Trying To Make Transit Work In Anchorage

Anchorage's People Mover busses don't run very often (a few come by every 30 minutes, but most every hour) and we have a pretty low density.  The low density is one of the attractions of Anchorage, but it makes running a bus system hard.

So after talking to the public last year about proposed changes then (I think, but it could have been earlier this year), the People Mover has proposed a new schedule which combined a couple of their alternatives.

Here's an announcement at their website:

New Bus System
Big changes are coming! The entire People Mover bus system is being restructured to reflect the priorities we heard from you during Anchorage Talks Transit.
Beginning October 23, 2017, you can look forward to...

• Less Waiting - Buses will arrive more frequently, some as often as every 15 minutes. Weekend bus frequencies are also increasing to every 30 minutes for most routes. 

• More Hours - Most routes will operate from about 6am to midnight on weekdays, about 8am to 8pm on Saturdays, and about 8am to 7pm on Sundays. 

• Better Service - More frequent buses means easier transfers to a wider range of destinations. This also means that fewer trips will require you to connect through the Downtown Transit Center, resulting in less out-of-direction travel. 

Click here to view a complete list of bus stops that will be serviced by the new system.
Click here to view individual route maps and a stops served by route.
Please click the links below for a detailed look at the new system map. Schedules listing exact departure times will be released as soon as they are finalized.

I went to the meeting held today at Spring Hill Elementary school.  I think there were four people from People mover and maybe 15 to 20 members of the public.

On the right is the table with maps proposed schedules for all the routes.  

The three benefits listed in the announcement above, apply to people who live in the more central areas.  For people who live further from downtown, the new system means busses are further away and less frequent.  

A woman from Oceanview was distraught.  She'd moved into her house many years ago because a bus went right down her street.  Now it will be gone and she'll have a mile walk to the bus stop.  She was over 50 and using crutches.  She didn't see herself walking a mile on icy or uncleared sidewalks in the winter and wasn't sure if a mile was feasible even in the summer.  

Bart Rudolph

But People Mover has to balance routes against ridership.  It might have been helpful if they had given us some data on cost per passenger for each route so people could see why they cut some routes.  

On right is Bart Rudolph, planner for the transit department.  Mostly the staff members mingled with the crowd to answer questions one-on-one or in small groups.  

I live in a bus rich area on the west side of the University and I'm losing my favorite route to downtown (Route #2), but route #3 will be replaced by route #10 and should be coming by every 20

Collin Hodges

minutes instead of every 30 minutes.  (Route 3 was one of the few routes that currently comes by more than once an hour.)

The hope is that more people will ride the bus if they come by more often.  But it's going to take a lot of persuading to get people onto the bus, even if it goes more often.  They need new riders and from what I can tell, most of the people at the meeting were current riders with concerns about losing their busses.  The lady from Oceanview said people like her have campaigned hard to fund transit over the years.  It was clear that losing her close bus stop is not going to keep her a strong supporter of the system.  

The People Mover needs to do all it can to attract new drivers to these more frequent buses.  Some thoughts I had:

• Make the intro period for the new schedule a time that welcomes new passengers (and old)
• Send out two week free passes with all the utility bills and make them printable on line for those who pay online
• Sell $1 two week bus passes, so that they have more value in people's eyes than a free pass.  
• Put up games and contests online and elsewhere that require people to look at the routes and scheduling to win prizes - like free bus passes
• Put together a contest or scavenger hunt that requires teams to ride all the routes the fastest.  People would have to read the schedules carefully to figure out the best connections.  But they would then know how to use the people mover well.  Pitching this to middle and high school students might get lots of them onto the buses, especially if contestants get a free bus pass and winners get prizes.  

But they also have to overcome emotional barriers to people using the bus.  

• Buses are for the poor
• Some people equate riding the bus with being poor, with not being able to buy a car
• Others think there are strange people on the bus and don't want to be exposed to them.  There are some strange people now and then, but they are everywhere else too.  But there are far more very normal, friendly people too.
• Buses are inconvenient and take much more time


• The new schedule will make the buses more convenient for people in the core area
• Making stops and getting back on has meant long delays in the past, it should be better now, but still nothing like bigger, denser cities where buses come by every ten minutes.
• Shopping is harder when you go by bus and need to carry things.  Maybe People Mover can sell collapsable wheeled carts that folks can use when the shop and use the bus.  
• The bus is easiest for people who use it every day for the same route. 
• New apps make it easier to check on routes and when the next bus is due.  Google maps* has real time bus information, and texting your bus stop apparently does too.  But the call up just tells you the next stop based on the schedule, not real time.  *It doesn't work on my old Safari browser, but it does on Firefox.  

David Levy was camera shy

I think about the woman in Oceanview.  The internet makes connections much easier.  Nextdoor.com is a website that allows neighbors to talk to neighbors.  I suspect that people might be able to work out rides to bus stops that way.  Or find other people int he same predicament.  If there are enough who go at the same time, maybe a Lyft driver could pick them all up and get them to the bus, even to their destination without the bus.  Collin suggested Ride Share as an option.

A little lot of brainstorming is needed to figure out how to get people from their homes to the bus stops where the bus stops have become much farther away.  

I'd encourage people who do live near a new, more frequent route, to learn how to use the bus system, even if they only use the bus once a week to a location that's a direct shot from their house.  It's an adventure.  

Why I Live Here: Close Encounters With Moose

This is another quick entry while I'm distracted by another project.  As I mentioned before, you can go to the Favorite Posts tab above and look at one of the old ones.

But biking to my meeting yesterday, I suddenly realized there was a moose just off the bike trail.  And then I saw there were two more little ones.  I had to make a quick decision, but it was easy to make.  If I tried to stop, I'd probably end up right next to the moose, so I just carried on and rode by, less that five feet from the mom, who didn't seem distressed at all.

The moose are pretty much used to people passing by on the trail.  As long as you keep your speed and stay on the trail, they're generally not going to be upset.  It's erratic behavior that seems to get their attention.

So for less than 30 seconds I had the never diminishing thrill of living in the woods with a mother moose and two new mooslings.

Is The Alaska Dispatch News For Sale?

Looks like it.  Oliver Optic, an occasional commenter here, sent me a link to this Craig Medred piece that says Alice Rogow is trying to sell the newspaper.  Interesting piece, though not in a good way.

This may be my shortest post ever.  Still occupied with other stuff.

Donald Cried Coming To Netflix August 15

"Donald Cried" was one of the features in competition at the Anchorage International Film Festival last December.  There was a strong group of features, and as I wrote back then, I could have argued for any of them getting one of the three prizes.  But Donald didn't.  But it made a very powerful impression on me.

Here's what I wrote in after seeing the movie:

"Donald Cried starts with Peter coming back to the small town where he grew up to sell his grandmother's house and settle things after she's died.  You don't know all this as the film starts - you pick up more and more details as things progress.  He's lost his wallet on the bus and so he has no money and goes across the street to a neighbor's, who greets him like a long lost pal and practically kidnaps him taking him around town.  The neighbor, Donald, seems like he's got Asbergers or something as he constantly crosses normal conversational boundaries in politeness and topics.  But the history of Peter, Donald, the grandmother, and others slowly is revealed.  But there were still so many questions I had.  And reading the credits - Kris Avedisian was listed as the writer, the producer, the director, and actor - I knew exactly who I wanted to talk to.  My wife asked, which one was he?  I assumed he played Donald, but then I had this thought, whoa, what if he played Peter?  That would have been so weird.  But as the cast scrolled by, he did play Donald.  So I was ready to go home and start looking for an email address for Kris."

I found that email address, sent a bunch of questions, and got a quick response back with a link to a video interview of Kris at a different film festival talking about the film.  (None of his team made it to Anchorage.)  I posted about that and the video here.

This is a quirky film festival type film with powerful characters and an interesting reveal of these two characters' past relationship which you wouldn't have guessed from the beginning, but ultimately makes sense.  And the interview at the link above answered a lot of my questions.

So yes, I'm making a recommendation to watch this film.  The schedule of August movies was on Lifehacker.  

Wisconsin State Journal Gives Preview Of Upcoming Supreme Court Gerrymandering Case

A large part of the Republican control of the US House is due to the last redistricting based on the 2010 Census.  From Five Thirty Eight:

"Republicans’ astounding state legislative gains in the 2010 midterms — the year before the decennial redistricting cycle — allowed them to redraw four times as many congressional districts as Democrats in 2011 and 2012, stretching their geographical edge even further. As a result, in 2012, Democrats won 51 percent of all major-party votes cast for House candidates but just 47 percent of all seats. In 2014, Democrats won 47 percent of all major-party votes but just 43 percent of the seats. Amazingly, just 16 of 247 House Republicans won their races by fewer than 10 percentage points."

There's currently a redistricting challenge that has been accepted by the Supreme Court.   From the Wisconsin State Journal:

"The three-judge panel that heard the Whitford case last year weighed the evidence and ordered the maps redrawn. The state has appealed the decision to the U.S. Supreme Court, arguing the process was lawful. The Supreme Court stayed the lower court order and agreed to hear oral arguments as early as this fall."

The Court hasn't ruled on political gerrymandering saying it was hard to get an objective sense of it.  But the Wisconsin legal team has come up with a way to measure

"the Whitford plaintiffs devised a three-pronged standard for partisan gerrymandering: Proving discriminatory intent, demonstrating a discriminatory effect, and finding no other justification for how the maps were drawn.
To prove the discriminatory effect, the plaintiffs measured the election results based on what is known as the "efficiency gap," which seeks to calculate how many votes for a given party are "wasted" because its voters are "packed" into certain safe districts or "cracked," that is, placed into districts where they still can't muster enough support for their candidate to win.
The Whitford plaintiffs argued the Wisconsin legislative districts were the most gerrymandered in the past 40 years, with 13 percent of votes wasted in 2012 and 10 percent wasted in 2014. Based on an analysis of 786 legislative elections across the country, they argued a gap of more than 7 percent should be deemed unconstitutional."

This will be a huge case either way it is decided.  If the Court goes with the plaintiffs, it should slow down partisan gerrymandering.  If not, it probably signals the issue is probably dead until there is a significantly new Supreme Court.

I wrote about this case back in February.

The Rule of Law Is Protecting Trump

For the time being anyway.

The Rule of Law is a foundation of our democracy.  It means that we follow the rules, the laws, that are created by our elected officials which are based on the legal foundation of the constitution.  We aren't supposed to take short cuts, but rather follow through the process of administering justice.

The rules for removing a president are laid out in the constitution.  There's impeachment.  From the University of Chicago:

Impeachment Clauses

Article 1, Section 2, Clause 5
The House of Representatives shall chuse their Speaker and other Officers; and shall have the sole Power of Impeachment.
Article 1, Section 3, Clauses 6 and 7
The Senate shall have the sole Power to try all Impeachments. When sitting for that Purpose, they shall be on Oath or Affirmation. When the President of the United States is tried the Chief Justice shall preside; And no Person shall be convicted without the Concurrence of two thirds of the Members present.
Judgement in Cases of Impreachment shall not extend further than to removal from Office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any Office of honor, Trust or Profit under the United States: but the Party convicted shall nevertheless be liable and subject to Indictment, Trial, Judgement and Punishment, according to Law.
Article 2, Section 4
The President, Vice President and all Civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.
Article 3, Section 1
. . . The Judges, both of the supreme and inferior Courts, shall hold their Offices during good Behaviour. . . .  (emphasis added)

I started this a week ago, and planned to go into each of the grounds for impeachment.  I thought I'd have to abandon this post, because I just don't have the time to complete this properly.

However, today I ran across a Tweet that cites a short 1974 book by Charles L. Black, The Impeachable Offense, which does all the work for me.   And Lawfare blog has excerpted key parts.  Critical  reading for anyone who wants to talk about impeaching the president.

There's also a commentary by Jane Chong that speculates on how this might be applicable today.  (For example, Black dismisses treason as not relevant in Nixon's case, but because the word is being used today, Chong discusses it, though only to show that it is still not relevant, despite the use of the term by some.

For the time being, though, the rule of law protects Trump.  From my perspective, Trump is actively doing damage to our laws and institutions that protect people's safety, health, and even lives.  Just as many people are supportive of taking legal shortcuts during a crisis, I have that instinct now with Trump. But I know we have to take it step by step and do it right.  We'll have to clean up the damage later.  Chong too makes that point, of taking it slowly.

"Last month I made a pragmatic argument against pushing too early for Trump’s impeachment. But as Black makes clear, hasty action on this front is more fundamentally a failure of principle. “Everyone must shrink from this most drastic of measures,” he declares on page one. Acknowledging his own status as a longtime political opponent of then-President Richard Nixon, Black nonetheless expresses 'a very strong sense of the dreadfulness of the step of removal.” Impeachment must be treated like high-risk surgery, he insists, “to be resorted to only when the rightness of diagnosis and treatment is sure.'”

"the discrepancy has been resolved"

It's hard not to blog, but the stuff I'm working on is using that part of the brain that I would blog with, but I can't blog it.  Yet.

Check out my favorites in the tab above in the mean time.  (Or see previous post.)

But here's a little follow up of something long ago.

I wrote last year, June, that the income tax problems from my mom's estate - really it was about the tax withheld from her caregiver's checks - was resolved.  And I got letters to that account and refund checks.

But this was zombie resolution and it came back this May.  They Social Security records didn't match the IRS records.  I'd sent all that information in once already, but I sent it again.

Today I got a new resolution letter.

I would remind people, as I did in the post last year, that a lot of the trouble here is due to continuous cuts to the IRS budget.  They simply don't have the people to keep up with all this.  And the people who get screwed are the small fry.  The really rich guys and corporations have lawyers who can run circles around a tax bill forever.  And that's true for all the other agencies that protect the public health, the environment, worker safety, and on and on and on.  Corporations know if government isn't properly funded, regulators can't come out and regulate them.  And they can get away with murder.

Some Of My Favorite Posts

The next few weeks I'm enmeshed in a project that will take a lot of time and about which I can't blog about until it's all over.

I'll try to put something up now and then, but only if I think I can write something that isn't a waste of your time.

However, I've been putting together a "Page" which is what Blogger calls Tabs at the top of the site.  And I've help off putting it up until now so you could look at some good older posts you might have missed.  You can either go to the top of the page and click the tab that says "Favorite Posts" (right next to "About This Blog") or you can click here.  But while this post will flow down the river of posts, the tab will stay at the top.  Below is what it looks like on this page.

Early Flowers Fade, New Ones Bloom - And A Link to a "Happy Uterus Tea" Recipe

Let's get this out of the way first.  My favorite gardening book is Bob Flowerdew's No Work Garden.  Most of the yard is natural birch, spruce, willow, cottonwoods, and high bush cranberry.  What was here before houses.  The 'lawn' has grass, dandelions, and clover.  The neighbors have accepted the fact that it's never going to look like a Sunset Magazine yard.

But I do have a rock garden in the front - we have a hill and I was trying to capture water so it doesn't run into the street as much - and over the years I've put in various perennials and that part looks ok.  And through no fault of my own (this was purely accidental) the plants bloom at different times of the summer.  We start off with lovely pink phlox, and then other plants bloom, and we have color all summer.

And this post shows some that have started blooming now.  But, to make my point, here's a lily that has finished its bloom.  (Budding and Blooming shows these lilies budding in early May.)

The hosta is just starting to flower.

So's the Maltese Cross.  Wikipedia lists 20 common names for this flower.

And the trollius.

This lily doesn't really count.  My neighbor gave it to me a few weeks ago and its still in a pot.  But it's there and smiling to the world.  

And the Achillea is starting to bloom as well.  From the Vintage News:

"Achillea millefolium, commonly referred to as yarrow, is a flowering plant that belongs to the family Asteraceae.

Depending on the region where it’s found and used, the plant goes by many names such as little feather, nosebleed plant, devil’s nettle, old man’s pepper, soldier’s woundwort, thousand-leaf, and more. . .

According to the legend, the plant’s original name, Achillea, was given it by Achilles who carried it on the battlefields and used it to cure battle wounds."

The Herbal Academy tells us that:

"Lady’s mantle is a powerful female herb for anytime during a women’s reproductive life. It helps relieve mild aches and pains during menstruation, with a tea or tincture able to stop spotting between periods and lessening excessive menstrual bleeding (Soule, 1998). Lady’s mantle has astringent qualities so it is useful for loose stools, and shrinking sores in one’s mouth or skin (Hoffman, 2003). Lady’s mantle is also helpful for the menopausal years (Hoffman, 2003), easing those troubling symptoms due to its astringent and anti-inflammatory actions."

They have recipes too.  

And finally, the Clustered Bellflower (Campanula glomerata):

I'd note a post from 2009 called "Trojan War Reenacted In Our Garden" shows many of these flowers eight years ago and also features the book No Work Garden mentioned up top.  The Veronica spicata - or Spiked Speedwell also mentioned in the older post - is almost ready to bloom.  

So, should I call this an example of repetitive posts?  I'd prefer to think it's a reminder of the seasons' returning visitors.  

Living In Different Worlds

While adult Americans are enmeshed in topics like Russian influence in elections, health care reform, and immigration, I'm watching our visiting four year old going about her life blissfully unaware of any of that.

She's enjoying helping her grandfather water the garden, sifting the compost, making bread, putting away the dishes.  She's enjoying when her grandfather is being silly, but also learning to distinguish between when he's telling a joke and saying something serious.  And when he's working on something else, she has ways to poke him, pull his shirt, call his name repeatedly, wiggle her way onto his lap to get him to reengage with her.

She's been enjoying the magpie family that stops in our yard now and then and this morning while we were eating breakfast on the deck a Steller Jay got very close looking for loose peanuts.  On this trip she's seen a real wild moose for the first time, musk oxen at the musk ox farm, and various other Alaska animals at the zoo.

She's adding words to her vocabulary daily.  She's got projects she's working on - like getting across the monkey bars by herself, and riding a bike.  She wanted me to take the training wheels off the bike and worked on the bolt with the monkey wrench.  But keeping balance, pedaling fast enough, and steering without the training wheels proved much harder than she expected.

She can recognize all the letters and some words and she's learning how to write them.  When I'm doing the Sudoku in the newspaper, she wants me to do the crossword puzzle with her.  I have to figure out the word and tell her how to spell it and she tries to write the letters in the little boxes.  The letter S tends to backwards.  When I say things like, "That's great, but it is upside-down," she quickly replies, "Not if you are sitting over there."  This morning she said she couldn't make a B, so I showed her to make the line first, then one loop, then the other.  She copied what I did and made B after B after B, reveling in her new B writing skill.  In the picture it's easy to spot what I wrote and what she wrote.

She's got this whole world that she's absorbed in that overlaps with mine in many places, but the larger world of politics is definitely not part of her realm.  Lucky her.  And lucky me to have her visiting and getting to enter her world.