Transportation Two-Step

Recently, I explored Austin’s transportation options beyond my customary round-trip, tracing a triangle between three major points — Central Austin, East Austin, and South Congress.

Transportation Two-Step Triangle Across Austin

I have written before about the need to plan ahead when choosing bus service to move around Austin — because frequency varies greatly from one route to the next; and, traveling by bus can be frustrating if the bus route is ahead or behind schedule (Capital Metro does not broadcast a live feed of buses’ locations).

A more complex itinerary requires both planning and flexibility, so that you are prepared to jump from one transportation option to the next if you miss a connection. For example I played a bit of Russian roulette with Car2Go. I took the bus to South Congress, betting that I would find a Car2Go there that could take me the final leg to my friend’s house, which is located in a residential neighborhood. I then bet with myself that the car would still be there after dinner to drive home. Luckily, it was. But, I lined up a ride home as plan B, just in case.

Even though I was ready for the day’s “transportation two-step,” I still ran into the customary gaps in service — like the 15 minutes I waited at 6th and Congress for my connection to the South Congress neighborhood. But, on the plus side, I discovered some new things:

• On my way to dinner, I picked up wine for the first time at a wine store, East End Wines, near my coworking space, Conjunctured.  

East End Wines

• My walk took me past the Texas State Cemetery and, for the first time, I really looked at it. When you drive by at 30-40 mph, it is hard to see how beautiful it is. Now I can’t wait to return to explore it.  

Texas State Cemetery

• I also discovered a purple flower I had never seen before growing across the street from the cemetery. I have since learned that it is called Passiflora “Incense” and that it is a great plant to include in a butterfly garden.

Passiflora "Incense"

• Rather than returning home after work or driving directly to my dinner engagement, I took advantage of the irregular bus schedule to spend an hour decompressing on the Hotel San José patio. It’s also a great place for people watching. Every time I visit, I see someone interesting. This time, it was a college-age guy dressed in rolled up white shorts and a rainbow colored bathrobe.

Patio at Hotel San José

All in all, I found that the combination of planning, a flexible attitude, and a little luck turned a complicated, multi-leg trip from an ordeal into a day of reduced stress (thanks to the Hotel San José) punctuated by discoveries along the way.

New City, New Routine (Part 2 of 2)

When I started spending half of my time in Houston, the following list of questions helped me move beyond its stereotype as the quintessential driving city to identify the options for reducing my dependency on the family car:

1. Where are you now, and where are you going? In an expansive city like Houston, this question is fundamental. If you are considering joining a carpool to commute to and from work, but your office’s location requires a car to attend meetings or go to lunch, a carpool may not work for you. In my case, my home in Houston is too far from my office to consider using alternative transportation for my daily commute. On the other hand, my office is located in Rice Village, a dense, mixed-use retail center. So, once I arrive, I can walk anywhere I need to go.    
2. What modes of transportation are available, convenient, and safe? Houston’s options for alternative transportation are relatively limited, although expanding. 

• Walking is an option in some neighborhoods, but the city is so spread out that it is not viable as a primary mode of transportation.
• The bus system, Metro, is making efforts to court new users through the light rail system. And, a public-private partnership recently launched a free bus route downtown called the Greenlink. However, the overall system continues to suffer from a public perception of inefficiency and inconvenience.
• Houston’s car share options are limited to “by the hour” rental cars and companies like Relay Rides whose members share their personal cars with each other. 
• On the other hand, it offers public access to more electric vehicle charging stations than many U.S. cities.
• The City recently launched a bike share program downtown. But, its scope is so small that it is only convenient for people who live and/or work downtown. 
• All in all, cycling appears to be the best choice in the city core, because it allows longer travel distances than walking, and it is more convenient (and, possibly, safer) than taking the bus. The only down side to cycling is the low percentage of streets with dedicated bike lanes. However, the Houston Bikeway program is slowly enhancing the cycling infrastructure.
3. What kind of transportation are other people using? Whether walking, cycling, or taking the bus, increasing the number of users often results in increased safety—both in terms of reducing car collisions and reducing the risk of crime. 
4. How much time, money, and effort are you willing to invest in an alternative mode of transportation? The answer to this question will vary from city to city and from person to person. Based on my responses to the above questions, my best options for reducing car dependence in Houston include: 
• living and working in areas of town that offer safe options for walking and cycling and a safe link between the two; 
• walking to services and amenities that are close to home and work; 
• cycling during the day to destinations that are slightly farther away; and, 
• using a combination of cycling and the light rail to travel to and from downtown. 

In order to meet these criteria, I would need to move closer into the city core, and I would need regular access to a bike. Neither of these requirements are realistic investments at the moment. So, for the time being, I have limited my attempts to reduce car dependence in Houston to taking advantage of the walkable nature of my office’s location.

In spite of the fact that I haven’t been able to meet my original goal of dramatically reducing car dependency in Houston, these four questions have given me a better understanding of what options are available today—and what might become available in the future. This exercise has also prompted me to start looking more seriously at the cycling infrastructure in Austin to see how it might fit into the mix of transportation options I use in that city.

Try using these questions where you live and travel. And, let me know if they helped you identify new ways of moving around the city, or if they just reaffirmed your initial assumptions. 

New City, New Routine (Part 1 of 2)

Cars are so dominant in the American transportation landscape—with a few exceptions such as Boston, New York, and San Francisco—that it can be daunting to seek alternatives.  Most of us are also creatures of habit. So, once we find a mode of transportation that suits our daily routine, we tend to use it for all of our trips, even if another mode of transportation would be more convenient.

I am just as much a creature of routine as the next person. And, while it has taken me a few months to develop a system that allows me to move around Austin with minimal reliance on our family car, I have realized that I self-limit my transportation options to an either/or question:

Should I take the bus?

   

Or, should I take Car2Go?

I was recently shaken out of this rhythm, however, by moving part-time to Houston, which is more than twice the size of Austin in terms of both population and land area.

Source: Google Maps

As I considered the best way to move around there, I was faced with a quandary: How could I continue to reduce my car dependency in such a different city?

In the second installment of this blog post, I will outline the questions that helped me evaluate my options.

Tracking My Trips: July 2012

The results from the second month tracking my daily travel are in.

In July, I spent 10 days in the Baltimore/DC metro area, 10 days in Austin, and 10 days in Houston — three metropolitan areas with very different transportation mixes. I was surprised to see that, in spite of spending 1/3 of the month in Houston (a city that is notoriously difficult to navigate in any form of transportation other than a car), I improved on my trip profile in alternative forms of transportation, dropping from 48% single occupancy car trips in June to 35% in July.

Trip Profile in July:

	Car	Transit	Walk	Other (air, car share, carpool, cycling)
My Trips	35%	18%	36%	11%
U.S. Average	83%	2%	10%	4%

Two longer trips during the month may have artificially increased the overall numbers: a train ride from Baltimore to DC and a roundtrip between Austin and Dallas using Zipcar. 

For example:

• These two trips account for 60% of the carbon emissions I avoided over the course of the month. Using EPA estimates of average passenger car CO₂ emissions, I more than doubled my avoidance of CO₂ from 32,000 grams in June to 82,000 grams in July – roughly equivalent to taking 4 cars off the road for a day.

• On the other hand, these trips were also likely responsible for lowering the average daily health benefits from increasing the number of trips I took using alternative forms of transportation. In spite of the change, I still scraped by with an average of 141 calories burned per day in transportation-related activities (1 calorie above the Surgeon General’s recommendation). And, I averaged the minimum recommendation of physical activity: 30 minutes per day.

• As relatively fast modes of transportation, these two trips may also have helped reduce the difference between my overall monthly average trip time and the baseline (the trip time in a single-occupancy car) from an average of 32 minutes a day in June to 22 minutes a day in July. 

Interestingly, in spite of the high cost of the train ticket and Zipcar reservation, on average I saved $1.36 per day in the cost of gas and mileage in July, a moderate improvement to my revised average savings in June of $1.22 per day.

But, as I experienced in July, there is no such thing as an average month. 

I am learning that location plays a large role in determining trip profile. In August, I am splitting my time between Austin and Houston. We’ll see how that affects my ability to maintain a similar array of cost savings, offset carbon emissions, and health benefits associated with active transportation.

Filling the Gap

Weather can make or break a trip across town using alternative forms of transportation – i.e., walking, cycling, bus, etc. – if you don’t have options.

Last week, I traveled to a morning meeting on the bus without a problem. It was a nice morning – sunny, low 70’s. I sat on a bench in the shade – a must in the Austin, Texas sun – for a few minutes while I waited for the bus to arrive.

When I arrived at my destination in South Austin, I walked through a cool, shaded residential neighborhood, arriving only a few minutes later than if I had driven there.

The next stage of my journey, traveling from the meeting location to my co-working space, Conjunctured, was not as pleasant. The weather had changed over the intervening hour and a half – and, not for the better. I found myself standing in 90+ heat at an unshaded bus stop on a loud, busy street with no prospect of a bus arriving for at least 20 minutes.

Not excited about losing part of my workday to another experiment with public transportation in Central Texas, I was on the verge of wishing I had driven our family car to the meeting, when it dawned on me that I could use car2go – one of several car sharing options in Austin. I tend to think of Zipcar when both my husband and I need to drive somewhere at the same time, because it worked so well when we lived in Cambridge. But, car2go was the right option in this situation, because it allows one-way trips.


So, I checked car2go’s website on my iPhone (check out their mobile apps here), found an available car parked less than a block from the bus stop, headed its way, hopped in, and arrived at conjunctured before the bus I was waiting for would have arrived at the bus stop.

In cities like Austin, where many buses run on 30, 45, and 60 minute schedules rather than the 10-20 minute schedules seen in cities with higher ridership, supplementary options like car2go fill an important gap that could otherwise discourage car owners from thinking of the bus system as a viable option for intown transportation.

The fundamental question of when it makes sense to take the bus rather than a form of transportation that you can control – e.g., driving, walking, or cycling – lies in being able to determine whether you can plan ahead to fit your schedule into the transit system’s schedule.

To wit, I rode back home that afternoon from my co-working space on the bus without a hitch. But, that was because I checked the bus schedule ahead of time and organized my work schedule to arrive at the bus stop (shaded, with a bench) several minutes before its scheduled arrival. If I had missed the bus, I probably would have used car2go a second time that day rather than wait in the heat for 45 minutes until the next bus was scheduled to arrive.