Why San Jose Cyclists Must Vote No on Measure B

Around this time three years ago I moved to California from Connecticut. Every warning I got from friends about how problematic the housing situation was true or was too limiting in its scope in describing the madness. There are too many jobs being created here and too few homes to fit all the workers, so people move two hours away or further or crammed with a ton of roommates.

Oh, sorry: I forgot I'm in Silicon Valley. Instead of "crammed with a ton of roommates" I meant to say "co-living."

Worse than that: the tight demand for apartments is raising rents faster than incomes, so teachers, restaurant workers and even small business owners have to move farther from the homes they grew up in. 

The need for affordable housing is severe but we have to break down the words "affordable" and "housing" to understand what's really going on here. The median sale price for a home in San Jose is around $1 million and the median rent is north of $2,500 a month. If you add a thousand - two thousand or event five thousand units it won't add to the supply enough to bring the rents down. 

So if you add, say, 900 homes, it's not enough to bring the rent or sale prices down. 

So the proposed addition of 900 homes in the Evergreen neighborhood in San Jose - which the Measure B San Jose ballot initiative wants to do - won't bring prices down. In order for housing to be affordable, homes that are for sale or rent have to only be available to those who make below a certain income level. 

These 900 homes will not be - and even if they were it does not speak to a bigger problem.

San Jose had a bunch of annexations in the 1960s that made it not grow up, but out. This city is huge, and with suburban homes everywhere cars were (and still are) the preferred way to get around. Frequently, my wife and I - who have successfully gotten away with owning only one car between us for the nearly thirteen years we've been married - feel environmentally coerced into getting another one. It's the same old story: there aren't enough trains, not enough buses, where-I-need-to-go-isn't-walkable-or-bikeable. Using a car is almost always easier and cheaper even though their wear on the environment is harder and more expensive than most drivers know. 

That brings me to my next beef with Measure B. Look at Evergreen on a map. Then look at downtown San Jose. 

More of the same environmental coercion. 

In other words, building 900 homes far from transit with a garage and a Tesla flanked by a GMC Suburban in every driveway is a bad idea on multiple fronts: as I've said before if you enable cars, you get traffic, you get pollution, you get road deaths, you get local governments going insolvent trying to pay for all the infrastructure. 

So when some rich goofballs want to build a new suburban land mass on the outer edge of a city we have to say no. Not only is none of this "affordable" but we have to get used to the idea of not calling the suburbs housing. Suburbia is something San Jose experimented with and is failing at - just like any other city. 

San Jose's own housing plan isn't perfect as it is (why I'm also recommending Yes on Measure C) but giving a green light to developers to build a replica of "The Real Housewives of Orange County" neighborhood isn't the way out of a housing crisis. Homes that are part of multifamily structures that do not require the need for the occupant to own a car is the only way this city can move forward. 

And it isn't just me who's saying this: The Bay Area Council (I know, I know: I gave them some heat last year for talking about housing and traffic as though they were separate issues) recommends building dense housing near transit. Since we do have to "build our way out of" the housing crisis let's not force tens of thousands of dollars a millennial can't afford anyway into car-related infrastructure they'd rather not use.

The Bay Area Council has also found, again in their survey, that the number of people who want to leave the Bay Area has gone up once again this year. Not only that, but outgoing governor Jerry Brown is starting to put permanent water conservation rules in place - hardly the time to build places that involve the water-suck and time-suck of a lawn.

And the final reason to give Measure B a big thumbs down: as much as the backers yammer on about "senior" housing and "preference for seniors" we have to recognize the long-term dangers of that. Sure, a home out in the suburbs might be nice for someone in his or her sixties, but what happens when they push up against their eighties and can't drive anymore? The organization Strong Towns probably put it best in a piece they wrote last year: car-based living isolates the seniors living in car-based places - and worse than that: the streets themselves become scary, pedestrian and wheelchair-user unfriendly places that can't be navigated easily even if they could. 

So this is what you need to do by or on June 5: Vote no on Measure B - not because it is for billionaires (it is) and not because the backers are cynically using the need for affordable housing in the most irresponsible way imaginable: but because it wants to keep San Jose in a backwards place: with a car wash next to every train station, a boatload of car loan debt on every adult, and a two-hour car commute for everyone who commits the sin of earning less than six figures a year. 

To hell with that and to hell with them. Vote for our future. Vote no on Measure B and Yes on Measure C. 

P.S. - Also vote yes on Regional Measure 3.

Thanks for reading and thanks for riding - especially if you're in San Jose. 

Biking (Again!!!) In New York City

New York City, Dec. 22, 2017

"This is the year we spend Christmas alone at a Denny's in Witchita, Kansas.

This is what I tell myself every time the trip from California to Connecticut begins. There are so many interconnected stages of the journey barely holding on to one another that if just ONE thing goes wrong it can be chaotic - and if that one thing is the flight, that's it. 

In the span of 25 hours, I took one overnight cross country flight, three Lyft rides, three New York City cabs, a Metro North Railroad trip, a two-hour Amtrak trip, and two car rides from friends and family just to get from San Jose to a small house in Mystic, Connecticut where my parents live. This is where I learned how to kayak when I was a kid. 

Worth the trip. 

But as I started to tell you in my last post my relationship with Christmas has changed since I moved to the Bay Area. If you host a Christmas gathering at your house your relationship with Christmas - when does everyone arrive? Where do they sleep? What do we eat? - is the same no matter what happens to your guests before. But if you have to spend two hours in late November trying to figure out how to travel two hours of a 25 hour journey, your relationship with Christmas is going to be affected.

Mine sure was, and I was feeling it as I was groggily wandering New York City around ten in the morning on Friday, December 22nd. 

Because of the way the day was structured, about two hours after the plane landed (In New York and not Wichita! Woo-hoo!) I had about two hours to myself near the corner of 8th Avenue and 16th Street. It was cold and I was wearing a wool coat I had mashed into my carry-on and a hat with matching gloves that only sees action when I visit the East Coast. 

After a long red-eye flight all I wanted to do really was sleep. But as I wandered up 8th Avenue I soon came to a CitiBike bike share rack. 

I normally dislike biking without a helmet (like the talented writer Karen Kefauver, I believe one should bike in the world we have, not the world we wish we had) but I looked at 8th Avenue. It had a protected bike lane that stretched as far as the eye could see. 

My jet-lag addled brain hatched a plan: I'd get a bike, ride up to NYCeWheels (a bike shop I used to blog for that specializes in folding bikes and urban scooters) and do some shopping.

As you know by the white paper I wrote a few years ago about Bike Share in London, I'm well versed in how to use a bike share bike when you don't have a membership: stick in a credit card, follow a few dodgy prompts, and unlock a bike. It's easier than I remembered, and unlike London I knew where I was going. 

At least I thought I did. NYCeWheels had changed locations since I had last been there - they are now on 58th St. between 1st and 2nd. A little closer than I thought but still over three miles away. 

So I pedaled north.

It was the longest period of time I've spent on a protected bike lane, and this was a pretty good one. I've never liked bike lanes that keep me corralled in such a way I can't get back into traffic easily (like when I want to make a left turn) but this one worked pretty well.

I also enjoyed being outside in a city I still feel more at home in than I do now in San Jose. I briefly thought of the ten Five Boro Bike Tours I had done and wondered if there'd ever be an eleventh. 

Never mind. 

I made it to NYCeWheels a little after 11 in the morning. Lucky for me their new location was easy to find. And the little ramp they had outside leading into the shop seemed inviting. 

With no docking station nearby I simply rolled the bike inside where I got to see NYCeWheels' new digs. 

They had definitely moved up. Their old location was tiny and this one had the room for plenty of Bromptons and quite a few accessories. I've admired these bikes for years - and my admiration only went up when I got to tour the Brompton factory in London a few years ago. 

I bought about $200 worth of stuff that I couldn't find in the Bay Area - and I reasoned it was worth having to carry this stuff the rest of the entire Christmas journey.

First I needed to bring it back to 16th and 8th. Luckily I easily latched my complimentary plastic bag* to the front rack. I checked my watch. I could just about make it if I hurried. 

Sufficiently warmed up at this point I definitely pedaled faster to get back. Not in the relative safety of the bike lane for a chunk of the way I shared the road with cars and felt the kind of pleasant, Premium Rush-ish "I'm home" feeling I hadn't felt in a while. Almost no electric cars, no Access OK stickers. Just potholed streets, ornery drivers, mysterious vapors rising from the street. New York delivered a cycling experience that only New York can - and I was thrilled to be a part of it. 

I returned the bike to the docking station and walked briskly to the meeting point at 16th and 8th with minutes to spare, holiding my bright green plastic bag. I ended up stuffing the contents into a suitcase and later made it up to Level 5 of Luggage Tetris to make everything fit to go home. 

Now this may just sound like a nice story, or a good way to pass time, but I like to think it's more than that.

You see, The New York Post recently published a column by Steve Couzzo titled This is the Single Biggest Threat to Progress in NYC. Couzzo correctly cited traffic as a huge problem facing the city but, like so many others who defend cars, is pounding nails into his own forehead and blaming others for the headache.

Read his piece (as well as the other cringeworthy article from the Post editorial board bashing congestion pricing). 

Cities have outgrown cars. We need people to drive them less. Our lungs, bodies and financial solvency depend on it. 

Congestion is caused by car traffic and productivity is lost. Part of how to combat that is by creating safe bike lanes (like the one I enjoyed) and giving people more opportunities to use a bike in the first place (like bike share). 

Think for a moment: $200 went to a small retailer in New York City I never would have gone to since a taxi or Lyft would have been too expensive and slow. But the city provided infrastructure and means for me to stimulate the economy. 

Couzzo and those like him probably just defend cars out of habit - or because they drive one themselves and just want to get to where they are going faster. So they peer out of their windshields and make checklists of things that should go away to enable them to do that. But nature abhors a vacuum, and cars will take up any space that we give to them. So taking away bike lanes will only make car traffic worse. 

The city is moving in the right direction. Yours might be too. Some streets are being taken away from cars altogether, which is what needs to happen more often, not less often, going forward. We also can't deny congestion pricing will help NYC even more. 

So keep moving forward, New York City and other cities. Ignore the naysayers who don't understand the concept of induced demand. Take more from cars, give to cyclists and pedestrians. And I will make damn sure I'll visit more shops again even when busy travelers like me only have a narrow window of time to shop in New York. 

I have no ending for this, so I will show you a picture of where I biked on the West Coast on New Year's Day: Fort Ord.

Happy New Year, and thanks for reading and thanks for riding. 

*you can't get that so easily in California. 

What If The Waterslide Kid Had Tied Up Traffic?

Most people are good. But sometimes you are just going to see a horrendous display of humanity made even worse by the everydayness of it. 

I see it several times a week, but it was absolutely turned up to 11 today. What happened was someone climbed up the Bay Bridge in San Francisco and threatened to jump. Here's what NBC Bay Area had to say in a tweet:

The video itself is 20 seconds of traffic moving at a crawl. Nothing you don't see everyday. 

I get it. I've seen traffic reports and traffic reporters work. If you're stuck in traffic for a long time for seemingly no reason you'll want to know why. But the traffic isn't the angle that should be front and center. The question should be who is this person and what can we do to help him? 

But the tragic thing is, we don't. If you are sitting in a car it seems that everything is about you and how best to move you forward. Someone's son/father/daughter/wife is up on a ledge threatening to jump? Dang it! I am late for my Crossfit class and don't have any more podcasts to listen to! Shove this loony over the side so I can get a move on!

If a UFO lands in the Bay Area I expect the headline to look something like this: 

Also an alien has crash-landed in Redwood City blocking the third and fourth lanes on 101. That's a real mess there. 

NBC Bay Area wasn't alone in this traffic-first angle. Man Sitting on Bay Bridge anchorage snarls westbound traffic was KTVU Fox 2's headline (that changed slightly but, as I said a couple weeks ago, they had the picture of the traffic and had the story filed under 'Traffic Stories').

Tomorrow morning we're going to wake up and some of us are going to watch television.  I'm asking everyone reading this to please watch how the context of a story is different when it has an impact on traffic. 

Traffic, which is ONLY caused by too many people driving, is explained away by, among other things, a motorcycle crash on 101, a tractor-trailer rollover on the 87, or construction on highway 85. Red lines on the map signify traffic problems and even though about 80% of Bay Area drivers travel alone and distracted driving is a serious problem NBC Bay Area wants you to join the Bay Area Wazers "to help viewers avoid traffic jams". (Laura Garcia-Cannon: you've said a couple of times after the traffic reports that people should not use their phones while driving and I am appreciative of that.)

So we have to ask ourselves some interesting questions about this car-centric world we live in. What if the waterslide kid had tied up traffic? What if that commuter train crash from years ago didn't have gory footage but instead tied up the commute? Would we be talking about safety issues, interviewing NTSB personnel? Asking why these things aren't better regulated? Car accidents outnumber waterslide issues by the tens of thousands and yet I don't see parents pulling their kids out of driver's ed. 

So please: for those in the media who are reading this please put car accidents on the same footing as the waterslide kid and let's try not to make everything about a more comfortable car commute. 

Thanks for reading and thanks for riding. 

Cartoon of the Week:The Horrors of Making Cars A Few Pennies a Day More Expensive

Last fall I pointed out several ways California (specifically the Bay Area) could get out of the traffic jams it always seems to find itself in.

I woke up this morning to a story from the San Jose Mercury News that the Golden State was considering raising the gas tax, upping the charge of registration fees, and proposing a fee on electric cars. 

In the words of Jerry Seinfeld when he saw Kramer getting ready to go to work in his apartment one day: "How long have I been asleep? What year is this?"

I would personally like to thank Internet Commenters on SJMC Facebook Page for inspiring this cartoon - and I wish California luck into making this happen. 

10 Ways to Reduce Traffic Congestion in the Bay Area (No. 4 Will Surprise You)*

I need to thank the San Jose Mercury News for providing me with inspiration with the click-bait headline Bay Area’s 10 Most Congested Freeways (No. 3 is a Surprise) from yesterday.

I create content for a living so I’m in on the click-bait joke - and I’d like to issue this follow up on that story. 

So here we go.  

10. Leave the Car

Traffic isn’t caused by other people. It is caused by you and me when we choose to get in a car to go somewhere. 

That's worth reading again. Traffic isn't caused by other people. It is caused by you and me when we choose to get in a car to go somewhere. 

Millennials are a generation with many flaws but they are collectively smart enough to realize that owning a car is pointless and expensive. They bike. They walk. They rideshare. They take the train. Be like millennials. Leave the car.

9. Vote for Measure B

On the ballot next month in Santa Clara County there is a 1/2 cent, 30 year sales tax measure. In my opinion not enough of the money expected to be raised by this very small tax will go to bike and pedestrian infrastructure, but a lot will. The bulk is going to improving a ton of interchanges and expressways around the county, and also fund the completion of the BART extension to San Jose (means fewer motorists and more people taking the train). So read about it and vote for it. 

Oh: another reason to vote for it - I am told this is important for Santa Clara County residents - is that this measure will also pay for fixing potholes. 

I understand the hatred of potholes, but I lived in New Hampshire for 11 years. You may know a lot of things, Silicon Valley, but you don't know potholes. Go to the Granite State if you want to learn something about potholes. And in one winter new and unwieldy terms will become part of your vocabulary. Like frost heaves.

8. Raise the gas tax

The worst place in the world I have ever ridden a bike is Greenwich, Connecticut. A close second is Cherry Hill, New Jersey. A little New Jersey quirk: in addition to most of the car infrastructure looking like it was pulled from an erotic dream of Robert Moses you can’t pump your own gas. That’s right. Gas is pumped for you so you never, ever have to be uncomfortable.

But they just raised the gas tax. California can too. 

7. Focus on “Low Stress Bicycle Networks”

This was a theme of the Silicon Valley Bicycle Coalition’s summit back in August. If you really want to get people to drive less and bike more we have to go beyond peppering the landscape with incomplete bike lanes and SHARE THE ROAD signs. Roads need to be designed for bikes and cars together and in such a way the cyclists are protected from cars. 

Even if you will never, in a million years, ride a bike to work or to the In-N-Out Burger others will. That means more space on the road for your electric or hybrid car. 

Except…however…

6. Kick Electric and Hybrid Cars OUT of the Diamond Lane

That’s right, I’m going there. 

After sixteen months of living here in California I am tired of the spectacle of protecting the environment. A hybrid car used to drive a mile or two from your house to pick up eggs or flour from the grocery store or a meal from In-N-Out is not good for the environment. An all-electric car charged from a coal fired power plant is not good for the environment. Perpetuating the use of cars is not good for the environment. Creating and maintaining a system that coerces people to use cars is not good for the environment. 

I used my homemade cargo bike made from mostly thrown away bike parts to pick up environmentally-friendly detergent. How did you pick up your detergent? Your Chevy Volt? How environmentally friendly of you!

Showering environmental praise and pouring weird benefits on hybrid and electric car owners (such as giving solo drivers of such cars access to the diamond lane) is also not good for the environment. 

And it slows everyone down. Peel off those damn ‘Access OK’ sticker/trophies and get in the middle lane where you belong or bring a passenger. 

In the interest of full disclosure: I own a ten year old gas-powered four wheel drive SUV. But I am better for the environment than some of the irate Smugmobile owners reading this post since I rarely use it for any trips within four miles of home. Let’s stop issuing merit badges to everyone who can afford to spend money on the newest hybrid or all-electric wonder and put that money towards bike, pedestrian and mass transit projects instead. 

5. Get rid of parking minimums

The San Jose Mercury News talked about the horror of parking minimums quite well in a recent story about Palo Alto. Also, the organization Strong Towns is bringing the conversation about parking minimums into the mainstream too. If we enable car parking, we get car traffic. 

So how do we enable bike parking? Glad you asked.

4. Tax breaks for businesses to provide bike parking/bike infrastructure

Like a fine wine, this is best paired with No. 5. We get traffic when we enable driving. If you want to reduce traffic, you need to enable other modes of transport. Providing safe, secure and convenient bike parking helps (if it isn't confusing all the better).

Every time I park here in San Jose I think that if I stare long enough a tear in the universe will appear. 

And if we need space for bike parking we must take it away from cars before we take it away from pedestrians. Before any diehard motorists are triggered at the thought of having to circle the block another time for parking, let me remind you that you spend an awful lot of time looking for a space to put a motor vehicle that you no longer need to use. It makes more sense - as the great coffee shop in Stamford Lorca is doing - to get rid of a parking space and get something better in its place.

3. Cut the Tax Break for Electric and Hybrid Cars

That’s right. I’m going there again. Car Culture 2.0 is officially on notice. 

One of the best recent books I read was The Worst Hard Time - which is about the Dust Bowl. It noted that the 1930s gave birth to agricultural subsidies that helped rescue small farms at the time but ended up being the wasteful subsidy for agribusiness it is today. 

What are we going to say about the hybrid and electric tax breaks five or six decades from now? The technology is proven and getting better all the time. It a lot of places it's easier to park a $100K Tesla than it is a $100 Roadmaster**.

A tax break on cars - if one should exist at all - needs to apply to low income people (especially, as the Mercury News recently reported, a place with a hollowing middle class) and maybe married couples who have only one car between them. Why my tax dollars need to go to the $100K Tesla sitting right next to a top-of-the-line GMC Yukon in the same driveway of a $3 million house hasn’t quite been explained to me. Thoughts, Mr. Musk? 

2. Take the train - and demand more service

As I’ve written about before (in Uncle Traveling Matt***-like dispatches when I first moved to California) the trains in California are superior to the trains in Connecticut. The VTA is fantastic and so is Caltrain - they both allow bicycles on board (and yes, I had VTA in mind when I designed my folding cargo bike). 

Where Connecticut beats California has to do with frequency. There are a lot more trains. So demand more service - and stop demanding for more car infrastructure at the same time. 

1. Take the Bicycle

I’m still culture-shocked after moving here 16 months ago. In some ways (particularly professionally) I’m still waiting for California to love me back. But I’m also surprised that so many people here would choose to drive when you have so much nice weather. Why so many choose to drive when there are so many great bike trails and parks? Why so many choose to drive when so much of the area is flat enough for a fixie?

Remember the thirteen words: If you have a bike and can ride it safely, please ride it. I you don’t have a bike go to Good Karma Bikes on 460 Lincoln Avenue or another local bike shop and pick one up. You save money, you actually help the environment instead of add to the spectacle of helping the environment, and you get fitter. You also get to meet nice people, don’t have to pay for parking, and you give a parking spot to someone who needs it more than you.

I’ll watch out for you on the roads. Watch out of me, too. Thanks for reading and thanks for riding. 

* I actually have no idea if No. 4 will surprise you or not. To be honest, I wrote this so fast I don't even remember what No. 4 is.

** That is sadly true in a lot of places. Something’s wrong there. 

***The Internet doesn’t have that many Fraggle Rock references. Congratulations for reading one.