» Transit Benefits

June 17 began as a windy, rainy morning in St. Louis for National Dump the Pump Day, and the weather only got worse as the morning commute continued. But for some people, it was just another adventure in dumping the pump in St. Louis.

Anthony Michael Philip on his morning commute to work.

Four years ago, Anthony Michael Philip’s car met its demise in a “random act of vandalism.”  He decided not to replace it and instead to get around through transit and biking.  ”I’ve always loved bicycling. It’s been part of my whole life.  But I live downtown and work in south St. Louis City.  [After his car died] I woke up and thought, ‘What am I gonna do?’ So, I hopped on my bike and rode to work and haven’t gotten a car since.”  I asked him how he finds getting around in St. Louis without a car and he replied, “Piece of cake. Between public transit and my bike, I can get everywhere I want to go.”

When I asked him if he had any advice for people looking to give up one or more of their cars, he said, “Yeah, don’t wait for someone to blow up your car to do it.  There’s no better reason to do it than just because.  It’s good for you and its a great way to get rid of stress.  By the time I get home, I’m ready for my evening.”

Citizens for Modern Transit’s Tom Shrout joined us at Civic Center MetroLink Station and explained that his family went from a two-car family to a one-car family seven or eight years ago.  His favorite perk is using the money saved for other pursuits, especially travel. “With the money we save, we like to go to fun places like Paris, London, Madrid. Those were places we couldn’t go if we were spending money on an extra car.”

There are no shortages of these stories in St. Louis.  Sometimes I hear, “What? Carless in St. Louis?” But people are doing it in our region all of the time, by choice or necessity.  If you have embraced more walking, biking and taking transit in your life, tell your friends, family and coworkers about the benefits and realistic challenges.  When someone is thinking about trying something new, it helps to get encouragement from people who are already doing it.

North East Middle School cheerleaders cheer on transit riders for Dump the Pump Day.

Thank you to everyone who participated in National Dump the Pump Day, especially considering the blustery, rainy weather.  Metro employee Ambassadors were out on the MetroLink alignment and bus transfer centers greeting customers and handing out entry forms for our Dump the Pump giveaway.  You can still register until June 28 to win prizes and alternative transportation gear from Metro, Trailnet, Citizens for Modern Transit, and Great Rivers Greenway.

Have a fun weekend, St. Louis, and however you go, safe travels!

OK, it’s summer 2010.  Oil continues to spill into the Gulf of Mexico, and we still spend billions of dollars to feed our ever-increasing appetite for petroleum, all while pumping millions of pounds of carbon emissions into the atmosphere.  Isn’t it about time we embraced some alternatives?  It’s time to get on a bike, a train, or a bus, St. Louis!

Courtney and Arch Observer's Jim Barnthouse with t-shirts and gear from Trailnet, Great Rivers Greenway, and Metro. Who needs cars with faces like these?

Thursday, June 17, is National Dump the Pump Day.  Sponsored by the American Public Transit Association (APTA), Dump the Pump Day is designed to focus on conserving fuel, reducing the environmental impact of everyday commuting, and reducing America’s dependence on foreign oil by finding alternatives to the use of personal vehicles.

Walk. Bike. Take transit. It’s a great time to get out of your car and explore your neighborhood, try transit, or bike to work.  Did you know bike commuters lose an average of 12 lbs during their first year of bike commuting?  Or that public transit users walk an average extra 20 minutes a day over auto commuters?  All over the country, transit and bike commuting is increasing as people realize the benefits of staying away from traffic.

To encourage St. Louis area commuters to Dump the Pump, Metro, together with community partners Citizens for Modern Transit, Trailnet and Great Rivers Greenway have donated some awesome gear to encourage you to walk, bike, or take transit, including:

• Bike Helmets from Great Rivers Greenway
• Membership to Citizens for Modern Transit
• Metro 10-Ride ticket booklets
• Metro messenger bag
• Trailnet ride vouchers
• Forest Park Shuttle tickets

Trailnet & Great Rivers Greenway T-shirts and other promotional items

Entries will be accepted through Monday, June 28.  Prizes will be awarded July 6. Click here to register to win some of the awesome gear from local organizations promoting alternative transportation (as shown by myself and Arch Observer Jim Barnthouse).

I hear Jim Barnthouse is alternative energy.

People can also obtain entry forms for the Metro Dump the Pump prize giveaway at:
•    Metro Headquarters – 707 N. 1st Street, St. Louis
•    MetroRide Center – 7th & Washington, inside America’s Center, St. Louis
•    Great Rivers Greenway – 6174 A Delmar Blvd., St. Louis
•    Trailnet – 1533 Washington Avenue, St. Louis

Commuters choosing public transit on June 17 may also be greeted and thanked personally by members of Metro’s leadership team, employee volunteers, and even cheerleaders from North East Middle School in St. Louis.  Because you deserve some recognition and thanks for dumping the gas pump.

Need more reasons to convince people to give up some gas?  According to the APTA:

• Each year, the use of public transit in the U.S. saves 4.2 billion gallons of gasoline by eliminating the need for 900,000 automobile fill-ups each day.
• Commuters who switch to public transit can reduce the carbon emissions of their personal vehicles by 20 pounds a day, or 4,800 pounds a year.
• In addition to helping save the environment, families that use public transit and live with one car can save an average of $9,000 a year.
• For every $1 invested in public transportation infrastructure, $4 is generated in economic returns to communities.

June 17: National Dump the Pump Day.  Step away from the car, and spend the day being the alternative.

In the last couple of weeks, we have highlighted John and the Falks: Riders who have shared their stories with us so that we can tell people what transit means to them and St. Louis.  Now meet Alison, a physics librarian at Washington University.  Alison commutes from her home in Chesterfield to the University’s Danforth Campus every day to work.  She owns a car, but started riding transit to save money, help the environment, and spend some quiet time reading.  What she did not anticipate was the strong sense of community among her fellow passengers.

Alison’s story is not unique – there is a sense of familiarity and togetherness among transit riders.  While walking in my neighborhood last weekend, one of the regular riders on the #73 Cardondelet yelled from across the street, “HEY METRO LADY!” with an enthusiastic wave hello. I know her from community meetings and riding the #73 together. It’s one of the things I personally love about riding transit.  Watch Alison’s story:

Metro Means Community – Wash U Employee Alison from St. Louis Metro Transit on Vimeo.

For many, public transit really does mean freedom. What kind of freedom? The freedom to work, the freedom to be social, the freedom to educate yourself, the freedom to live your life. For Stuart and Dianne Falk, who both have multiple sclerosis, Metro Call-A-Ride allows them to attend theater rehearsals with the DisAbility Project, go to the gym, attend religious services, and other activities throughout town. When their Call-A-Ride service was lost last March during service cuts, the Falks appeared on CNN and St. Louis Post-Dispatch to tell how the cuts would affect their lives. The Falks admitted to feeling “trapped” in their nursing facility in Ballwin without Call-A-Ride access.

It’s always important to remember that public transit is more than buses and trains. Watch:

Metro Means Freedom – Stuart & Dianne Falk from St. Louis Metro Transit on Vimeo.

The Uppity Theater Company is the sponsor of the DisAbility Project Theater Group. You can schedule for them to come out and speak to your organization, business or school on a variety of topics from asthma to ADA accessibility to finding love. The group seeks to raise public awareness about disability and empower and honor the disabled through the stage. Schedule a performance for your organization!

Citizens for Modern Transit (CMT) has produced a short video spot showing support for public transit from some of St. Louis’ local personalities…Mike Shannon, Al Hrabosky, Mark Wrighton of Washington University, Zelema Harris of St. Louis Community Colleges, the President of Ameren, Joe Edwards of the Delmar Loop, even Fredbird.  The take-home message: some of us ride transit, but all of us need it.

Watch:

(Click here if you are unable to see the embedded video.)

It’s Toronto, Canada, not St. Louis, so the numbers wouldn’t be the same. I’m definitely aware of that. But the realities are similar. Losing public transit would be disastrous for any metropolitan region, including ours.

Or $6 or $8 or $10…what would it mean to you? Most of us would probably prefer to ignore those thoughts, but Christopher Steiner gave it some thought, enough thought for a book described in yesterday’s article in the Chicago Sun Times. The author of the article described $20 Per Gallon: How the Inevitable Rise in the Price of Gasoline Will Change Our Lives for the Better as “surprisingly optimistic”, and Steiner’s examples are, indeed, rose-colored.  He envisions a world with better public transit, reduced obesity, and revitalized urban cores, but also surburban ghettos, prohibitively expensive travel, and the end of “big box” shopping.

How do you see a future of ever-increasing gas prices? Is the glass half full, half empty or is that even the question? Perhaps the question, instead, is what will we do with the remaining contents of the glass?

While searching through the Post-Dispatch’s Building Blocks blog, I ran across an old but interesting post about job sprawl, a term I’d never heard until today. According to Tim, a study from the Brookings Institute looked at job density and ranked cities in order of highest to lowest. St. Louis, as you might imagine, is pretty close to the bottom of the list, i.e. has less job concentration and more job sprawl.

We could rehash all of the old arguments about sprawl here, but what I actually found interesting about the article is how it highlights another reason why planning public transit in St. Louis is a real challenge. Metro’s official mission is “Regional economic development through excellence in transportation,” which is one reason that Metro is very conscious of serving job centers. That’s hard enough in any city, but what happens if, as they say, the center does not hold? As job centers deteriorate and companies locate willy-nilly across the region, it becomes more and more difficult to identify (and thereby structure transit around) job “centers.” You can see, by looking at the job sprawl phenomenon, that planning for transit needs to be just one part of a regional plan that should address not just roads and buses and trains, but also serves to coordinate development  of job and industry centers.

One final note: I, too, will be interested in seeing the follow-up study on whether the jobs are sprawling because the people are.

A satellite image of a typical Tyson’s corner road. (Image: Microsoft Virtual Earth via Downtown Creator)

One of the toughest challenges facing public transit agencies is designing a system that works well in lower-density areas outside of traditional urban centers. Suburban and ex-urban sprawl pose a serious problem for alternative modes of transportation–for bikers, walkers, and transit riders–in cities all across the country, including our own dear St. Louis.

Time magazine published an interesting article last week about Tyson’s Corner, Virginia, one of the nation’s most notorious and massive examples of sprawl, located in the D.C. area. Right now, this ‘exurb’ consists mostly of shopping malls, big box stores, and office complexes, and has very little housing. The article details a new development plan inspired by the proposed addition of a light rail line through the area, with four stops proposed for Tyson Corner. The development, all sponsored by private developers rather than a local government, calls for the addition of thousands of living units and the institution of a street grid in an area that now is connected primarily by parking lot. It’s Transit-Oriented Development on a massive scale, with the impetus for the project coming mainly from the addition of the light rail stops and from a desire to reduce traffic.

It’s an interesting idea and, as far as I am aware, unprecedented in its scale. What do you think? Will this work or even happen? Could transit-oriented development of this type transform St. Louis in the future? I’m interested to hear your thoughts.

My friends and I waiting at a bus stop. (Photo courtesy of Lindsey King)

Big news: gas prices are up again, nearly a dollar from the low in December. But I have a confession to make–this news doesn’t bother me one bit. I don’t have a car, so gas prices just aren’t on my radar screen anymore.  (This is not to say that I don’t realize that high gas prices pose a serious problem for many people…just that I have managed to insulate myself from worrying about them.)

“But how can you live without a car in St. Louis? That’s impossible!” Nay! It is quite possible. For the entire three years that I have lived here, I have been car-less and fancy-free. Doubters take note. (more…)