Point A to Point B: The TECO Streetcar Edition

I'm a member of a photography group that went on a Saturday outing to Tampa recently.  I was happy the event organizer suggested we use the TECO Streetcar to get around town.  I had not previously ridden Tampa's electric streetcar system.  (TECO = Tampa Electric Company but the TECO Streetcar is operated by a not-for-profit corporation).

Many urban areas have a similar trolley or streetcar system, and those that don't should.  I still have fond memories of a family vacation to San Francisco in 1984:  The city's famous cable car system had just resumed operation after a two-year restoration project and riding the cable cars over the city's hills was a highlight of the trip.

In the case of the TECO Streetcar, the streetcar took us a distance of about 2.5 miles through Tampa.  The one-way fare is $2.50, which is a little steep but an all-day fare is $5.  The drivers were friendly and helpful.  The cars were air-conditioned; our entire group found that a blessing in Florida's blistering summer heat.

A few thoughts based on my first TECO Streetcar experience and my ongoing experience with Tampa Bay Area transit:

• There are three streetcar routes through the urban areas of Tampa.  The route coverage is good; it links downtown offices with historic Ybor City and the Channel District (also known as "where the cruise ships dock").  Shopping, hotels, museums and restaurants are easily accessible.
• One down side to the streetcar routes is that one is the TECO Streetcar and the others are In-Town Trolleys operated by HART (Hillsborough Area Regional Transit).  The schedule and fare structure for the TECO line are different from the HART trolley lines.  I find this a little confusing, and the HART trolleys have fairly restrictive schedules.
• Relating to the various fare structures, this is a great idea from the San Francisco Bay Area:  One fare card that will soon operate on all area transit agencies.  I would love see this in the Tampa Bay Area.  It's true, there is a one-month unlimited use pass that applies to both Pinellas and Hillsborough County transit agencies.  But I found this a little difficult to locate on HART's web site, and I would like to see more options beyond just the one-month pass.  I suspect it's just a matter of time.
• Google's trip planner apparently does not include the streetcar.  I'm not sure why, maybe because the streetcar schedule is not as comprehensive as a conventional bus or rail system.  It's still a disappointment to know trip planner is not giving us every option.

All in all, Tampa's TECO Streetcar is a good show.  It's useful for both residents and tourists.  If you are in Tampa, or plan to be in Tampa, leave the car and take the streetcar.  The best transit is not just functional, it also adds of the scenery, and the TECO Streetcar qualifies.

Food and Place

Regional food variations.  I had never even heard of Cuban sandwiches until I moved to Florida.  (I did enjoy a delightful Cuban restaurant when I lived in Raleigh, North Carolina.)  Here in Florida, Cubans (the sandwiches) are as common as subs.  Here are links to a couple of Cuban sandwich recipes:

Three Guys From Miami Recipes
Taste of Cuba

As a low-budget foodie, when I moved to North Carolina in 2001, one of the things I most looked forward to was trying red-eye gravy.  Being completely naive, I didn't even consider that it was called "red-eye" gravy for a reason.  I was probably the last person on earth to realize that red-eye gravy is made with coffee grounds.  I have a mild allergy to coffee and have never even liked the smell of the stuff.  So I steered clear of red-eye gravy after that.  But the southland redeemed itself with other regional variations such as eastern Carolina-style barbecue and hearty biscuits.

Julie and I had the good fortune to travel to Slovenia in 2006.  Slovenia was part of the former Yugoslavia until 1991.  The country doesn't have much in the way of "native" cuisine.  It borrows heavily from surrounding countries: Hungary, Austria, and Italy.  This was fun because we feasted on wood-fired pizza, wild boar goulash, and apple strudel.

One of the real negatives of national or global restaurant chains is that they reduce our opportunities to enjoy locally authentic food.  What are your experiences with local/regional cuisine?  Favorites?  Disappointments?  While you think about that, you might enjoy this TED talk from Carolyn Steel, the author of Hungry City: How Food Shapes Our Lives, about food and its impact on urban development.  It is a real eye-opener.



And if your local grocery or bakery doesn't have Cuban bread, you're really missing something.

The Durability of People and Places

The morning after:  A new normal, or a return to the old normal?

Five weeks into living at our new address in Tampa.  When I woke up about 2:30 Saturday morning, I thought I heard an explosion.  Since I was sound asleep, I assumed I imagined the noise.  We live near a fairly trendy bar/restaurant district, so when I heard a man yelling a few seconds later, I thought it was someone straggling home and being stupid.  Even when I looked out the blinds into the street, I couldn't see anything unusual.

When I heard car doors and voices a few minutes later, I looked out the window again.  Police officers walked up and down the street, police tape was put up to block traffic and that odd-looking trash in the middle of the street was marked as evidence - they were shell casings.  The officer who came to the door told me that one of our neighbors (we live in a triplex) had been attacked and had shot the assailant.

To our knowledge, it was the first act of violence in the neighborhood since we moved here.  We were shocked at the initial event and we remain uneasy.  Julie and I have both walked around the area extensively, during the day and at night, and saw no reason to be concerned.  Should we be now?

In 1992 I lived in Palo Alto, California, in San Joaquin County.  The next door community of East Palo Alto, in San Mateo County, was the "murder capital of the nation" that year.  The few times I went to East Palo Alto it was dramatically different from most of the rest of the San Francisco Bay Area; roads were crumbled, houses and businesses had bars over the windows.  I didn't feel in any particular danger, but I didn't linger.  Housing prices in surrounding communities rose so high that East Palo Alto became the only option for a lot of people.  In only a few years, major retailers started moving in, a bank opened an ATM (no bank had trusted East Palo Alto with an ATM prior to that), and housing prices doubled.  I haven't been there in many years, but I understand crime rates are down and some degree of gentrification has occurred.  I realize many people (including myself) have mixed feelings about gentrification and its impact on diversity.  But there is no doubt that East Palo Alto today is a changed city from what I saw in the early 1990s.

We remain optimistic about our own neighborhood, trying to view the violence in our street as an isolated incident.  But it got me thinking about the pace of local change.  At what point can we recognize change at the neighborhood or city level?  As with a recession, it seems we are well into the event before we identify it.  Often the events we expect to cause the greatest change - for example, a transition of mayors or city council members - bring little recognizable change at all.  The question applies at higher levels, also.  For example, the United States after 9/11:  Was the world really a different place on September 12, 2001, or was it only Americans' perceptions of the world that changed?  And to what extent did those new perceptions result in further global change?

New Orleans provides an example of how a dramatic event, Hurricane Katrina, did not so much cause change as exacerbate change that was already in progress, from a SeedMagazine.com article on Urban Resilience:

"In New Orleans, for example, more than 60 percent of wetlands have been lost in the last 60 years, due partly to oil and natural gas exploration and partly to the levies that were built to keep the Mississippi from flooding the city.  Ironically, the loss of these wetlands contributed very directly to the disastrous effects of Hurricane Katrina.  Researchers have since calculated that restoring 1 kilometer of wetland would reduce the wave height by one meter, and now efforts are underway to begin rebuilding the southern Louisiana coastline."

So what we perceive as change sometimes is just the result of change that occurred while we weren't paying attention.  Or, it may be a result of change that happened elsewhere; change in East Palo Alto was driven in part by the rising cost of living in surrounding cities.

I didn't really get back to sleep that morning after the shooting.  By about 5 A.M., I could hear birds outside singing, just like they do every morning.  When we left the apartment later to run errands, the only visible evidence of the horrible event was a section of police tape left on a telephone pole.  Otherwise, the neighborhood was quiet and looked exactly as it has every other Saturday morning.  People walked their dogs and went about their day.  Emotional shock waves were the only evidence that an exceptional event ever took place.  On some future day, maybe that will pass, too.

Point A to Point B: The Save Your Life Edition

If you could make a simple lifestyle change that would save the lives of 3,000 people every month, would you do it?  Think about that and read on.

Earlier this year a surfer was killed by sharks off the west coast of Florida.  Of course, this is a tragedy for the victim and his family.  It's shocking not only for the violence of the event but because it is so rare.  The media offered a series of lengthy reports on the subject.  On average, four people die of shark attacks in the entire world every year.  Do we all need to fear going to the beach?

More than eight years after the horrific events of September 11, 2001, our news media and politicians continue to obsess over terrorism.  Is there a legitimate terror threat?  Yes.  Should we expect a terrorist around every corner?  (Or worse, assume that every person of a particular religion, or dressed in a certain way, or born in a specific country, is a terrorist?)  During a 38-year period, from 1968 to 2006, a total of 3,227 people were killed by acts of terrorism in the United States.

According to the CDC, you're much more likely to be killed by heart disease; over 631,000 people died from it in the United States in 2007.  In one year.  That is the leading cause of death in the U.S.  A combination of diet, exercise, and, when our genes fail us, cholesterol-lowering medication, can drastically reduce heart disease deaths.  Have you tried the latest supersized bacon-cheeseburger combination from your local fast food chain?

According to the National Safety Council, 39,800 people were killed in the United States in motor vehicle crashes in 2008.  That comes to 3,317 every month.  Research shows that 90% of crashes are caused by people (as opposed to vehicle failure).  In 2007, motor vehicle crashes were the tenth leading cause of death in the United States.  So every month nearly 3,000 Americans die because we are driving too fast, talking on the phone, running red lights, or performing some other dangerous behavior.  Not to mention that auto dependency has taken us off our feet and contributed to widespread obesity.  How we get from Point A to Point B is one of the most dangerous things we ever do.  We rarely stop to think about that, or about what we can do to make our roads safer.

Here are a couple of passages from Tom Vanderbilt's book Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us):

In the wake of those attacks [on September 11], polls found that many citizens thought it was acceptable to curtail civil liberties to help counter the threat of terrorism, to help preserve our 'way of life.'  Those same citizens, meanwhile, in polls and in personal behavior, have routinely resisted traffic measures designed to reduce the annual death toll (e.g., lowering speed limits, introducing more red-light cameras, stiffer blood alcohol limits, stricter cell phone laws)."

And this:

"Traffic fatalities are by far the most important contributor to the danger of leaving home."

Often, it seems to me we've taken our eyes off the ball.  We scan the waters for sharks that almost never appear.  We demonize people for the color of their skin or because they worship differently.  Most likely our own choices will do us in.  Do you really want to save lives?  Slow down, pay attention, and let the phone wait.  It's simple and the life you save could be your own.

As for the bacon-cheeseburgers, that's a subject for another day.

The Three Dimensional City

For years, I've wondered about America's apparent obsession with building out instead of up.  I understand, it costs less to build a single-story building than a multi-story building of the same total square footage.  That benefits a developer, or a few developers.  But it has caused a terrible cost on society.

Building up creates a higher density.  Density makes mass transit practical; that reduces our dependency on fossil fuels.  Density brings destinations closer together; that reduces the amount of time we waste driving from place to place.  And it reduces our need to turn our landscapes into vast parking lots to accommodate big-box retailers.  It's no surprise that residents of Manhattan, one of the highest-density markets in the country, use less water and fuel on a per capita basis than the rest of the country.

So I've always wondered why we choose to help out a few developers, who are probably doing all right financially anyway, at such a high cost to the rest of us.

I've only realized lately that a lot of people, much smarter than me, have been thinking the same thing.  I've also noticed that a few more developers are starting to think in three dimensions.

In February, I came across this article in the Baltimore Sun; it talks about a two-story development with a Lowe's Home Center on the first story and a Walmart on the second story.  The entire project will include additional retail space and residential units.

In my recent hometown of St. Petersburg, Florida, a Publix grocery store built the majority of its parking lot underneath the store.  Buy your groceries and take your grocery cart down an escalator to your car.  I'm surprised how many people complain about the escalator.  I've tried it, it's easier than walking across a large parking lot, especially when it's raining.

The photo shows a development in Tampa, my current hometown.  Instead of the usual oversized parking lot, we have a multi-story parking garage.  Next door is a multi-story retail development with Target upstairs and Whole Foods, and other retailers, downstairs.  The overall footprint is smaller than the typical suburban retail development.

These examples indicate change on a small scale.  But they are good examples of building up instead of out.  We live in three dimensions; we should think in three dimensions when we plan our cities.

Movies and Place: The Sequel

A few location-specific movies of interest:

Kontroll (2004):  Filmed almost entirely in the Budapest subway.  Romance, cynicism, and a murder mystery prove there's a lot going on underground.  Move toward the light.

Hoosiers (1986):  I'm biased because it was filmed in my home state.  People who call this a sports movie don't get it; it's about forgiveness and second chances.  The opening credits show rural Indiana beautifully and that's how it really looks.

Casablanca (1942):  Still one of the most beautiful films every made.  Casablanca is the transition point between war-torn Europe and the hope of freedom in America.  Only a special breed, like Rick and his friend Renault, choose to stay in Casablanca.  The film reminds us that, like today, "isolationism is no longer a practical policy."

The Untouchables (1987):  Sean Connery asks the all-important question, "What are you prepared to do?" in the movie that taught us about "the Chicago way."  The heart-stopping train station shootout was filmed in Chicago's Union Station.

The Last Picture Show (1971):  The dust blows, the windshield is cracked, and the bed creaks to wake the devil - Peter Bogdanovich shows us life in a small, remote town with clinical precision.  The nearest glamour is in Wichita Falls, but Cybill Shepherd, Jeff Bridges and Timothy Bottoms give us the beauty and recklessness of youth born in a town without hope.

See my previous post on movies and place for additional suggestions.

Tampa: Is Transit the Missing Link?

I'm not what you would call an optimist.  But I just moved to Tampa, Florida, and I'm feeling, for me, fairly upbeat. Two factors are putting me on the sunny side of the state.

First, let's be honest, when you're at or near the bottom, there's not much to do but improve.  Lately all the news seems bad.  Consider this:

• The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports the Tampa Bay Area's unemployment rate was 12.7% for March, 2010.  That's horrible, but at least an improvement over our January peak of 13.2%
• Bay Area home prices declined 11% in 2009, making us the second worst performing housing market in the country.
• In February, Forbes declared us the worst area in the United States for commuters.
• The Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index ranked the Tampa Bay Area among the unhappiest metro areas in the United States recently.
• GMAC Insurance reports that Florida's drivers rank among the worst 10 states in the nation.  Of course, reckless driving is not just a safety problem, it drives up insurance costs for everyone.
• In 2009, Transportation for America and the Surface Transportation Policy Project ranked Florida the worst in the nation for pedestrians and cyclists.

This gives the impression we're all trying to run over each other, what with our unhappiness, cheap homes, and free time from being unemployed.

Still, there are good things going on here.  Some extraordinary beaches and wilderness areas have been preserved despite the best efforts of developers to bulldoze every square inch.  Tampa is an international air and sea hub.  We have an increasingly diverse workforce, not to mention the University of South Florida.

One recurring theme in Tampa, and the entire Tampa Bay Area, is poor transportation.  Florida transportation departments at every level, historically, have been primarily road builders.  The result has been endless sprawl.  I have to think that contributes to our inability to attract employers and the resulting unemployment and unhappiness.

And that's the second reason I'm upbeat:  Tampa Mayor Pam Iorio has been leading the charge to develop a comprehensive area transit system that includes light rail and expanded bus service.  I haven't lived in Tampa long but I can't help but like the Mayor.  She just looks like an optimist, something we need these days.

In a recent column for the St. Petersburg Times, the Mayor wrote, "I see the construction of a modern transit system as critical to our future economic growth and quality of life."  She wisely points out that comparable cities like Charlotte, Phoenix and Dallas have successfully implemented light rail networks.  We are "at least 20 years behind in building a comprehensive transportation system," and this leaves us in poor standing when the Great Recession finally drags to an end.

It's when things seem worst that planning for the future can be most important.  Despite a year's worth of bad news about Tampa, serious people like Pam Iorio are looking at the long term.  The Tampa Bay Area has shown such promise in the past, imagine what a serious transit network will do for us.  Voters in Tampa and the rest of Hillsborough County will hopefully have a chance to vote this November to fund light rail.  I've lived in, and traveled to, areas with serious mass transit systems and it makes a tremendous difference in the quality of life.  And there's good evidence that transit spending is a more effective economic tool than road building.

So I'm optimistic about Tampa's future.  There are still plenty of good things about this area, and the right transit system will bring it all together.

What is the Identity of Your Community?

Communities, like individuals, have a unique character and identity.  I spent two years in Ft. Worth, Texas, while attending Texas Christian University.  (Go Horned Frogs!)  The area most people refer to as Dallas - Ft. Worth, I refer to as Ft. Worth - Dallas.  Ft. Worth sometimes seemed overshadowed by its larger neighbor.  At the time, gift shops at the international airport, situated strategically between the two cities, offered a vast sampling of Dallas souvenirs and only a few token Ft. Worth items.  Mostly there was just a friendly rivalry between the two cities.  I never felt that Ft. Worth lacked for a unique culture or identity and I enjoyed my time there.

This is how Fodor's describes Ft. Worth:

"The city and its people are more deliberate, mindful of the western legacy forever shaping their identity.  That's not to say this is a town of simple country folk - Fort Worth's Cultural District houses world-class art, showcased in architecturally significant buildings."

That's a little stereotyped but basically reflects my memory of the city.

(Google map of Pinellas County, showing the position of St. Petersburg.  Tampa in Hillsborough County is toward the right.)

Until recently, I lived in St. Petersburg, Florida, often reduced to one-third of Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater.  In fact, it often becomes just Tampa-Clearwater, even though St. Petersburg has about twice the population of Clearwater.  Here's how Fodor's describes St. Petersburg:

"There are two distinct parts of St. Petersburg: the at-times snobbish downtown and cultural area, centered on the bay, and the more laid-back but pricey beach area, a string of barrier islands that faces the gulf and includes St. Pete Beach, Treasure Island, and Madeira Beach.  Causeways link beach communities to the mainland peninsula."

Even Fodor's can't identify St. Petersburg!  The beaches referenced in that paragraph (St. Pete Beach, etc.) are not part of St. Petersburg; they are separate communities with their own local governments.  And downtown is an important but geographically small part of the total city.

Further evidence that St. Petersburg can't commit to an identity:  At first I thought this road sign identifying St. Petersburg as a "Bicycle friendly community" was a joke.  There are bike friendly areas in St. Petersburg, but this street (66th St. North, a heavily traveled commercial thoroughfare with no bike lane) is not one of them.  It's almost as if the city can't make up its mind.

Did you know a Major League baseball team plays in St. Petersburg?  Many don't, because the team won't take on the city's name.  Instead, they're the Tampa Bay Rays.  Talk about an identity complex.

The mayor of St. Petersburg recently hired a city lobbyist; skeptics have wisely pointed out that lobbying for the city should be part of the mayor's job.

In Made to Stick, Chip and Dan Heath offer a case study of The Daily Record, the newspaper in Dunn, North Carolina.  Dunn had a population less than 10,000 according to the 2000 census.  Yet the newspaper has a circulation over 8,500, based on the most recent figures I could find.  This is extraordinary at a time when major newspapers are shrinking daily.  The Daily Record has one mission - to be local.  To provide the news that national and regional newspapers or network and cable news channels cannot; to fill The Daily Record with as many local names as possible.

I picked up a copy of the St. Petersburg Times last week.  I confess I seldom purchase the local newspaper because between the internet and television, I get more news than the paper can provide (some of it from the Times' own web site).  More important, however, is the lack of news about the city from which the paper takes its name:

• On this particular weekday, there was not one item on the front page specific to St. Petersburg.  Yes, there were state and regional articles of interest to St. Petersburg, but I bet the Tampa Tribune's front page that day looked very similar.
• The food section contained a review of a restaurant in Clearwater.
• The local/state section included a couple of brief articles about St. Petersburg subjects.  It also had a substantial article about Brooke Shields, who I'm sure is a nice person but seems to have no local connection.
• The business section had a brief article about a survey released by the University of Florida in Gainesville, will over 100 miles from St. Petersburg.  Raymond James, Payless Car Rental, Jabil Circuit, and Home Shopping Network are among the companies located in St. Petersburg - it's hard to figure this out from the local newspaper.
• The St. Petersburg Times has an odd section that combines classifieds with comics and advice columns.  The classifieds are from all over Pinellas County; the rest is primarily national syndicated material.
• A weekly Life Times section contained more nationally syndicated material along with a lengthy article about local residents (some actually from St. Petersburg) competing in a Wii tournament.  This section also includes a tiny paragraph advising us to "shop locally" - despite a glaring lack of information about local businesses.
• The sports section had some local focus, with a few articles about St. Petersburg high school sports and coverage of the above-mentioned Tampa Bay Rays
• Finally, a weekly Neighborhood Times section contained several pieces specific to St. Petersburg.

The lack of a local focus doesn't seem to be hurting the St. Petersburg Times.  The newspaper has a circulation over 300,000; St. Petersburg's population is about 245,000.  The paper received two Pulitzer Prizes in 2009.

On the other hand, I have to wonder about the impact on the community and St. Petersburg's apparent lack of a coherent identity.  Would St. Petersburg be better served by a newspaper with a true local focus?  Would other news media come forward to provide local news for other Pinellas County communities?  (A local strategy would work with me.  The one day I bought two copies of the St. Petersburg Times was the Sunday that one of my photos was featured in the travel section.)  I also think our definition of "local" is too geographically broad to support strong neighborhoods and communities.

One final item:  A major Bay Area entertainment venue is called the St. Pete Times Forum.  It's in Tampa!

All of this is not to criticize the St. Petersburg Times or the city of St. Petersburg.  I loved living in St. Petersburg.  I do think it's important to consider questions about community and identity.  If we don't work to build and maintain a positive identity for our respective communities, the wrong identity may prevail.  St. Petersburg has at times been identified with a culture of cruelty.  And that's not good for anyone.

The Places We Leave Behind

Sorting through boxes of stuff in preparation for moving, I came across a 1990s newspaper article about the Old Mill Six.  The Old Mill Six was a discount movie theater in Mountain View, California.  If you were willing to wait until just before a film's release on VHS (remember VHS?), you could see a movie at the Old Mill Six for less than $2.  A buddy and I had a somewhat weekly routine of seeing a movie at the Old Mill Six, then searching the jazz room at nearby Tower Records, followed by good conversation at a coffee shop next door to Tower.  The Old Mill Six closed years ago, as did all of Tower Records' U.S. stores.  But when I say I still miss the Old Mill Six, it's not just the place I miss but the camaraderie of a friend I haven't seen since leaving California in 2001.  They are forever linked in my memory.

I've written previously about my grandmother's caution to me about wanderlust in the Bravard family.  I've moved many times and lived in five states.  My launching point for this blog was the plan for another move - Julie and I moving from St. Petersburg to Tampa.  We've rented out our house in St. Petersburg and found a small apartment in Tampa, so this week is moving week.  We're caught up in the rush of packing boxes, changing our utilities and all the many things you have to do when moving.  We're not moving far, only Tampa Bay separates the two cities, but for some reason it feels to me like a vast distance.

I've also written previously about the definition of home; about how wildlife often has an instinctive need to return to its place of birth while people have considerable flexibility to change homes as needed.

Moving is a situation designed for nostalgia.  It's natural to think not only about the logistics of moving and setting up a new home, but about the emotional impact of what we're leaving and what we're about to find.  "Place" isn't just a house or the built environment, it's the people and experiences that fill that environment.  Time and distance don't just take places from us, they take the people who complete those places.  My advice is to enjoy your place as much as you can, because you never know when it might change or circumstances might require you to leave.  I still miss the Old Mill Six.  I still miss my grandparents' farmhouse in central Indiana.  I still miss the wonderful couple who lived across the street from us in North Carolina; they treated us like family and invited us to all of their holiday get-togethers.  And in St. Petersburg, I'll miss the Good Fortune Chinese Buffet; Julie and I are regulars there and it's a great place to have a long conversation over some General Tso's chicken.

There are pros and cons to settling in one place, just as there are pros and cons to my affliction with wanderlust.  I've seen places and met people I would never have seen or met otherwise.  And places change regardless; the Old Mill Six would have closed whether I stayed in California or not.  Still, it's hard not to feel a little sad over the places we leave behind.  Sooner or later, it seems, the time always comes to walk along a new sidewalk.

Point A to Point B: The Downtown St. Petersburg Edition

Let me digress for a moment:  I love The Globe Coffee Lounge in downtown St. Petersburg.  It is a funky, friendly café with an eclectic menu and a diverse clientele.  The owner, JoEllen Shilke, is smart and vibrant and a strong supporter of local arts.  I think every community needs more JoEllens and more Globes.

So when Julie and I went to an event at the Globe this week, I decided to make that my next experiment with Tampa Bay Area transit.  I rode PSTA (Pinellas Suncoast Transit Authority); one bus, no transfer needed.  Downtown is easily accessible by bus as many of PSTA's routes pass through there.

(Point A to Point B: My route)

The distance from my house to the Globe is 8 miles.  The entire trip, including wait time, took me 58 minutes; compared to Google's estimate of 47 minutes.  (I could have reduced my wait time by 10 minutes but since I'm not familiar with PSTA's on-time record I decided to play it safe and get to the bus stop a little early.)  Exactly 6 minutes of that time was walking from my house to the bus stop; that matches Google's estimate of the walking time.  Driving from Point A to Point B is 20-30 minutes, depending on traffic.

(The view from the bus)

• I wrote previously about my belief that we do not sufficiently fund transit in the Tampa Bay Area.  I think PSTA does very good work with the resources available to them.  On this particular trip the bus was clean, comfortable and on time.

• I'm not wild about PSTA's route maps.  They show a few landmarks but the maps do not show routes in the context of streets, or even with a conventional north-south orientation.  I don't feel these maps are very welcoming to new transit users.

• On the other hand, I do like PSTA's web site.  I find it easy to navigate.  You can purchase tickets online with a $2 handling fee.  Fare and route information are all easy to find.  And Google trip planner is incorporated into the home page.

• A coalition of organizations, including PSTA, operates trolleys that cover downtown St. Petersburg.  The fare is only $0.25.  However, these trolleys only operate until 5PM Sunday through Thursday (later on Friday and Saturday); this is of limited use to people who work a conventional weekday schedule and want to visit downtown in the evening.

• Be careful to look at every suggested route when using Google trip planner.  In my case, Google offered three suggested routes and the third route was the most efficient.

(The Globe)

Simplicity in urban planning

Thanks to the Permission to Suck blog I came across a talk Rhode Island School of Design president John Maeda gave at TED on the subject of simplicity.  (Maeda literally wrote the book on simplicity.)



I really started to appreciate simplicity when I was a student in Professor John Sullivan's fluid mechanics course at Purdue University.  Our first exam did not go well; Professor Sullivan said our class achieved one of the lowest test score averages in his career up to that point.  One particular test problem had most of us scribbling furiously for a page or more; when Professor Sullivan demonstrated the solution, it only required a simple, elegant, three lines.  It was a thing of beauty.  I don't always succeed, but the power of simplicity is a lesson I've tried to return to throughout my life.

Simplicity can be a valuable tool in urban design and city planning.  In his excellent book Green Metropolis, David Owen wrote, "Walking in much of Manhattan...is like walking on a map."  The average New Yorker lives nine months longer than the average American; there are several reasons for this, but one reason is the fact that they walk more.  The city is a walker's dream: plenty of landmarks, sprawling sidewalks, and a beautiful grid street layout.  The city is easy to navigate because of the grid.  Even if you get lost on foot, you'll rarely go more than a block out of your way.

I've lived in St. Petersburg, Florida, since 2004.  We do not come close to New York in terms of walkability.  But we have a street grid system that makes St. Petersburg a breeze to navigate.  Sequentially numbered avenues run east-west and sequentially numbered streets run north-south.  So if I'm looking for 5100 3rd Avenue North, I know I need to go to 51st Street and 3rd Avenue North.  If, from there, I need to go to 71st Street and 38th Avenue North, then I need to travel 35 blocks north and 20 blocks west to reach my destination.  This is perfect for the directionally challenged like myself.

(St. Petersburg, Florida)

I'll be moving to nearby Tampa soon enough.  Not quite as easy to navigate.  Yes, most streets are laid out according to an approximate grid.  But Tampa covers a much wider area than St. Petersburg (more on that in future posts) and, except for a few areas, the convenient numbering system is gone.  I don't know Dale Mabry Road from Hillsborough Avenue from Columbus Drive.  I'm looking forward to being in a new city and learning my way around.  It will just take longer than in St. Petersburg.  I'm also wondering if this has an impact on emergency services.  The street numbering system in St. Petersburg doesn't require much thought (or GPS help) once you're used to it.  It seems finding an address in Tampa, and most cities for that matter, will take precious extra time, even if only a few moments.

(Tampa, Florida)

Point A to Point B on the Tampa Express

How we get from Point A to Point B in our daily lives consumes massive time and energy.  My current home in Pinellas County, Florida, and my (hopefully) future home in Hillsborough County, Florida, are not hotbeds of public transit progressivism.  With a few exceptions, local civic leaders embrace the inefficiency of roads and highways and exclude other transit modes.  Thankfully, there is serious talk these days about light rail (often led by Tampa Mayor Pam Iorio), but that is far off in the future.  For now, bus travel is our only public transit option.

So from time to time I'll select a Point A and Point B, geographically, and use public transit to make the trip.  This week I went from my home to a Borders in Tampa via an express bus that crosses Tampa Bay, connecting St. Petersburg and Tampa.  Julie works near this Borders, so I had a reference point for driving (and a ride home, something most transit riders don't have).

Bay Area residents have some idea of how difficult this trip is.  I traveled through two counties via two different transit agencies: PSTA (Pinellas Suncoast Transit Authority) and HART (Hillsborough Area Regional Transit Authority).  My trip involved walking, riding a local St. Petersburg bus (PSTA), riding the express bus across Tampa Bay, and riding a local Tampa bus (HART).

According to Google, this is a distance of 21 miles.  My actual travel time was 1 hour, 23 minutes; Google Trip Planner estimates 1 hour, 48 minutes; Julie normally makes the drive in about 50 minutes.  Fifteen minutes of my travel time was walking from my house to the bus stop.

However, my total travel time, including waiting, was 3 hours.  I could have shortened this by taking a later local bus in St. Petersburg, but if that particular bus had been only 5 minutes late, I would have missed the express bus, leading to an additional 2 hour wait.  Wait time, of course, is crucial for transit users.

Here are a few take-aways from my bus experience:

• I haven't studied many of HART's routes, but many PSTA routes only run every half hour, some only once per hour.  This is not frequent enough to be practical for many people.  I don't blame PSTA for this; the real problem is that we have not sufficiently funded transit.

• Buses were clean and comfortable.  All the drivers were professional and courteous.  (This is more important than it sounds because I think driving a bus seems like a very stressful job.)  Buses ran on schedule; one even reached its destination a few minutes ahead of schedule.

• Counting student and senior discounts, PSTA offers 14 different fare options.  I appreciate the attempt to offer options, but this might be a little too much.  I would also like to see more area-wide fare options that integrate both PSTA and HART.

• The total fare was $6.50.  This is a little steep, but there are discounted multi-fare options for regular bus travelers.

• The individual fare for both HART and PSTA local buses is $1.75.  Exact change only.  For all those times when you have a dollar bill and three quarters handy.  This (not to mention potentially long wait times) can be a problem for the impulse traveler who just wants to go to a movie or shopping.  Until debit card readers are installed, the fares should be even dollar amounts.

• The day I took the bus was a beautiful spring day in Florida with high temperatures in the mid-70s.  Imagine waiting half an hour or longer at a bus stop during the Florida summer, with a heat index well over 100 degrees.  Now imagine that wait carrying groceries or with a child.  This is another argument for more frequent service.

• This was my first experience using Google's trip planner with public transit.  It was reliable and told me specifically which buses to take.  It did not, however, tell me the bus fare, so I still had to look at the individual transit agencies' web sites for this.

• The buses were not heavily used; there were only 5 passengers on the local PSTA bus and never more than 12 passengers on any of the three buses.  Many use this to support the abandonment of transit.  I feel the exact opposite is true - for all the reasons I've listed above (and more I'll surely think of later), this is evidence that we need to improve Bay Area transit and increase service frequency.  The more convenient it is, the more people will use it.

Movies and Place

A few location-specific movies I've watched (or re-watched) lately:

The Model Shop (1969):  Watch Gary Lockwood drive around late-1960s Los Angeles in an MG convertible.  The buildings are packed tightly together but seldom reach above two stories.  Yet it seems very neighborly.  Sprawl seldom looked so good.

Rocky (1976):  Philadelphia in the late 1970s was showing her years.  The buildings are crumbling but the mood of the city, like Rocky Balboa, is restless, a city paying dues for an uncertain future.  Watch for the great shot of City Hall.

Annie Hall (1977):  New York City vs. Los Angeles.  Woody Allen always prefers NYC, and it shows in the loving shots of the city that show up in many of his films.  Received the Academy Award for Best Picture.

King of California (2007):  Michael Douglas plays a character in denial of how suburban sprawl and big box retailers dominate the landscape.  Watch for all the corporate retail logos that represent the gentrification of an entire country (and someday the world?).  Turns out the real bargain is underneath CostCo.

A River Runs Through It (1992):  Rural Montana in the post-World War I years.  I've never been fly-fishing but director Robert Redford proves it's an art form.  The movie justifiably won the Academy Award for cinematography.

Home

Nature, it speaks true.  Why not man?

The Tempest (1982)

One morning Julie and I found a turtle in our back yard.  Being tree-huggers of sorts, we were at a loss.  Although for me, the love of animals has more to do with their helplessness than any sense of conservational responsibility.  We couldn't leave the turtle in the back yard because the dogs might hurt it.  Our house sits close to the street, so the front yard wasn't an option.  We called an area nature center and were advised that a turtle will do just about anything to return to its place of birth.  This gave me some relief that turtles lack firearms and opposable thumbs.

The guy at the nature center told us the turtle was probably headed for the nearest body of water.  The only thing we could think of was the drainage ditch that runs across the street.  So we left the turtle out there and hoped for the best.

Every year a pair of doves nests in an orange tree in our back yard.  Not only the same tree, but the same branch of the tree.  I've read that the average life span of mourning doves is 1.5 years, so maybe these are descendants of the original doves.  Either way, I appreciate their consistency.

This theme of returning to the place of origin seems common in nature.  I've met people who never left the county in which they were born.  I've met others who spend their lives wandering and have no wish to settle in a specific location.  I left my home state of Indiana in 1989 to go to school in Texas.  Since then I've returned to my hometown exactly three times; two of those trips were for funerals.  It's not that I don't like the place; funds and time are always limited.  In 2001 Julie and I sold our house in California, moved to North Carolina, and bought a new house there - all in one month.  This adaptability, the ability to position ourselves in more viable locations relatively quickly, has clearly been critical to our survival as a species.

Only economics and politics - national borders - complicates this social and biological freedom to move from place to place.  And technology has gradually chipped away at economic factors, making it easier for more and more people to live and work in completely separate locations.  What is home, then?  A physical space?  A state of mind?  A collection of emotional or social bonds?

We affect our location and our location affects us.  Where to live is not a trivial decision.  In the United States, Sperling's BestPlaces helps you figure out the city or town best suited to your likes and dislikes.  (San Francisco came out at the top of my list, which makes me think their algorithm isn't giving enough weight to my desire for affordable housing.)  Either way, living a thoughtful, deliberate life involves giving serious thought to our location.

I admit, some days I still wonder how things worked out for that turtle.  But the baby doves left the nest recently and it was a real treat to watch.

Traffic Circles

Traffic management is a vital aspect of community.  In his book Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do and What It Says About Us, Tom Vanderbilt cites research showing that traffic roundabouts can reduce traffic delays as much as 65% compared to intersections with conventional traffic signals.  That's because at roundabouts all drivers have to slow down, but they rarely have to stop.

(Traffic circles and roundabouts are technically different.  In traffic circles, priority is often given to drivers entering the circle.  In roundabouts, drivers entering the circle generally have to yield to drivers already in the circle.  I often use the terms interchangeably but the efficiency increased mentioned in Traffic applies to roundabouts.)

(Satellite view courtesy of Google Maps)
Above is a roundabout in a residential area of St. Petersburg, Florida.  I'm not wild about this one; based on observation it's not effective at slowing traffic.  Traffic from two directions does not have to reduce speed until it's well into the circle, so drivers from these directions often force the right-of-way, increasing the possibility of a crash.  Unfortunately, I'm not sure of an effective solution because of the divided road on the east side of the circle.  Expanding the width of the roundabout might work, but this would require acquisition of substantial amounts of the surrounding private properties.

(Satellite view courtesy of Google Maps)
The above roundabout is also in St. Petersburg.  It seems effective at slowing traffic.  It's smaller than the earlier roundabout and it's located in a commercial district.

Above is a photo I took of Columbus Circle in Manhattan in 2005.  This is a traffic circle; entry is controlled by stop lights.  Traffic circles and roundabouts can do more than calm traffic.  They offer a public space - note the benches around the interior of the circle - and they offer a forum for public art, in this case a statue of Christopher Columbus.

(Satellite view courtesy of Google Maps)
One of the highlights of a recent trip to Washington, DC, was an evening hanging out in DuPont Circle.  It not only manages the intersection of four streets but provides a public greenspace.  Benches line the circle.  Julie and I sat with cold beverages while enjoying the diversity of ethnicities, ages, income levels, and activities around us.  Dog walkers, athletes and families passed by, along with people who appeared to be homeless and others dressed in a formal business attire.  On nearby streets we found a range of shops and restaurants, as well as a DC Metro station, giving us easy access to the entire DC area.  It's the kind of public space all communities could use more of.

Where to see a movie in a small town

Well Saturday night about eight o'clock

I know what I'm gonna do

I'm gonna pick my baby up

And take her to the picture show

The Drifters

When I was a child, I didn't realize the Castle Theater was such a unique place.  The Castle is a real movie theater, at the time the only theater in my hometown of New Castle, Indiana (there is a drive-in just outside of town).  It opened in 1935, before the days of metroplex shoeboxes where the sound from one microtheater leaks into the next.  I saw some of my favorite movies there, including the original Star Wars in 1977.  As I've written before, I've only returned to New Castle three times in the last twenty-one years.  On the last visit Julie and I saw American Wedding at the Castle.  The movie was forgettable, but Julie was impressed by the Castle and I couldn't help feeling proud that my hometown could sustain such a nice theater.

Except, it almost couldn't.  The Castle closed in January.  It was a real shock to many of us who grew up there.  The good news is the Castle is scheduled to open in March under new ownership.  I admire the new owners but I don't envy them; operating the only movie screen in a small city can't be easy.

I lived one terrible year in Stockton, in the Central Valley of California.  One of the few things I liked about Stockton was the Empire Theater, another historic movie theater.  They often showed classic films and I saw The Godfather there.  Some folks suggested the classic film route for the Castle.  I like the idea, but I don't know if New Castle has the population (18,339 in 2008) to sustain such a niche business.

Part of what defines a place is the kind of businesses it attracts and retains.  Cheap consumer electronics and a global trend toward urbanization haven't been kind to small towns and their movie theaters.  Movies are one of the things America has always done well and many of our fondest memories are what movies we saw, the theaters we saw them in, and who we saw them with.  A night at the movies is local entertainment that is culturally unifying whether we're in a theater in Newton, Iowa, or Middletown, Connecticut, or New Castle, Indiana.  Every small town theater that closes causes a disconnect bigger than the business itself.

The good news is that the Castle Theater will open again.  Maybe this is not a great thing in the grand scheme of economics.  But I'm relieved because in a world that changes more rapidly all the time, the theater's presence is a constant that links several generations.  And I hope for the best when the Castle reopens, because while the movies are still good, the movie theaters have really gone downhill.  And the Castle is a great theater.

I miss the bookstores, and so will you

I lived in the San Francisco Bay Area for nine years.  It was where I came to love bookstores.  It was where I developed an understanding of what Ray Oldenburg called the "third place," those places away from home and work that give character to communities.  Howard Schultz also developed an understanding of the third place; he put the insight to much better use than I have.

Anyway, there were great bookstores in the Bay Area.  Independents and used bookstores.  And when a Borders opened on University Avenue in Palo Alto, I enthusiastically accepted it as part of the local culture without understanding the impact Borders and Barnes & Noble would have on independent stores.  Amazon.com had not yet conquered the world.  The bookstores I loved were not only places to browse books, but because many of them had attached cafés, they were ideal places to meet with a friend for a hot beverage and good conversation.  (Printers, Inc., was one of the best; their space in downtown Mountain View is still a bookstore/café operated by Books, Inc.)  Used bookstores, like BookBuyers in Mountain View and Know Knew Books in Palo Alto, were treasure hunts where I found the likes of The Last Convertible by Anton Myrer and Hemingway's A Moveable Feast; books I would probably never have stumbled onto in a chain retailer.  Those bookstores helped define the community and so they helped define that stage of my life.  I'm thrilled that a few of the bookstores I frequented are still around.

Culture shock hit when we moved to Raleigh, North Carolina, and found that independent and used bookstores were much less common.  Third places were more likely to be chains like Starbucks.  Borders became a guilty pleasure.  We moved to St. Petersburg, Florida, in 2004.  More culture shock.  Our local Borders is usually filled with people shouting at each other (or into their cell phones).  Much of this is more about changing times than changing geography.  We do have a large and popular used bookstore downtown, but they have a shrine to extremist idealogues that I find too distracting.  A few other used bookstores in St. Petersburg, but the selection is limited.  It's not their fault; there's not enough business to support the kind of stores I fell in love with.

Borders recently closed its B. Dalton bookstore in Laredo, Texas.  That makes Laredo one of the largest cities in the United States without a bookstore.  There are suggestions that Barnes & Noble will open a store there in the future.  Should we worry that a city of 250,000 people can't support a bookstore?  Or should we accept that online booksellers and Kindle-like e-book readers are good enough?  I don't have the answer.

I don't know what the future of literacy in our country is.  Or the future of third places.  I don't know if it's a bad thing that the internet (and bloggers like me) seem to be shortening our collective attention span.  I can't prove that it's a bad thing that we spend more time in third places text messaging people remotely than we spend talking with the people in the room with us.  I feel that our society has been unraveling somewhat in recent years and that this trend is continuing, but I don't have data to back that up.  I just know I miss the bookstores, and I think we'll all miss them someday.  I miss them like I miss my wasted youth.  I miss them like a lost love.  And I don't think they're coming back.