Longitudinal Slum

Zipcar-ing to New Jersey

This weekend we hit the road for an overnight stay in New Jersey, via Zipcar. Despite my current sense of near euphoria over the pain and suffering being inflicted on those who hit the road nearly everyday, it sure does feel good to get on the freeway once in awhile. Maybe once a year is good enough. Maybe we should do it more often. Zipcar covers the gas expense, so what do I care?

I've been commuting to work primarily on bicycle for about 4 weeks now; a great change of pace from the subway which is actually a longer commute door-to-door. The increase in New York City bike lanes recently means most of my ride is in the (relative) safety of a dedicated bike lane, when it isn't also being used for double parking, a turning lane, or a passing lane. Brooklyn still feels a little bit like the wild west. It's resulted in a few changes to my daily routine. Such as no more stopping at the Bowery Whole Foods on the way home after work. From here on out it's the Bed-Stuy Bravo. And the work attire has become very casual, at least until it cools down. It is also a challenge to store the bike in the office. Alternating between two poorly organized storage rooms at the moment, but long term will likely require some overhead means of storage. At the moment I'm fortunate nobody else has decided to start riding in also.

I'm probably not making a big difference by commuting on bike - I've either walked or taken the subway to work in the 6 years I've lived in New York, but freeing up a seat on the subway and hopefully making a small dent in rider awareness helps somewhere along the way. I guess I should feel fortunate I live in a city where it's even possible to commute to work on a bike.

SUV Owners Feeling The Pain

The rise in gas prices is a move in the right direction that if sustained long enough and is painful enough, could and should lead to meaningful change in how Americans approach transportation, infrastructure, and urbanism. While much of the current debate is mis-directed and focused on finding new sources for oil, hopefully attention shifts toward alternative approaches to transportation and urbanism.

At $100 for Tank of Gas, Some Choke on ‘Fill It’ [NY Times]

Road Trip

Zipcar is our new favorite service. After living in NYC for over six years we have almost no sense of what the surrounding region looks like. New York State is a big question mark, as are the other states leading into New England. So a quick road trip to New Haven followed by a night in Providence has helped to build a bit of a mental picture of some of the I-95 corridor.

A combination of the ease of the Zipcar and Google Maps on the iPhone reminded me how nice and liberating it used to be to own a car and take spur of the moment road trips, though when taken from Lincoln, Nebraska it usually meant committing to a biblical trek just to get anywhere worthwhile. While we could have gotten to New Haven and Providence by means of rail, having the car afforded us a certain level of freedom and flexibility that isn't possible taking the train. Maybe we should be more idealistic and commit strictly to mass transit, but flying down the Interstate in a little Mazda felt like the American dream.

A couple thoughts about Zipcar: It's a shared-car program, meaning it's users are supposed to have a certain level of care and responsibility toward the car. Of course the car we picked up was coated in cat hair, pine needles and soda syrup, while the glove compartment was filled with parking tickets. It just reinforces the notion that people are awful. Other than having to deal with other people's slop, it's an efficient and well thought through experience.

The more I use the iPhone, the more I wonder how people used to get by without it. Outside of being able to use it as a navigation device, the convenience of being able to Google 'hotels' when arriving in a city, compare their locations on Google Maps, and call the hotels displayed in the search results for rates and reservations, all seamlessly with one device is a dream.

And finally, after some confusion driving into New York City and ending up driving Myrtle Avenue from the middle of Queens to Fort Greene, Brooklyn, I'm of the opinion that Robert Moses didn't carve nearly enough super-highways through the boroughs...

Nebraska's I-80 Wish List

The Nebraska Innovation Zone Commission is looking for input on the future of the I-80 corridor between Lincoln and Omaha. A brief survey is online here.

Planners Kick-Off I-80 Corridor Study

Led by Omaha's HDR, the team "promised not to back away from possible controversy and conflict."

I-80 corridor study under way [Omaha World Herald]
previously
Nebraskans Look To Develop The Interstate Strip [Longitudinal Slum]

Los Angeles & Smart Growth

LA Weekly with a feature article on Los Angeles and smart growth, and several of the challenges the city faces as it looks to control the transportation and density issues.

What's Smart About Smart Growth? [LA Weekly]

On The Subway

On the subway. Edgy Muppet style.

9 Hours Trapped In Chicago

I've always been dumbfounded by stranded passengers in airports. You usually hear about them during the holidays when they are trapped in airports for hours on end, sleeping on floors like refugees and complaining to television news crews about their plight - oblivious to the fact that when you travel during the winter you're likely to be screwed. So when I was stranded in Chicago for 9 hours yesterday, en route to Omaha, I tried my best to understand that there are circumstances beyond the control of the airlines and airports (though it is amazing how a few delays and cancelled flights can send ripple waves through the entire country).

My biggest mistake was not packing required power and adapters and chargers for electronic equipment, ie: laptops and cell phone. Instead I was forced to study most of the day for my last remained ARE exams, which was likely a better use of my time.

The remainder of my time was spent trying to embrace the airport / shopping mall hybrid typology, which was relatively un-impressive, consisting primarily of generic bookstores selling generic books, generic electronic / music stores selling generic music and media, and the same retail food chains found in any strip mall. The airport as a city is a stretch of the imagination.

The most annoying part of the experience was the continual buzz of bad and tacky ring tones, stranded passengers talking loudly on their cell phones about nothing, and the continual and irrational complaining of those with less travel experience - who believed American Airlines was out to individually screw each one of them, as though the airline had a vendetta against them and were feeding them lies one after the other.

Despite all of this I made it to Omaha, and am now sitting in it's urban city center - the Village Pointe Lifestyle Center on the western fringe of the city, enjoying free wifi in an empty coffee shop watching seniors and unemployed housewives putter around with nothing to do.

Robert Moses & The Modern City

This afternoon we viewed one of the three exhibits on Robert Moses, this one at the Museum of the City of New York, titled Robert Moses and the Modern City: Remaking the Metropolis. Focusing on the physical transformation of New York City, the exhibit examines a range of works completed by Moses, ranging from roadways and parks, to developments such as the United Nations and Lincoln Center. The show also includes unrealized projects such as the Midtown Expressway, the Lower Manhattan Expressway, and the Brooklyn Battery Bridge - all presented in model form.

The exhibit strikes a balance between giving credit where credit is due and displaying projects where Moses was defeated by stiff opposition. The Expressways proposed for Manhattan and the Brooklyn Battery Bridge would have drastically changed the face of Manhattan as we know it, much the same way the landscape of the Bronx was altered with the Expressway Moses built there.

Notes from a Union Station bound Amtrak train from Penn Station

Notes from a Union Station bound Amtrak train from Penn Station – the Carolinian – with stops in Trenton, Philadelphia, Baltimore, amongst others. From a coach seat window glimpses of the rapidly changing landscape are possible, here one second and gone the next. The speed of the train coupled with a fluxuating pattern of development varying between dense to thin, open and closed, afford snapshots of development, quickly taken away by an approaching group of trees or vegetation or building located tight to the tracks. The nature of the observed landscape varies from an infrastructure specific to rail or transportation, either active or long abandoned, to sections of the city (the definition of city used loosely), which are interrupted by the rail line or end at the rail line.

Dross is most prevalent in manufacturing areas, most of which seem to be abandoned. A combination of empty buildings and surrounding spaces overgrown with junk or vegetation define these leftover spaces. Random buffers of ‘nature’ sometimes separate the rail from these spaces, usually a combination of water (ponds or steams) and ill-formed clusters of trees. When the route passes through denser residential ‘neighborhoods’ the quantity of good building stock – by NYC standards – is overwhelming. Neighborhoods packed with row houses are abundant, and you can almost smell the potential of these areas if half of them weren’t visibly derelict, abandoned or completely burned out. All things the guys from This Old House couldn’t fix however, should they ever venture into what look like the worst parts of Baltimore.

In addition to observing the physical landscape, signal clouds and their presence or lack thereof become obvious. The most obvious of these is the range of Sprint’s cell coverage. An unexpected signal cloud is the range of wifi coverage. With Macstumbler open, the application blips as the train rolls through a pocket with coverage – though all are password savvy, and the signal fades and drops as quick as it appears. The application saves a list of all wifi signals with names ranging from the generic, like NETGEAR or 06B$09199818, to the clever, like ‘franks wireless network’ or 'GrillConcepts'.