just for a moment

[solarbird]

There isn't all that much going on right now; I'm going to be clearing the leaves off the raised beds and prepping the soil soon, I'm looking forward to gardening again; I want to see about attending the Northwest Flower and Garden Show, probably on Thursday the 15th (anyone else interested?); Norwescon is coming up and I need daily 'zine ideas badly; I've joined the Japan Culture Club at school, but they keep scheduling meetings while I'm in class so haven't been able to go to any events yet; and I need to start talking to faculty at UW again starting right about, oh, now. But mostly, I've been doing daily life and classes.

The biggest thing bothering me this week is that I'm almost certainly going to drop to audit status in Japanese 112. Everything will be the same except that I won't get a grade or credit. The reason for that is that the expected vocabulary acquisition rate has jumped quite a bit; we're now getting about, hum, 8-10 words a day at this point - not counting things like counters which are kind of like new individual words but kind of aren't because they're in series, with regular roots and such. That rate isn't going to go down - in fact, it's expected to go up. It's a real problem, given that I was barely keeping up last quarter, when it was more like 2-4 new words a day - and that was only true because I already knew half the words from previous study. And I've forgotten half the words that were new to me then.

I kind of figured I'd hit this wall eventually, tho' I was kind of hoping that I wouldn't, or that if I did, it wouldn't be until spring quarter. But I did, and it was pretty abrupt; I was okay, okay, okay, hey wait, zomg oh crap I don't understand any of the words anybody is using in class, and then oh look I only know about 40% of the words on this test <p0wned> - all in about a week and a half.

I hate that wall.

So unless a miracle occurs, I'll be officially changing to audit late next week. It makes me sad, but it's better than adding a D or something to my GPA. I talked with the professor about it (for over an hour) on Thursday, and she thinks it's the right thing to do, given everything. I don't really like it, but I don't have any better ideas.

So here, have a picture:


Leaf on Smooth Rocks
And here, have a couple of URLs:

Bicycle Boulevards, as implemented in Berkeley, California. It's a multipronged approach, but key elements are: 1) Making openings for bikes in closed-end streets, most of which were closed for vehicle control, and 2) designating some secondary streets to be bicycle-centric, tho' not bicycle-only, and paint/mark them appropriately as such. (Cars and such are still allowed.) It seems to be a rather low-cost approach to improving bike transit.

Meanwhile, the FHA tells Oregon to stop focusing on anything but cars, and get to building more freeways, presumably like the South and midwest, where it's endless acres of parking lots and zillion-lane freeways and a walkable environment is seen as some sort of commie plot. (Courtesy Cascadia Drumbeat.)

Now, back to trying to learn these stupid words.

Comments

[janne.livejournal.com]

Oooh, now there's a lovely picture. Adore the colors and patterns!

[solarbird]

Thanks - Shoreline campus is attractively gardened, once you get past the unpleasant (if at least somewhat hidden) ring of parking lots. Since I take the bus, I skip that part, but I still know it's there. I've gotten several pictures from campus plants and rocks and such. ^_^

[lyonesse.livejournal.com]

just a question -- do you still take dmae? i know i found it helpful with the fact-o-rama blizzard condition that was neurophysiology i....

[solarbird]

Absolutely - off it, I couldn't get this far. I've tried varying dosages, looking for the best amount of memory I could get without slipping into hideous time awareness (were you around for that? That kicked in 400-450mg). Currently, I'm at 230mg.

[lyonesse.livejournal.com]

nope, wasn't there for that. but there are other "smart drugs" you can try -- let me know what you *have* tried, and i'll see if i can spot anything else worth a shot.

[solarbird]

Check email. ^_^

That time thing really sucked. When I describe it to people, they're all, "...but that's normal." Apparently not for me. Or maybe it's one of those things that's just fine if you've grown up with it, but OMG SO HORRIBLE if you haven't.

[banner.livejournal.com]

Having lived a decade in Portland, I can tell you Metro always gets everything wrong. They put in a light rail system at a cost of a couple BILLION dollars, and then designed it so it couldn't even carry the capacity (or sever as many area's) as the already existing bus system.

Which of course they shut down after the rail opened. All so they could have the deepest subway station in the world. And remember that the system is Designed to be unable to serve the levels it needs, you can't add any more trains to the track (it's really a bad design, a complete boondoogle).

Also the traffic in the area is terrible, with all the people who commute into the city, and Metro will not do anything to improve it. There are only TWO bridges from vancouver across the river and one of them is ancient. Yet Metro has said they will never build another one (despite the several million commuters from Vancouver to Portland). Instead they're going to put MORE bridges IN portland, where there are like seven already!!

Bike traffic? Forget it! Not only are there NO shoulders on most roads, but face facts, the weather is against it more than half the year, and most people have too far to go. Serving bicyclists is nice, but they need to server the commuters in their cars first.

The way I used to have to go to work every day was blocked at least once a week by a traffic accident with a truck (it was the only road they could take) or by a landslide. Once A Week for FIVE years. Yet metro wouldn't do anything about it. This forced me to take one of two alternate routes on Hundred Year Old Roads. One of which I almost slide off of an over a cliff one winter because it was a solid sheet of ice and Metro didn't care.

And I'm not even getting into the blatent corruption of Metro.

So don't take Metro's side in this, they're asshats. It's already a parking lot there, and a dangerous one as well. But it doesn't have to be. If the local government is going to keep encouraging businesses to move their by granting them decade long tax exemptions (like Intel) then they have a duty to at least fix the roads to support them. Not build billion dollar per mile (I'm not exagerating!) light rails to the airport that serve maybe 60 people a day.

[solarbird]

Adding a lane to I-5 through Seattle was estimated to be well over a billion dollars a mile per lane, and that was back in 1998 or so. I imagine it's only gotten worse since then, given property values and such.

That said, my concern here isn't with telling Portland to go back and try again. I have no problems believing a regional transportation agency is sucking, believe me. I have no problems with them saying, "your plan is b0rken, try again." But I do have an issue with a response being "change your intent completely in such a way that makes you do something completely unlike your desired goals and increases dependency on oil." Just because most of the country is Cars Uber Allies doesn't mean everywhere is, or should be.

I mean, there's pretty much a consensus up here that we aren't going to road-build our way out of transportation problems. Even the car-heavy eastside has been asking (and voting for) more transit these days, and they're going to get a chance to vote on rail expansion to the eastside this fall. Is the FHA going to come try to tell us to fuck off and start building 18-lane highways like in Houston instead? I mean, if that's what Texas wants to do, I might think it's a bad idea, but I'm not going to tell them to fuck off and start building monorails.

[banner.livejournal.com]

I don't have a problem with mass transit, I just have a problem with the idiots behind it. Mass transit needs to be aimed at one, and ONLY one class of people. Commuters. Everything should be done for the sold purpose of catering to them, and serving them, to the exclusion of every other group out there.

AFTER they have that handled, then they can see about what kind of services that they can add for everyone else if it has no effect on the first group. But if it isn't serving commuters, they won't use it, and it will fail. And as they're the ones really paying for it with their tax dollars, it should serve them. I'd love to commute to work on Mass Transit. The train station is only a 15 minute walk from my door, and probably a 15 minute bus ride from the station nearest work. BUT it's like a 2 hour train ride to go ten miles. Each way.

In Portland (as well as Sacramento) the biggest class of users of the light rail (and most mass transit) are burglars, and other thieves. Sad but true.

When Seattle's people passed the monorail initiative I thought your elected idiots would get a clue, sadly they did not. It was sooo simple, build monorails over all the existing highway right of ways. Put in express rails, and have large parking lots on the outskirts of town, and change the bus service in the city to service the new mono rail stations. No new right of ways, and everyone in traffic see's the monorails over head whisking by and realize that they could be doing -that- instead. But nope, they killed it, and any rail system they put in will cost millions more in seized land, construction costs, etc.

Oh well.

[llachglin.livejournal.com]

What makes you think mass transit agencies or advocates aren't interested in commuters? Lines are selected based on commuting routes, and commuters are the largest single chunk of passengers. Yes, even in Portland. (On the other hand, commuting only makes up around a third of all trips people make, so it's not the only thing to consider.)

One thing that's common among a lot of people whether they favor mass transit or cars is that they see their preferred method of transportation in isolation. Good transportation solutions would worry about moving people, and then select the best methods to accomplish that, rather than starting with a method and then pigeonholing people into it. That requires thinking about how cars, roads, and mass transit interact. If you just build more roads because you want to cater to motorists, you create sprawl without reducing commute times. If you just build rail lines because you're unhappy about the fixation on cars, you ignore the wishes of potential passengers on your system. An integrated system realizes that every car pool, bus, and train passenger who isn't in a car improves the efficiency of the system even for the people still in their cars. An efficient system promotes those behaviors while still giving people the choice for personal transit (i.e. cars) so long as they pay their fair share of the costs imposed on others by their decision. In other words, tolls and congestion pricing so that there's a market in choosing efficient means of commuting.

You can't just look at a bus or train system and say it's inefficient because it's not adding new riders. If the number of riders stay the same but the result is a better commute for everyone involved, that's worthwhile.

[llachglin.livejournal.com]

Damn, I wish we had transportation agencies that were so focused on alternatives to highways that they upset the federal highway agencies. Good for Portland. Hopefully, they tell the feds to fuck off. It's worth foregoing federal aid and raising money for real transportation choices locally.

I've decided that the big problem with transportation in Washington state and Seattle in particular is lack of accountability, and the source isn't so much a cultural problem with "Seattle process" but the fact that too many government agencies have say in any project. That means everyone has power to propose changes but no one has the power to make a final decision.

Look at the viaduct project. The state highway administration (er, department of"transportation") wants to bulk up the roads that it controls. The two most expensive roads it owns are 99 and 520. The city wants a new waterfront. The Port of Seattle is concerned about freight. The voters want everything without having to pay for it, and insist upon a vote. If they don't get a vote, other anti-tax voters will pass an initiative or three in an attempt to get more without paying for it. Nobody has the power to say no to anyone else. There are no clear lines of authority. Who controls transportation in Seattle? Everyone, and no one.

Here's what we need, I think (feel free to suggest constructive criticism.)

1. In every area, one agency controls transportation.
2. In urban areas (say, counties over 200K or slightly smaller counties with at least one city of 50K people or more), there should be a single metro transit agency. For most urban counties, each agency would control transportation for that one county. Seattle/Tacoma/Everett would be controlled by a single metro transit agency. Basically, Sound Transit, with some modifications.
3. Metro agencies would be led by councils partially appointed from stakeholders (city, county, state) and partially by elections. That way, every goddamn group that tries to have a say now would have a say within the agency itself. That small group of people would raise revenue and plan, build, and maintain projects.
4. No other agencies would make transportation policy in urban areas.
5. Funding for urban projects would come entirely from within each metro area. The emphasis would be on tolls, congestion fees, vehicle sales and licensing fees, and other relevant user fees. A constitutional amendment would prohibit initiatives by the people on the details of taxation policy for transportation policies.
6. The state would use its revenue solely for rural road projects, and projects connecting metro areas. It would be explicitly charged with a mandate to rebuild a statewide rail network along existing interstate rights-of-way, with long-term planning for a high-speed network. Any state highways entirely within major metro areas would become the responsibility of the metro agencies. If you look at the map, that's most of the major state highways.
7. Each metro agency project would require an integrated roads + transit approach that is agnostic in principle but dedicated to moving as many people as fast as possible (favoring average transit speed over increased capacity). In practice, this would mean incentives for mass transit, investment in rail of all kinds, and a de-emphasis on highways.
8. Oh, and roll the Port of Seattle into Sound Transit, probably, or at least parts of it. It's notoriously badly managed, and there's zero effort so far to integrate freight and air travel with our rail systems. That integration should be part of their mandate. The Port is yet another redundant agency.

So, imagine having a single agency, accountable both to voters and to local and state officials, that raises all relevant money, makes all decisions, and has final responsibility for results. That would get things done.

By this plan, you'd have the following metro agencies:

Sound Transit Plus (all of King, Pierce, Snohomish)
Spokane Transit
Capital Transit (Olympia/Thurston County)
Clark County Transit (Vancouver, WA)
Tri-Cities Transit (Benton County)
Yakima Transit
Whatcom Transit (Bellingham)
Kitsap Transit

The state's transportation mandate would be connect these areas with integrated road/rail, and fund rural roads in all other counties.