It’s that time of year again.  The Ann Arbor Art Fairs will descend upon downtown Ann Arbor from Weds. July 16-Sat. July 19th.

Because the Art Fair’s close many downtown streets and parking prices increasing during this time, you might be looking for other commuting options during this time.

getDowntown has created a page on our website with info on Art Fair Commuting, from which streets will be closed, to what you need to know to get around.

Check it out here: www.getdowntown.org/resources/Commuting_during_Art_Fair.html

I just got the following info from the AATA.  Overall, I think they did a good job listening to citizens and didn’t make some changes that would have been hard for many people.

They are not going to eliminate any service on the 13.

Another great change is that the AATA is going to add service on the #8 Pauline bus, which will mean it will run every 15 minutes during morning and afternoon peak hours.

In terms of some negatives, they are going to stop running the 12UL, but since the #8 Pauline bus will be running down Liberty when it goes downtown, this should be ok for some.

Also, they are going to be having service to the Miller Rd. Park and Ride Lot every 20 minutes.

For the most part, I think the changes are ok.  I work with the AATA on a regular basis and hope they continue to find ways to increase service.  With gas at $4.00 a gallon, it is clear we need more service.

So here’s the stuff about the service changes:

AATA Board approves revised service changes

Following extensive public input on proposed service changes, the Ann Arbor Transportation Authority (AATA) Board of Directors carefully considered the public’s concerns and approved a revised list of changes at its May 21 meeting.

The service changes will take effect on Sunday, August 24, 2008.

Overall, the changes are designed to add service during morning and afternoon peak hours, and improve on-time performance on routes where this has been a problem, including the 4, 1U and 12UM routes. The changes will improve service to the Miller Road Park & Ride lot and add service to the new Skyline High School.

Service reductions are planned in lower productivity service during midday, evening, and weekend hours on Routes 7, 12UL, 14 and 16.

Of the original 28 proposed changes, 17 were adopted as proposed, four were adopted with modifications and seven were not adopted, as a result of the public input.

Here is a list of the Changes (going to effect on Sunday, August 24, 2008)

Route 1U - Pontiac-University

• Timing will be adjusted on this route to improve on-time performance.

Route 4 – Washtenaw

• Multiple changes are designed to improve the reliability and frequency of the route in Ann Arbor without adding to rider’s travel time or adding a large number of additional service hours. Details of the changes will be included on the AATA web site when the maps and schedules are produced and posted.

Route 7 - South Main-East

• The 10:18 p.m. trip leaving the Blake Transit Center will end at Eisenhower and South Industrial.
• The loop now serving Kerrytown will be eliminated.
• A trip from the Blake Transit Center to the Pioneer High Park & Ride Lot will be added at 10:48 p.m.

Route 8 - Pauline

• Frequency of weekday service during morning and afternoon peak hours will be increased to every 15 minutes.
• The additional service will use Liberty Street to travel inbound to the Blake Transit Center (BTC). Service on Route 8 will be through-routed with the #2 Plymouth route. That is, a bus arriving at the BTC on Route 8 will depart as a #2 bus to enable riders to travel to and from the University of Michigan (U-M) campus and medical center without changing buses.

Route 9U - Jackson-University

• The route will be moved away from Maple Village to the Miller Road Park & Ride Lot. Service will be provided on North Maple Road between Dexter Road and Miller Road. No service will be provided on Jackson Road.

Route 12UL - Liberty-University

• The route will be eliminated.

Route 12UM - Miller-University

• Peak Hour Service: Service to and from the Miller Road Park & Ride Lot will be increased to every 20 minutes. Service to the new Skyline High School will be added.
• Midday Service: Service will operate every 30 minutes between the Miller Road Park & Ride Lot/Skyline High School and the Blake Transit Center, resulting in service every 15 minutes on Miller Road.

Route 14 - Geddes-East Stadium

• Peak Hour Service: During peak hour service, the route will be shortened to operate between Pioneer High School and U-M Medical Center (Mott) and time will be added to improve on-time performance.
• The #14 and #9U route service will be through-routed at Mott. That is, a #14 bus that arrives at Mott will depart as a #9U bus to enable #14 riders to travel to and from the U-M campus and downtown without changing buses.
• Midday Service: Midday service will be eliminated.

Route 16 - Ann Arbor-Saline Road

• Service will be eliminated on two loops along the route: 1) William, Thompson and Hill streets and 2) OakValley east of Lohr, Ellsworth and Lohr Road south of Oak Valley. A third loop on Oakbrook, Main and Eisenhower streets will be shortened to use Northbrook rather than Main.

Once revised, maps and schedules showing the changes will be posted on the AATA web site, www.TheRide.org.

Route and schedule questions may be directed to AATA at 734.996.0400.

Here are some more winners of Curb Your Car Month Prize Drawings:

Bike to Work Friday Winner (won a $25 gift card to Whole Foods): James Welch, Arbor Research Collaborative for Health Employee

Monday go!pass drawing winners: We have the numbers and the places they work, but we don’t know the names yet. The go!pass numbers drawn were 4117 (Brown Jug Employee) and 4350 (Vinology Employee).

You can win, too! Check out all of the Weekly Prize Drawings here: Weekly Curb Your Car Month Prize Drawings.

getDowntown would like to announce the following winners of our weekly prize drawings:

Monday go!pass drawing winners: Ann Jacobs, Arbor Research Collaborative for Health and Elizabeth Sharon, Miller Canfield

Carpool/Vanpool Tuesday drawing winner: Casey Brooks, Arbor Brewing Company

Walk to Work Wednesday Winner: Julie Sverid, People’s Food Co-op

To see what these people won, and the prizes for the upcoming drawings, go here: Weekly Prize Drawings.

The two go!pass numbers pulled for this week’s go!pass drawing are:

3141 (Miller Canfield employee)

747 (Arbor Research Collaborative for Health Employee)

If you are one of these people, please email getdowntown@annarborchamber.org to claim your Moosejaw Waterbottle!

Last week I did a commuter choices presentation at JJR. At these presentations I give staff information and resources to help them walk, bike, bus, carpool, etc. to work. Since JJR is participating in the Commuter Challenge, this was a great time to come and talk to them.

Ron was at the presentation. He just started working at JJR a couple of weeks ago, so didn’t know all of the ins and outs of commuting to the downtown.

Since he doesn’t live in Ann Arbor, I encouraged him to think about parking at the Miller Road Park and Ride Lot and taking the 12UM AATA bus into town. The 12UM goes right past JJR, so it works out really well. And since JJR participates in the go!pass program, Ron gets a go!pass and can park at the Park and Ride Lot and ride the bus for free.

Ron sent me an email describing his experience using the Park and Ride Lot and bus for the first time. He had a great experience that I wanted to share with you:

I actually got to the Park & Ride Lot on Miller and M-14 by 6:25 a.m. and rode the bus to town!

My normal commute is 18.2 miles (36.4 miles roundtrip) and this saves me 2.5 miles (5.0 miles roundtrip) one way. Time wise it takes maybe 5 more minutes, waiting at the Lot for the Bus and the number of stops, no big deal. The stop close to JJR is on the SW Corner of Huron and Ashley.

I up’ed my [Commuter Challenge] goal of 4 Sustainable Commutes to 16 for next month’s, “Curb Your Car Month”. Last night we put over $60 in a tank of gas. At these prices this little 5.0 mile savings/commute will allow me not to purchase another $400 in gas over the course of the year.

I think Ron’s words speak for themselves! Do you want to save more money? Get more out of your commute by participating in the Curb Your Car Month Commuter Challenge. Take the Challenge by clicking here.

A recent article on Entrepreneur.com discusses the increasing trend of businesses encouraging their employees to use sustainable transportation to get to work.

The article cites increasing gas prices and awareness of the realities of global warming as the top reasons behind this trend.

And the things businesses are doing to encourage sustainable transportation can be done right here in Downtown Ann Arbor:

• Pay for transit use. Many downtown businesses already do this with the go!pass
• Pay for carpool and vanpool use. Now that getDowntown is offering preferential parking for carpools and vanpools, this idea makes even more financial sense.
• Give out Bikes to employees. Not sure if any downtown business is doing this yet, but if you do, let me know.
• Offer showers and lockers for cyclists. At the very least, businesses can demonstrate they want to encourage cycling by offering free memberships to the Y, or even just learning more about resources for cyclists in our community.
• Encourage employees to live close enough to walk. Ann Arbor was recently rated the 3rd best city for walking in the whole nation. What can your business do to encourage employees to live close enough to walk to work?
• Offer employees incentives to try a sustainable commute. It’s easy to do that in downtown Ann Arbor, all you have to do is sign up your business for the Commuter Challenge. getDowntown does the rest! But if you really want to offer your own prizes and incentives, that would also be good.

So join the trend. All the other cool businesses are doing it!

For those of you who are numbers people, you might be interested in this.  As you can see in the table below, go!pass use is the highest it has been in the last 7 years.  The table below shows the number of people showing their go!pass on the buses each month.  As you can see, about 6,000 more people used their go!pass this March compared to last March.

At the same time, the AATA itself just hit a record for the number of riders they have per service hour.  So it’s clear that people are changing their behavior.  And I bet high gas prices have something to do with it.

This is what frustrates me about McCain’s idea of cutting the gas tax.

It’s a bad idea for so many reasons, and I actually found an article from Fox News no less, detailing 10 reasons why suspending the federal gas tax would be bad for the economy and poor public policy.

One of the reasons this article mentions:

It would eliminate almost $9 billion that would be invested in road, bridge and public transit investments that benefit the public and American businesses–$7 billion in highway improvements; $2 billion in transit investments. This would trigger a series of negative economic consequences.

Did you read that?  $2 BILLION dollars in transit investments.  Hello?  Isn’t this the time to increase transit because gas prices are so high?  Not to mention global warming, congestion, etc.

At the same time, as you can see by the go!pass stats, people are changing their behavior.  This is good for our environment, good for individual and community health, and good for people’s pocketbooks.  It makes no sense to mess with that at this point.

While it is true that commuters who live too far away to walk,  bike or bus are the most affected, this shouldn’t be reason to cut back on taxes.  If anything, we should find ways to increase access to transit so these folks can get to work without driving.  And of course, carpooling is also an option.

And perhaps that will mean that people’s schedules need to be more consistent so they can carpool.  Or maybe that means more teleworking.  Whatever we do, I think this is a great opportunity to push some initiatives forward.  Let’s keep moving forward and give SE Michigan the transit system it deserves.

There is a nice article today in the Ann Arbor News about all of the great new services for commuters to the downtown.

We touched on these services at last night’s Commuter Choices Reception. About 40 people attended this reception and we talked about all of the great commuting choices people have to the downtown as well as some new services coming to the area.

Here are some of the great resources we discussed:

Walk

• Want to walk downtown? Check out this great Walk Map produced by the DDA.
  • You can also get a paper copy at downtown parking structures and at the Chamber of Commerce Office at 115 W. Huron 3rd Floor.
  • This map is a great resource not only for it’s info on parking lots, bus stops, and the LINK route, but also because it has info on places to eat and shop in the downtown.
• Want to know how far you have to walk? Check out the Gmaps pedometer.
  • This nifty little program lets you see how long (in miles) in takes you to get from one place to another. Simply plug in an address, zoom in click “start recording” and double click on a starting point. Then keep clicking on points in the direction you want to travel until you reach your destination. Gmaps does the rest.
  • For those of you who run to work (or run home) you can also use MapMyRun, an online social networking site for runners.

Bike

• Get you Bike Maps here. We’ve got Bike Maps over here at the Chamber that show you preferred cycling routes.
• There are tons of other resources for cyclists on our website for cyclists. Check them out here.
• Ever wanted to put your bike on the bus. We can show you how.

Bus

• 5,400 strong and growing. That’s the number of go!passes we’ve sold so far to 388 downtown businesses.
• And not only do go!passes allow you to ride all AATA buses for free and park at Park and Ride Lots for free, they also come with DISCOUNTS TO DOWNTOWN BUSINESSES!
• The AATA is staring up a new Commuter Bus from Chelsea to Ann Arbor on May 15
• getDowntown is working with AATA and the DDA to provide a NightRide van service to downtown employees at work after 11:00pm.
  • This van would arrive at Fourth and Liberty every 45 minutes from 11:15am-1:30am and drop you off at your house (if you live on the West Side of Ann Arbor) or at the Pioneer Park and Ride Lot.
  • The service will be free for awhile to encourage people to use it and tell us what they think.
  • More info to come!

Carpool/Vanpool/Share a Ride

• getDowntown and the DDA are now offering preferential parking for carpools of 3 or more or vanpools in downtown parking structures. These spaces will be $125 each (divided among 3 people that’s about $42 each) and are guaranteed to be there for you. Want one? Email me and I’ll give you more details. I hope to get this up on the website soon.
• getDowntown and the DDA are working on getting Zipcars into the downtown. And things are moving forward. I just need to write a proposal to the DDA and they need to approve it. If the DDA approves the proposal, we should have 3 Zipcars in the downtown area by around June.
• The AATA is going to be introducing some new online ridesharing software in May. This software will allow people to go right on a website and find people to carpool or vanpool with instantly. Look for it soon!

And last, but not least, Curb Your Car Month! Stop reading this right now and sign up for the Commuter Challenge and Check out all of the great events.

Whew!

I just wrote a post discussing the Sunday Ann Arbor News article on the possibility of streetcars in Ann Arbor.

You can check out the post and the ensuing discussion on Arbor Update.