Attack of the Killer Tree Sperm

My cold from AB has rolled over almost perfectly into spring allergies. For a couple days I was feeling almost over things, then bam, wake up today to thick eye mucus and extra sandy eyes and being tired and all. I'm toying with getting to FilkOntario. I'm also wondering where I can travel that won't have air jizz at the moment. Besides the Southern Hemisphere. Not sure Florida would be enough. I guess dry country. Puerto Rico?

Finished Watership Down. Wheee. Requested other old children's books: Mrs. Frisby, Secret Garden, Heidi (so many choices of versions.) Remi is only available as a reference copy. ! I wonder what happened to my family's copy. Don't find an e-book of it either.

Went to SCA dance dinner, biked home, had reflective experience about biking on sidewalks. I was going up Prospect from Central Square, and didn't stay on the road long. It's one land each way, narrow, and busy. Choices seemed to be take up lane and slow everyone down, squeeze along curb and feel stressed about risk, or sidewalk. There were enough people on the sidewalk that I'd go slow for even me on a bike, but not so many as to not be going faster than I could walk. On average I think it works out okay: traffic passes me when it moves, including the braver bicyclists, but then waits at a light while I keep going, and I happened to not have to wait for cross lights much myself.

More evidence that my attitude toward biking modes is shaped by not going all that fast anyway, with me on my cheap heavy wide-tire mountain bike, and by my comparing myself to walking speed, not driving or ideal road bike speeds.

Traffic subsidies (USA)

Free parking, possibly $300 billion/year
http://www.trb.org/conferences/roadpricing/presentations/shoup.ppt
Fourth power rule for trucks: http://thatmansscope.blogspot.com/2009/10/trucks-and-fourth-power-rule.html

In most of the US public transit is explicitly a social service like welfare, providing options for people who can’t drive; complaining that it doesn’t support itself is like complaining food stamps don’t. And, being meant for poor people, the options provided are crappy. A train system that ran every 10 minutes instead of every 30 would seem to cost 3x as much, but might attract many more riders by virtue of being frequent enough to be useful. (Also, it wouldn’t cost 3x as much, since the rails would be a fixed cost. The more you use the rails, the cheaper per ride they get.)

Also, traffic accident rate is a lot higher than the transit accident rate, killing 30-40,000 people a year, for a social cost of $200-300 billion a year. Add that to an estimated $300 billion/year subsidy of free marking, and unknown health and pollution costs, and we’re talking a lot of money.

Also, transit subsidies are (a) small compared to road expenditures and (b) help drivers. At least where a decent fraction of commutes, even 10%, are by transit, those are people who aren’t driving, who are off the road and not competing for parking. If you’re a driver in a remotely congested area you should *want* people taking transit, out of your way.

Hard to monetize, but driving is also supported by non-inevitable decisions to prioritize driving. Used to be roads were open to all, a mess of pedestrians and horses and carts, then bicycles and streetcars. Then cars came. They could have stayed mixed with everyone else, crawling along at safe speeds; they’d be a lot less attractive then. But instead we decided to clear the roads of other users, despite having priority, for them and let them zoom along. And pretty much everything that makes cars faster makes roads more hostile and dangerous for pedestrians and cyclists (not that those two always get along either.) Pedestrians want short blocks and narrow streets with lots of stop or at least yield signs and jaywalking rights; cars want long blocks with limited control and lights with long switch times.

Apparently, car safety also wants road - sidewalk - trees, to be forgiving of cars somehow leaving the road. Better to hit people than trees, I guess. Pedestrians would want trees between them and the road. This is actually a thing