I wanted to take the #136 north on Gilbert, transfer to the #40, and then transfer to the light rail.  I studied the schedule for the #136 and could not determine when it would arrive near where I was staying.  I would have been happy to just go and wait for it if the bus arrival times where every 15 minutes, but the frequency was 30 minutes.  Strangely I almost went to wait for 30 minutes considering the temperature at 10:30am was an awesome 72 or so degrees.  That temperature however wouldn’t last long, and since I’m rather sun intolerant, I decided a car was unfortunately in order.

I got a ride from Jo’s soon to be married friend Cubers (pronounced “CUBE-ERZ”) to Enterprise Rent-a-Car and picked up a POS automobile.  I then drove directly to the nearest light rail transit park & ride and ditched the POS Chevrolet Cobalt.  That was the end of that turmoil, I could now focus on life, people, architecture, and my surroundings instead of driving.  With the car ditched I walked myself through the expanse of parking spots, filled with automobiles.  Through the parked buses, one a BRT oriented ride, one a normal hybrid bus, and then onto the platform where an LRV set awaited my embarking.

The Phoenix Bus System Fails but the Light Rail Rules

I’m going to clause this next section with my assumptions, thoughts, and ideas about Phoenix.  I figured it was a right leaning, socialistically auto transport oriented catastrophe of pavement ala Los Angeles.  I assumed that there would be no real density, and the downtown would be a corpse with partially sullen people.  I thought the light rail would be at 20-30% occupancy even though I had read the ridership statistics.  I thought all these things, how could this famously inefficient city harbor an intelligent process of zoning and growth.  How could mile long blocks, as inhumane as that is, allow for dense development, beautiful architecture, and above all – intelligently operated and built transit?

Please excuse my excursion in vulgarity, but holy shit did I just get sideswiped into a new consciousness.  Thank you Phoenix.

Mesa, Gilbert, and Bulldozing

I boarded in Mesa.  In my previously stated stereotype of Phoenix.  Mesa, is simply …  well, most of it should just be bulldozed.  Same with Gilbert.  Probably a lot of the outlying suburbs.  These areas are expanses of non-communication, human un-involvement, a faceless expanse of human development without any humans.  Sure, there were plenty of people around, but they were hiding in their cars, in their homes, and away from any actual community.  The sprawl was beyond destructive to the surroundings, but to any human being with a soul that desired community, life, culture, ideas, thoughts, or other elements it was not the place to be.  I’m sure there are some in the burbs’ that would argue this, but sit me down with them and they’d walk away either realizing this and a high likelihood of planning to move inwards toward the city.  Simply put, the surrounding suburbs are a dirge.  Pure death of the soul, no authenticity, no art, no originality.  The suburbs here are the archetype of American mindlessness, allowing corporatism to feed us the majority of our thought, the grand slice of our ideas, from our religion to our diets.

But this ended within just a few stops on the light rail system.  By the third stop the train was full of human beings.  Smiling, some talking to each other, checking their phones for the latest text or E-mail.  The train was primarily college students, young and beautiful.  There were a few people heading to work or other errands, but mostly college students at this time.

By the fifth and sixth stops the train was even more packed.  Even once we reached ASU and unloaded a ton of people, a ton more got on.  We kept rolling at a good speed down the center street alignment.  In about 10 minutes we where downtown, rolling through the streets with cars and people everywhere.  Strangely though, and this is where my idea of Phoenix rapidly started to change.  I thought to myself, wow, “this is enlightening”.

There were people wandering around outside heading for lunch, EVERYWHERE.  This of course is just one test of a city, a good lunch crowd.  I also realized that citizens, regular ordinary citizens, were walking around with their second amendment rights squarely planted in armaments upon holsters on their hips.  Unfortunately for the staunchly anti-gun blue crowd nobody was gunning down each other – hmmm, the twisted irony of that.  On the note of the staunchly anti-transit red crowd, which I thought polluted Phoenix too, the transit was indeed full of riders and even the bus stops garnered decent numbers of people waiting for a ride.  I was, being the Libertarian middle of the road advocate that I am, euphoric to see high transit ridership and armed, proud, happy citizens all over the place.

American Citizens in Phoenix

Speaking of Phoenix citizens, I honestly thought there would be much more grumbling and aggression.  In the suburbs it seemed that this might just be the case.  I saw 3 arguments taking place, heard about a botched robbery and the robber being shot, and other various forms of aggressive crimes.  But here I was downtown being greeted by complete strangers as I walked the sidewalks.  At first I figured it was the camera, so to see I took it off and stowed it in the backpack – but it ALL continued.  People, in full honesty, were greeting me with hellos.  Of course not every single person, but a solid 2 dozen people greeted me with hellos and smiles.  I was, shall I say shocked.  I had not seen this in any city except Portland.  But really, most American cities do seem to be picking up this spirit of camaraderie among each other.  I have to admit, that it has improved even more amid Obama being elected.  His victory truly has made an impact in city life, just by the air of change.  Regardless of what is functionally occurring with the administration, his presence versus Bushy Boys presence has changed the attitudes of millions of Americans.  Phoenix seems to be no exception, except that it has bucked my idea by exponential degrees.

Sandwich Factory

I jumped into the sandwich factory and got an excellent New Yorker Sandwich.  The shop had a great attitude (and armed employees also), and just gave me even more of an exuberant boost.  I gave Tony (of Lightrailblogger Fame) a call, got popped into voice mail.  I then tried to give my coworker from a job in another land, Aendenne a call, but my phone ceased to cooperate for a moment.  After about 15 minutes though Tony txted me back and we had a short txting exchange, which ended with me asking where a good wifi establishment, preferably with coffee, would be.  He pointed me to Lux.

Lux – Community – Coffee - Art

I mapped Lux on my iPhone and found it without much effort.  I fortunately knew where the light rail went, because I looked at the map and hit the “transit button” which failed to work.  I checked and came to the unfortunate conclusion that Valley Metro has not provided their transit information to Google.  I had a message for Valley Metro, GET YOUR INFORMATION TO GOOGLE!  Even without the transit directions I knew where it was, walked over to the light rail and checked the station stops.  A few stops north would land me almost at the front door of Lux.  An LRV arrived and off I went for a coffee surge and some electricity for my montage of devices.

I arrived, and was puzzled at first where Lux was, but then in short order with a tip from Tony, realized the located and stepped inside.  At first, walking into Lux was disorienting because of the darker lighting compared to the excessive sun outside.  My eyes adjusted and I moved forward in better clarity.  Stepping up to the bar I realized there was a roasting machine in the back.  Absolutely a good sign for coffee of credibility.  I got a smile on my face while I set my pack down beside the bar.  I ordered an ice mocha, figuring it would be a good default to jump into after the heat.

The girl at the counter asked, “want whip cream” to which I replied, “no thanks.”  She then got a sad puppy look like I’d hurt her feeling, which she then told me kindly, “we make the whip cream home made…”, to which I quickly changed my tune.  I received my mocha and must say, very tasty whip cream.  The mocha was good too, with a solid rich chocolate flavor and a slight bit of espresso bite.  I’d suggest one.

Lux was pretty packed when I got there, with only 3 seats empty in the whole place.  I was able to snag one after inquiring with one of the beautiful people seated aside me, “may I snag this seat?” to which I received a reply of “oh no, please do” from the young lady seated there.  I took my pack and set it aside, pulled forth my camera, laptop, iPhone, and all requisite cords to plug em’ all up and get juiced back to full batteries.  The pretty gal aside me plugged in my gadgetry for me, since I was across from the plug.  With the zappy electric flow going I commenced upon completion of this blog entry.

Needless to say, if you haven’t been to Lux and live in Phoenix, you should probably go.  You might kick yourself for not having been, especially if you actually like coffee of the higher quality (i.e. Not Starbucks burnt roasts & sugar induced comas).

The Ride to Lux, Light Rail Style

As I stood upon the LRV rolling north out of the heart of downtown Phoenix, I marveled at a number of things.  One of those things was the smoothness of the ride.  Because of the straightness of the alignment, the LRV could really scoot and still sustain a smooth ride unlike some of the twisting, turning, and raised embankments the LRVs in Portland and Seattle ride along.  I’ve come to find that the best riding light rail is planted firmly in cement along straight corridors.  The ride was absolutely chill, I dug it.

The second thing that outright shocked me was the level of development along the light rail.  Of course some was pre-existing and some is new.  But much of the pre-existing has now become transit oriented development (TOD), and garnered options to the lifestyle that being TOD provides.  There where shops, businesses, and massive apartment, condo, and other living complexes along this northern branch.  Every inch of what I had seen so far along the light rail line was in good maintenance, and the entire line tended to run through areas where the buildings where beautiful.  At least in the facade of beauty that many buildings exist hidden inside of.  This level of development continued extensively with only a couple blocks along that line being undeveloped or under-developed.

The other notable thing I noticed, was the continuation of people riding on the light rail.  Not just old, or poor, but everybody.  There was an older guy in a suit, a 30ish old suited man, some young kids in the tweens, some young ladies carrying on about some cute guy toward the middle of the car, probably in their early twenties, and a few single people interspersed in age range, lifestyles.  Also stood gazing into the distance a skate boarder, pondering what no one really knows, or possibly nothing at all.  One thing in common among all of us, was that everyone on the train was relaxed, chilled out, unlike the drivers I had seen earlier in the day in Mesa & Gilbert.

Packed to Crush Capacity

My last comment in this entry, is that while I sat in the wonderful air conditioned space of Lux.  I sat there watching each light rail vehicle make its way by.  When I got off and entered Lux around 1:30pm the trains going by were at about 95% seated occupancy.  By 2:15pm the trains coming by had 100% seated occupancy and had 10-20% standing occupancy.  By 3:15pm the trains coming by had reached 90% of crush capacity.  Each LRV set was going by with approximately 190-200 people each.

I’ll have a lot more to say regarding Phoenix, the architecture, design, zoning, layout of the city, and much more.  But for now, I bid the intertubez farewell for a bit and am off to wander the line a bit more.  This last photo I depart with is a shot of the city from the Lux Light Rail Station.

…and economic reality.

I just was watching this winning video, and the video properly states what New Urbanism is; AKA Old Urbanism, Traditional Neighborhood design.  Of course, as with all Government agendas they don’t mention we should actually return to the effective monetary policies and zoning practices that allowed the creation of these old urban and traditional neighborhood designs, they instead want to dictate and control the build out of these “new urban” designs.  This does cause concern from me, as it is against any notable choice, individual liberty, or freedom of the individual.  Often times the planners and Government leaders push forward with these efforts as if people choose not to live in cities and choose to live in the suburbs.  The politicians and planners often forget, the main enabler of suburbs, sprawl, and the whole damnable aspect of the wasteful, weakness inducing American stereotype is them and they're debt increasing subsidization of sprawl type development.  Now they try to hold us all accountable to this and people don't even realize they're living a heavily subsidized lifestyle.

Anyway, some of the comments on Youtube I just had to answer, because I'm always amazed at the lack of insight, context, or knowledge they often proffer.

From electer1776 these questions for the utopians:
1. How will you get people to leave their nice suburban homes? Force?
2. How will you stop people from fleeing your overcrowded utopia? Force?
3. How will you stop an explosion of crime in your overcrowded hell?
4. What will you do to control concentrated pollution in your overcrowded areas?
5. What size army will you need to oppress the people into your utopia?

This is simple.  There are many cities that prove these answer I’ll provide, including but not limited to;  Portland, OR, New York, NY, San Francisco, CA, San Diego, CA, even gasp Los Angeles, CA.  Add to that density increasing cities of Seattle, WA, Tuscon, AZ, Miami, FL, and hundreds more around the world.  When given options, people do NOT always choose a sprawling suburb.  Just as often, and usually more often, when provided a choice (which we haven’t had for years in the US) of a good city urban life versus the burbs, people will choose the urban lifestyle.  So, to the answers.

1. Offer then a choice.  Over the years people that want culture, night life, development & education, will often leave the burbs for the higher intensity of brain trust & creativity that is alive within cities.

2. People fled American cities for a number of reasons; white flight, mass subsidization of Interstates that encouraged sprawl, a drastic change in zoning which disabled people from living in cities or allowing cities to grow intelligently.  There where a number of reasons, and the flock often goes the way the herder encourages, so thus the people fled cities per what the Government thought was a grand idea – suburbs!  Now we're slowly finding out, as the market told us before, that suburbs aren't exactly feasible.  So after 50+ years of debt induced sprawl, we're being forced to cut back.  No longer is China and others so willing to keep buying our debt.  We’re going to have to start buying our own lives back now, and we're deeply owned by others already – it's a tough road ahead.

3. Crime?  Crime is a unique trait of lower income areas generally, NOT of a particular land development.  New Orleans is a prime example of a million plus people, with very high crime for the US.  Portland, Oregon is a prime example of a million plus people, with very low crime in the US.  You are simply correlating incorrect data points.  Correlation is not causation, simple fact.

4. Populated areas often have less pollution than less populated areas.  Take Portland & Seattle for example.  Compare that with Jacksonville, Florida or Atlanta, Georgia.  Both of those cities have tons more pollution, dirtier air, entire ghettos that are polluted in ways many don’t even know anymore.  These ghettos, are primarily suburban sprawl.

5. What size army?  Hell, Portland & Seattle don’t even need police in large number compared to sprawling areas like Atlanta or Jacksonville.  Jacksonville is close in population to Portland, it had more than 2x the murder rate for the last 30 years.  Atlanta, a little closer to Seattle, still vastly higher.  Don’t even get me started on other places like that.  As urban centers have lost the chaotic destruction caused by mass Interstate Subsidy and white flight, they’ve started to become lively again.  As suburbs mature they become more despotic and crime ridden.

I could go on for days.  The defense of suburbia is ridiculous.  The defense is infeasible.  Already, we can’t afford our military or the economic impact of this lifestyle.  So what do we do?

No matter what, we change.

I started a series a long while ago about why Portland rocks so much.  It seems I really didn't need to because there are dozens of other people out there doing it for me.  One of those entities is the New York Times.  The paper has printed, or at least blogged/webified numerous articles about parts of Portland that rock.  One of those was the recent write up with Random Order Coffee House as the picture of the emodiment of Albera Street.  You might ask, "alright, Alberta street may be cool, but what has that got to do with transit?"

Oh yeah, this blog is about transit!  Well that's an easy question!

The #72 is net profitable on operations, which is the line that serves Alberat Street.  It is a vital connector for the area, connecting the street to MLK, and other area east and west.  The reason the #72 route is net profitable is because an insane number of people ride the bus on this route.  In the middle of the slowest hours one is likely to see the buses running every 10-15 minutes with at least 20 people, during peak hours they run every 3 minutes, often stacked up with the maximum number of possible passengers loaded on every single bus.  The #72 also connects to 82nd, which is one of the most active streets in Portland for commerce, especially for the Asian, Latino, and African American Populations and they use the bus service extensively!  It is, by far, a route that TriMet would do well to replicate and extend (i.e. get bigger buses for it).  The route could even tangibly run 24hrs a day without losing its net profitability on operations status.

But back to Alberta Street, and the similarities that are seen on this bus route all the time.  The community is lively, vivacious even, and effervescent in connecting with each other.  A large percentage of the residents live, play, and work in the area and use the transit.  They see and interact with each other every day and the bus is part of that.  This interconnectedness of the neighborhood is what makes Alberte one of the great areas in Portland.  The individualism, the creative work, the vitality of life itself among the people in the area is contagious.  So far this has all been done on a citizen basis, by private endeavor, and hopefully the city won't ever try to interfere with what is a well balanced area.  Alberta needs to Gentrification, or no more, it is set.  It is a beauty unto itself.

In addition to the #72 connecting Alberat east and west the #9, #73, #8 and #6 all connect to Alberta in the core and on the edges of the Alberta area.  These routes provide important connections to downtown Portland and to the immediate north and south points of interest.

One last note, is the #72, because it is a bus (not a streetcar) works very well on such a street because on art walk day it is re-routed.  The route is maintained a block north of Alberta because about 20 blocks of the street becomes pedestrian only and is packed with art walkers.  Because of this flexibility, it makes Alberta one more reason Portland kicks your city's a@#!

...and if you read the NYT article you'll see that Portland snagged two individuals from Seattle, because, Portland kicks that city's a@#! too.  :)

(Please note, it's in jest, so don't go gettin' yerself all fussy that I'm saying your city isn't as kewl as Portland.  Sides, it probably isn't!)  :p 

I was digging around on various sites, specifically Sam Adams’ Site and caught the schedule for several meetings.  These meetings are labeled “Bicycle Master Place and Streetcar System Plan Open House”.  These look like some meetings one might want to attend if you want, or do NOT want Streetcars plying the streets of Portland in 5-25 years.  So get up, go check em’ out.  I’m a mixed boat with the current silliness of the east side loop, but I would like to see some streetcars on primary arterials.  So swing down, comment, or e-mail me and let me know if you’re coming.  We’ll team up and jump on a bus and see what is up with these plans.

Tuesday, May 5th @ 4pm – 7pm @ Franklin High School Cafeteria @ 5405 SE Woodward St., Portland 97206

Wednesday, May 6th @ 4pm – 7pm @ David Douglas High School Cafeteria @ 1500 SE 130th Ave, Portland 97233

Monday, May 11th @ 4pm – 7pm @ Roosevelt High School Cafeteria @ 6941 N Central, Portland 97203

Ok, so I’m not a big fan of WES.  So far, it looks like a failure before it has even really opened.  However, there might be a silver lining to the whole debacle.  Something the private sector can actively do to make a ton of cash, save people a ton of cash, increase people’s standards of life, beautify an area, and generally breath life into America’s sprawling yet decaying communes of suburbia.

This ideal is embodied in effective and real (maybe!) transit oriented development, like the development outlined in Villebois.

Now the question is, especially in our trying economic situation, is will this even get built?  Will someone stand in the way?  Will it be effective?  Will it bring the ridership to WES?  I checked out the Flickr Images and it seems a LOT of the village has already been built.  It literally looks beautiful, but I don’t see any shots of the “town center” with businesses and thriving street life that would actually bring this community together.  So far from the Flickr Villevois Images all I see is suburban style neighborhoods with a few parks, and no reason to leave the car at home and take a walk in the “town center”.  Without the town center, it looks like nothing really new or different that what we’ve already got from sprawl oriented zoning.

Anyone got any shots of the town center?  I might actually take a trip down and check it out sometime, but I don’t want to go without a town center that I could travel to.

Looking at the layouts of the maps from the site it does, I must admit, look laid out really well.  I’ve grown very curious about that even with all of my questions.

To the right of development is a large green space wetlands area?

Another question that comes to mind is, where is the transit in relation to the village prospective town center of Villebois and the WES Station?  Overall, even with the overblown prices of things like WES, getting developments like this are in a strange, immoral, and perverse way a good thing for Portland and the nation as a whole.  We NEED more developments like this, but we should build transit at a good ROI cost, but I can rest a little easier at night knowing that at least some good development has been spurred around WES already.

Looking at the map of the larger Wilsonville area though draws some major concerns though.  Even though there is the town of Villebois, I’m suspecting that 90%+ of the town will haul itself around not by transit (even though it is TOD?  Is it?) but by getting in the ole auto and lumbering around the sprawlish area of Wilsonville.  I would imagine though that many of the transit needs of the Villebois Village could be met by the SMART System.  With that thought I went searching for the SMART System map of the area.  To my surprise the Villebois Village actually HAS A SHUTTLE!!!!

I was stoked when I found this out, but looking at the schedule, it’s barely useful to catch the train let alone get around Wilsonville.  Hey, but at LEAST you can catch the WES eh!

Overall though, the real connectors look like the #4 and #6.  The schedules on these two lines, even though they don’t really connect at all to the best Village in the little town of Wilsonvile, they do maintain a little bit better frequency.

I’m writing this, but in all reality, any bus service in a town the size of 20k like Wilsonville is awe inspiring to even have any service.  Most towns the size of Wilsonville are lucky to have any buses let alone multiple lines connecting to a commuter rail line and express buses into the city.

Overall, this revelation has improved my opinion of Wilsonville a little bit.  Not a lot, just a little bit.  It absolutely gives people another major choice at a great cost for the Portland area.  The Villebois also provides, at least if that town center gets built and they get some decent stores down there (and maybe a non-chain presence of local establishments?) a car free lifestyle.  At least it would provide a “not needed as much auto” lifestyle.

On that note, it’s a decent looking area from the pictures, I’ll probably do a review when I do my test commute in a few weeks.  So stay tuned, and if you got any comments on the place, please, fire away!