. A few good years of sales in the '90s covered up structural problems that became insoluble when gasoline prices went up and car sales went down a few years later.

Crash Course is selected vignettes of the automobile industry. In one event after another, the American auto manufacturers were boxed in with high fixed operating costs, then a drastic decline in volume of sales, and finally very few desirable car models.

One of the stories in Crash Course is the General Motors second effort to make a small car to compete with imported cars like the Volkswagen. Chevrolet designed the Vega 4 cylinder small sedan. Chevrolet prepared to manufacture the car in Lordstown, Ohio with production beginning in 1970.

The same Lordstown factory was also studied by Emma Rothschild who wrote Paradise Lost The Decline of the Auto Industrial Age.

I have reviewed her book in this blog: Review of Decline of the Auto Industrial Age

Crash Course tells the story of Lordstown with additional details. Where Emma Rothchild found the Lordstown factory an example of the problems with the the mass automobile manufacturing culture, Mr. Ingrassia adds details and shows business consequences that are both mundane and grim warnings of the upcoming problems with making autos in America in the American way.

Chevrolet had spent about 2 years designing the Vega and advertising it's engineering innovations. Shortly after the Vega went into production at Lordstown, the United Auto Workers called a strike. The strike lasted 67 days, it stopped Vega production and distribution. The strike as an event shows that the UAW Union treated the Vega introduction as an opportunity to force General Motors to sign a new labor contract when the company seriously needed to get a major new manufacturing iniative started.

Right around the same time, General Motors reorganized the Lordstown factory management. GM gave control of the factory to a new entity called GM Assembly Division. The effect of that change was to add a new layer of bureaucracy between the Vega designers and the car assemblers.

Within the Lordstown factory, there had been a major effort to incorporate robotic machines. The goal was to improve build quality and reduce labor content in the cars. Unfortunately, the setup changed many assembly jobs into machine loading tasks.

According to Crash Course, the Lordstown factory also had one of the youngest workforces in General Motors. The factory was one hour drive away from Kent State College where 4 students were shot to death on May 4, 1970. The Vietnam War and the draft were both in effect. Recreational drugs were known and used at that time. The social climate, draft pressures and a robot dominated work environment all affected the workforce. When the strike ended, the Lordstown plant began manufacturing Vega cars.

Lordstown management raised the number of cars built per hour from 60 to 90. It was called "the fastest factory in the world" according to Ms. Rothschild. There was an explosion of car quality problems. Cars were made with keys broken off in the trunk lock, dents in the fenders, cuts in the upholstry. The engine had cylinder problems resulting in the car becoming famous as having a "throwaway engine block".

The Lordstown Vega story happened 40 years before the GM bankruptcy. Let me try and list the ways that this incident foreshadows the coming problems:

General Motors was re-organizing itself. The change at this factory played a small role in a failure to build good small cars. The corporation became more complicated but not more productive.
The union was using strike tactics that conflicted with the goals of the Vega project. The strike damaged the product introduction and contributed to the subsequent speed up of the production line later.
The effort to automate car manufacturing combined with the production pressures created by the strike timing combined with the Vietnam draft and Kent State killings made a work environment of epic crumminess.
The Vega was several hundred pounds and several hundred dollars more expensive than the imported Volkswagen it was supposed to compete with in the marketplace.
Once the engine problems and manufacturing problems were fixed, the car was a decent cheap 4 cylinder sedan.
The strategic goal of making a quality and cost competitive American small car was undermined by the actions of GM management and the Union management and the assembly workers.

Crash Course shows how the American automobile makers became boxed in several business dimensions. High labor costs, equally higher management costs, further costs due to committees, strictures preventing importing of parts, rules preventing use of low cost suppliers.

I think one of the things that is missing from Crash Course is numbers and description of the huge American consumer buying push over the last 70 years. What is the economic rocket motor that has caused the American public for at least the first 50 years to buy the stuff the American automobile manufacturers have offered?

In this blog I have explored one of the factors propelling the usage of automobiles in America. I found a cost advantage of using a private car compared to the cost of a public bus when the value of the traveller's time is included in the cost computation.

Total-cost-of-trip-car-versus-bus

Another thing that puzzles me after reading Crash Course is why does General Motors (or the other two American makers) not learn from past management and engineering successes? Here is what I mean: All the car makers have had instances of good small engines and good small cars. Why doesn't years of experience result in new designs that are better than the old designs?

Here is another way of putting it, the puzzle in Crash Course is how could all three American auto makers have all gone so deeply into a jam of rising costs, difficult labor relations and plausible energy problems?

The powerful picture created in Crash Course is the Big Three became boxed in, they finally all leaned towards a "big vehicles for big profits" product mix and they marched ahead with a cost structure that would not proportionally decrease if sales decreased.

Here is my list of puzzles about the automobile business that Crash Course approaches:

The car business is still a vigorous trade despite the economic problems experienced by the Big Three. How strong is the continuing demand for cars?

The financial problems of the Big Three would probably make some very interesting tables and graphs. Both GM and Chrysler bankruptcies have accounting stories that needs to be told.

In a Wikipedia article about General Motors, one view point is that the accounting methods introduced by Alfred P. Sloan in the 1930's eventually allowed excess production in later years. The accounting design left management blind to excess inventory that became a great burden when car sales began declining.

One of the seminal decision points of the entire narrative is the finding by American car makers that "Small cars (energy efficient cars) result in small profits."

This is a specific pivotal point where the journalism should describe the problem in much more detail. There are many examples of abandoned efforts: What is the theme revealed by the Falcon, Pinto, Escort, Vega, Corvair, Sprint, Aveo, Valiant, Dodge Omni, Dodge Colt and domestic Volkswagen.?

What is required to make a domestic small car to match a Toyota Corolla or a Honda Civic? Why can't a domestic small car go 200K miles and not draw curses from it's owner as one cheap thing after another breaks, falls apart or rusts away?

Found, Linear regression data from Los Angeles 1980

2010-03-29T22:09:00.000-07:00

Four lines for four linear formulae

(Having trouble getting the graph right)

   I found my linear regression travel time analysis of automobile and public bus travel in Los Angeles. The trips were made in 1978
and 1979.

In the table below, the Los Angeles 1980 trips are slower than the El Granada - Pacifica -San Mateo trips made in 2009-2010.

    The analysis was done in 1980 from the trip records using topographic maps and a drafting scale for computing airline distance between points. The regression calculations were done using a HP-41 programmable calculator. I published the program through the HP contributed software service.

   I need to check if the distance value I measured using maps in 1980 has an error compared to the great circle value I have used for 2009 calculations. In 1980 I used topographic maps that are marked with a 1000 meter Mercator grid. I used this grid without any documentation. Fortunately I have a paper record for each trip.

Linear regression coefficients for travel time.
For Los Angeles in 1979-1980 and El Granada-Pacifica-San Mateo in 2009-2010
Not yet tested for differences in measurement and calculation method.

Travel time in minutes.	minutes per mile	+minutes
Bycar2010EG	1.41	12.09
Bycar1980LA	1.68	8.04
Bybus2010EG	4.20	24.51
Bybus1980LA	8.54	16.88

Same equation expressed in popular units:
Vehicle behavior	miles per hour	+minutes
Bycar2010EG	43	12
Bycar1980LA	36	8
Bybus2010EG	14	25
Bybus1980LA	7	17

The real bus trip alters my previous linear regression

2010-03-20T00:12:00.000-07:00

Click to see graph as a separate display

The recent bus trip I took from home to work modifies my previous linear regression calculations of a "travel time equation". The "real" bus trip had modest walking and very little waiting

For travel distances expressed in great circle miles:

Auto: 1.41 minutes/mile + 12.09 minutes =

Samtrans bus: 4.20 minutes/mile + 24.51 minutes =

The 3-16-2010 journey has these calculated and real travel times

Auto, calculated = 35.3 min. Real = 45 min

Bus, calculated = 93.52 min. Real = 80 min.

Taking the bus to work

2010-03-16T22:46:00.000-07:00

The bus stop at Carmel and Avenue Alhambra.

Finally I got organized and made a trip to work using the public bus. I look forward to testing my linear regression formula and reviewing my total cost of a trip analyses I made earlier in this blog.
For this first trip, I took notes on the number of passengers. The table below shows the "load factor" of the buses I rode as I made a trip to work during a workday morning.
For the advocacy of this blog here are some of the observations I was interested in during this journey:

Is the rear door and rear area of the public transit buses adaptable freight carts?
Do the SamTrans buses board wheelchairs?
How busy is the bus driver?
What is the level of time and destination automation being used on the buses?
Are there active advertising signs inside the bus?
Are there any clues to the potential for making the bus an autonomous vehicle?

The following table shows the load factor generally increasing as the buses I rode moved from a suburban setting to a highly urbanized setting.

Definitions: Time = clock time. On = count of people who board Off = count of people who get off Riders = count of riders including the observer Seats = count of seats Load factor = riders (up to this stop) / seats. Minutes = interval between rows.

3/16/2010 bus trip home to work
Time	On	Off	Riders	Seats	Load factor	Minutes	Comment
5:51							Leave house
6:00						0:09	Arrive at bus stop
6:03	1		8	39		0:03	Bus 294 arrive
6:11	1	1	8	39	0.21	0:08	Stop on 92 near Peets
6:18	3		11	39	0.21	0:07	Main x Kelly HMB loop
6:36		1	10	39	0.28	0:18	92 x Alameda de las Pulgas
6:38		1	9	39	0.26	0:02	Near high school
6:41		1	8	39	0.23	0:03	Near library
6:44		8	0	39	0.21	0:03	End El Camino Real x 31st
6:45			12	39		0:01	Board 390 Southbound
6:46	7		19	39	0.31	0:01
6:48	1		20	39	0.49	0:02
6:49	1		21	39	0.51	0:01
6:50	1		22	39	0.54	0:01
6:52	4		26	39	0.56	0:02
6:54		1	25	39	0.67	0:02
6:57		2	23	39	0.64	0:03
6:58		1	22	39	0.59	0:01
7:00	1	4	19	39	0.56	0:02
7:02		1	18	39	0.49	0:02
7:03		1	17	39	0.46	0:01	End bus ride ECR x Brewster
7:08					0.44	0:05	Arrive gate
7:11						0:03	Arrive at work
						1:20	total trip time

Brown for Governor, Poisner for Governor and Meg Whitman - can they say the unpopular truth?

2010-03-04T22:43:00.000-08:00

This tractor is used to place rocks and sand to prevent cliff erosion.

I write this on March 4th 2010.

Around the state (California) there are demonstrations asking "Restore the funds cut from education." I feel the demonstrations neglect to speak to much larger public and political problem:

The public dialogue will not contemplate enacting higher taxes.

How will the three candidates for governor engage with the following unpopular truths?

Revenue to the California state government needs to be substantially increased.

Revenue must be increased to fund a modern society that does provide public education, health support, social security and other services and benefits.

The problem with raising the basic tax rate for all is how to do it fairly and evenly. I favor raising the sales tax rate to 11%, and then doing adjustments and credits at the level of the state income tax.

Real estate in California over a 40 to 50 year period has become over valued by 40-50%.

The entire state (indeed the entire nation) is caught in this unpleasant state of affairs. Nobody enjoys the vanished "wealth effect" that ended when property price appreciation stalled out in 2007-2009.

The over valuation of real estate (I refer mainly to homes) is the root of a cascade of problems.

One of these problems is the large amount of mortgage debt. The nation hasn't yet started to have a dialogue about how to get off of the hook of enormous mortgages that often require two working parent incomes.

From another point of view, critics describe the mortagage industry as about twice as big as it should be.

Another aspect of the over valuation is: Young adults starting a family can't afford a home. See "The coming collapse of the middle class" below.

Resource:

Henry_George advocate of land value taxation

YouTube - The Coming Collapse of the Middle Class

How to move forward on a bus system charter ammendment?

2010-02-15T10:37:00.000-08:00

A bell pepper core. After getting to the core of things..

How do we reorganize the core for presentation to others?

How would I recast the arguments of "Put carts on the public bus..." to appropriately address lawmakers?

How would I address transit agency directors and engineers?

The history of public transit is the collapse of private transit and the development of public transit funding and public transit organizations.
No matter whether the funding is public or private, transit service agencies operate with a very low load factor or utilization of available capacity.
More...

President's State of the Union Address - reviewed from a bus system change point of view

2010-01-27T22:35:00.000-08:00

A row of bicycles for rent or sale at Half Moon Bay Bicycles

Entertaining an advocacy like "Put carts on the public bus..." immediately puts a listener to the State of the Union address on the alert for what is the President's vision of the approaching social future?

One policy change of note is the President advocated construction of more safe nuclear power. He also asked for more alternative energy projects, research, and business startups. He places these measures in a framework of more jobs, more domestic growth and competitiveness.

On a broad view, I feel the Republicans don't grasp that Mr. Obama is a very middle of the road politician, he is with them in not changing the American system much at all.

The image of America I heard from the President sounds consistent with the past.

Here comes the tide of advocacy for high density urban cities

2010-01-24T22:30:00.000-08:00

This photo, taken on Tuesday, 12:33 pm 12-29-2009,

shows a pretty good load of passengers.

Here is a book that advocates large dense urban cities as a way for many people to live with a smaller carbon emission footprint:

GREEN METROPOLIS
Why Living Smaller, Living Closer, And Driving Less Are the Keys to Sustainability

By David Owen, published 2009.

Rebecca Solnit reviews the Copenhagen Climate Summit

2010-01-05T21:30:00.000-08:00

Rebecca Solint published on the TomGram essay site

Best wishes to you in the new year: 2010.

The Copenhagen Climate Summit conference held in December 2009 ended with what I regard as a stunning and disappointing outcome. No numeric goal and deadline for global warming gas emission was agreed on. According to the Rebecca Solnit article, the main reason for no numeric emission reduction is China refused to participate in a commitment.

Lets take the Copenhagen Summit disappointment, and note the broad decline in American manufacturing, and especially note that what remains of an American automobile industry depends on a large fraction of low cost imported components.

Here are the points that affect the implementation of "carts on the bus":

This blog needs a CO2 emission reduction overview of the :carts on the bus scheme.
The design should favor modifying existing carts, locally creating the components.
The benefits of an euler path should be reviewed.
The benefits of unatteded autonomous buses should be identified..
A further design with "zero packaging waste" and 100% re-use should be explored.

Not within this blog but personally, I have had a feeling that the state of California should raise the sales tax to 11% (from the present level of 10%). In other words, the state of California should move a little further toward the European "consumption tax" revenue model.

One of the reasons for that tax increase is the tax will collect revenue from Chinese import products whose manufacture has ended the tax revenue created when the same products were previously made in California. A state cannot directly tax imports, but a state can tax all manufactured non-food and non-medicine items.

So as it relates to the "carts on bus" proposal, if the scheme uses carts or buses or bus batteries made in China, the additional 1% of sales tax is partial compensation for the higher CO2 emissions of the offshore manufacturing in a non-CO2 capped nation.

.

Buses and their service charter: Need to expand definition of what they do

2009-11-29T01:35:00.000-08:00

Kayaks in the mist, off shore from Pillar Point, this is the area called Mavericks.

. They are waiting for waves to ride.

Here is the code where the statement of business purpose needs to be edited to re-direct the Transit District.

The present law authorizes the public transit system to do only the simplest kind of transportation.

PUBLIC UTILITIES CODE

SECTION 103010-103022

103010. Unless the context otherwise requires, the provisions of this chapter govern the construction of this part.

103011. "District" means the San Mateo County Transit District.

103012. "Transit" or "transit service" means the transportation of passengers and their incidental baggage and parcels by any means.

Here is a first draft at how the public transit organization charter should be extended.

We define extended transit service to include the following public service and values:

The transit service may include the transportation of carts and containers in addition to passengers.

The transit service may support and facilitate extended communications for users and clients of the transit service.
The transit service may operate a communications network or access framework to support extended transit service communications.
The transit service may operate vehicles that are partly or completely autonomous.
The transit service shall predict, test and evaluate it's vehicles, system and social impact in terms of the energy used by it's vehicles, and system and in terms of the carbon dioxide emitted and emissions avoided.
The transit service shall endeavor to minimize CO2 emissions.

Buses and fair competition: Need to allow Bus Systems to offer "sales below cost"

2009-11-29T00:13:00.000-08:00

Here is one part of the California state law that prevents the public bus from competing with private bus services.

California Business and Professions Code

17043. It is unlawful for any person engaged in business within this State to sell any article or product at less than the cost thereof to such vendor, or to give away any article or product, for the purpose of injuring competitors or destroying competition.

17050. The prohibitions of this chapter against locality discriminations, sales below cost, and loss leaders do not apply to any sale made:
(a) In closing out in good faith the owner's stock or any part thereof for the purpose of discontinuing his trade in any such article or product and in the case of the sale of seasonal goods or to the bona fide sale of perishable goods to prevent loss to the vendor by spoilage or depreciation; provided, notice is given to the public thereof.
(b) When the goods are damaged or deteriorated in quality, and notice is given to the public thereof.
(c) By an officer acting under the orders of any court.
(d) In an endeavor made in good faith to meet the legal prices of a competitor selling the same article or product, in the same locality or trade area and in the ordinary channels of trade.
(e) In an endeavor made in good faith by a manufacturer, selling an article or product of his own manufacture, in a transaction and sale to a wholesaler or retailer for resale to meet the legal prices of a competitor selling the same or a similar or comparable article or product, in the same locality or trade area and in the ordinary channels of trade. The notice required to be given under this section shall not be sufficient unless the subject of such sales is kept separate from other stocks and clearly and legibly marked with the reason for such sales, and any advertisement of such goods must indicate the same facts and the number of items to be sold.

Review: Whole Earth Discipline by Stewart Brand

2009-11-28T23:31:00.000-08:00

Review of

Whole Earth Discipline An Eco-pragmatist Manifesto

by Stewart Brand,

the founder and editor of The Whole Earth Catalog,

Whole Earth Discipline advocates the best course for the world to decrease CO2 levels and minimize the human contribution to global warming is development of cities, nuclear power and genetic engineering.

   Whole Earth Discipline earns it's appositive "Manifesto" because it argues for a dramatic departure from some of the social or cultural norms that have developed over the last 50 years.

     The book is largely a dramatic disagreement with the following statements, that I offer as cultural beliefs: "small farms are best", "big farms raising huge crops with genetically engineered seed with very few workers are bad", "cities are crummy places", "nuclear power is worse than coal power", "genetic engineering makes frankenfood" and "organic food and organic farming are best".

   In relationship with this blog Put Carts on the Public Bus, the book Whole Earth Discipline does not engage with the automobile culture or transportation in cities.

Here is a WikiPedia summary of Whole Earth Discipline

How does Whole Earth Discipline compare and contrast with the physicist's energy and CO2 analysis Without Hot Air that I reviewed a few months ago?

Link to Without Hot Air, energy and CO2 analysis

Whole Earth Discipline (WED) addresses cultural values and argues for changing them.
WED has a lot of dialog and attempts at describing in a gentlemanly way the sometimes dramatic and painful differences in values between Mr. Brand and a number of Environmental and Political groups.
WED doesn;t get into the engineering details of nuclear power, cities or farms.
WED does not have the complete book available online. The WikiPedia entry is an overview of the book.
Without Hot Air (WHA)addresses energy consumption and proposes reductions.
WHA has the book available online.

Need to study California State anti-trust law - Free service strategy

2009-11-02T20:54:00.000-08:00

Sunflower leaf showing the branching pattern of the transport pathway structure.

"State governments engaging in governmental functions cannot violate federal antitrust law."

"Thus, one special aspect of the immunity for state action is that states can effectively fashion their own exemptions from federal antitrust law..."

---------------------------------

Came across a very interesting Wired Magazine article about the rise of "free"as an Internet marketing strategy and business structure.

You can look at marketing "carts on the public bus" in two ways:

One approach is to say buses need anti-trust or anti-competitive practices exemption to deal with the conventional claim that carts on the bus "steal business from other carriers because the service is offered below cost"

An alternate approach is to explore making "carts on the public bus" somehow "free".

"Free" type marketing depends on a subtle shift between what is free, what is sold and who is the buyer.

For freight carts, the thing sold might be the connecting taxi, connecting jitney, connecting delivery service, the grocery service that fills a shipping container and dispatches it to the customer via the bus system and the connecting delivery robot.

Here is the URL to the wired article:

http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/magazine/16-03/ff_free?currentPage=all

-------------------------------------------

One of the problems that must be solved in order to draft an approach to seeking a anti-trust exemption or to develop a "free" service is there needs to be a compelling statement of the public purpose being served.

Anti-trust exemptions for freight carts on the public bus?

2009-10-20T21:38:00.000-07:00

    I have found a book on anti-trust exemptions. There are three categories of exemption.

   This initial survey is to find examples in law of antitrust exemptions that model the law needed to enable the public bus to carry freight carts.

   There are several areas of law that have operated against public bus service changes. "Unfair competition" is one area and in the United States, much of the law is called antitrust law.

Anti-trust law has a long record of being a very mixed public benefit. See this Wikipedia entry:

Wikipedia Sherman Antitrust Act

      Category 1: General exemptions from antitrust. There have been no new exemptions in this category in 50 years.

     Category 2: Transactional or event specific exemptions from anti-trust law. Here is a link to a Google Books web page:

Federal statutory exemptions from antitrust law, American Bar Association Section of Antitrust Law, 2007, page 38

     Category 3: Modifications of anti-trust law for the benefit of some class or activity.

Two anti-trust exemption models appear in the Category 2 listing on the URL above.

    First, on page 42 is a description of the anti-trust exemption called "Collective agreements among motor carriers."

     I don't consider this a model to be studied without regard to the poor outcome of the exemption. Frankly, my contact with motor carriers in the home furnishings transport business means this exemption is a license to charge huge amounts for moving service. The family goes along with the high charge due to the moving expense deduction in the Federal tax code. A side effect of the collective agreement is cheaper strategies like renting a 32 foot trailer and loading it yourself are not available.

Second on page 48 is the "Surface Transportation Act". This requires close reading.

Third on page 52, a Category 3 exemption is the "Local Government Antitrust Act". This law also requires close reading because it is a very confining statute. The exemption is counter balanced because the statute also allows local governments to be sued using anti-trust laws.

Switch focus to clarifying the anti-trust and fair competition problems.

2009-10-18T22:43:00.000-07:00

Using a digital camera to count the number of people riding a public bus.

It is hard to slow down the YouTube video player enough to count the riders. In the camera, viewing the video frame by frame I counted 3 riders, maybe as many as 5.

To get better results the camera needs to be on a tripod, set up and focused before the bus arrives. The bus window needs to be backlit. The camera should be at bus window height and about 15 degrees off of perpendicular to show multiple riders sitting in one row of seats.

Video of passing bus shows 3 to 5 passengers on a Sunday afternoon, 2 miles from start of route

I feel this blog needs to research the "anti-trust", "unfair competition" and "common carrier" conflicts triggered by putting carts on the public bus.

Enumeration of the legal problems that need to be addressed if the public bus carries carts, unattended carts, night-time freight, airline passengers with luggage, shopping carts from the grocery store, operates as an un-attended autonomous vehicle.

One argument used is buses offer "unfair competition" to private carriers like airport bus services. (I think I need to figure out the famous problem for non-lawyers, is this a tort?)
Another blocking strategy has been a limiting clause in Federal grants and bond issues to purchase buses, the vehicles are limited "to the transport of passengers and their incidental luggage only."
If buses carry parcels or merchandise the bus is replacing either a taxi or a parcel delivery service such as United Parcel.
The first legal problem is UPS is a regulated, permitted private carrier and the bus is not equipped with a permit.
The second legal problem is the carrier is a private firm and the bus is mostly funded with public funds. What are the laws and what is the structure of the reasoning that stops the bus from doing this kind of work?
The public bus can't carry shopping carts because California has a "Shopping cart theft law" that really limits how far a shopper can take a shopping cart.
Taxi and jitney services can't carry passengers and freight containers and carts between a bus stop and the surrounding community. Taxi services are basically obliged to provide the entire trip for a passenger. There is no way for a taxi to pick up 6 riders at a bus stop, be paid by the bus system, and ferry the people to their destinations for a flat rate.

Energy used by various modes of transportation - from the 1978 Busbook

2009-10-18T20:45:00.001-07:00

"Calculated energy consumption for six forms of transportation" a graph published in the Busbook, March 1, 1978.

First page of footnotes for the graph.

Second page of footnotes for the graph.

How do we ramp-down the petroleum extraction machine?

2009-10-11T16:23:00.000-07:00

"Perhaps the most telling measurement of a transport system' convenience is a hard, cold winter rain: any gaps in what shold be comprehensive service become brutally apparent. there is nothing like queuing up at an unsheltered bus stop in this kind of weather to make one wish for a true door-to-door transport system." Quoted from Tabor R. Stone, Beyond the Automobile, Reshaping the Transportation Environment, Prentice-Hall, 1971, pg. 105-106.

     One way of looking at the auto-industrial age is it is a huge social machine built around the extraction and burning of petroleum.

    The micro-economic analysis of time, distance and the value of personal time shows that the private automobile simply can't be beat for enabling long daily drives, which in turn enables many people to earn the most money given their specific skills.

   That driving, in turn results in thousands of pounds of petroleum being burned per year per car per solitary driver.

To put one's finger very precisely on one practice that needs to be drastically revised: We need to cut the rate of petroleum burning. How much?

Suppose we say the goal is for American society to use 10% as much petroleum in 50 years.

x = .1^^50        # What number multiplied by itself 50 times equals .1

x = .9550         # - 4.5% per year petroleum usage reduction

Rethinking the Transformation of the Auto-Industrial age

2009-10-04T19:58:00.000-07:00

A surfer at Surfer's Beach, El Granada, California.

He is beautifully balanced with bent knees as he picks up speed on the rising wave face.

From a slow motion video shot 10-4-2009.

Slow motion surfer

The proposal to put carts on the public bus is just a small scheme in the framework of the auto-industrial age.

Carts on the bus reduces CO2 emissions because it uses presently wasted capacity on public buses.
Carts on the bus has dismal time-distance performance compared to cars. Unattended cart transport dodges this performance problem.
The post auto-industrial age will still need a way to move things around. If we described such a societal framework, what would it use if not carts?

The Theory of Moral Sentiments models a precusor to economic science

2009-09-29T22:53:00.000-07:00

This is the blogger with his dog, taken with a nod to Philip Greenspun.

the author of Philip and Alex's Guide to Web Publishing

The glass in the picture holds fresh squeezed pear juice and the clutter in the background is

solar water heater plumbing parts.

The writing in The Theory of Moral Sentiments is 250 years old. The text was developed as a course for college undergraduates, and it includes many asides, anecdotes and hypothetical situations that are entertaining and defy casual reading.In some ways, the book is like a 250 page Socratic monologue. Adam Smith is definitely performing philosophy. And he also engages very respectably with one of the central questions of philosophy, namely "What is Virtue?

I find it interesting to look at The Theory of Moral Sentiments as a kind of pre-economic thinking. The Moral Sentiments are scores of propositions developed and explored. Acts of generosity, acts of jealous husbands, thoughts and deeds are described and explored.

For example, the Theory of Moral Sentiments dwells on propositions including wealth and life, but it does not focus on the specific entities of time and money

In contrast, the science of economics uses time and money as units to study. So economics gains mathematical rigor and it abandons the huge colorful tapestry of the set of Moral Sentiments objects.

So I look at Paradise Lost The Decline of the Auto-Industrial Age as a writing as a piece of writing that has a lot in common with The Theory of Moral Sentiments.

In my own analysis of problems with the public bus systems, I think you will recognize, the micro economic analysis of time and distance and money and distance propositions are quite dispiriting.

From The Decline of the Auto-Industrial Age to The Theory of Moral Sentiments

2009-09-28T23:03:00.000-07:00

View of cars on the 280 Freeway.

Morning traffic hundreds of trips to all sorts of jobs from San Francisco to San Jose

     I read Emma Rothschild's Paradise Lost The Decline of the Auto Industrial Age with a mixed feeling of respect and disappointment.

   Her assertion that the institutions of the Auto Industrial age are in decline, that it is a problematic kind of work, that the cars manufactured have altered and degraded our natural world and human society is quality social criticisim.

    But I am disappointed that the social criticism has not engaged with the deeper layer of the auto industrial enterprise as a successor to the preceding coal, iron and steam dominated industrial era.

    General Motors and all of the people who bought a 1972 Vega are riding a wave of natural resources and chemical energy that was released by the commercial production of oil and the development of cheap standardized steel alloys.

   I mean to emphasize the idea that the auto-industrial era itself was driven by the vast release of energy that is associated with operating a car. A 1972 Vega might weigh 2,700 lbs. but during a 100,000 mile product lifetime it burns 58,000 lbs of gasoline.

   The car burns more than 20 times it's weight in gasoline.

[ Using, Vega mileage 19 mi/gallon and gasoline 11 lb/gallon. ]

   From this viewpoint, the manufacturers of cars have a relatively small role. In the hands of the owner, the automobile provides years and years of mastery of time and distance on the suburban scale of things.

   The auto-industrial age was preceded by the age of steam power and coal extraction began accelerating due to the development of the relatively efficient external condenser steam engine by James Watt. This development began entering industrial use around 1776. .

-----------------------------------------------

     From the description of Emma Rothschild's teaching activities from the biographic URL above I note that she teaches a course that uses The Theory of Moral Sentiments by Adam Smith.

   The Theory of Moral Sentiments was first published in 1759. As described by E.G. West, this book became a best seller of the time. It was reprinted several times and it established Adam Smith's reputation as a teacher and intellectual 20 years before the publication of The Wealth of Nations.

I checked out The Theory of Moral Sentiments to see how Adam Smith may have influenced the ideas developed in Paradise Lost.

   I remember a professor in an American Popular Culture course I took at Cal State LA in 1971 saying there was a very strong academic bias against scholarly writing getting too close to car culture or the technical side of car culture.

Reviewing Paradise Lost The Decline of the Auto-Industrial Age by Emma Rothschild

2009-09-27T23:47:00.000-07:00

Sixties vintage Chrysler Valiant seen on the back of a wrecking truck being towed up Highway 92.

It appears the car was parked in a field in the salty rain of the San Mateo coastside.

     Paradise Lost The Decline of the Auto-Industrial Age was published 36 years ago.

   I am pretty sure I read it when I was writing my Busbook I essay in 1979 but the book did not make it in to my footnotes.

   Paradise Lost is a description of the social problems raised by the operation of the American automobile manufacturing industry.

   Paradise Lost draws many specific observations from the General Motors Chevrolet Vega plant in Lordstown, Ohio. The Vega was General Motors' second major effort at making a small car to match the imported cars beginning to arrive in America.

   The Vega production line introduced welding robots and a 36 second per car production rate. Ms. Rothschild characterizes this manufacturing scheme as the ultimate expression of what she calls "Fordism".

    "Fordism" is a term to describe the process of optimizing a production line at the expense of the quality of the work of the workers on the production line. The Lordstown production line was structured with an extreme production pace, that was called "fastest in the world".

     In the Lordstown plant, some welding robots had signs saying "Take care of me and I will do good work". The workers occupied a subordinate status as part handlers.

     Henry Ford pioneered the automobile production line. In the Lordstown plant the conditions of human labor became extremely difficult, emotionally degrading, menial and repetitive.

    One of the meanings of the book title Paradise Lost... is the automotive industry produces huge numbers of unskilled, repetitive, boring jobs. The kind of work involved in making cars is the opposite of paradise.

   Another very interesting word (possibly coined by Ms. Rothschild) is "Sloanism". The word describes the selling strategy devised under the leadership of Alfred P. Sloan, the President of General Motors starting in 1923 and ending in 1956 when he retired from the position of Chairman.

   The process of "Sloanism" is the proliferation of makes, models, accessories, annual styling changes, annual technical changes, and finance and trade-in arangements that facilitate huge volumes of automobile sales.

     So a second process that the book title "Paradise Lost" points to is the deterioration of cities and expansion of suburbs that accompanies 80 years of mass production of automibiles.

   A web link to Emma Rothschild's current writings and academic positions is here:

http://www-histecon.kings.cam.ac.uk/emma_rothschild.htm

Buses with ultracapacitors, solar panels, wireless passenger tech

2009-09-20T22:16:00.000-07:00

Public buses and the bus system offer several opportunities for low energy and low cost operation.

Use of electric drive and storage schemes. Use of autonomous vehicles.

Buses can be electrified and they can be repeatedly re-charged as they travel on their route. The battery or super-capacitor used on a bus only needs hold energy for 5 or 10 miles of operation.
The bus stops can be equipped with solar panels and capacitor storage, so energy can be stored for re-charging the next bus.
Buses can be made to operate as autonomous vehicles. The driver can secure carts, load and unload freight. The driver can resume operating the vehicle when error situations arise that the bus navigation software can not handle.
An autonomous vehicle without a driver would have a vandalism or passenger mischief problem.
Electric, autonomous buses could be made by modifying existing buses. Remove the engine and fuel tank. Install an electric motor and storage devices. Perhaps provide a fuel cell for supplementing the storage devices if there is a failure of the charging scheme.

Slashdot.org: Ultracapacitor Bus Recharges At Each Stop

Use of wireless computer technology for coordinating passenger and freight pickup and routing.

The bus and selected bus stops can operate cell phone base stations. All the phones calling through the bus or bus stop base station can have no-charge calls for organizing the pick up and drop off of riders and freight.
One of the ideas of putting carts on the bus is to push the load factor of the buses from below 20% (currently for El Granada traffic of mainly passengers) to above 80% by filling the bus with less time sensitive loads such as freight carts and unattended freight.
The cell phone communication can be used to link local electric taxi, local on-call ride-after-dark services to the bus service. The taxi can be guided to meet the bus. The bus can call a taxi. The bus can tell the taxi how many passengers and where each passenger desires to go.
The bus can call an autonomous driverless freight delivery truck. The truck can receive a load of carts and containers for local delivery.
The local grocery store can schedule an early morning bus stop event to load 10 or 20 containers or carts for delivery.

Combine autonomous electric buses with 24 hour store and forward freight service. Use the freight revenue to facilitate 24 hour bus service, where present bus service is confined to busy hours with just a little night-owl service.

The present bus system struggles in a saddle of operating cost, labor cost and demands for service.
Move the operating cost down by selectively implementing autonomous vehicles. Experiment with ways for the "driver" to selectively leave the bus, or for the driver to lead a caravan of buses, with another driver rejoining the bus at a later station.
An euler path is the ideal way to structure an autonomous bus route. The path provides a very powerful simplification of freight routing.
A night time bus service might consist of one driver with three autonomous buses. The driver would load and unload the buses. He would sit in one bus and the other buses would follow the lead bus.

The Auto Industrial Society, Are we transforming yet?

2009-09-20T01:21:00.000-07:00

Ms. Rothschild says:

"One of the intended consequences of the free market ideology of the 1970s and 1980s was a loss of confidence in government, or at least in nonmilitary government. The environmental regulation of the automobile industry since 1975 has been a dismal case study in government failure, of which the rise of the SUV is only the most visible example."

This is a very interesting way of describing the problem of moving toward a low CO2 future: Regulation of the automobile industry (as in requiring more low fuel consumption vehicles) has failed due to "a loss of confidence in government...".

There is a very interesting thought embedded here that is certainly worth exploring. But I find the argument extremely difficult to articulate.

My plan is to request Ms. Rotschild's book from the library. (She has published many academic papers on aspects of the auto industrial society that are not available from my local library).

So I will revisit this review some time in the future.

Reviewing: Can We Transform the Auto-Industrial Society? By Emma Rothschild

2009-09-17T22:39:00.000-07:00

In the February 26, 2009 New York Review of Books is published

Can we transform the auto-industrial society? by Emma Rothchild

Other writings by Emma Rothschild

To the question embedded in the title of Ms. Rothchild's article: There is still quite a bit of work to do to construct a framework of social requirements to give shape and specific implementations to the changes needed for moving to a low CO2 emission society.

But wait, there is much interesting history and analysis in this article.

Ms. Rothschild was writing about the General Motors and Chrysler Bailout Loans issued by the outgoing Bush administration. The sale of Chrysler to Fiat and the bankruptcy reorganization of General Motors are not discussed in this article.

Ms. Rothschild wrote a major study of General Motors in 1974 titled Paradise Lost: Decline Of The Auto-industrial Age. Around those years, General Motors was the largest industrial corporation in America.

This New York Review of Books essay was written at about the time when the accounting value of General Motors had dropped to the bankruptcy point.

The loan to the auto companies was explicitly structured to assist the companies in getting back to "financial viability".
The loans were made short term, to allow the incoming Obama administration some time to perform an assessment of the entire American recession situation.
A future aiming for 80% less CO2 emissions based on a linear extension of a model of a "hybrid future" with solar panels and electric cars and the same American use of suburban space and long solitary commutes has scaling problems when similar patterns are applied to China and India.

What does Sustainable Energy say about bus transportation?

2009-08-03T21:35:00.000-07:00

In Sustainable Energy, buses and electric trains are present day technologies with better energy usage than autos.

At its best, shared public transport is far more energy-efficient than individual car-driving. A diesel-powered coach, carrying 49 passengers and doing 10 miles per gallon at 65 miles per hour, uses 6 kWh per 100 p-km -13 times better than the single-person car.

In 1979, when I asked a Los Angeles public transit planner what they used as facts for energy efficiency, the planner said a typical 52 passenger bus got 5 miles per gallon of diesel fuel.

From, MacKay's appendix, a U.S. gallon of diesel fuel computes to 40.48 kWh. With a further conversion of 1.609 km/mile how does my 1979 BusBook energy calculation compare with the energy usage reported in Sustainable Energy?

Here is the calculation. The unit of transportation energy usage to be computed is kWh per 100 passenger kilometers.

40.48 kWh/ (5 miles x 1.609 km/mile x 52 passengers) = 9.68 kWh per 100 passenger km.

McKay recognizes in his transportation analysis that buses and trains do not run fully loaded.

In 2006–7, the total energy cost of all London’s underground trains, including lighting, lifts, depots, and workshops, was 15 kWh per 100 p-km – five times better than our baseline car. In 2006–7 the energy cost of all London buses was 32 kWh per 100 p-km. Energy cost is not the only thing that matters, of course. Passengers care about speed: and the underground trains delivered higher speeds (an average of 33 km/h) than buses (18 km/h). Managers care about financial costs: the staff costs, per passenger-km, of underground trains are less than those of buses.

That is a really interesting value, his real world total energy cost of 32 kWh per 100 p-km is 5.3 times as much energy as the ideal fully loaded bus with no extraneous energy charges applied.

Taking the reciprocal, the value of .19 crudely compares to a 19% "load factor". Now we are being really crude here.... but what it suggests is the London bus system probably has a working load factor of perhaps 30 or 40%.

That is a lot of empty bus available for carrying freight.

Sustainable Energy defines a consistent set of energy and CO2 emission units. Presenting the entire energy problem with a consistent set of units is a great contribution.

In 1979 I struggled with the energy units problem and I wound up settling on BTU per passenger mile. The consistent metric units used in David MacKay's analysis help greatly with seeing the various parts of the energy problem in their proper proportion.

Reviewing David Mackay's Sustainable Energy Without the Hot Air

2009-07-31T20:42:00.000-07:00

Sustainable Energy - Without the Hot Air is an analysis of how human society uses energy and generates the carbon dioxide that is associated with global warming. Proceeding further, for each area and kind of energy use, this book reviews the known and hoped for changes in energy use that are needed for society to migrate to sustainable sources of energy.

The title has the tag line "Without the Hot Air" because this book examines a large number of the energy conservation claims that repeatedly appear as many organizations describe an energy conservation benefit in unscientific terms such as "Blah blah blah will save enough energy to power a California city for three weeks."

http://www.withouthotair.com/

Besides being available as a conventional book,, the entire book is available as a pdf file and also in the form of web pages you can read in your browser. www.withouthotair.com

The author, David MacKay is a professor in the University of Cambridge (England) Physics Department. He has a PhD from CalTech, he has taught physics at Cambridge since 1995 and he says since 2005 he has devoted much of his time to public teaching about energy.

The first third of the book "Numbers not Adjectives" counts up the total energy released in human society and then the total CO2 released.

How much of that energy is released in different countries?
How has this energy release changed since the 1700's?
What is the graph of global CO2 concentration since 1700?
What is the global CO2 release and absorption budget?
How has the CO2 release and absorption budget shifted due to combustion of wood, coal and oil since the 1700's?
What is the state of scientific understanding of the meaning of the CO2 concentration rise?

In chapter 2 David MacKay phrases the central question of the book:

The question addressed in this book is “can we conceivably live sustain-
ably?” So, we will add up all conceivable sustainable energy sources and
put them in the right-hand, green stack.

In the left-hand, red stack, we’ll estimate the consumption of a “typ-
ical moderately-afﬂuent person;” I encourage you to tot up an estimate
of your own consumption, creating your own personalized left-hand stack
too. Later on we’ll also ﬁnd out the current average energy consumption of
Europeans and Americans.

After these two chapters that phrase the grand problem, there are 12 chapters that describe 12 social systems that are important components in the energy problem: cars, planes, heating and cooling, food and farming are discussed.

"Making a difference", the second third of the book, systematically explores how to dramatically reduce CO2 producing energy consumption, Chapters like "better transport" and "better heating" are classic essays that describe the specific systems in detail and review the simple and sophisticated changes that can be implemented to reduce energy use and CO2 release.

Travel time equation for the bus, really disappointing results

2009-04-21T22:58:00.000-07:00

I revisited my Google Apps Spreadsheet that calculates a linear equation for bus rider travel times given the distance traveled.

The problem is, I got disappointingly slow numbers when I used the San Mateo County 511.org website to get travel times for six plausible bus trips I might take.

I tried to push the linear regression calculations closer toward car numbers.

First I excluded two of the slowest in speed (miles per hour) trips. I had noticed that all buses between El Granada and San Mateo city make a 10 or 12 minute dogleg through south Half Moon Bay. I took out two trips that apparently force the rider to ride the dogleg.

Second, I added a bus trip that avoids the "dogleg" and is what I would consider very fast. This was a trip up the coast to a Pacifica grocery store right next to the last bus stop.

The result of leaning on the data to push the bus numbers toward plausibility was very disappointing. Here is what I see now:

Bus 11.55 minutes per mile with -10.64 minutes added to each trip.
Car 1.41 minutes per mile with 12.09 minutes added to each trip.

In algebra:
Given a trip of "miles, measured as the bird flies"
The travel time in minutes is:

For bus trip = 11.55 x miles -10.64 minutes
For car trip = 1.41 x miles +12.09 minutes

These are two linear equations expressed in words. These linear equations model the time performance of these two different systems of transportation.

The crossover point for these two equations is 2.24 miles. That means a 2.24 mile bus trip and a 2.24 mile auto trip would have the same travel time, using these equations.

The reason I call these results disappointing is I did similar bus and car calculations in the 1980's using data for trips made in suburban Los Angeles. I have unfortunately misplaced those records. But I recall the bus performance coefficients in Los Angeles were much closer to auto performance coefficients.

The difference in land layout affecting the bus coefficients is I presently live in coastal El Granada, California. Steep coastal range mountains separate my home from store and work destinations.

A beautiful branched structure

2009-02-06T20:08:00.000-08:00

I am reading The Great Inflation and It's Aftermath. The Past and Future of American Affluence by Robert J. Samuelson.

This is a book about the monetary inflation that took place between the mid 1960's and the early 1980's. The author proposes that this inflation is the force that created the mortgage banking practices that have been at the center of the mortgage meltdown that began in 2007. The same inflation shifted the relationship of American business with American labor. The inflation intensified a business tendency to move manufacturing abroad and shift domestic employment to shorter term relationships.

The Aftermath of the 20 year bout of inflation is the economic institutions we have at present ( I am writing in February 2009 ). These are very interesting times with downsizing, downstaffing, and extraordinary budget difficulties facing cities like Half Moon Bay, the local San Mateo County property tax supported government, local school districts. In my present work as a substitute ParaEducator, I am only working 60-70% of full time. And further, there has been an obvious jump in the prices of tires and food.

Against this backdrop, I have a friend who has aquired several 18 watt barebones PC computers. I simply can't see the economics of it but there should be a market for installation and consulting for people needing an alternate to proprietary desk top computing. If I work locally, I could use a freight cart for transporting replacement computers and supplies for doing networking and maintenance.

Why is there a squash on the hood of the Mercedes?

2009-01-04T22:41:00.000-08:00

The squash is on the hood of the Mercedes to remind me that the car has been in my driveway for 5 years.

I have been working on my own cars for 45 years.

The Mercedes is a case in point of Lee's Law of what happens when you own two cars: Eventually one car will stop working and you will not get around to fixing it until you have to.

One of the results of working on my own cars is I can explore the following propositions:

An automobile is simply a machine.

It takes in fuel and burns it.

Components undergo wear due to motion and vibration of the vehicle.

It performs the burning of fuel with an efficiency directly related to the compression ratio of the engine.

Because the car must move itself as well as the passenger and payload, the net efficiency is limited because the car weighs several thousand pounds and whatever the car transports weighs several hundred pounds.

The change in the structure of human affairs, or "readiness for action" accomplished by the use of a car is a quantity that is quite difficult to measure.

A book I find very provocative on the question of what is information in human terms is Information, Mechanism and Meaning by Donald M. Mackay.

Eulerian paths: coiled electric cord and a bus system

2009-01-04T22:29:00.000-08:00

The Euler path bus route idea has a common component with the coiled 100 foot extension cord pictured above.

Both are one long string, the extension cord shows many crossing points, which we can call a node (a visual node, not a physical node), A bus system would have a node where a bus route crosses another bus route.

What is the ultimate schedule for a public bus system?

2008-12-26T18:17:00.000-08:00

One problem I have looked at is "what is the ultimate or best schedule scheme for a bus and a bus system?"

What are the functions that a schedule scheme should optimize?

Reduce the waiting time between transfers between one bus and another bus.
Provide "meets" during off hours so night time travelers are not marooned at a bus stop when a slightly early bus misses a transfer time with a slightly later bus.
Organize the rolling stock to carry the most people during rush hours.
Arrange for the driver to start and end his driving work at the bus terminal.

Topology provides some very useful ideas for organizing a route network.

Think of each bus route of a bus system as a loop.
Think of all the bus routes of a bus system as many loops with many loops crossing. Like a pile of rubber bands.
The place where s bus route crosses another route is called a node.
The length of bus route between nodes is called an edge.
As long as there are an even number of bus routes entering and exiting each node, there exists an Euler path.
An Euler path can be completely driven by a bus driving over each stretch of road (or edge) .
The Euler path is in honor of the famous problem solved by Leonard Euler called the "Seven Bridges of Konigsberg." A Wikipedia entry for Eulerian Path

What timing structure would work best with an Euler path bus network?

Suppose we look for a timing structure where there is the smallest wait time when transfering from one bus to a different bus.

If two buses on different routes arrive at the same time and wait for passengers to transfer from the other bus this is the shortest wait for all travelers.
If the travel time between system nodes is made the same then the most nodes will have the least transfer time in all directions.

Transfer payments and The End of Oil by Paul Roberts

2008-11-15T19:53:00.000-08:00

Seen at Pillar Point on a Sunday morning.
What a great way to get from San Francisco to one of the best beach walks in Northern California, with dogs.

Now, I haven't got around to working on the published spreadsheets. And I also have not managed to figure out the really difficult m and b coefficients I am seeing for the San Mateo bus system.

These are the questions that I would like to explore now:

I need to get the spreadsheets and the data entry forms into good condition. Rewrite for clarity, list the validation tests, work out a way so users can print out a graph and the matching assumption values.
What about looking at schemes for equalizing the "perceived personal cost" between cars and bus riding? Lets look at various kinds of transfer payment.

I was reading The End of Oil by Paul Roberts. One of the things I found interesting was how Mr. Roberts describes the chronic problems of desirable solutions that cost more than the present oil based solutions.

The End of Oil, by Paul Roberts, book website: http://the-end-of-oil.com/

I recommend to you The End of Oil as an enjoyably sane and well organized broad view of the "end of oil" and the paths available and the problems in moving American and the world society towards using much less oil.

Getting paid for riding the bus? Getting paid for leaving your car at home on grocery day? How about time specific coupons to direct freight cart traffic onto lightly loaded buses.

Noting the broader view from Wendell Berry

2008-11-15T18:37:00.000-08:00

Sunrise from Pillar Point West Shoreline Access

Here is an essay by Wendell Berry, pointing to changes in social philosophy that correspond with a simpler, low energy American society.

Wendell Berry is writing about very big ideas.

This "Put carts on the public bus..." essay is a relatively small project to bring forward a lower energy transportation structure.

If we can solve some of the problems identified from this small project, then perhaps other low energy transportation projects will also become more feasible.

Spreadsheet, chart and form available

2008-11-08T18:57:00.000-08:00

Sorry, the bugs are not fully worked out for this posting process. The graph and the spreadsheet are not synchronized and the underlying assumptions are not clearly presented.

Here is a chart showing the relative perceived costs of trips made using an automobile and a bus.

Chart of perceived cost for a given hourly wage, gasoline price, car mileage and bus fare

Here is a form for changing the input values of the perceived cost chart.

Input data form

Total cost of a trip: Car versus Bus

2008-11-07T22:31:00.000-08:00

Personal time $5/hr, Gasoline $3.70/gallon,Bus fare $2.00, Vehicle 22.5 mi/gallon, bus and auto coefficients mentioned earlier.

So here is a graph to begin exploring problems with the economic utility of using carts on the public bus as an alternative transportation system to the auto or truck.

The lines show a kind of total cost for making a trip of a given distance.

For the car, the total cost being graphed is $ 5/hr for personal time plus $.33 per mile for gasoline and maintenance.

For the bus, the total cost being graphed is $5/hr for personal time plus $ 2.00 bus fare.

------------------------------------------------------------------

The graph shows in a nutshell the problem that all kinds of bus travelers face: When you count a cost for the time you spend riding the bus, the "total cost" of the bus ride is greater than the similarly figured "total cost" of a car trip.

I'll work on putting up a Google spreadsheet so you can experiment with changing the values of the graph. It is very interesting to see the effects of eight dollar gasoline and a modest improvement in the linear equation coefficients of the bus system.
One of the most impressive changes in assumptions is to explore cart transportation schemes that eliminate the cart operator. Carts that can travel on the bus system without an operator are released from the time and distance economics that make individual autos attractive.

Graph for travel time, auto vs. bus, preliminary

2008-10-11T23:30:00.001-07:00

Please note the values shown here for the bus are estimates.

For both the auto and bus lines above, a trip of 0 miles does not exist. I simply solved for 0 miles which is also called the "x intercept"

Both lines above are generated using the y=mx+b type of linear equation.

For the auto, the travel time y in minutes for x miles is:

y = travel time in minutes
x = trip distance in great circle miles (or "as the bird flies").

m = 1.41 minutes/mile
b = 12.09 minutes per trip

The automobile coefficients are based on 46 vehicle trips measured with a GPS (global positioning system).

For the bus, I used a set of 6 trips using travel times calculated using the samtrans.org web site.

m = 12.91 minutes/mile
b = -14.96 minutes per trip

===

The next step is to compute and compare total percieved cost of a given bus trip with a car trip.

The "perceived total cost" depends on a very simple economics generalization that I found in a 1970 vintage economic analysis of the decision to extend the Victoria Subway system in London.

The economists generalized the value of a person's time at 1/3 that person's hourly wage. If you earn $15/hr at work, then the approximate value of your personal time spent doing your daily journeys is $5/hr.

(Footnote to original research paper needed).

So the next step in my freight carts on buses analysis is to compare the total perceived cost of riding a bus with the total perceived cost of driving a car, for a set of realistic distances using travel time data that reflects actual experience.

I am particularly interested in setting up some data input forms so the reader of this blog can change the input values. For instance, just how high does gasoline have to go in price before I switch to riding the bus to work?

I know $4 a gallon gas got me concerned enough to start this blog.

When I reach the point where the cost comparisons have plausible supporting data then it will be possible to explore what economic or physical changes will make freight carts on buses an attractive transportation mode for American society.

Linear equation for travel time by a car

2008-10-06T21:03:00.000-07:00

I have finally finished re-creating my linear regression travel time analysis.

Based on measuring 46 car trips in my 1993 Dodge Van, with many trips starting from my El Granada neighborhood, here is a formula for the time required to drive places in a car:

Given the distance in miles measured as a bird would fly (great circle miles)
Time = 1.41 minutes per mile + 12.09 minutes

Details of the data:

The measurement covered 46 vehicle trips.
Average distance was 7.90 miles.
Average trip time was 23.2 minutes.
Average speed for all trips was 17.72 miles per hour.

Another way of looking at the transportation formula is:

1.41 minutes per mile implies 42.55 miles per hour... (take the reciprocal and multiply by 60 to convert miles per minute to miles per hour).

That is pretty reasonable as my neighborhood has mostly 45 and 50 mile per hour speed limits on Highway 1.

The travel time formula is an approximate empirical constant that reflects the performance of a car as a transportation device.

So a car trip consists of "About 12 minutes plus you move toward the destination at 42.55 miles per hour."

Travel time equation - data collection for auto travel

2008-07-03T23:49:00.000-07:00

Here is a graph showing travel time and distance for travel by a car.

Each of these data points was marked at the beginning or end of a trip made by driving a car.

What I am going to do with these data points is develop a linear formula that relates distance and the time required to travel that distance for a specific type of transportation.

Example: Given two points D miles apart, how many total minutes is the travel time, by car?

Tc = Kc + Mc X D

Tc -- Time in minutes to drive by car.
Kc -- A constant term of minutes.
Mc -- Number of minutes per mile of D distance between points.
D - Distance to travel in miles.

The travel time formula above is very interesting when you have constant values for automobiles and public buses and other modes of personal travel.

You can talk about the personal economic and time choices the different modes of travel provide.
You can estimate the time benefits resulting from changes in the transportation system, like "faster buses".

Telling my local community this proposal.

2008-06-20T22:08:00.000-07:00

Photo shows a wheelchair chassis carrying 2 pc. of Rubbermaid brand 18 gallon (68 liter) storage container.

The wheelchair with the storage containers is a sample or prototype for carrying stuff on a public bus.

I posted a link to this blog on my local community web site. Thanks for the comment and I'll work to clarify the proposal.

http://coastsider.com/index.php/townhall/viewthread/286/

Carrying carts - what are the range of services?

2008-06-16T22:02:00.000-07:00

Here is a list of the things that might be transported on the public bus system.

The first 3 items are carried by public bus systems in use today.

The last 4 items are transport challenges of increasing difficulty.

Incidental baggage that depends on hand and arm strength - knapsack, purse, briefcase, shoulder bag, laptop computer in a case, makeup case, cloth grocery bags.
Purpose carriers that use shoulder support - backpacker's pack, laundry bag, two bags of balanced weight with a shoulder strap.
Bicycles carried in a front of bus carrier.
Heavier objects that can be lifted but not held for long - tool boxes, handle grocery bags with canned goods.
Wheeled devices that can be lifted up steps- rolling suitcases.
Wheeled devices operated by a passenger that require ramp or lift to enter the bus: modified shopping carts, modified wheel chairs (seat cushion removed). Contents can include: construction supplies, personal computers, printing, mail, restaurant and office supplies, weekly groceries for a family, automobile repair parts.
Freight containers designed for shipment without an accompanying passenger. These containers are travel on pallets and are boarded and removed based on shipping orders. Contents can include: groceries, business supplies, personal computers and monitors, store purchases, food supplies for restaurants, hotels, schools.

The peak problem: why buses have spare capacity

2008-06-08T21:54:00.000-07:00

The load factor of a bus is fraction of seats filled or passengers riding compared to the total number of seats or passenger capacity.

In 1979, the load factor for the Los Angeles public bus system was somewhere below 33%. I am looking for a published load factor with a 2007 to 2008 date.

For the typical public bus system, and for a lot of passenger carrying systems, load factors of 25% and less are quite common. There are a number of reasons for this persistent state of affairs:

A passenger car with 1 driver out of a total of 4 or 5 seats is already operating at 25% or 20% load factor.
Public buses start out empty in the morning and they gradually fill up as they drive from the suburbs to the city center.
There is a big surge of bus patronage each morning. The bus management has to schedule enough buses to reasonably handle the peak of the surge. The peak hour bus fleet continues to run even as the patronage surge declines.
The peaks of the twice daily surge are plausibly about a workday plus a lunch hour apart ( or about 8.5 hours).
It is a management and labor scheduling challenge for every public bus system to arrange reasonable working hours for bus drivers to match bus service with the demand for it.

As a public bus system critic I see the "below 33% load factor" as a huge service opportunity.
Potentially up to 66% of the gross carrying capacity of the public bus system is available to do useful work.

My daughter runs into the "bus can't do it" problem.

2008-06-08T21:03:00.000-07:00

My daughter is having her first exciting month living off campus at a northern California college town.

Her initial scheme for saving money on groceries is to shop at a discount grocery store about a mile away, and perhaps 400 feet lower elevation.

In round numbers, she hopes to buy 4 bags of groceries at $15 each instead of 4 bags at $20 each in the gourmet ghetto.

So the scheme is to save about $20 by going to the discount store once a week. The bus fare is $1.75 each way.

The choices for her are:

Travel by bicycle: The trip is a 2 mile (round trip) bicycle ride on heavily traveled side streets.

Travel by bus: The bus trip requires walking 2 blocks to the bus stop, waiting, then taking a 1 mile bus ride, then walking 1 block to the store.

I'd say her travel problem puts her on the boundary line of the utility of the public bus system.

Doing this trip by bicycle is a strenuous ride with lots of automobile traffic hazard. Doing this trip by bus will raise problems with arm and hand fatigue. If she doesn't carry the 4 bags of groceries, then she needs a large knapsack and a shoulder bag.

So the point I see as a public bus critic is: the bus does not accommodate the day-to-day need of people to carry 30 to 120 pounds on the bus.

Example of how private firms block the transit district

2008-06-08T20:54:00.000-07:00

My local public bus system was sued by a private transportation firm for "unfair competition". The result is, the public bus system restricts the amount of luggage people can carry on the public bus that goes to the airport.

Here is the story it appears in the SamTrans.org website.

"Luggage Policy on Route KX

SamTrans is unable to allow excess luggage to be carried on Route KX between San Francisco and the San Francisco International Airport in either direction.

SamTrans Carry-on Policy States:

"If a passenger can carry the item(s) on his/her lap or store it under or next to him/her on a seat unneeded and not hurt anyone else, and not interfere with others, the item is probably safe to transport." The final decision will be made by the bus operator, who is responsible for the safe transport of everyone on the vehicle.

Alternatives & Information:

If you are unable to ride Route KX, Route 292 can take you to The City or the airport.

SamTrans wants your trip to be as pleasant as possible. If you have any routing or fare questions, please call 1-800-660-4287.

Background:

Since SamTrans receives some federal money to help fund its operation, a private bus operator cited "unfair competition." Under an agreement with the Federal Transit Administration, SamTrans agreed not to transport passengers with luggage between The City and the airport on its express route.

If the item fits into the following definition, SamTrans will gladly allow the passenger to board with the item. "

source: http://samtrans.org/luggage.html

How does a transit district define itself?

2008-06-05T22:10:00.000-07:00

Here is how my local San Mateo County transit district defines itself.

The omission... from my viewpoint as a transit critic is there is no commitment to allow the bus rider to carry or board with any substantial load.

"About the District

San Mateo County Transit District provides SamTrans bus service throughout San Mateo County and into parts of San Francisco and Palo Alto.

The transit district also offers Redi-Wheels paratransit service for persons with disabilities who are unable to ride SamTrans.

Mission:
To supply the public with a high-quality, safe and efficient transportation system that should enhance quality of life by increasing access and mobility, reducing congestion, improving the environment and promoting economic vitality.
Vision:
San Mateo County Transit District is a leader in providing mobility alternatives that are relevant and desirable.
Values:
Integrity, Customer focused, Respect, Quality, Teamwork, Leadership, Accountability."

Quoted from: http://samtrans.org/info_about_the_district.html

Walk, wait and ride times explain the bus system network

2008-06-01T21:31:00.000-07:00

The structure of a public bus network is reflected in the time a bus traveler spends walking to, waiting for and riding the bus.

If you want to "improve" the time performance of a public bus system, you can decide which time relationship you want to improve.

To reduce the walking tine, you add bus routes so the distance is less to walk.
To reduce the waiting time, you add buses so the interval between buses is less.
To reduce riding time, you add faster buses or provide high speed lane options.

There is a problem with globally "improving" a bus system by adding more buses and routes: The operating costs can go up much faster than patronage arising simply out of shorter trip times.

At the time of my 1979 bus study, the public bus system spent 3 times more than it earned in farebox revenue.

You can say, conventional American public bus systems operate in a "cost and revenue saddle". The total time of a bus trip can be 2x to 3x the same trip made in a private car. There simply isn't the funding or resources to drive down bus travel times by the brute direct provision of more routes, more buses and faster buses.

(Unfortunately, I have not been able to find my 1979 linear regression travel time analysis data and formulae.) I am still looking. The data was on HP-41 magnetic cards. I hope to find at least the notes and calculation work sheets.

Saving the appearances: Determining a linear equation for travel time on a bus

2008-05-28T21:01:00.000-07:00

i wanted to develop some observation based mathematics for the bus system. The purpose was to enable modeling of the bus system and evaluating proposed improvements or changes.

So I began with a "Travel time record". I generated one of these records every time I went on a bus trip. I did several versions of this form as the bus travel experience and what I could do with the data became clear.

To develop a linear travel time equation I collected these data items:

Start time, start location of the bus trip, measured from the door.
Walk time (time when I arrived at the bus stop).
Waiting time (time when the bus arrived, ending the wait)
Riding time (time when I got off the bus)
... additional walk, wait and ride times for a 2 bus trip
Walk time (time when I walked to the destination and touched the door).
Destination location.

With just a few bus rides recorded, I began to see a travel time relationship emerge. For a typical bus trip: **

30% of the trip time is spent walking.
30% of the trip time is spent waiting.
40% of the trip time is spent riding the bus.

Before even beginning a linear regression analysis, the basic characteristics of the public bus system as a network of paths, buses and walking people are beginning to emerge.

**The travel ratios presented here are subject to editing. I am hunting around in my garage for the original data. 5-28-2008

From "Carry carts" to our shared mythology

2008-05-27T17:50:00.000-07:00

Here are two tools for making the public bus service do more. Consider the consequences if a person could board the bus with a shopping cart.

The consequence: An entire class of domestic living activities would be possible without owning a car or hiring a taxi.

Now in thinking about why the bus systems I have studied don't carry shopping carts I finally conclude is because Americans have a mythology about individual automobiles as our primary mode of travel. The public bus system occupies a little corner of that mythology.

By mythology, I mean we have a set of shared values and ideas. For instance, here is a statement that we broadly share:

There is one mind common to all individual men. Every man is an inlet to the same and to all of the same. He that is once admitted to the right of reason is made a freeman of the whole estate. What Plato has thought, he may think ; what a saint has felt, he may feel ; what at any time has befallen any man, he can understand. Who hath access to this universal mind is a party to all that is or can be done, for this is the only and sovereign agent.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, Essays: History, paragraph 1.

Our shared mythology is continually present and interacting with our perception of what is reasonable, what is possible in the review and development of the public bus system in the new world moving toward a low carbon emission society.

Busbook conclusion: Change bus rules of operation to allow efficent operation.

2008-05-26T22:09:00.000-07:00

I studied the public bus system of the Los Angeles metropolitan area in 1979. Within the framework of the rules of operation extended to it, I found the Southern California Rapid Transit District was providing "transportation for those who have no other choice" in a fair manner. The District had a "service standard" to provide service and access. The District put buses on the road and did the best it could with fare income and government support.

Part of the study was I bought a 1 month bus pass and I resolved to not drive my car at any time during the month. On the last three days of the "no car" month, a neighbor offered me $100 to install a gas water heater for him. I was unemployed at the time, staying temporarily in my Dad's house, and I needed the money bad.

I had two toolboxes of plumbing tools in a storage locker 15 miles away. I had previously been in business as "Lee McKusick Water Conservation and Faucet Repair" during the 1973 water crisis. The tool boxes weighed 48 lb. and 52 lb. I decided it was not practical to walk 4 blocks, some of it up hill with this load.

So, in violation of my study discipline, I drove my 1965 Volkswagen sedan (with a bald front tire and problematic liability insurance), got my tools and made my $100.

I had just lived through a practical demonstration of the failure of the public bus system. The service rules are rigged to provide "transportation for people and their incidental baggage only."

So the conclusion of my Busbook research is: The public bus system is caught in a saddle of restrictions on what it can do with it's resources. The restrictions condemn the system to operation at a low load factor and low usability. Low load factor means the overall fraction of seats filled for the entire bus service day is below 1/3. Low usability means most people choose a car or get some other kind of ride.

The affirmation is: The mythology and legal restrictions on the public bus system need to change. The mythology is a belief that a public bus system should not be allowed to provide services offered by the private sector.

The legal restrictions that must be reduced are restrictive clauses in Federal transportation equipment bonds and suits brought by commercial transportation providers that find a bus service steals patrons from their licensed transportation service.

Advocacy: Change public bus service idea

2008-05-18T22:30:00.000-07:00

This blog is a rewrite of my 1979 research project "Busbook - A study of the Los Angeles public bus system".

The current (year 2008) global warming and carbon dioxide crisis reminds me of my experience with the 1979 energy crisis.

My 1979 study and my 2008 experience leave me in the uncomfortable position of advocating a substantial social change in the services offered by the public bus system in America.

The public bus system should add services of carrying carts and containers of 30 to 150 pounds with the service purpose of allowing more individuals, families, and small businesses to function sometimes without the use of an automobile or truck.

The public bus systems I have studied all show a "load factor" of 33% or less. That means about 2/3 of the bus capacity is unused.

The public bus must be wedged out of it's assumption that the public bus is for "those who have no other transportation choice" and service is limited to "carry passengers and their incidental baggage only."