Happy Friday and happy birthday to Houston Texas, the Apple II computer and of course, Mark Wahlberg. Say hi to your mother for him!
- Good news from the transit front: Milwaukee County buses are now equipped with front loading bike racks, just in time for bike to work week. There are many a time when I’ve wanted to take the bus somewhere, but the walk from the stop to where I wanted to go was just a bit to far. Being able to ride a bike to and from any stop in Milwaukee really opens up the possibilities for using the bus system, and personally will cut down on a transfer for when I take the bus to work. Good work by the Milwaukee County Board to override the County Exec. and make this happen.
- The long anticipated Schulz aquatic center in Lincoln Park opens tomorrow. It’s an awesome facility with lap lanes, zero depth entry, and slides. Basically something for the whole family to enjoy. While the weather may not be the best for it this weekend, it should prove to be a popular attraction the whole summer. MilwaukeeMoms.com has pictures.
- Another fun this on tap this weekend: Drive in movies at Miller Park! Tonight is Anchorman and Jaws, tomorrow they’re showing the Sandlot and Major League. The cost per car and 2 people is $20, which isn’t bad. The website for the movies is here if you want more details. While the two R rated movies tonight don’t exactly make it something for the kids, it’s great idea and a good use for the space which otherwise sits empty when the team is out of town.
- Several people emailed in puzzlement about why I mentioned yesterday that it was a good thing when public officials can come together to get things done. They were confused because I didn’t criticize County Exec. Walker, but instead praised the ability of he and others to get something done working through three levels of government. It happens, and as I’ve always said, when politicians do something right, they deserve kudos for it. The “right” in this case wasn’t the sale in my opinion, but working together to get it done. Some people have a hard time believing me when I say that, but it’s true. I often disagree with Mr. Walker, but there’s a difference between disagreeing with his policies and going after him personally for the sole reason that he’s named Scott Walker. Kind of hard to explain in a short amount of space, but hopefully you get the picture. It’s what makes me a “biased partisan hack” I guess.
I live in the Washington Heights neighborhood of Milwaukee, WI with my wife Jen, our daughter Emerson, and son Carter.
Dan, likewise people should be applauded when they can put the team mentality aside and assess the situation for what it is. It is unfortunately extremely rare to find people with this quality (just look at the comments from both “sides” on this blog!), so kudos to you for being able to do it. It may seem like common sense to you that you would evaluate a situation based on the facts, not the letter next to the actor’s name, but evidence suggests strongly that it is indeed not common sense.
What about the Apple II? A title that doesn’t deliver at all. Also, how about those Penguins?
Since when did you become a Penguin fan? Hopefully the Wings give Mumble Crosby and the rest of the happy feet gang a better game tonight.
Suspiciously absent (especially in light of the attention drawn to the evil brain-washed right winger who shot the courageous abortion doc) is mention of the Muslim convert who assassinated an army recruiter and wounded a second soldier.
also
Outside of “ride your bike to work week and find out on the first day that you prefer your car but you proved how environmentally minded you are by at least biking for the one day”, I wonder how much use those racks will get? Another sad do-gooder waste of money.
Hm, perhaps I am just in a bad mood… wealth redistribution does that to me.
The bike racks are heavily used in Austin. It might be more questionable in Milwaukee given the weather, but it’s a relatively low cost way to make an existing bus system more useful.
$1400 per rack is not low cost at my house. $650,000 to implement the program and $230,000/year to maintain it ($500 per rack per year). I don’t know about you, but I have a bike rack, and it costs me nearly nothing to maintain it, nor did I have to hire a special mechanic to do so.
MCTS expects $22,000 in new revenue due to the racks. At $2 a ride, even my public school education tells me that they expect 11,000 new riders per year (30 per day). That is $80 per rider. Even at triple that number of riders, we would have been better to offer them free cab rides, it would have saved money and created more than 1 new job. Liberals are ridiculous when it comes to spending money on bicycles… or really anything else for that matter.
Obviously I can’t speak to how it is being implemented in Milwaukee. The numbers you state do sound pretty off-the-wall, so someone should probably look into that.
Off the wall? I got them from the Milwaukee Journal, MCTS website, and published County Board minutes.
Granted, the Journal and the County Board could be accurately described as “off the wall”, but the figures are published on the web for even the laziest liberal to find. Perhaps we could add wi-fi service to the buses so you could look it up as you ride to work proudly sporting your bike on the bus rack. You do ride to work, don’t you? In December? In a cold April rain?
Perhaps that was not considered when they used warm and sunny Austin TX as a role model.
TFG, settle down and tone down the knee-jerk defensiveness. I said the numbers don’t sound right, so it might be a wasteful implementation someone should look into. I am assuming your numbers are correct.
I don’t ride my bike to work. I travel (by plane) out of town most of the time, and it doesn’t make any sense to check my bike in the cargo hold.
I don’t think Milwaukee used Austin as a model. I live there and was simply mentioning what I had seen first-hand in Austin. Indeed, I specifically mentioned the weather difference.
First, the weather. These racks are used in other northern cities like Cleveland, Chicago, St. Paul, and Minneapolis without any problems. Are there as many people riding bikes in the middle of December? Of course not, but just because there may be a slow down in usage for several months doesn’t mean you should just toss the whole program.
As for the cost, 90%+ of the cost of the racks was covered through a federal grant.
The $230k number you cite for maintenance is based off a single quote from the County Exec. in the newspaper, and I don’t know what he’s basing that off, or if it even reflects the actual cost of maintenance.
So you’re right to suggest the amount of money you’re using in your example might be a little bit high.
One final thing, the folks who will be using these racks won’t be limited to “liberals”. There are issues which are partisan and those which aren’t. Riding bikes isn’t one of those.
The problem with the system is that local governments think that 90-10 federal funding somehow alters the equation. Just because you socialize the costs of a program by charging 90% of the cost to people who will never benefit from it doesn’t make the program cheaper. Do you think this is magic money that comes out of nowhere??? The truth is, most fed money is that is debt or printed money… both of which are FLAT TAXES and, as anyone on the left will tell you, hurts the poor and middle class way more than the rich.
Ok, so other northern liberal politicians have put “feel-good” bike racks on buses; This does not make it a good idea to stick our tongue to the flag pole too.
No matter where the money came from, it is tax money and politicians have a responsibility to spend it where it does real good, not to simply waste it on populist crap.
The maintenance figure comes from having to hire a special mechanic, and likely having to perform frequent repairs and replacement of racks that will be damaged by misuse, accidents and constant contact with the weather. As always, liberals overlook and underestimate the operating cost of a program
The folks using the racks will be few in number. The garbage put out by the lefty group that promoted the racks was silly. Very few people will be interested in taking a bicycle on the bus. If you have figures from a major cold-weather metropolitan area that show otherwise, I’d love to see them. I suspect that there will be more empty bike racks even than empty seats on the unused downtown trolley.
But hey, we are a broke liberal city, so if you build it, they will come. If not, make it bigger and invent a new tax to support it. Rinse, repeat.
And I’d say that using tax money to increase ridership on mass transit, reduce congestion on the roads, help the environment and so on is a good thing.
Have you actually seen the racks yet? You might change some of your opinions about how much maintenance there will be if you had.
No one is saying it’s a bad thing. Giving every American a car would be a good thing too. I think the point of the critics, and the point that is often lost on the left, is that the benefits need to outweigh the costs (and not just the portion of the cost paid by the state government).
“As for the cost, 90%+ of the cost of the racks was covered through a federal grant”…..A yes the Free money tree Federal government, because there’s Federal money available us libs have to spend it. By the way Dan, why have we seen no posts on the whopping crap sandwich your party is shoving down our throughts in the middle of the night called the Wisconsin budget, please keep focussing on the bigger issues like bike racks and drive in movies.
I’ll make a point in the future to write about what topics that would please you and allow you to use phrases like ‘crap sandwich’. Maybe it’s frustrating you that you can’t get your childish jabs in on non-controversial subjects like drive in movies?
Where’s your weblog by the way? Or maybe you can back up ‘whopping crap sandwich’ with a real name to start.
I thought of a couple of questions regarding the bike racks.
1 – Per the MCTS website, each rack can accomodate 2 bikes. There suggestion for when the racks are in use, is to wait for the next bus. Knowing this, how many bike riders will use the racks knowing that they may have to wait for several buses?
2 – How much in additional diesel fuel will the county spend while the buses idle waiting for the bikes to be mounted/dismounted from the racks?
3 – How will the additional time needed for mounting/dismounting bikes affect the non-bike bus riders on the bus? Will those riders with a tight bus schedule need to take an earlier bus because they may miss their transfer bus? Will some of those riders just opt to use their cars rather than spending even more time on a bus or having to leave their homes earlier?
4- How much is the liability insurance for this program going to cost? Undoubtedly, some bikes will be damaged by stones, debris, etc. being kicked up by other traffic.
Dave- here are some answers- We have bike racks in Las Vegas and there is little time spent loading and unloading the bikes. Usually, if there are people getting on the bus and paying their fare, the bike rider is already gone by the time the bus is ready to roll.
We also have a two rack system. While I do not ride the bus that often, I haven’t seen the situation come up where there are 3 bikes waiting for the bus. Does it happen, probably, same thing happens when there are 4 wheelchair spaces on a bus and 5 wheelchair riders waiting to ride. It can be a pain in the butt, but it happens- part of the transit system.
As for liability, I would assume you would take your own risk, unless the bus is somehow negligent.
per the Family Guy, $1400 seems awfully high, but hey it’s government, it’s not really your money, isn’t it?
Dan, I will agree that it won’t always happen that both spots on the rack are in use. I would hardly expect that to happen if someone wanted to go to, let’s say, 76th & Grange. But if those bike racks are open and not in use, why have them?
I would expect the racks to have heavy use, at least initially, let say to the downtown area or to the UWM and Marquette campuses. But after several days of waiting for several buses and an open rack, many students will just give up due to the hassel of having to wait and revert back to their previous mode of transportation to campus. Since these racks are now only going to serve a very small segment of our population, can we justify the cost of the program.
Like I said, I think initially, some of the routes will have heavy use of the racks. But after frustration sets in due to the delays, people will opt for convenience and not use them. As an example, look at this story from Santa Fe dated in May, 2008:
http://www.santafenewmexican.com/Local%20News/bike-to-work-week-Rider-struggles-with-city-buses
With all the fiscal problems all levels of government are experiencing, can we really justify this as a priority, or could this money have been put to a better use?
Well the problem in the article you mention is the demand is outstripping supply, I don’t get how that’s a knock against the racks.
About the “better use of money” question, like I said previously, I think reducing pollution and congestion on freeways and city streets is a worthwhile use of federal money.
Surely as worthwhile as a spending $700,000 on a fence around the Florida Emergency Operations Center in Tallahassee last year?