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  • rajbot 8:57 pm on March 20, 2007 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , transportation   

    Making MUNI Suck Less 

    I’ve been spending many hours criss-crossing the city on public transit lately, and I’ve decided I don’t like those MUNI buses shrinkwrapped in gigantic ad banners. They’re like billboards on wheels, except even larger, and somehow even more lame.

    We’re doomed to live with both billboard and advertising-wrapped buses, right? Well, maybe not.

    What if San Francisco banned billboards, like some other communities do? The cost of putting giant ads on the side of a bus would go up, and MUNI would get more money, and maybe they would use the extra money to make their service suck less. And we would have no billboards, expect the ones on wheels. What do you think?

    Note that in real life, I don’t think banning stuff is a good idea, even if the stuff is lame, like billboards. I also don’t think MUNI would actually use the extra money to help me get around the city any faster.

     

    • dodger 9:37 pm on April 7, 2007 Permalink | Reply

      Billboards are illegal in Alaska, a decision made in the 50′s, and no one up there seems to miss them!

      While marketing informs us about what’s available in the marketplace, advertising is the attempt to try to get us to buy it. Billboards and advertising on public spaces (and if we can see them, aren’t they all public in a way?) probably doesn’t make our life any better.

      So, I’m an anarchist, but I don’t think advertising on public property (like buses) help us out any.

  • rajbot 4:51 pm on February 20, 2007 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , transportation   

    The Camel Bookmobile in Kenya is the best thing I’ve seen all day! Check out the pictures, video, donation info, and amazon wishlist. They need donations of books in English and Swahili. You can ship eleven pounds of your old books to them for $11.55. (via boingboing)

     

  • rajbot 2:02 pm on February 4, 2007 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , transportation,   

    Funeral for La Contessa 

    La Contessa was destroyed by arson in December. Here are some videos of her wake I shot on a tiny digicam.

    She was a great ship, and shall be missed!

     

    • may 1:33 pm on February 5, 2007 Permalink | Reply

      darn, i’m bummed i missed this!

  • peliom 12:36 am on January 21, 2007 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , transportation,   

    Ride the Thunderbird!!! 

    Service started last Saturday on the officially named Muni Thunderbird, also sometimes referred to informally as the T – Third. From January to April the Thunderbird will run free service, weekends only, starting at 10am. April 7 full service will begin.

    I gave it a shot today and it was great. The ‘bird is right in front of my building. I took along my camera and did some timelapse sequences. This first one is shot vertically and ends up looking pretty dumb on YouTube since they apparently don’t know how to deal with 320×480 video.

    I did about five sequences today of various durations. My favorite is a five second loop of 280 in the early evening. Once again this is pretty boring on YouTube since they don’t loop the clip.

    Link to tbird sunset, vertical (h264, YouTube)
    Link to 280 overpass (h264, YouTube)

     

    • rajbot 12:53 pm on January 21, 2007 Permalink | Reply

      Wow!!! These are both great! A couple suggestions:

      1) We have a timelapse tag!
      2) Can you upload these to archive.org?

      Jess thinks they are cool too :)

    • mangtronix 11:12 pm on January 31, 2007 Permalink | Reply

      I tried letterboxing a 480×640 for youtube and it turned out okay I guess (my first youtube video, evar). See http://www.michaelang.com/a/121/silence-at-gigantic-art-space.html

      That’s also the first video from my new G7. Woot! I made an xvid for my site but I’d rather do QT. Looking for an avi->mov commandline converter for Windows.

  • rajbot 11:27 pm on December 7, 2006 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: transportation   

    La Contessa burned :( 

    Apparently it was arson…

     

  • peliom 1:25 am on November 27, 2006 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , transportation   

    Canyoneering is …. 

    Waking up early ….



    Finding your way ….







    Sliding down scree slopes ….



    Rappelling dry (and wet) falls ….







    Getting creative ….





    Locking off mid-rappel and ….





    …. taking a picture of yourself ….



    …. and your lifeline overhead






    “Ghosting”




    Traversing green and yellow leaves ….





    Link to Hastings Canyon Slide Show
    Link to Supercloud Canyon Slide Show

     

    • rajbot 3:23 pm on November 27, 2006 Permalink | Reply

      This is why we need a HArdK0r3 tag! Awesome pics :)

  • peliom 1:32 pm on November 13, 2006 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , transportation   

    Soon: Take the T-Third to My Place!! 


    Isn’t it funny how sometimes people have strangely work-appropriate names? This is from a newsletter by Laura Locker of the UCSF gym. I think it’s a fake name but it’s still funny.

    Here’s the latest scoop from MUNI regarding the Third Street Light Rail which will serve the Mission Bay campus. Phase I (introductory service) begins January 12, 2007 with daytime weekend service only (probably 9 am-6 pm) and will run from the Sunnydale Station to the Castro Station. No fares will be collected, and there will be no changes to the surface bus (15-Third).

    Phase II (full service) begins April 7, 2007. Service will be 7 days a week, 20 hours a day. Regular fares will be collected and changes to various bus lines will take place at that time, including the discontinuance of the 15-Third bus line, and changes to the 9X San Bruno line to fill in for the 15-Third at the north and south ends of the line.

    I also found this in the Third Street Light Rail FAQ on the MUNI website.

    What service will be provided on the Third Street Corridor?
    The K-Ingleside Line will be extended out the Embarcadero and south along Third Street and Bayshore Boulevard to Sunnydale Avenue. Along Third Street and Bayshore Boulevard it will be called the T-Third. The N-Judah will continue to serve the 4th Street CalTrain Station, as is the case today. In the future, development in the Mission Bay area will require the extension of the N-Judah down Third Street to a loop at 18th Street, to provide additional service in that area. Additional light rail vehicles are being acquired by Muni to serve the new corridor.

    Sweetness! This means at some unspecified but nevertheless exciting date, I will be able to walk outside, hop on the train, and get off right in front of Burger Meister at Carl and Cole.

    Update! A Declaration …. the official TikiRobot! name for this rail line is “the Thunderbird” ;-)

     

  • rajbot 9:31 pm on November 10, 2006 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: transportation   

    Kickflip! 

    I found this at TheFunniest.info, which is a xkcd project.

     

  • peliom 2:25 pm on October 9, 2006 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , transportation   

    It’s Not Every Day You See an Aircraft Carrier in Your Front Yard 

    Carrier-1

    I can’t make out the name of the ship …. I expect our guest is visiting for Fleet Week

     

    • may 6:27 pm on October 9, 2006 Permalink | Reply

      I always have mixed feelings about the Blue Angels and big aircraft carriers. On the one hand, they are weapons of mass destruction. On the other hand, they go zoom zoooom Zzzzzzoooooooooommmmmmmmm!! (okay, maybe not the aircraft carrier)

    • peliom 7:05 pm on October 9, 2006 Permalink | Reply

      I think there are two things missing from the Blue Angels demonstration:

      • First of all, break the sound barrier! I mean once a year, a sonic boom. OK twice a year, saturday and sunday. But that would be so cool!
      • I want to see some of these “smart” bombs I keep hearing about. I mean, have you ever *seen* a smart bomb? I want to see the flight commander drop a laser-sighted 500lb device onto an old barge or something.

      By the way, for anyone unfortunate enough to be reading this, the Blue Angels website has lots of interesting information, especially the FAQ.

      http://www.blueangels.navy.mil/index.htm

  • peliom 1:30 pm on September 21, 2006 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , transportation   

    More Parking 

    May beat me to the post! Here are some photos of the PARK(ing) spots that I rolled by this morning on my bike



    Link to “parking” on Flickr
    Link to Rebar

     

    • may 1:25 pm on September 22, 2006 Permalink | Reply

      thanks for posting these! I wish I’d gotten home early enough so I could have seen them myself.

  • may 7:42 am on September 21, 2006 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , transportation,   

    PARK(ing) Day 

    sf_parking_5.jpg
    Today is Park(ing) Day here in SF – a day to temporarily transform a metered parking spot into a PARK.…at least until the meter runs out! Here’s an email Arena sent about it

    Today I will be volunteering to help deploy the “Temporally Displaced Open Space” in the downtown area of San Francisco — part of PARK(ing) Day. Or, to put it more succinctly, I’ll be hauling dirt with my bicycle trailer.

    If you get time today (Thursday), check out some of the installations all around downtown (one near Axis Cafe in front of CCA(c) and one in front of Ritual Roasters on Valencia). This is a one day art installation to visualize the potential of parking spaces as green spaces.

    Consult the map:

    http://communitywalk.com/map/19478

    or the website:

    http://rebargroup.org/projects/parkingday/index.html

    and please pass those links on to anybody that you think would be interested …or make a PARK(ing) space of your own, it’s an open-source project.

     

    • Travis 6:28 pm on September 21, 2006 Permalink | Reply

      This is so awesome! I’m so doing it one day! Where are the animals in the park? I would bring some dogs and a few ducks…

  • peliom 3:57 pm on September 5, 2006 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , transportation   

    Kings Canyon 1, Team Fakin’ It 0.5 

    We made it through to the end (like we had a choice?), but got back after dark, super tired…. We lost two out of four cameras. Not pictured here:

    • 120 foot rappel *inside* this waterfall
    • Random 15-30 foot jumps into cold Kings River H2O
    • Scrambling up, over, around and through boulders the size of a nice apartment
    • Swimming through huge pools of gorgeous blue water
    • Final 20 foot hand-over-hand rappel into the Power Station’s backyard
    • Walking through the glow of sodium vapor lamps past massive, buzzing power transformers.

    Link to DMM Truscrew Screwgate Carabiner on REI.com

     

    • rajbot 11:23 pm on September 5, 2006 Permalink | Reply

      Hardk0re dude.. You guys rappelled down a waterfall?? Wow. How many jumps were there?

    • may 11:01 am on September 6, 2006 Permalink | Reply

      yay! swimming! but where’s the picture of you in a wetsuit???? we want to see jesse in neoprene! :-)

    • Travis 3:11 pm on September 15, 2006 Permalink | Reply

      lol I love those sweet pics! Next time store me in the trunk and i’ll go with ya! hahaha
      I think i would be a jumper!?

  • may 9:47 pm on August 28, 2006 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , transportation   

    WiFi on Bay Area Buses 

    Bay Area AC Transit buses will start testing free wifi on a fleet of 79 buses and are hoping to fully rollout the service in mid-fall according to this Engadget post. Although I’m pretty psyched about wifi on Caltrain, I’m a little skeptical about this one since most buses aren’t set up for someone to comfortably do work on a laptop. but who knows…maybe it’ll work.

     

  • rajbot 12:32 am on August 27, 2006 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: transportation,   

    Muni Link-o-Rama 

     

    • may 11:41 am on August 27, 2006 Permalink | Reply

      hmm. I’m not so sure about “free rein at City Hall” but hooray for the bicycle coalition!!

      i wonder if it’s possible to make Muni private and free? or at least, not expensive. i guess that would be the *most* far-fetched.

    • rajbot 12:39 pm on August 27, 2006 Permalink | Reply

      I guess since only 1/4 of the MUNI budget comes from fares, it isn’t as far-feteched as it might seem.

      There is free shuttle that runs from downtown to the Presidio. I’ve taken it once and it wasn’t overrun by sleepy homeless people, which seems to be peoples’ biggest fear.

      My solution to increase ridership would be to double the frequency of the buses.The extra buses would be air-conditioned, clean, have limited stops, a coffee bar in the back, and cost $3/ride.

      With daily ridership up 15% during the Bay Area’s recent free transit experiment, some officials are calling for the policy to be made permanent.

      Wikipedia link to free public transit systems

    • may 5:31 pm on August 28, 2006 Permalink | Reply

      $3/per ride! that’s almost as much as caltrain! how about more buses and $1/ride? (or a free ride!) The revenue for the extra buses and reduced fare could come from location based marketing – while you’re on the bus, a video screen could describe some of the commercial establisments you’re passing en route to your destination…restaurants, shops, local businesses etc. (as a bonus, you’d be given the option to text in a special code for a discount at any of these places).

      This might drive me crazy on a daily commute ride…but if it were only once in a while, it might be useful. I’d be sure to take the bus that passes by Tartines to get a discount on their chocolate croissants :-)

    • rajbot 1:57 am on August 29, 2006 Permalink | Reply

      The buses in LA, in addition to being cleaner than ours and air-conditioned, have TVs with local ads and ridiculous public service announcements.

      I can’t believe that LA, a city which seems to fiercely hate non-drivers, has such a nice bus system.

  • rajbot 10:38 pm on August 26, 2006 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: transportation   

    The Neverwas Haul 

    Here is a video of the first test drive of the Neverwas Haul, a three-story, steam-powered Victorian mansion on wheels. Check out these photos, and look for it on the playa!

     

  • may 12:01 am on August 8, 2006 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , transportation   

    CalTrain goes WiFi! 

    not yet, but very likely in two months according to this article!! They tried it out last week and apparently it went well. “The train reached 79 mph while testers…watched streaming video, composed e-mail and completed a large file download at broadband speeds.” Caltrain says it won’t charge extra for the service. Now if only they’d add extra bike cars so we’d all fit on the express train in the morning, it would be perfect!!

     

    • rajbot 12:35 am on August 9, 2006 Permalink | Reply

      Coool.. The SF-to-southbay commute has gotten much better over the years, particularly due to the bullet trains and especially DrinkTrain. But it’s very hard for me to justify the three-hour-a-day bike/train/shuttle commute, even with a dump truck full of money..

      maybe they need bigger trucks

    • rajbot 1:01 am on August 9, 2006 Permalink | Reply

      Caltrain hates bikes. I would ride the last morning bullet*, and they would always refuse to let cyclists at 22nd St get on, because their bike car was too full. They only let 16 bikes on the entire train, and the last morning bullet was only 10% full! There was *so* much room on that train, but they would be so hard-headed about the ‘too-many-bikes’ problem. wtf?

    • may 7:13 am on August 9, 2006 Permalink | Reply

      Yeah that’s the one I take and I ride my bike all the way to the 4th and Townsend station just to make sure I can get on. Even still, they’ve turned me away at least 5 times!

      Lately, I haven’t been minding the longer train ride though because it gives me a chance to get some reading done. Usually, I’m too distracted at home by the internet to read.

      uh-oh…I’m probably never going to read another book again once they get the wifi working.

    • rajbot 12:25 am on August 10, 2006 Permalink | Reply

      There is so much room at 22nd St.. I wish they would put in some bike lockers.

      I was going to make and install some myself, but then I stopped caring..

    • may 8:07 am on August 10, 2006 Permalink | Reply

      bike lockers would be really cool! I think someone told me there are bike lockers at the 4th & King station but I’ve never seen them. i should check.

      i think they just need to get more bike cars in general because there will be even more people on the train once they get the wifi working! plus it always seems like there’s sooooo much room in the regular cars.

      oh and thanks for the pointer to DrinkTrain!! i’d no idea! i once got on an earlier train than the one i usually take on friday night and everyone in the bike car had a drink except for me. i was confused.

    • rajbot 9:18 am on August 10, 2006 Permalink | Reply

      Well, if it was in the bike car, it wasn’t drinktrain, it was PartyCar!. Deep helps organize PartyCar i think..

  • rajbot 12:20 am on August 7, 2006 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , transportation   

    How Fast is Public Transit in San Francisco? 

    According to this SPUR report, the 38 Geary travels an average of 5.3mph through downtown during peak times. Ouch!

    I take the 24-Divisadero a lot since it runs by my house, so I decided to calculate its average speed. I used the awesome Gmaps Pedometer and to calculate route length: the 24-Divis travels 6.7 miles from Bayview to Pac Heights. The bus that leaves 3rd and Palou at 12:02 arrives at Jackson and Webster 12:49, which means the 24-Divis goes 8.5mph. Well, it’s faster than walking!

    Somewhat related to Gmaps Pedometer, bikely is a site that uses Gmaps for sharing cool bike routes. There aren’t a lot of SF routes posted there. Someone should post the butter lap!

     

    • may 10:25 am on August 7, 2006 Permalink | Reply

      neat! I’ll add some of my routes to Bikely :-) also, Arena has been working on a similar app that’s pretty nice called Velo Map. I think it should be out soon.

    • mangtronix 11:36 am on August 7, 2006 Permalink | Reply

      Yeah, most of the bus lines are insanely slow. I took the bus for a good many months and I would reluctantly have to say it’s one of those things that starts to grind away at the soul.

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