Mass Transit reality check from Reason TV: 17 Miles in Just 78 Minutes! Light Rail vs. Reality in LA; backwards South Florida can hardly laugh at LA!

Reason.tv video: 17 Miles in Just 78 Minutes! Light Rail vs. Reality in Los Angeles. Watt Smith plays the role of guinea pig going from LAX to Burbank to see what's true and what's not re LA's Light Rail system, and discover's that even riders would prefer faster buses, not expensive and slow trains. December 2011.

http://youtu.be/7P1bFR5LOcg

Don't act so smug in watching this, South Florida!

As I've detailed previously here and in emails, blog and newspaper comments elsewhere over the years, when the Miami-Dade Metrorail system was in the development stages, wonky transit nerds and Good Government public policy types were completely out-muscled and out-hustled by the local taxi cab industry -and their campaign contribution$- which is why a Metrorail route between Miami International Airport -aka M.I.A.- and the downtown Miami business/legal area then on Flagler Street, and beginning to rapidly move south to Brickell Avenue, was NOT the very first route completed, like it would be in almost any other normal community that didn't have natural obstacles between them.

But in Miami, it didn't happen.

In fact, you STILL can't get straight from MIA to downtown Miami or Brickell Avenue entirely via Metrorail in the year 2011, can you?

And in Broward County, despite the name, Tri-Rail's Airport station isn't really at Hollywood/Ft. Lauderdale International Airport, is it?

No, it's a few miles away in Dania, and you have to take a bus to actually get to the airport.

And there's currently no rail service to Port Everglades and all the thousands of tourists and employees there to... anywhere.

(And who can forget all my many -fascinating!- blog posts here in the past about the lack of a bus at the Tri-Rail station closest to Ft. Lauderdale Stadium & Lockhart Stadium -Coconut Creek- where the Orioles used to have spring training, and the complete lack of a city or county bus or shuttle that goes directly from the Tri-Rail station to the City of FTL-owned stadiums when events are taking place there, despite it being well over a mile away?)

Yes, South Florida has really been blessed the past forthy years with lots of real geniuses in charge of public transportation!

To better illustrate these points, especially for those of you reading this now who live far from the heat and humidity -and sunshine- of South Florida, here are two excerpt of email I've sent

the past four years.

The first was sent to Gabriel Lopez-Bernal, the founder of the very popular public policy and transit-oriented blog, Transit Miami, back on November 7th, 2007.

Gabriel listed this blog on the Transit Miami blogroll a few months after I started it and the South Beach Hoosier blog, the latter of which will be seriously tweaked and improved by the beginning of the new year. http://southbeachhoosier.blogspot.com/

Dear Gabriel:

Per Larry Lebowitz's insightful article about the latest "only in Miami" controversy, around the North corridor of the extension of the Metrorail, something the Herald neglected to mention when discussing the issue of the U-M's move to Chez Huizenga, and your good take on the situation which I read just a few minutes ago, http://www.transitmiami.com/2007/11/could-north-corridor-be-threatened-by.html

"MIA got luggage carts when?" is going to be my new generic response to how things can be the way they are in South Florida.

For instance, the Herald suddenly discovering that there are no general interest bookstores within the City of Miami city limits.

Luggage carts at MIA? That happened like, what, just 4-5 years ago???

When I was still living the Beltway Life up in Arlington, I could get a luggage cart at the Reagan National Airport Metro exit just seconds after going thru the farecard taker.

Don't quote me on this, but I think they had luggage carts at Le Bourget Airport in Paris when Lindbergh landed in 1927

Come on, you know how long it takes for all the good ideas to finally make their way to Miami!

-----

Want more proof of the lack of common sense on transit?

Here's an excerpt from a 2007 email of mine to Broward County Comm. Sue Gunzburger, the Commissioner for my part of Broward, telling her about a series of problems I had noticed even BEFORE the County initiated a new -and long overdue- express bus service along U.S.-1/

Federal Highway called The US-1 Breeze.

The route starts south of me in Aventura at the Aventura Mall, come north thru Hallandale Beach, Hollywood, Dania, stops at FLL airport, and then continues to downtown Ft. Lauderdale, near the County and Federal Courthouse and Broward Schools HQ, ending at the Broward County Central Terminal on Broward Blvd., just around the corner from the Broward County Govt. Center.

Since this service started four years ago, if nobody I know wants to come along in my car, I take this when I need to go up to Broward County Commission meetings -or the Ethics Comm. meetings- so I can read the newspaper, listen to ESPN Radio and drink some Iced coffee and be there in less than 45 minutes for less than two bucks -and don't have to pay for parking:

1. Considering the amount of public back-slapping Broward County engaged in after they finally decided to create the #1 Breeze, an idea that should've been done 10-20 years ago, how is it that less than one week before the service actually began, there were still NOT any printed schedules for the Breeze service available on existing #1 buses, the natural constituency of a new line?

Could you possibly sabotage your own efforts any worse?

Actually you could, since there were no easily visible symbols of some sort on US-1 in advance, indicating where the small number of stops would be.

That was the icing on the Breeze cake for me.

As it happens, I spent quite some time investigating this, not only on the phone talking to customer service folks with Broward Transit, but also employing old-fashioned shoe leather, actually walking US-1. You know, the route involved.

Trust me, Comm. Gunzburger, whatever you are told by Broward Transit on this matter needs to be completely disregarded, because it could hardly have been more self-evident they didn't know what they were doing.

How botched was it?

Well, customer service people I spoke to at Broward Transit, just days before the service began, couldn't tell me with any degree of certainty where the stop(s) in Hallandale Beach were to be located.

Or, as it turned out, where the ONE stop in Hallandale Beach was.

The whole subject of the lack of a sufficient number of city-created bus shelters in SE Broward in HB and Hollywood, will be the subject of a future blog post here, though I've broached it here in the past.

I mention this because the north-bound stop in HB for The Breeze consists of two benches across the street from McDonald's -with no sheltered roof to keep you out of the rain or sun.

The one south-bound stop is roughly the same but in front of a gas station.

In the entire length of Hallandale Beach, along very busy U.S.-1, there is exactly one bus shelter on the north-bound side of the road, and it's just two blocks south of Pembroke Road, the cityline with Hollywood.

Welcome to Joy Cooper's Hallandale Beach!

-----

seventhmetro'd video: Los Angeles Metro: The past, Present and Future of LA's Mass Transit

http://youtu.be/DGNpibdVuU0

From today's Transit Miami blog, relative to FDOT:

FDOT, Brain Surgeons, Engineers and Trust

StrongTowns video: Conversation with an Engineer, Street Project

http://youtu.be/_-6X1-SLOXM

-----

http://www.transitmiami.com/

http://www.youtube.com/user/ReasonTV

Rail-Volution's 2007 Conference in Miami, Florida

http://www.railvolution.org/past-conferences/all-conferences

Summary of Lake Worth Charette; Transit Oriented Development

http://www.railvolution.org/rv2007_pdfs/rv2007_001a.pdf

Papers, Presentations and Highlights of other Rail-Volution annual conferences:

http://www.railvolution.org/past-conferences/all-conferences

Creating a Positive Future for a Minority Community: Transportation and Urban Renewal Politics in Miami: By Milan Dluhy, Keith Revell and Sidney Wong

http://repository.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1013&context=penniur_papers&sei-redir=1&referer=http%3A%2F%2F

http://www.youtube.com/user/seventhmetro

http://www.strongtowns.org/

http://www.strongtowns.org/journal/

http://www.youtube.com/user/strongtowns

Meanwhile, back in my former home, Arlington County (VA), Extravagant Local Govt. Spending Central, similarities to So. Florida abound

Oh dear!
Somebody is using someone else's wallet, purse, debit and credit cards to do some early Christmas Shopping for all kinds of un-necessary things, and one of the suspects is a member of the Usual Suspects in Northern Virgina.

That person's name is Chris Zimmerman, the very self-involved Arlington County Board and WMATA Board member who went ballistic when average citizens -and Boy Scouts- wanted to start post-9/11 Arlington County Commission meetings with the Pledge of Allegiance.

It's all-too-true: One of the main reasons that people leave Arlington County, VA is Comm. Chris Zimmerman, a condescending, know-it-all liberal bureaucrat with a tin ear and yen for raising taxes for pet projects.

Arlington Yupette, the sensible, dependable and common sense blog friend of all well-informed and discerning citizen taxpayers in Arlington County (VA) -where your faithful blogger Dave lived from 1989 to 2003- along with her observant, hyper-vigilant but still severely put-upon readers, are literally breathing fire after the latest examples of illogical upside-down, run-amok government spending priorities among Zimmerman and the Arlington County government and the Arlington School Board, the twin pillars that compose Arlington's sprawling Extravagant Govt. Spending Central colossus.
http://arlingtonyupette.blogspot.com/

That refrain sounds familiar, can you hum a few bars?
I can definitely name that song in two notes!
And it definitely smells familiar, too.

The only difference from Broward County is the absence -so far- of photos of FBI agents arresting Arlington elected officials.

Christmas in October continues this evening at the County Board meeting. Items on the agenda include gifts for the Artisphere, the Washington Golf and Country Club, and an $82 million pot of gold from establishing a special tax district encompassing Crystal City, Pentagon City, and Potomac Yards for the County's Board's pet vanity projects (Fisette's Aquatic Center, Zimmerman's light rail, etc).

The Arlington Sun Gazette slammed both Sally Baird and the Arlington School System today, providing a laundry list of serious problems and failures ranging from extravagant unnecessary spending to a drop-out rate that's a "barely-concealed scandal".

The current mendacious shell games up there in Arlington, especially with the special taxing districts, Business Improvements Districts, (BIDs), which have been so successful in Washington, D.C. after some early problems, recalls the 'funny business' I've written about here in the past per Charles Rabin's excellent coverage in the Miami Herald of the the multiple CRAs in the City of Miami, which have former White Knight Marc Sarnoff's fingerprints all over them.

'Funny business' that is, if by 'funny business,' you mean barely-concealed personal agendas being played-out with taxpayer/business money.
I do!

My July 30th post on this subject was: It can't be said better than this - Howard Troxler in 7/29/10 St. Pete Times: St. Petersburg's cynical plan to thwart Amendment 4 (redux)
http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2010/07/it-cant-be-said-better-than-this-howard.html

Comm. Sarnoff's fairly rapid descent into meddling mediocrity and curious, not-to-say questionable policy/ethical choices and words, has led many Miami-area civic activists and reporters and columnists I know and trust, who once regarded him as a breath of fresh air, to privately admit that Sarnoff is the latest South Florida pol to "go over to the Dark Side."

Just like Broward County Comm. Kristen Jacobs up here, which I wrote about the day before the August primary election.
That August 23rd post was Broward political insider wisely intones the truth: "Kristin Jacobs has gone over to the Dark Side."
http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2010/08/broward-political-insider-wisely.html

For more on Chris Zimmerman, see this,
http://arlingtonyupette.blogspot.com/2010/06/please-help-chris-zimmerman.html and then David Alpert's excellent piece from last Sept. 29th,
Innovation resistance at Metro, part 1: The value of "bottom-up"
http://greatergreaterwashington.org/post.cgi?id=3655

His piece appears on his excellent public policy blog GreaterGreaterWashington, which lacks a mirror site of similar scope and quality in South Florida, though to be 100% honest, his site often fails to take into account the role of the average DC-area taxpayer, who doesn't want to keep paying for transportation experiments that benefit a very small number of people.
http://greatergreaterwashington.org/

You can be very pro-transit like me, but also accept the fact that some transportation or public policy projects pushed for funding are either turkeys or white elephants to be.
Being pro-transit doesn't mean having to also be intellectually dishonest, though that sometimes was the case in Arlington, just as it is here in South Florida.
Like I need to tell you, dear readers.

Another couple of things on Chris Zimmerman from an email I sent to Transit Miami founder Gabriel Lopez-Bernal in 2008. http://www.transitmiami.com/

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/24/AR2008042403382.html

The Washington Post

Hired Riders to Assess Metro
Critics See Waste, Say There's No Mystery to Poor Service

By Lena H. Sun
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, April 25, 2008; B01

The Metro board yesterday approved spending as much as $1 million over five years to hire professional "mystery riders" to assess the quality of service on trains and buses.

But some rider advocates questioned the expense and said the transit agency could get equally valuable information from its riders, who already bombard Metro with more than 3,000 complaints a month.

Much like the mystery shoppers of retail, the undercover Metro riders would take trips on Metrorail and Metrobus. Armed with a checklist of criteria that includes cleanliness and on-time performance, the mystery riders would travel on nearly all routes, evaluate the service from a customer's perspective and provide feedback to Metro, officials said. The information would be used to help Metro identify and correct problems.

"We want to know what works and doesn't work, and what can be made better," said Metro board Chairman Chris Zimmerman, who represents Arlington County and pushed for the program as part of Metro's goal to improve service.

Metro already hears from many customers about what does not work. The agency receives between 3,000 and 4,000 complaints a month, according to agency reports. The most common complaints are late buses, rude and discourteous behavior, and a lack of reliability for MetroAccess, the paratransit service. More than 1.2 million trips are taken systemwide on an average weekday.

Zimmerman said the mystery-rider program is needed because "we can't afford to wait until there's a complaint" to improve service.

The board authorized the agency to hire a company to assess 95 percent of Metrorail and Metrobus service, according to Donna Murray, Metro's manager of consumer research. Metro would pay $175,000 for the first year's work, according to the board resolution. The $1 million budget covers three years, plus two one-year options to renew the deal. The program could begin by late August, she said.

Murray said she could not provide an estimate of how many mystery riders would be deployed.

Metro had a similar program several years ago that used trained volunteers. Maryland board member Peter Benjamin asked why the agency needed to spend money to hire professionals.

The earlier program produced unreliable results skewed by riders' subjectivity, said Sara Wilson, Metro's assistant general manager for corporate strategy. "We'd only get the results of the person who rode the X2 every day."

The new proposal drew a mixed reaction from rider groups.

Nancy Iacomini, who chairs the Metro-appointed Riders' Advisory Council, said it was a "great idea" to have "people deployed in an organized fashion to every bus line and train line at different times of the day." Relying on customer complaints as feedback provides only part of the picture, she said.

But Jack Corbett, of MetroRiders. org, urged the agency to "listen to its own riders with its own staff and use the million dollars for something that would benefit the riders."

He added, "You don't need a professional to determine that lights aren't lit, or that the air conditioning isn't working, or that the trains are 30 minutes late."

The larger issue, he said, is that the amount of feedback Metro receives -- whether from real riders or hired ones -- is irrelevant if the agency does not use it. The agency is making critical decisions about rail and bus service as it drafts next year's budget, but riders' opinions are not being taken into consideration, Corbett said.

Reader comments are at:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/24/AR2008042403382_Comments.html

____________________________________________________

Saturday April 26th, 2008

Dear Gabriel:

Given what I know about some of your upcoming career choices, from your emails, I thought you'd find Richard Florida's appearance on C-SPAN's Book TV this weekend of some value.

He's a really interesting guy to listen to.

Florida's book was "Who's Your City: How the Creative Economy is Making Where to Live the Most Important Decision of Your Life"

As for my own thoughts about this WaPo transit story, which I found amusing because of my own heavy daily use of the Metro for 15 years, plus the occasional bus ride during heavy snow, here's a couple of things to consider as you ponder whether or not it makes sense to use the

$1 Million towards professional surveying/inspection vs. simply relying on rider comments
and complaints, assuming those actually made it to their rightful place in the food chain:

The Chris Zimmerman referenced above was already an Arlington County Commissioner while I lived there, and is/was a first-rate JERK!

(Just as is the case in the City of Hallandale Beach, where I live, an incumbent like Zimmerman benefits from the fact that though it's a very liberal place, all members of the Arlington County Board are elected at-large, and there are no term limits.)

While he was Chairman of the County Board, he tried to actively prevent the Board from reciting the Pledge of Allegiance before the meetings started, even after 9/11.

Things came to a crescendo in March of 2002, before a packed room and TV cameras present from every Washington-area TV station, he was made an object of ridicule by the entire area, after numerous Washington Post editorials and attacks on him during prior Board resident's comment periods.

That happened when a vocal critic of the Board's refusal to say the Pledge stood up in the Board auditorium and started reciting it before the meeting, and, like energized marionettes, the County Board jumped up and followed suit with the recitation, which the public was already doing.

Now usually I really wouldn't care about that sort of issue, but sometimes small issues highlight a much larger perception problem an elected official has, a blind spot if you will.

Such was the case here with Chris Zimmerman.

If they stumble over something so small due to sheer petty ego and personal pique, how can you really trust their judgment on something important?

Zimmerman made such a point of saying that it shouldn't be necessary for County Board members to say the Pledge at the beginning of their own meetings, that it proved terribly embarrassing later -and showed him for the creepy hypocrite I always thought he was- when he was on various appointed boards and commissions, like with METRO, the Northern Virgina Transportation Comm. and VIRGINIA RAILWAY EXPRESS, and what's the first thing they do at every single meeting?

Exactly!

(If you can believe it, the NVTC's website is www.thinkoutsidethecar.org )

So, Zimmerman had no problem reciting the Pledge publicly while on a Board that he was appointed to, he just had his personal/political/philosophical reservations about doing the same thing for a Board that he was actually elected to by Arlington County voters.

It was a hard slap in the face to Arlington's residents and a valuable lesson I'll never forgot in judging elected officials' behavior and hypocrisy.

And this is the great genius behind the $1 million decision in Washington.

Honestly, in all my myriad experiences in Washington, over 15 years, even when I disagreed with people on an issue, I always tried my best to keep things civil -and classy!

Frankly, I actually enjoyed the company of some people who disagreed with me on public policy issues more than some who agreed, esp. if they liked sports or film, not surprisingly.

But, that being said, Zimmerman was the closest thing to a 1930's Stalinist government
goon/henchman as I ever met.

Really.

That he was smart and should've known better only made it worse, not unlike the situation with State Sen. Steve Geller, who chooses to use his talents and abilities to help Steve Geller, not to help under-served segments of society who could use his help and influence to get a fair shake and see their causes given a seat at the table, like older Foster Kids who'll soon be on their own, Haitian-American social services groups, et al.

That's one of the principal reasons I so detest Geller.

He's so damn self-serving, almost as if it's very transparency made it funny or amusing.
It's not.

Zimmerman acted like he could do pretty much whatever he liked and residents just had to lump it, because the board was all Democrats and they couldn't deny him.

Well, I was a (moderate) Democrat, too, like most of the County, but I wanted diversity of ideas on the County Board, too, to generate outside-the-box thinking about the problems where I lived, not a choir singing songs pre-approved by Zimmerman.

(Photos and info on my old neighborhood in Arlington:

http://www.arlingtonva.us/Departments/CPHD/ons/pdf/GlebeWoodFinalReport.pdf

Did you ever see my old South beach Hoosier blog post where I mentioned that my old townhouse was where President Ford's daughter Susan lived, while he was President?

When I left, it still had the old Secret Service-installed communications system throughout.)

Frankly, as I later explained it to some people, Zimmerman sometimes acted like Arlington County taxpayers were merely guinea pigs in some Pol. Sci. experiment he needed to do in order to earn his PhD. dissertation at U-W in Madison.

His creepy and diabolical personality were such that I knew quite a few folks who were deeply involved in the Arlington community -people I wish we had dozens of clones of, down here!- who were popular and well-respected, but who made no secret to me of their hate for him.

If current blog technology had existed back then, Zimmerman would have been my Arlington-based blog's favorite political pinata!

Meanwhile, back in Orlando, transit also stammers and stu-t-t-ers...

Meanwhile, back in Orlando, just as is the case in Broward and Miami-Dade counties, transit also stammers and stu-t-t-ers...

Received some very interesting info earlier yesterday afternoon in my daily email from the Central Florida Political Pulse blog, the Politics blog of the Orlando Sentinel, one of my daily must-reads, in the form of a post by the Sentinel's David Damron titled Orange Mayor Crotty Reveals Lynx Funding Plan.

But after reading it and absorbing the central points, I surprised myself and got to thinking about something else, or rather, some one else -Alex Sink.


Though it's been little commented on so far, don't think that people around the state, esp. those of us with an interest in transportation policy, aren't paying attention to CFO Alex Sink's role in the continuing transit mess in Central Florida -esp. commuter rail- even as she tries to morph her official role into that of a numbers-crunching, truth-telling combination of Agent Dana Scully and Agent Clarice Starling, saving the day right before it's too late.


Since I returned to South Florida from D.C. a few years ago, to the extent that I thought of Alex Sink at all -which I didn't- due largely to some positive words from friends back in D.C. and in Florida who were longtime Lawton Chiles supporters, I gave Sink the benefit of the doubt, even as I wondered why in the world she got so much attention.


(For instance, Florida Trend's May 2008 story, Sink Sees a Silver Lining in Florida's Slowdown
by Amy Keller http://www.floridatrend.com/article.asp?aID=48843 )


But given that other than Gov. Charlie Crist, Sink has been the subject of more laudatory media coverage than anyone else in the state, where has she made a real difference in the lives of Florida citizens yet?


I've yet to hear Sink say anything either counter-intuitive or politically brave that would really cost her politically in the future, much less, take a principled stand that goes against the personal interests of her usual political/financial supporters. Where's the bold thinking?



Who knows, maybe something will happen in the not-too-distant future that'll give her the opportunity to show her true stripes and abilities, but thus far, given all the ink that's been used on her, color me unimpressed.


Can I really be the only person in South Florida who thinks this?


By the way, you may or may not be aware of the fact that in stark contrast to the popular approach that Gov. Sarah Palin took in Alaska with regard to getting rid of state aircraft, FL pols are much more averse to saying sayonara to their beloved "Wings of Man.'



Just over a year ago in a great Aug. 28th, 2007 post at the aforementioned CFPP, http://blogs.orlandosentinel.com/news_politics/2007/08/just-plane-comm.html#more labeled, Just plane common sense, Aaron Deslatte wrote about the efforts to pare just one of the planes from the state's control.


Among the more interesting facts to emerge from that post was this one: Since June 1, state officials have racked up $258,962.50 in air fare on Florida's fleet, according to manifests for the three planes. Records show Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink flew the most in that period, with over $31,000 in air travel used through the summer.Crist came in second, with almost $24,000 in airfare around the state.

(Speaking of that, how funny would it be if somebody in a position to know, floated a rumor that the state airplanes had contained listening devices!? The sheer amount of lies and B.S. told on those planes would stupefy the electorate! And make great columns and newscasts!)

Based on what I've read and heard from across the state, and in myriad conversations/emails with folks much closer to the scene than me, including elected officials, for my money, Sink is THE most over-rated pol in the state, edging out Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, long a bête noire of mine, in case you've forgotten some past blog posts of mine where I've zeroed-in on her.

I really loathe DWS.

I've already written a pretty informative blog post about DWS that'll be coming out within the next week regarding her inclusion in the John Harwood and Jerry Seib book, Pennsylvania Avenue, which I think paints a very unflattering portrait of her personal scruples.

That's not my opinion alone, but rather one that's also shared by many folks around the country who've read the book, and commented to the authors.
In fact I even wrote someone recently and said that I wouldn't bring her up again in future emails because she's too much of a downer!


(The book was the NY Times Book Review's featured review three months ago: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/08/books/review/Widmer-t.html?partner=rssnyt )


By the way, per some of my earlier blog posts at HBB, and the August 1st post by Gabriel Lopez-Bernal at Transit Miami, http://www.transitmiami.com/2008/08/01/mary-peters-in-miami-today/
my formal request for info and docs about FDOT Sec. Kopelousos and her co-called "public" appearances in South Florida will be sent within the next few days, hopefully by next Monday.

I can hardly wait to read the predictable lame excuses, alibis and PR-spit-shined obfuscation that awaits me.

I will, of course, share it with you once it's in my hands.
______________________________
Orlando Sentinel
Central Florida Political Pulse
Orange Mayor Crotty Reveals Lynx Funding Plan
posted by David Damron on Sep 9, 2008


Orange County Mayor Rich Crotty released a Lynx funding plan Tuesday that would create a long-sought dedicated funding source for the bus system, but would likely do little to head off an immediate budget crunch that could gut some routes and trim service.


Crotty's plan calls for the leaders of Osceola, Orange and Seminole counties to each pledge a certain level of property taxes to fund the system, and lock it into place by establishing a regional transit system between the three governments.
The effort would require voter approval.


It would also put more of the future funding burden on Oseola and Seminole counties, who now contribute roughly $5 million.
Under Crotty's plan, that number would rise significantly to almost double that amount.


"If this is truly a regional asset, like a university or an airport," Crotty said, "then we need to think regionally and pay for it regionally."


To see the rest of the post:
http://blogs.orlandosentinel.com/news_politics/2008/09/orange-mayor-cr.html

DOT Sec. Mary Peters in Miami on Friday

I didn't know about this until this afternoon, when I heard it on a WIOD news break during Rush Limbaugh's show, that the Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce will be hosting an event Friday in downtown Miami at the Hilton with DOT Secretary Mary Peters.

I followed-up late in the day with friendly Tania Valenzuela, Director, Regional Business Development, at the Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce, and she gave me the lowdown on what's what manana. http://www.miamichamber.com/
American Airlines and MIA are the official sponsors of the event.

I'm mentioning the event here, admittedly, on short notice, so that perhaps someone out there in the South Florida blogosphere might have the means, motive and opportunity to attend, and give us all
a play-by-play later.
(in Pathe News reader voice)
"Today, the Washington Beltway met the Banana Republic of South Florida amidst the tony splendor of the Miami Hilton..."
Think Raymond Burr doing his radio play-by-play from high atop a building in downtown Tokyo, as Godzilla approaches menacingly from Tokyo Bay, as a nation watches helplessly...

When federal public transit policy meets South Florida's notoriously fickle apathy, who wins?
Oh, right.
Everyone loses!

Recent Washington Post stories on Sec. Peters:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/NewsSearch?sb=-1&st=Mary%20Peters&

It's interesting to me that DOT Sec. Mary Peters in Washington can manage to fit this area into her busy schedule, even while FDOT Sec. Stephanie Kopelousos remains MIA from the greater MIA/FTL.

You'll recall that in the past my chief criticism of Kopelousos
http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/search/label/Stephanie%20Kopelousos has been that, regardless of whatever else her particular strong suits may prove to be in the future, as it involves South Florida, she NEVER seems to actually be anywhere.

That is, except at functions full of either schmoozing politicians, engineers or industry people.
But NEVER anywhere that citizen taxpayers can ask herquestions, and make her accountable for the FDOT policies and process that she's responsible for giving direction to.

Meanwhile, if anything happens in Jacksonville:
http://www.floridatrend.com/article.asp?aID=46992

I get the whole "de-centralized agency" mantra I'm always hearing FDOT folks spout on TV, I just want to see her actually down here once in a while, if it's not too much trouble.

I referenced this well-written Florida Trend profile of her last month here, and as I mentioned a few weeks back, I think I may've even spoken to her a few times when she was still working in Rep. Tillie Fowler's Capitol Hill office:

Profile: Stephanie Kopelousos
Hard Road Ahead for State Roads
By Cynthia Barnett
http://www.floridatrend.com/article.asp?aID=49017

To quote Transit Miami's Gabriel Lopez-Bernal in a recent email responding to some comments of mine about Kopelousos having an event in Destin, of all places, http://www.wjhg.com/news/headlines/26001299.html even while continuing to avoid road trips here to give South Florida's taxpayers some answers, "It is interesting that Destin's terrible congestion issues take center stage..."
Indeed!

Meanwhile, elsewhere in the news of getting people from Point A to Point B...
State contractors continue contributing to Gov. Blagojevich
http://www.ilcampaign.org/blog/2008/07/state-contractors-continue-contributing.html

Think Virginia is short on transportation money?http://hrblogs.typepad.com/the_shad_plank/2008/07/think-virginia.html

Morning Bell: Bringing Accountability Back to Transportation Funding
Posted July 29th, 2008 at 9.11am in Ongoing Priorities. http://blog.heritage.org/2008/07/29/morning-bell-bringing-accountability-back-to-transportation-funding/
________________________________________
A NEW TRANSPORTATION APPROACH FOR AMERICA
Featuring MARY E. PETERS
Secretary of Transportation
U.S. Department of Transportation
August 1, 2008 12-1:30 p.m. Hilton Miami Downtown

I. Welcome and Opening Remarks
Humberto P. Alonso, Jr.
Chair, Greater Miami Chamber Transportation & Infrastructure Committee
Vice President, PBS&J

II. Introduction
Neisen O. Kasdin
Chair, Greater Miami Chamber New World Center Committee
Shareholder, Akerman Senterfitt

III. A New Transportation Approach in America
Mary E. Peters
Secretary of Transportation, U.S. Department of Transportation

IV. Q&A Session
Neisen O. Kasdin

V. Closing Remarks
Humberto P. Alonso, Jr.


Mary E. Peters was nominated by President George W. Bush on September 5, 2006, and confirmed by the U.S. Senate as the 15th Secretary of Transportation on September 30, 2006, after spending more than two decades within the industry.

Secretary Peters brings a unique perspective to her role as the nation’s transportation chief, having spent her career working on transportation issues in the private and public sectors, including leading both federal and state transportation agencies. This hands-on experience allows her to understand and appreciate the real-life aspects of planning, building and operating transportation systems on local, regional and state levels.

As secretary of transportation, she is responsible for maintaining a safe, reliable and efficient transportation system, while leading an agency with almost 60,000 employees and a $70.3 billion budget that oversees air, maritime and surface transportation missions.

Prior to joining President Bush’s Cabinet, Peters worked in Phoenix, AZ, as the national director for transportation policy and consulting at HDR, Inc., a major engineering firm. She was responsible for building a management consulting practice and formulating public policy initiatives for the firm's transportation program.

In 2001, the President asked Peters to lead the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA). As FHWA Administrator from 2001 to 2005, she placed special emphasis on finding new ways to invest in road and bridge construction, including innovative public-private partnerships that help build roads faster and at less expense. She also was a strong advocate for using new technology to reduce construction time, saving taxpayer money and resulting in safer, longer-lasting roads and highways.

From 1985 to 2001, she served in the Arizona Department of Transportation (ADOT). A fourth-generation Arizonan and an avid motorcyclist, Secretary Peters holds a bachelor's degree from the University of Phoenix and attended Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government Program for State and Local Government

South Florida transit issues and govt. agencies relative usefulness

It's been mentioned more than a few times to Hallandale Beach Blog (South Beach Hoosier) by recipients of his emails, that he ought to strongly consider using parts of those past emails as building blocks to buttress certain public policy points he's tried to make in the past on the blog.

Up 'till now, I've largely resisted the urge, but today, I thought this one might actually be of enough interest to you all to make posting it worthwhile, so that you might learn what I've learned about some Florida government agencies that are part of the planning process governing transit, but which rather than taking a pro-active approach and being an example of good management -aren't.

It's an excerpt of an email to Gabriel over at Transit Miami, one of the most influential blogs in South Florida for a reason, even if I don't necessarily share their political viewpoint on an everyday basis.

But even when I disagree with what they say, there's usually something to be learned.
__________________________________________________
Dear Gabriel:

Started this email last weekend but decided to wait 'till after Memorial Day to send it along.

Earlier this week, I watched the WGN-TV noon newscast and saw their up-close camera shots of the CTA derailment the same day it happened, and also saw how damn impressive the neighborhood Chicago Fire/EMT response was -one minute.

People living in the immediate neighborhood said that in riding the El the day before the accident, the track seemed "loose" in the same exact spot as where the derailment took place. Can't vouch for whether that's a fact or someone saying something provocative to get attention.
(Temps were in the mid-50's, so unlikely a joint/heat expansion problem.)

The top CTA administrators are really angry because this is the third one since April 21st, and it occurred while the CTA is waiting to hear how much money the state legislature in Springfield is going to give the CTA.

Dave
_______________________________________________
Saturday May 30th, 2008

Dear Gabriel:

From my perspective, long story short of this latest Minneapolis Star-Tribune account of policy and process under a legal microscope after a disaster: there but for the grace of God goes the Sunshine State.

I strongly suggest you run a link to this story at your Transit Miami blog so that folks around the state, with an interest in transit and public policy, might be able to read this for themselves and imagine how this'd be handled here.

Frankly, though I've written about transit issues, esp. as they apply to Broward County and the SFECC, as well as the Broward County Charter Review Comm., it just seems a much more natural fit for your blog than mine at South Beach Hoosier or Hallandale Beach Blog.

The insightful Star-Tribune reader comment below about the DFL-friendly law firm being brought in by the MN state legislature to try to undermine NTSB results, sounds 100% plausible to some savvy, politically-connected Dem friends of mine up there, who are rarely wrong about this sort of thing. (As opposed to their sports analysis and predictions!)

Maybe it's just me, playing the role of cynic, but I can totally picture both Dan Gelber and Steve Geller trying pull something like that off here, too, perhaps with Ron L. Book involved for good measure, too.

You know him, he likes to be a 'party' to everything important -sometimes against even himself.
Just something to think about.

(Also, in case you've forgotten, the Republican Nat'l. Convention will be at the Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul the first week of September, exactly one week after the DNC is held in Denver. Expect a spate of stories on the 35 W bridge come August, right after the Olympics in Beijing.)

As I mentioned to you recently when you gave me a call, in the near future, I'm planning on querying the FDOT Secretary, Stephanie Kopelousos, and find out whether or not she's EVER planning on being somewhere in South Florida where citizens, esp. those with an interest in transit, like you and me, can actually ask her some non-softball questions, rather than the sort of convivial industry forums, govt. official-only chat fests or ASCE events that her agency seems to prefer.

For instance, take a look at what I found when I checked the archives of the Gold Coast Chapter of the Institute of Transportation Engineers at http://www.itegoldcoast.org/events.html

Curious what you'd find when you go to the link at the bottom, titled, The State of Transportation in Broward County?
I was.

(The URL is http://www.itegoldcoast.org/PDF/ASCE-FES.pdf in case the link is dead when you go to it.)

Answer: An invitation to their New Year's Eve Italian Dinner Party!
On January 12th.

To her credit, in a new and very fair-minded Florida Trend profile of her by Cynthia Barnett, Kopelousos claims that she's anxious to change the way things are done at FDOT, and bring them firmly into the 21st century.

(But the article also points out her weaknesses, the most obvious being her non-engineering background, which, apparently, has always been a predicate for the top FDOT job.)

Those positive qualities notwithstanding, where's the proof that this is resulting in any tangible positive changes for South Florida? http://floridatrend.com/article.asp?aID=49017

While I appreciate that more than most state agencies, FDOT is, necessarily, decentralized, in my opinion, despite her short tenure and clear aptitude for hard work and long hours, given the sheer amount of hard work that's required down here, I think she's got a lot to answer for.

Not least of all, being practically M.I.A. for South Floridians like you and me -and the folks who read our blog posts, here and around the state.

So where's the interaction with taxpayers who aren't engineers and public officials?

(As it happens, I think I actually ran into Kopelousos a few times while I was up in Washington and she was working for the late Rep. Tillie Fowler, whom I always found to be a real straight shooter, just like Rep. Charles Bennett had been earlier for the Jacksonville area when I moved to DC. http://www.arlingtoncemetery.net/cebennett.htm )

The other day, largely as a result of the foolish actions in Miami regarding the Miami River, and the common sense of the Charles Lewis commentary, If the Miami River is really dead, why do the bridges go up? http://www.miamitodaynews.com/news/080522/story-viewpoint.shtml
I decided it was about time I made plans to attend the next meeting of the South Florida Regional Planning Council. http://www.sfrpc.com/

Well, turns out that it's Monday at their Hollywood HQ.
So naturally I was curious if they'd put up an agenda for Monday on their website, since the meeting was Monday, the next day they were open.
Maybe get familiar with any staff reports in pdf., so I can better follow the proceedings while I'm there.

Do I really even have to tell you that when I pulled up the web page that was supposed to have agendas, it was largely blank? (At least, as seen on my computer monitor.)
Or that their website itself, which needs to be red-done if not tweaked, seems like it was put together by not-too-bright ninth-graders?

Call me old-fashioned, Gabriel, but that's really NOT my idea of proper planning.

It's also NOT my idea of wisely spending taxpayer dollars, either.

Trust me, I'll try to make a point of mentioning all these things at the meeting, if I can.
___________________________________________
http://www.startribune.com/politics/state/19133569.html
Minneapolis Star-Tribune
MnDOT missed opportunities to note bridge flaws, study finds
By Mike Kaszuba, Star Tribune
May 21, 2008

Reader comments are at:
http://ww2.startribune.com/user_comments/comments.php?d=asset_comments&asset_id=19133569&section=/politics/state