Yet another benefit of transit. A recent study found that people who use a Commuter Train to get to work lost more weight over time than drivers. Check out the study here: http://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode.cfm?id=mass-transit-encourages-exercise-an-10-07-09
According to IBM’s Commuter Pain Survey, driving in many large metropolitan cities is pretty unpleasant.
What is causing all of this pain? IBM looked at 10 different factors:
1) commuting time, 2) time stuck in traffic, agreement that: 3) price of gas is already too high, 4) traffic has gotten worse, 5) start-stop traffic is a problem, 6) driving causes stress, 7) driving causes anger, 8. traffic affects work, 9) traffic so bad driving stopped, and 10) decided not to make trip due to traffic.
Whoah. Not good stuff. Cities ranking high on the commuter pain index include Beijing, Toronto, London, Paris, New York, and of course, Los Angeles.
Interestingly, some of the countries with high commuter pain also have high rates of transit, biking and walking (I am thinking of Toronto and New York in particular).
While IBM looks at commuter pain, I’d love to switch this around to check out a commuter happiness index. What sort of things could measure commuter happiness? Short commuting time would definitely be one of them. But how about some of the things that make biking, walking and busing so great? Like stronger connection to community, better personal fitness, and lower stress. Wouldn’t it be interesting to see what cities rank high on the Commuter Happiness Index and what makes those cities work so well? It might help understand the reasons behind the pain of these other places.
Slate.com has an interesting series exploring transportation, thriving cities, and how to solve an impending transportation crisis called “Nimble Cities” From the first article:
The world is moving to cities for the reasons they always have: because cities are centers of opportunity, of social connection, of innovation. But social mobility requires real mobility, and the cities that will succeed will be those with the fastest flow of ideas and the most efficient and robust links between people.
This is an exercise after my own heart – lets put our nerdy urban planning, transportation and economics thinking caps on and think about what could make Ann Arbor a nimble city. Is it already?
Light Rail
So let’s read and discuss! When thinking about parking, questions discussed are: does more parking encourage more driving and congestion? Would eliminating those parking requirements allow for more dense development, development that’s friendlier to transit? Would bicycle superhighways, or more bike lanes encourage bicyclists? Ideas like minimum parking requirements and congestion pricing, transportation demand management, light rail, improving infrastructure – are all represented. Locally, we have shared cars (Zipcar), rail could be a possibility in the near future, and parking is always a topic of discussion. Read the suggested solutions – which ones could Ann Arbor take advantage of?
At a recent Ann Arbor Transportation Authority (AATA) Board Meeting, I was able to hear a presentation on the AATA’s new Transit Master Plan process.
And before you go looking for the plan with all it’s components on the new Moving You Forward website, let me emphasize that what was presented was a process, not a plan?
Why?
Because what the AATA wants to do (with the help of several consultants) is engage the community on several different levels:
1. First, the AATA wants to find out what Washtenaw County citizens need and want for the County for the next 5, 15, and 30 years. Do we want a thriving economy? Do we want to attract more young professionals? Do we want more focus on the environment? Do we just want to party?
2. These needs will then be looked at in terms of what types of transportation could help meet the needs. If we want a thriving economy, does that mean we focus on trolleys or bus rapid transit? Or better bike lanes?
3. Finally, all of these different types of technologies will be mapped on some different scenarios to determine how they would all fit into a particular plan.
I like this approach because it reminds me what a marketing professional once instructed me to do: You see, when you want to make a pie, you don’t just make a little dough, but you make enough so that you can make sure you’ll be able to cover the whole pie. And then you cut that dough down until you have just what you need. So the AATA is going to use the public’s input to make a lot of dough and then work through the process of cutting that input down into something that looks and tastes delicious.
The whole Moving You Forward process has already begun, with the head of the AATA Michael Ford, meeting with many members of the community. There will also be lots of time for public input beginning later in the year.
If you are at all interested in seeing a plan for transit for this community (including how biking and walking fit into the picture) I encourage you to check out Movingyouforward.org and be a part of the discussion.
Recently, the getDowntown Program surveyed bike commuters to learn more about them.
In that survey, we asked two open-ended questions:
So what do bike commuters want? Not much, actually. But what they do want, while pretty simple to say, is much more difficult to implement.
Out of the 213 bike commuters who took our survey, the majority said the following would make it easier to commute to work in Ann Arbor:
More Bike Lanes and Paths
This was by far the most requested improvement. Cyclists would both like to see bike lines on more city streets as well as more paths that allow cyclists to get around Ann Arbor without having to be in the street. The interesting thing about this is that Ann Arbor does have a plan to add more bike lanes. The City’s Non-Motorized plan was adopted in 2007 and every year, the City implements some parts of that plan. So the biggest reason we don’t have more bike lanes and bike paths is not because we don’t want them, it’s because we need to get the funding for them. That’s why the City is pushing hard for the Rails to Trails 2010 Campaign for Active Transportation. A couple of years ago, the City submitted a proposal to this campaign to receive 5o million dollars for non-motorized improvements. Now we just have to wait for the Transportation Bill to be reauthorized. In the meantime, if you’d like to see the City dedicate more funding to bike lanes, you can always let your Councilperson know.
More Bike Parking, especially covered parking, secure parking and lockers
As many survey respondents recognized, getting your bike from point A to point B is just one piece of the puzzle. You next have to find a place to park it. That can be a much harder proposition if you are trying to find bike parking outside of downtown Ann Arbor. However, the City does have bike parking standards for new construction, which means that at least there will be bike parking when something new is created. If you have a place in mind where you’d like to see bike parking downtown, you can let the DDA know with this handy form.
More education for cyclists and motorists on the rules of the road
It isn’t surprising that many bike commuters would like to see more opportunities for cyclists and motorists to learn how to play well together on the road. The Washtenaw Biking and Walking Coalition (WBWC) continues to work on this issue and it always happy to have others help them out!
Better maintained bike lanes
Many survey respondents noted that bike lanes are great, but it doesn’t help if they’re full of leaves, snow, or potholes. I bet if we asked motorists what could be done to improve commuting by car in Ann Arbor they’d also talk about fixing out streets. Clearly this is a problem for the Ann Arbor area (and Michigan in general) that doesn’t have easy solutions. However, if you are a cyclists and do see a road maintenance issue you can report it to the City of Ann Arbor. Click here and go to the Report a Maintenance Issue section in the right sidebar.
Designated bike boulevards and corridors that are geared towards cyclists rather than cars
Bike commuters would also like to have places in Ann Arbor that are specifically geared towards the needs of cyclists. It’s an interesting idea and I could see many ways to do this, from simply designating certain places in Ann Arbor bike corridors, to actually creating separated streets specifically for cyclists.
So these are the thoughts of bike commuters. Does this jive with what you’d like to see for bike commuters in Ann Arbor?
Treehugger recently posted an interesting set of ideas for how to make your City more bike and ped friendly.
Their suggestions (in sum):
The interesting part about many of these ideas is that Ann Arbor is already doing many of them. The idea of no turn on red was suggested in the Ann Arbor Non-motorized plan. We have lots of parties downtown (Art Fair, Green Fair, the Car Show, etc), which I think definitely makes it more pedestrian friendly. Downtown people can’t really go more than 20 mph and I know the City as a whole has struggled with speed limits. We might not have a Tweed Ride but we do have the Ride Around Town (RAT–thanks WBWC!). Especially downtown, I think we are moving in the right direction on many of these items.
What do you think is missing from this list? What else could we do downtown and elsewhere to create a better environment for peds and cyclists in Ann Arbor?
FYI from the DDA:
Dear Friend,
The Ann Arbor Downtown Development Authority (DDA) is undertaking a comprehensive public parking plan following a request from City Council. The DDA seeks to understand the parking needs, priorities and preferences of community members so it can shape this plan.
Would you please take five minutes to complete this survey? It will help the DDA planning team understand more about your parking patterns, values and priorities in order to inform the parking plan.
We appreciate the time you will spend completing this survey and would like to express our thanks with the chance to win a $25 gift certificate for 2 respondents drawn from this survey. Please continue to check your local news source and our website www.a2dda.org for project updates. This survey is open to all members of the public and we welcome a variety of input – please feel free to forward it along.
Again, thank you for your time and thoughts.
Susan Pollay
Executive Director | Ann Arbor DDA
734-994-6697 | www.a2dda.org
FYI:
Internationally renowned walkability expert Dan Burden is visiting Lansing next Friday, February 12th to do an all-day workshop at the Michigan Municipal League.
I don’t have a lot of time to comment on these survey results right now, but I wanted folks to be able to check out the results from this survey (conducted late last year) that assess the interest of Washtenaw County voters countywide transit.
You can download the Executive Summary here.
To get a taste of some of the results, here’s the final conclusion of the report:
At the time of the survey (October, 2009) support for a transit tax issue, though nominally at a majority of 51%, was insufficient for it to pass. Too much of the support was half-hearted, and opposition, though in the minority, was firm. However, exposure to various arguments for and against a transit tax during the survey resulted in a gain of 10% for the issue, a fact that indicates the ability of a campaign to motivate a positive vote, not by trying to change the minds of those clearly opposed to a levy, but primarily by strengthening the interest and support of those who at the present time are only weakly committed to a positive vote on the issue.
Although households with at least one transit user are heavily in favor of a transit tax issue, and are an important constituency, they are insufficient in number to pass a transit issue. Thus the issue will turn on the broader community benefit to all, transit users and non-users alike.
The promise of improvements to existing services such as extended weekend hours and more frequent service, while probably appealing to riders, and perhaps important, do not attract voters in general. On the other hand service which broaden the usefulness of transit throughout the county have some appeal. The prospects, however, of WALLY receives a very mixed response and is not advantageous to a transit tax issue. Ann Arbor – Detroit service receives better response, but neither rail issue is, at present, a significant new plus for a transit issue, and funding for WALLY may pose a serious risk for a transit issue.
The fate of the transit tax vote will depend not on a promise of any specific service or service package, but rather on the ability of a campaign and its allies to move and solidify the positive and positive-leaning voters by informing them of AATA’s existing accomplishments, its careful and productive use of public money, the county-wide nature of its future services, the need for public transit to attract jobs, and the need to expand services for seniors and those with disabilities.
In the race for energy efficiency between mass transit and single occupancy vehicles, who’s currently on the winning side? The Straight Dope tackles this question in characteristically logical style.
The only thing I regret about this article is that he doesn’t look at bikes and traveling by foot as viable transportation option (although he does mention them in passing at the end of the article).
