A Hotel Could Lead To Transformation

I have been following the recent controversy about the proposed hotel near the corner of Southland Dr and Nicholasville Rd and have bee amused by the commentary.

It seems that the nearby residents wish to prevent what some call progress by claiming that they want to keep their backyards “private”. Folks all over town are building “privacy” fences in neighborhoods where two story homes look directly into the adjacent yard and, in some cases, those on adjacent blocks if the hillsides are steep enough. I have no idea what these people do in their backyards that they need to be so private, but it may be either risky (or risque).

The problem that I have is with the people in the neighborhood on the south side of Southland, well out of visual range and even earshot. Why is it that folks don't want to try to improve certain locations when just a little teamwork will do wonders.

My first memories of the intersection involve the building which houses the Denny's restaurant. It was an Independent Grocers Association (IGA) market when I was a small lad, the last vestige of town and the beginning of the narrow two lane road to Nicholasville. The family took trips the the locally owned “Bird & Animal Forest”, located about midway between the two communities, on summer Sundays. It was a crude attempt at a petting zoo but we enjoyed it.

My father's friend had a few acres and a roadside motel, some horses and ,I think, a pay lake. I searched for it some time back on some old aerial photos and actually found it. Today, that spot is occupied by the eastern half of the New Circle Road interchange. What a major change.

Southland Dr., as many know, was built as an alternate route to bypass the railroad crossing of Rosemont Gardens. The early drawing call it the “Southern U pass” since it incorporated a bridge to separate the auto traffic from the Southern Railroad trains. Waller Avenue had yet to be extended beyond the tracks toward Harrodsburg Rd. so the only access across the tracks was Virginia Ave., Rosemont and Stone Rd.(now Pasadena).

Commercial development exploded in this area during the '60s, thus the new residential subdivisions were required to provide sidewalks but the older “main drag”, where the shopping was designated, was exempt. Folks in those days hopped in the car just to go to the end of the block and who wants to look out for the pedestrians who should not be there. Southland Dr was not a neighborhood shopping center, it drew from all over the south end of Lexington. In many cases it still functions that way today.

Over the years this area has added some newer and larger uses and is no longer “out on the edge of town”. We should be looking to bring this intersection up to the sense of an urban retail corridor. One way to do that is to remove the types of uses which perpetuate the parking habits of the now aging “baby boomers”. Restaurants in Chevy Chase can succeed with their doors opening to the sidewalk and parking in the rear, so is Southland Dr area that much worse.

What I see, in this location, is an excellent opportunity to enhance this visual aspect of the intersection and allow the neighborhood to metamorphose into a vibrant entryway to the Southland experience. The proposed mid-rise hotel can begin to fill the space with active evening traffic but it still need desirable support uses like full-service sit-down restaurants and up-scale retail which can draw the neighborhood folks without making them get in their cars.

Gas stations are still a fact of life but some of the newer ones have found that being situated on an extremely congested corner with turn lanes presents unwanted access nightmares. At most times of the day one can only approach the existing Shell station from the southbound lanes and exit with a right turn only movement. No service work is done on site so the need for the massive paved area adds to the water runoff which the neighbors are so vocal about.

View Larger Map

Now, visualize if you can, imagine a structure built along the lines of the former Taylor Tire station at the corner of Old East Vine and Grand Blvd. It has been re-purposed as a retail complex, but it sits so close to the street that it has that cozy feel. A new building, placed similarly and perhaps with wing along both major streets, could accommodate fuel pumps streetside and in the back, address the street with a pleasing facade and allow for plantings or the like.

Continuing the streetscape on toward the donut shop and at an equal setback, the atmosphere becomes conducive to pedestrian traffic as well as auto. At present, Lextran does not use this section of Southland Dr but this streetscape will lend itself to adding a stop in the future. Replacing the existing Denny's with a more fitting facility would also do wonders for the area.

I honestly believe that even the hotel could be placed a little bit farther off the adjacent residential if the corner was redeveloped as a whole. Even the existing car wash could be accommodated in a pleasing manner.

The neighbors probably need to step back a bit, think about how they can get something a little closer to what they desire and work with the developer to give everybody a win-win scenario to shoot for. It can be for everybody's best interest.

Let me know what you feel.

Un-intended consequences?

“Un-intended consequences”

These words are usually spoken when an action, taken for very good reasons, is responsible for a debilitating harm done to a minor portion of those affected by the action. It is always nice to see it when those actions actually help that minor portion.

I don’t think that I have been shy in my outspoken criticism of the downtown circulator “trolley” and it does look like some of the suggestions that I made have been incorporated into the current routes, especially the Green Route. I am glad to see that many more of the local businesses have embraced the service and that Lextran has responded in such a positive manner. This service has had a much bigger impact than the initial downtown concept ever imagined

As I understand the original concept, the circulator was to enable those on the farthest edges of downtown to get to the center of activity and back to their offices with enough time to actually eat or shop during lunchtime. Evening activity was for downtown residents to traverse empty city blocks from housing to the nightlife and back safely. Though these are still of concern, they seem to be more minor today.

Today, we not only can get from one end of downtown to the other but also just a bit farther out and hit a little bit more shopping, dining and nightlife. I have seen and heard of many uses for the circulator since the routes expanded but I have not read any hard figures of ridership. Hopefully these will be forthcoming.

I have heard from my friends at West Sixth St Brewing, that quite a number of their patrons are arriving by ”trolley” since it eases the parking situation and the risk of driving while intoxicated. This will work to their advantage if those folks are coming from the Aylesford – Bell Court area and not just downtown.

But this is a two-way benefit. There are also folks from the Coolavin apartments just next door to West Sixth’s taproom who are making their way to the Kroger store on Euclid and coming home with the groceries for the week. In an area that has been identified as a “food desert” this access to fresh food without carfare is a win.

Coolavin is not the only example of this. The circulator travels past other assisted living facilities downtown so I doubt that this activity would not go on there also. Mrs. Sweeper and I watched as two ladies made their way from the Christian Church facility on Short St to the designated stop just to ride around town on a warm summer evening. The simple pleasures of life know no age limits.

So far, this phenomenon exists on the Green Route which cycles between the affluent neighborhoods near Chevy Chase and the resurgent commercial parts of Jefferson St. The Blue Route, running between the two University campuses, sees some mixing of the student bodies but mostly just due to their choices of dining and drinking locations. The other neighborhood residents do not tend to use the service much.

I believe that none of this was intended by those who arranged to fund the operation just a few years ago. Who could have thought that things would change this much? And does this mean that the local businessmen, who banded together to promote their downtown businesses, and now see as many or more folks leaving the downtown confines for other businesses, could give their support? I suppose so, but I hope not. If so, then the additional beneficiaries will need to stand up and continue this proven success.

I also believe that if it works in the downtown, then it can be successful in the subdivisions too, if done right.

If you have any thought on this, I would appreciate hearing them.

Where Is Lextran Going With This?

This showed up on my Twitter screen this morning.

Yes, the weather is beautiful for this time of the year.  Temperature about mid-fifties and a dry, high pressure system overhead.  Just a beautiful day to get out and enjoy.

But a bus ride?  This city’s transit system is geared toward getting the employee to his job, be he an industrial shift worker, a white collar, 9-to-5er or a service worker in the retail trades.  One thing this system is not aimed toward is the family oriented excursion to the park or other relaxing pastimes.

Those of us who were at work could find no time to get out for a pleasant ride on the bus and those of us who might wish to have an easy ride to the larger parks or entertainment locale have found that routes and scheduling are inconvenient.

All in all it is just a very confusing suggestion for Lextran to make.  Even Keeneland has no racing today.

Lextran, Really On The Move?

Look at what I saw on the lot at Lextran. It appears as though they have taken delivery of some new vehicles and have applied a new look to them. One or two of them looked to be shorter units and destined for the areas with lesser clientele.

My best hope is that they will not clutter them up with the tacky ads for the Lottery and such just yet.

Now, they need to get on with their new headquarters.

A Surprise And A New School Of Thought

I received an email yesterday from a recent reader informing me that this blog had been included as an entry on one of their blog lists. The link that was supplied indicated that I was one of 40 international bloggers writing about living in the suburbs and a quick scan of the list revealed some blogs from which I have tried to take my inspiration. I was really quite flattered. I quickly passed on the good news to Mrs. Sweeper since I was feeling real good about myself.

Then, I spent a great deal of time last night reading most of the other links and I am not so sure that this is a good thing. To be sure, they do have a balance of positions. Everything from the rabid “we have to move to the suburbs” to the “man are they going to be sorry someday” type of blog post from around the world. From those selling the myths of suburbia by retelling the myths of downtown to those who claim to see the despair of massive decaying home tracts. I think that they may have done a Google search on the word “suburb” and took a random sample of them all.

Oh well, exposure is exposure. I will take the good with the bad.

One of their links did cause me to contemplate the continued, less than cost effective, manner in which we use our schools. Take for example, the use of buses to get our students to and from school. Can it or should it be done a better way?

The first thought was to find out which portion of the annual school budget is used for transporting students and is it required. Finding the Fayette County Schools annual budget online is not an easy task and even then it would be an old one, so I took another tack. I looked at their fast facts.

They have 250 buses on the road daily, burning an estimated 2,200 gallon of fuel, to haul an estimated 34,000 students to 50 separate locations (and back) and covering approximately 15,000 miles. That is in a day.

Their start of school year enrollment is stated as 36,900 so that means that an astounding 92.1% of all enrolled students ride the bus. Daily. That makes 7.9% who walk or are driven by parents.

Why is it then, that there is always a traffic nightmare when passing any and every one of the 50 individual schools, morning and afternoon. The number of parent driven autos dropping off and then picking up the non-bus riding students is impressive. It also makes it difficult on those others of us trying to get to work on time.

I suppose that the 34,000 number could be the total daily rides and not students and that would cut the amount of students carried to about 17,000. That results in 46% who ride the bus daily and 54% who arrive some other way. Now we are talking a more reasonable figure.

But, do we need to pick up and deliver students to school when their parents clearly demonstrate that they for the most part are willing to do it? Our state law says that a public education needs to be provided but I know of no requirement to provide for transportation to and from said education. Have you seen the long lines of idling autos lined up in front of and looping around most of the schools in the hour before dismissal time? The environment would benefit greatly if all these carbon belching vehicles could be held to a minimum. Would it not make sense to route at least some of the existing public transit services to the schools and have a portion of the trip accomplished that way?

The development patterns of the past 80 years, and particularly the last 40, have contributed more to the time and distance needed to provide the services like school buses and public transit than they have in the rest of recorded history. We seem to be working at crossed purposes when we build in a lack of connectivity and demand that a service, supposedly delivered as a courtesy, be extended through a convoluted, circuitous path and expect our streets to remain tranquil and serene. Good luck with that.

I guess, my whole point here is that with the school district spending over $11,500 per student and a great deal of that in transportation costs how much more effective could they be by spending that money on class room work instead? The cost of fuel will continue to rise and the distances could get longer, so now is the time to consider/plan for a viable alternative and all options should be on the table. What is the sense of burning 2,200 gallons of fuel a day for 46% of he students and the parents burning probably half again as much for a remaining 35-40% while being taxed for both the schools and Lextran.

As an aside (and final thought), this would also add some stability to the school calendar since the calling of school for snow would depend on the parents decision of whether their child attends in inclement weather or not. Classes will be held, it is up to you to get your child there.

Latest On Artistic Stops

I found out the other day that the opening of Art in Motion's latest bus stop at Newtown Pike and Ash St. is set for August 31. Called the Bluegrass Stop, it sits across Newtown from the Lexington Health Department building and is the third in a growing set of designed bus stops in Fayette County.

I visited Art in Motion's website for details on the opening and some of their next projects only to find that it has not been updated since late March.

So far they have built the Bottlestop (on Versailles Rd), Artstop (at Elm Tree Lane and E Third St), and Bluegrass stop(Newtown and Ash) with the Gardenstop under construction at Euclid and Linden Walk. Other than this there is no information on their site.

Here is what I do know about their future plans. The conversations for a stop near the Good Foods Co-op on Southland Dr are progressing well and a location for a stop in front of the Fayette County Schools Central Office has been set. I have not heard of either having a design settled upon and hope that they will have another competition for one or both. The Central Office stop will have space for revolving displays of student art and achievements.

I know that the local high schools have some advanced engineering or design classes and hopefully that can be enticed to submit some basic concepts from which the professionals can finish the design. Perhaps the School Board will take this suggestion into consideration.

I am also hopeful the the solar collector vs metered electrical lighting situation will be resolved.

Proposal For The Fourth Of July

The more hear from folks about last weeks celebration of the Fourth of July and the good job that they did in arranging the venues, the more I believe that most of Lexington think like Mrs. Sweeper. They are under the assumption that there is no good place to park and many stay home.

Mrs Sweeper's desire to catch the trolley and ride in is a good idea even if it is impossible. But why is it impossible in this day and age? The Fourth of July only comes once a year regardless of when you celebrate it and everybody should be encouraged to attend, therefore the city and all of its satellite agencies should do their part. I think that Lextran is one agency that should step to the forefront and provide shuttle service from the neighborhoods at a reduced cost for that one day.

I do realize that Saturday is a normal workday for many folks and it may be a hardship on Lextran and their overtime scheduling, but how often does the Fourth fall on a Sunday and celebrated on the Third? Perhaps if more people were encouraged(and enabled) to get downtown there would be less reason for the suburban retail to be open and thus more folks wanting to get downtown.

This may be something to think about before next year.

Art Style Bus Shelter Updates

If my information is correct, and I have every reason to believe that it is, we should see the art style shelter planned for Newtown Pike coming alive very soon.

They have their design, they have a location, they have $30,000 in pledges from Lextran and others and they have a (probably self imposed) deadline of before the World Equestrian Games. So I have a feeling that we will see something in the near future.

Art In Motion should be in the process of reviewing the entries of the design competition for the shelter to be built in Aylesford (behind the King Alumni House) and the winner is supposed to be announced on April 14.

The buzz that I hear is very positive about other potential locations. The developers of the Hamburg development, I think, are looking a multiple locations and I would guess that they will be in a common theme. My bet would be an equestrian theme as all the street names are horse related.

I spoke with someone from the Southland Drive area the other day and learned that they have been mulling the idea for over a year. With both the Good Foods Co-op renovation and the continued success of the Sunday farmers market, either location would make a nice site. The Southland portion of the bus route has also proved to be a winner for Lextran.

There are other interested parties and suggested locations being bandied about and I am starting to feel that this could begin to overwhelm this small group. I don't see any reason to prevent another similar organization from also supporting Lextran in like fashion, but there should be a central coordinating panel, free of politics and its infighting to help spread the wealth.

Lexington could soon have a good number of clean, well lit, art style shelters and the Lextran riders (as well as the neighbors) will benefit.

I Still Support Art In Motion

I attended the fund raiser for Art in Motion last Thursday night, along with Mrs. Sweeper, as it afforded me the opportunity meet some of the people that I have posted about for a while. Or so I thought.

The location was Natasha’s Bistro and Bar on the Esplanade, time, from 5:30 till 10:00, a great chance for us to meet and greet other AiM supporters. Maybe even exchange some ideas. We arrived at about 6, just enough to not be the first in the door but still have some time the entertainment for the evening.

WRONG, WRONG, WRONG. By 6 o’clock the opening band was rocking the joint, and I mean rocking it. We heard them from the corner of Main St. There was no time for casual conversation with others, no introductions, no quiet time for mingling. Take your money at the door, hustle you to a table and we were on our own.

The band, Positive Movement, was playing some modern jazz or blues which the Mrs. and I enjoy on a regular basis during the summer, but this was just a bit too loud for the occasion. I couldn’t hear the waitress or my wife so we reverted to the primitive form of texting, passing notes to each other across the table.

Relatives of the band members or members of the main band, Water with Vera Soules, took up positions right in front of the stage and took snapshots and video of the performance while others kept to the periphery and ordered dinner.

We watched the slide show of a variety of art stops from around the world and marveled at the creativity of them. We watched the slide show of the sculptor of the Third St Artstop as he described how he did it. We heard reference to the major participants of the existing structures, but none of them were introduced. I felt a little bit lost.

Dinner over, and the slide shows behind us, little was left to keep us there, as apparently was the case with a majority of the others in the room, so we left. Two members of the MPO staff and the table with the EOP people had all left. I saw nobody from Lextran that I knew and I now know just one more person with Art in Motion.

Don’t think for a moment that this diminishes my enthusiasm for the Art in Motion program or for art stops in general. I will continue to post about them and continue to support their construction. I even anticipate being at a fundraiser in the near future, which I hear will be at Buster’s, and I am told that it will be more along the lines of what I expected last week.

Some Of The Work Ahead For Lextran

Here is a quote for the day.

For the bulk of the day, and on quieter routes, the average city bus usually undoes whatever efficiencies are gained during the few hours a day, on the few routes, where transit is at its peak.

Unfortunately, this is how many people think of Lexington's transit system. The many times that we see these buses, moments when we can take the time to estimate the current ridership, they are nearing the ends of their respective runs, either downtown or out in the suburban areas. And, as the quote says, during the "off peak" hours.

To all of the above, I can agree. Yet all of the above points out, to me, the need for Lextran to alter its thinking on some of the "off peak" routes and maybe all of its routes in general.

The current thinking for all routes appears to be "to get people from home to work". To that end all routes NEED to run from residential clusters, past job locations(shopping optional), past transfer opportunities, to residential clusters in order to start the cycle again. In this scenario, one can live at either end of the route and avail ones self to multiple instances of the middle opportunities. This seems to be very efficient, or would be if EVERYONE worked shift work or flexible hours.

Then there is this need for the destinations that are different than work/shopping and home. Destinations that are not ON a Lextran route. These are parks, schools and other special interest locations and may include some of the smaller shopping areas. Places that people also go to, in the middle of the day.

All in all, Lextran's system is less than efficient and it may not qualify for being "green". But is it less "green" than the mass of private vehicles plying the roads of Central Kentucky?

The personal auto may be proven to consume far fewer BTUs per passenger mile than transit vehicles, as per an article in the Vancouver Sun, but a majority of these said autos will be daily traveling nearly three times the distance of transit.

Adding to that, the yearly cost of ownership of personal autos which, on average, are used only 5% of the time. The other 95% is spent in some sort of storage, a garage, a parking lot or on the street, and the cost of maintaining said space should be factored into the expense ratios to transit.

Considering the environmental, economic and land use factors involved, Lextran has a great deal of work to do in order to become as efficient as they can be.

Thoughts On Lextran

A friend and I were talking the other day about some of the deficiencies of Lextran's service.

I have felt for a long time that there is not enough co-ordination between our downtown events and enabling our residents to attend via transit. He, on the other hand, was speaking about getting to some of our recreation areas(parks, etc...) and back by bus. This led us to consult a Lextran route map to test or confirm our thoughts and the most current one, we thought, would be online at their website.

I have been working with maps, particularly those of Lexington, for nearly 4 decades and I know my way around a map, but this one is a travesty. It would be bad enough if it gave no information to the reader but this one give out bad information-VERY BAD INFORMATION. I hope that they do something about it soon.

First, my friend asked about being able to take the bus to the park. This would obviously be a community park like Jacobson or Shillito, as the local parks are generally within walking distance of ones house, but the community parks are where Lexington has their larger get together's and widely advertised functions. Can someone ride the bus to the pool in the summer, without walking several blocks? Can we take the kids to Jacobson Park, to Kitefest, for the afternoon by bus? We can get to work, we can go shopping, but we can't go somewhere to relax-by bus.

Next, we looked at getting to school, by this I mean middle or high school. (I think that middle schooler's are able to use the public transportation to get home after school.) All of the high schools ARE on bus routes, but the middle schools are usually at least a block or two from a route.

And finally we talked about the city's continued efforts to have events downtown, sometimes in locations that severely disrupt Lextran's operations. Yet even if they did not pose any problem, there is no advertisement of park and ride to the event or shuttle trips from outlying lots for better attendance. From downtown to UK ballgames, yes, to the Art Fair, yes, from Beaumont or Hamburg for the Second Sunday, not a peep.

These are things that I think are reinforcing the public's impression that transit service is not a viable method of travel in Lexington. That "When they make it easier, then I will ride but right now, nobody is riding it" attitude is alive and well, and being fed by Lextran.

Second Sunday Is Coming

This Sunday is the second attempt for Lexington to pull off a Second Sunday "event". I have spoken about this before and I won't bother you with it again, but suffice it to say that I don't like how Lexington is going to pull this off.

I was looking at the list of sponsoring agencies and realized that Lextran is not listed in any way. For an event that takes place in a central location and needs parking spaces for patrons so that they can attend, the absence of Lextran as a way to avoid the parking woes really mystifies me. So I asked a planner for the MPO, who deals with Lextran and their future efforts, if they were involved in the past years planning meetings.

I can say that, from the course of the conversation, Lextran is usually brought in as an after thought... if then. I did learn that earlier this the Director of Lextran was call to a hastily arranged meeting of city officials because of a claustrophobia of circumstances surrounding the number of events occurring downtown this weekend. That is about as last minute as you can get.

I have written before about how I believe that Lextran is reactive agency and does not move to get ahead of the need for their services. If Lexington is going to plan for TOD(Transit Oriented Development) then the transportation needs to be planned for before the development gets started, not after. If Lexington is going to be prepared for the "Great Reset" then Lextran has to be involved in the early planning, not to see if they will "go along" with the decisions that someone else has made.

I don't think that Lexington is really going to implement any kind of meaningful mass transit. Nor does their transportation planning extend beyond catering to us on the "lunatic fringe". The LA Times wrote the other day that a larger and larger number of Generation Y'ers are foregoing the auto and getting around town by other means. If they recognize the trend there, then it will not take that long to get here, the quote the things always happen 20 years late in Kentucky may have been true at one time, but I think that it takes less time now.

Lexington has made some big strides in the provision of bike trails and paths in the past few years. thanks to Kenzie Gleason and her BPAC group, but that is just a small piece of the pie. Even the expansion of Second Sunday to a monthly schedule, in the manner in which they intend, with escorted bike rides, once again from the city center, lacks the involvement of the neighborhoods from which the participants will venture forth. I still believe that with 12 council districts and 12 calendar months, a Second Sunday street closure could be held all around Lexington for the next year. Real success would be when it is held in all districts on a monthly basis.

So far Kentucky's Second Sunday history has required a massive PR push and from what I've read, the original in Bogota, Columbia just sort of... ... happened.

What I Missed At The Art Fair

I was wandering through the LexRides website today as I try to do on occasion and tripped across an interesting tidbit. They had a pedicab at the Woodland Art Fair. And I missed it.

I was all enthused about the availability of a bike corral that I missed any discussion of a pedicab service. It seems that I am not the only one, I think that a lot of others missed it too. So for all of you out there who may be interested, here is what I know.

A young couple, Lauren Pfannerstill and James Gonyer, have formed a company called Sprocket Jockeys, LLC to provide a pedicab service in downtown Lexington. Wow, what a rush, a pedicab service in Lexington? And they tried it out at the Art Fair to, from what I understand, was a good business.

Their website says that they will begin with weekend night in downtown and see how it progresses. I can see this as being a contender, of sorts, to the Lextran trolley system which has yet to be rolled out. One could go out for a night on the town, dining at Baker's 360 and then dancing at the Penguin on the other end of town, or a short ride downtown from campus (once South Lime gets finished) and back. It is not inconceivable to consider some of the other near campus destinations like Chevy Chase/Euclid or the new South Broadway developments. The possibilities are almost endless. Distillery District may be a ways off but who knows what will happen with the completion of the Newtown Pike Extension. These thing would also be great for the Gallery Hop evenings.

I wish these guys a lot of luck and hope to take advantage of their service real soon. And I hope that you do too.

Passenger Rail in the 2035 MTP

Today I would like to take a look at the recently adopted 2035 Metropolitan Transportation Plan for Lexington and the MPO. My particular focus will be on one or two of my pet peeves, anything concerning rail.

Beginning in Chapter 3 the plan details an assessment of the present state of the transportation system and I am unaware of the reasoning behind the order of their sequencing. Obviously, the surface road network is of first priority as it has been since the '40s or before. This is followed by, and I don't know why, school transportation and taxi/limousine services. Passenger rail, which is next, does come before a practically, insignificant water transportation element(the Valley View ferry). Aviation, freight(road and rail) and transit(Lextran) make up the last items in the assessment. This order does not seem to fit any currently perceived hierarchy of transportation thought.

The initial paragraph of the passenger rail section states the AMTRAK operates the Kentucky Cardinal service from Louisville to Chicago daily while the highlighted link shows that the service was discontinued over 6 years ago. There is then a detailed(?) breakdown of the three closest AMTRAK stations, Cincinnati, Maysville and Louisville. The information given is apparently from a six+ year old schedule as the times and frequency data does not agree with the AMTRAK website and nowhere is it clarified that there is only ONE train a day(in alternating directions). The Louisville information, besides being old, does not show that the connection is made by motor coach and all the departure times for all stations are for service to Chicago. I have taken this route to Washington and on to New York(and back) in the past two years and can personally testify that there are very few empty seats.

This assessment does not include any estimations of current usage or demand nor does it contain any AMTRAK projections or on-time statistics. I don't see how any proposals could be set forth in the form of recommendations using this inventory of data.

Chapter 6 of the document contains the plan recommendations for each plan element. Their listed order is: Highway (of course) both short and long range, Transit(Lextran), Mobility(primarily rideshare/carpool/vanpool and awareness of transit/bike/ped/telecommuting), Bicycling/pedestrian, and other transportation modes.

At this point transportation by air is placed before rail despite ongoing consolidations in the airline industry and the demonstrated willingness of the new administration to push passenger rail, especially high speed rail. This new commitment to HSR(High Speed Rail) is mentioned yet any and all leading of the effort is left to the state Transportation Cabinet. What with the mayors of Louisville, Cincinnati and Nashville each touting regional rail in their areas, Lexington's mayor and Council are very quiet about the subject in public.

The one type of urban mass transit that is being discussed is, as most of should know I am not in favor of, the Automated Guideway Transit or AGT. These highly automated, elevated transit pods do enable a higher level of flexibility than the traditional streetcar model, but may not be able to be used in the case of failure of the automation system. The elevated guideways would alter the streetscape and the look of the downtown and may not fit with the proposed Downtown Master Plan, which though not adopted yet, is still in the minds of many urban citizens. An AGT wold certainly make Lexington a bit more unique, but the more traditionally minded Lexingtonians and others in Central Kenucky may be a roadblock. The AGT, although it may be next to last in the priority if recommendations, does have an impressive amount of information for something with so little publicity.

What you may have noticed over the foregoing paragraphs is the the mostly Federally funded, local MPO agency has little or no control over the planning efforts of Lextran, the Airport, Amtrak or, as I may get into later, the freight hauling modes of rail and trucking. As the umbrella transportation planning agency through which the Federal dollars should flow, there is little that they can do to influence how, where and when the funds will be disbursed.

I have not scrutinized the rest of the plan, nor do I intend to, as I dont want to get into which of the highway projects should get priority over another when I feel that they both could obtain the same results with a different mode as the solution.

Feel free to let me know if you believe some other solution is better.

Do We See Some Movement Here

Is it possible that we are seeing some movement on the Federal level toward cooperation between housing and transit?

Back on March 26th a Senior Fellow from the Brookings Institution testified before two Congressional Committees, urging that a change be made in the Housing and Transit policies of the Federal Government. In these testimonials, Robert Puentes argues that housing and transportation are irreversibly linked and that, in the face of the current recession, more integrated planning is needed.

I have posted on this before. On the need for the City to plan for the housing needs AND the transit needs at the same time. That no longer can we allow the land use patterns to dictate where the mobility challenged may live, while at the same time ignoring the transportation needs of the residents of the housing challenged. Why is it the the planners will not engage the transit authority before the housing gets built, nor will the transit planners consider routes until the ridership demand reaches a set level?

In the past, plans from the '30s and "40s showed the transit routes proposed which would cover the immediate future streets, yet from the '50s on that has not been the case.

The Federal government is no better, they have seemed to compartmentalize their interests into narrowly defined solutions conforming to tightly set criteria. In this case, housing is to be funded based on the lowest cost property and location without consideration of access to shopping or employment. Simultaneously, the transportation funding is generally based on trip demand and congestion levels without distinction of mode or concentration of trip timing.

One case in point that comes to mind would be the area around Gainesway Shopping Center. When planned in the late "60s and early "70s, the area was primarily starter homes that had been appended to the Gainesway subdivision, which itself was a section of ranch houses catering to the recently arrived industrial expansion, executives and UK staff. The shopping center occupied the center of the generally residential area, along with a park, 3 schools and apartments housing. Transit served the area and in the initial stages traffic moved both ways, in and out, but as lifestyles changed and an auto-centric mindset established itself the ridership frequency declined to just rush hour peaks. The executives moved up or retired and the starter homes proved to be smaller than necessary, so those owners moved up and out. The apartment housing evolved into lower income and eventually to public & senior housing where auto owership is more of a luxury. As the residential changed the shopping center declined to nothing and was replaced with social service office space. The social relationship dynamics reversed themselves 180 degrees and theoretically, the land uses of the center should now be on the edges, closer to the major roadways(and transit).

This weekend, came the news,

Two of President Obama’s Cabinet secretaries–Shaun Donovan of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and Ray LaHood of Transportation (DOT)–are promising to make their bureaucracies work together. And not just in stuffy interdepartmental meetings in Washington, but in crafting their programs as they impact communities nationwide.

This will reflect a Federal policy change of an equally remarkable 180 degree reversal. It also precedes the expected changes of the White House Office on Urban Affairs, which is just in the planning stage itself.

Seeing as how everything happens in Kentucky a few years later than the rest of the nation, I can't help but wonder when we will see this kind of cooperation of land use and housing.

Some thoughts on transit

There are transportation statistics galore flying around these days. The more you read them the more confusing they get.

First there was this snippet from the San Francisco Chronicle

Amtrak, the passenger rail service that struggled for years to attract riders, drew a record 28.7 million in the year ending Sept. 30. That is 11 percent more than the year before and the sixth straight year that ridership has increased. Ticket revenue hit a record $1.7 billion, a $200 million increase from a year earlier.

Last year's high gas prices caused many to find other ways to get between cities.

Gov. Ed Rendell, D-Pa., said higher gas prices and concern about dependence on foreign oil have made people more willing to invest in passenger rail.

"There is an appetite for city-to-city rail," Rendell told reporters recently. "Why should we be different than any other country in the world? You go to Europe and you can't get an airplane to a city less than 200 miles away."

Then came this from the same source. Transit ridership up, highway travel down in 2008

People made 10.7 billion trips on public transit in 2008, a 4 percent increase over 2007, according to the American Public Transportation Association. Over the same time, Americans drove 3.6 percent less on the nation's highways. Gas prices peaked at more than $4 in July before falling, but ridership remained strong.

In 1956, Americans made nearly 11 billion trips. However, the percentage was much higher because the country had far fewer people — about 170 million compared with some 306 million today — and not as many cars.

The date 1956 is significant because that was the year that the Interstate Highway System was enacted and the Highway Trust Fund was created. It was also the year that the Thunderbird and the Corvette became established as America's dominant sports cars. Two years later the word "sprawl" was coined to mean the unfettered growth along these new Interstates.

Public transportation use in America peaked in the 1940s and steadily declined after World War II as more Americans moved to the suburbs and highways were built. The number of people taking transit bottomed out in 1972 at about 6.6 billion trips.

Lexington was little different than the rest of the country. Here the streetcars closed down in the late '30s, as I have said before. The buses held sway as the shape of the city was small and compact. It was the mid-'60s before Lexington began to wildly expand develop.

1956 brought IBM to Lexington and more importantly a class of corporate executives that were used to the types of suburbia in the New York/New Jersey area. Larger ranch style homes on lots of about 1/3 of an acre and a little farther from the downtown district. Land and houses were(and still are) cheaper here and these people didn't mind driving at all.

IBM was just the opening of the industrial expansion for Lexington. We wanted clean manufacturing and took just about any industry without a smokestack. Ohh...for those days again. We now need the manufacturing plants and jobs that really make things.

The one thing that the Yankees did not bring with them was a willingness to use public transit and the local transplants(from eastern and southern Kentucky) brought their "drive to the big city and back home" style of transportation mind set. Therefore, is it any wonder that Lexington is one of the highest driving metropolitan areas in America?

The Brookings Institution released this study in December. The Road…Less Traveled: An Analysis of Vehicle Miles Traveled Trends in the U.S. in which Lexington is identified as 89th in the top 100 metropolitan cities in the U.S. in terms of total Vehicles Miles Traveled(VMT). Eighty-ninth! Out of 100. That means the 88 other cities drive more than we do. Until you look at the population differences. Lexington rates #87 in terms of VMT per capita. Thats 6,892.1 miles per person, in 2006. There are only 12 other metropolitan areas that drive more per person than we do.

But there is some heartening news here too. In looking at the Lextran ridership numbers I am glad to see that every month, in a year over year comparison, that the percentage ncreases have been mostly in the double digit range and the year end totals 16.2% for 2006-07 and 11.5 for 2007-08.

I'm sure that there is more to be learned from all this but it may take some time.