For
the past year, a group has been meeting in Petaluma on a monthly basis to talk about
this blog and whatever else seemed interesting in the world of urbanism. Last week, we had our best meeting yet, with
sparkling conversation from a variety of perspectives.
Fresh
from that success, Petaluma Urban Chat is going to expand its scope. On Saturday, January 26, we’ll take our second
field trip. (You may recall that we
spent an evening on the Petaluma River last fall.) Petaluma Transit will play a key role in this
outing.
We’ll
meet at the Flamez restaurant, in the G&G shopping center on Sonoma
Mountain Parkway, for a casual chat about urban transportation. We’ll convene shortly after noon. But there will be a catch. No one may arrive by car. (Okay, if you show up in a car, we can’t bar
you from the restaurant, but we can ask you to sit at a different table.)
We’re
guessing that most people will arrive via Petaluma Transit (PT). Although you’re also welcome to join us by bike
or by foot.
On
Saturdays, PT Bus Route #3 stops at the corner of Sonoma Mountain Parkway and Riesling
Road at noon. It’s only a short distance
from Flamez, hence our start time of shortly after noon.
The
PT #3 runs on one-hour headways on Saturdays and we don’t want to rush either
lunch or the conversation, so we’ll plan on catching the 2:00 bus, giving us
almost two hours to talk.
I’m pleased that there the group has enthusiasm about lunch and
about using Petaluma Transit. But I hope
that one topic over lunch will be what it would be like to use PT to meet the
obligations of daily life.
If PT holds schedule, which is virtual certainty on a weekend,
it'll be about 30 minutes each way from westside to the restaurant and
back. Which is really pretty good.
But the difficulty with 21st century intra-city bus systems often
isn't travel time. More frequently, it's
proximity and headway. From where I
live, it's a mile walk to the bus stop. And
I live in what is considered a walkable neighborhood. Also, if I miss the bus by a minute, I’ll
wait an hour for the next bus. That's a
real constraint on folks who must use the bus for daily tasks rather than for the
occasional lark.
For many of us, if someone in the front of the checkout line
fumbles for change, we’re two minutes slower getting back to our car. But for someone who relies on PT, it might
mean an hour sitting at a chilly bus stop.
We have built a world in which anyone who is able to drive will
drive, at least for in-town destinations, because the other options are too
inconvenient. So intra-city bus systems mostly
exist to serve people who are too young, too old, too poor, or too disabled to
drive. I hope we can talk about that reality
over lunch. Including the possibility
that Petaluma Transit can expand its niche by serving as a feeder to SMART. (Note:
This assessment doesn’t consider the folks whose environmental concerns cause
them to ride PT. They’re worthy of our
thanks.)
This comment on PT’s ridership isn’t meant as a criticism of PT. It's a comment on how we've constructed the
places where we live. PT has done a
great job of using the limited state and federal dollars to build a working
system. Ridership has more than doubled
in the last few years. (Acknowledgement:
I sit on the Petaluma Transit Advisory Committee. We may have provided the occasional bit of
good advice, but the bulk of the credit for improved ridership goes to the
transit manager and his staff.)
I
hope to see many of you on January 26 to talk about intra-city transit and the
full panoply of urbanism issues,
Everyone is welcome to join us, whether they’ve participated in past
Urban Chats or not. If you have
questions or need help understanding the Petaluma Transit schedule, my email
address is below.
As always,
your questions or comments will be appreciated.
Please comment below or email me.
And thanks for reading. - Dave Alden (davealden53@comcast.net)
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