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.