Posts
Monona has a key advantage over most other Madison suburbs: Location, location, location. In the days of $4/gallon gas, being next door to Madison gives Monona a leg up in attracting not just the teeming hordes that labor for state government and the UW downtown, but all of the jobs throughout Madison (to name a few, the hospitals, insurance companies, banks, law firms, and food carts).
Right now, however, the city government is not leveraging that advantage with a good a transit system. The Monona Express: does a good job if you work in the immediate Capital square area or on the east end of campus and you work regular weekday hours. The Monona Lift: more or less duplicates that service throughout the day and does circulate through Monona.
Those services are limited, limited, limited. They don't take you to UW hospital, any of the major insurance companies (except WPS), to any of the hospitals, or major shopping malls. The opportunity to capitalize on a significant built-in advantage is slipping through our hands every single day. Without an adequate transit service, we are turning away folks who do not want to be forced to rely on their personal car. These are precisely the folks we should be competing for.
Fortunately, alders Speight and Miller are breathing life into the Transit Commission (Mass Transit Authority) (which I admit I failed to do). Check out this month's agenda (Mass Transit 7/22/08), and attend a meeting, or drop them an email.
Saturday, July 19, 2008
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Doug,
ReplyDeleteI agree with to some extent.
It is terribly difficult to get from here to the westside and we do have the benefit of location.
Yet, Mass Transit has been rejected by the majority of the community.
The numbers on this thing are awful.
Take the Monona Lift....I have a strong hunch that it would be cheaper and an improvement on service to give all riders a taxi ride vouchers.
heck, that might be the case with Monona Transit.
I think you miss the point. I don't think mass transit has been 'rejected' by community memebsr. It's just not a viable option for most people because of its limited routes and times. A better system could turn non-riders into riders and could help attract new people to the community.
ReplyDeleteRegarding the Monona Lift, you should take a look at an earlier post. Monona Lift can be used by ANYBODY.
It would definitely not be remotely more cost-effective to pay for individual taxi rides Individual rides would also lose the societal benefits to the rest of us from decreased pollution and fewer vehicles on the road.
I don't use Monona's transit system because although it's somewhat cheaper than parking and gas, it is not enough so that I am willing to give up the convenience of driving. As gas gets to be more like five dollars a gallon and beyond, I think demand will grow. The "pain threshhold" is getting closer! There should be a discount for frequent users. Plus, it runs only a couple of times in the morning and late in the afternoon. Sometimes I have to work a little later, and then I am stuck downtown.
ReplyDeleteI agree on all points, except that it is at the pain threshold for me and a lot of people. Of course, I am also still buying gas for my kids, too! Ouch!
ReplyDeleteIt looks like we may have hit the peak price for oil for a little while. Barrons had a story a couple weeks ago suggseting that oil could retreat to $100/barrel by year's end.
"It would definitely not be remotely more cost-effective to pay for individual taxi rides"
ReplyDeleteHave you ran the numbers?
As I recall, the facts this is not the case.
"Individual rides would also lose the societal benefits to the rest of us from decreased pollution and fewer vehicles on the road."
So, what else can Monona due to help others. My I suggest outlaw freon and other types of coolants. Their would be huge advantage for society and our planet.
I am not "against" mass transit, but the issue of expanding and improving has been around a long time and no one has been able to come up with an answer.
A
"A"? Is that short for anonymous or did you almsot sign your name?
ReplyDeleteThe negative tone of you comment leaves me scratching my head. Should we just give up and not look for new solutions?
Doug,
ReplyDeleteI too, applaud the efforts for looking for new ideas as well, but agree that currently, the pain is not high enough (or the cost of Monona's bus low enough) for me to switch.
Here are some other suggestions:
Taxi credits (up to $10-$15) with ticket book purchases (to cover emergencies)
Kohl Center/Camp Randall shuttles for games/concerts
Airport shuttles
Greater Wi-Fi coverage in the Madison area would also help.
There is a discount for frequent riders I think- a punch card that is significantly less expensive then then pay as you go thing. I think
ReplyDeleteI agree that the "pain" is being hugely felt by people, but it is apparently not enough to get us to cut back on our driving and take the bus. for most of us with middle class incomes, it is still worth the convenenience - unless, of course, the bus would become moe convenenient. right now, its limited schedule is a big problem. And I agree that our location, location, location, is something we need to focus on and transportation to downtown, the hospitals and the campus should be a big focus. Imagine if we (Monona)could advertise that anyone who works at the hospitals, downtown or the campus could be at work within 30 minutes of walking out their door? What if that service was available hourly from 6 am to 9 am, 11-1 pm, and 4pm - 11pm?
ReplyDeleteNo, I am not saying that-
ReplyDeleteThe post just makes it sound like Miller and Speight have found the holy grail or the Rosetta Stone.
Alright, I will give it a chance, but still will take a skeptical eye to whatever plan they are baking.
GO BREWERS SWEEP THE CARDS!
Wow, good comments. It's interesting to see this much interest in Transit from (apparently) non-users.
ReplyDeleteThere is a 25% reduction for buying a 20-ticket pack. Plus, you may be able to pay for the tickets with PRE-TAX dollars. State and UW emnployees can and I think others can if their employer participates. I'll see if I can find that link.
The taxi credits for emergencies is exactly what the Community Car is for - you have a sudden need to get home or to the school, you can use the Community Car. You can do that now, we just don't have one in Monona. Yet.
I agree that Speight and Miller require close watching, especially Miller...(just having a little fun there). Seriously, there are no Holy Grails out there and I was just giving them some kudos for doing a better job than I did.
Yes, but UW employees get to ride Madison Metro for FREE. How many UW employees live in or very near to Monona, purchase UW parking pass and would take our bus if Monona would join that program? That's a two part question, but, I think, not so difficult to get the answers to if the Monona Commission would work with the UW.
ReplyDeleteNone of this helps people who have to travel about town for their jobs. Which, I think, is many of us.
ReplyDeleteAlso, how do we get out to the GD new middle school to pick up our sick kid, attend a parent teacher conference, or see a sporting event? There certainly isn't any mass transit that goes out that far.
Why wasn't Monona talking about this during the school discussion?
Instead of keeping the kids in the urban area that most CGers pass through anyways to get to work, we are choosing to send them out into the bedroom suburb of Cottage Grove.
What a waste of time, fuel and energy.
I guess that won't be very attractive to young families with school age children as they shop for homes in fuel-friendly geographical areas.
The last post points to the larger issue here -- that Monona is not part of a larger, metro-area bus (transportation) system. That's not necessarily something Monona can overcome on its own, but I think small, incremental changes will be just that -- small and little-noticed -- until Madison government/civic leaders see that it might be in their best interest to convert Madison Metro into a truly metropolitan system.
ReplyDeleteIt's not a radical idea; communities all across the country do it, and have much better bus systems than Madison does. It has a (rough) parallel to a metro sewerage system -- a separate governmental entity (along the lines of a public authority), with the ability to tax and spend and provide services, with only one function: transportation in the metro area.
Look at the Twin Cities, which runs a pretty good metro bus system under such an arrangement. The bus serves needed (mainly poor) areas of the Twin Cities that must rely on public transportation. Yet it also offers speedy, reliable, and convenient commuter bus lines to get people in the suburbs/outlying areas of Mpls. and St. Paul out of their cars and into busses.
Monona in my view is ideally situated to push for such a system, because of its geographic locale. But it would also require substantial leadership by Mayor Dave C., county exec. Falk, along with key nearby communities like Monona, Middleton, and Verona. Everyone in the debate (Soglin was particularly bad on this issue) needs to become a little less parochial about this issue to make it work. But communities both much smaller and larger than the Madison metro area have done it, and provided much better cross-community public transportation.
Agreed, but Monona must also have mayoral leadership that would push for a regional transit approach. It cannot be imposed by Madison. Let's not have big expectations for Madison leadership if we cannot muster such leadership within our own community.
ReplyDeleteAgreed, but let's be realistic -- Madison is the elephant in the room when it comes to the debate over converting Madison Metro into a truly regional transportation authority. It runs the only system that could be reasonably extended into a public entity capable of providing transportation on a regional basis.
ReplyDeleteMy point about parochialism is about leadership. Monona leaders sometimes have a tendency to think the city can go it alone, and provide the necessary services that its citizens want and need. That may be the case in many instances, but public transportation really cries out for some kind of regional solution. A guessing game -- what percentage of Monona's employment base commutes to jobs outside the city limits? I'm guessing it's a pretty high percentage. But I think you can also lure some of those folks into using reliable and efficient public transportation system. Any statistics on the number of Monona users of Monona's public transportation system exclusively for commuting to jobs (as opposed to valuable services like taking senior citizens to grocery stores, something the city provides that many communities probably do not)? I'm guessing it's pretty small.
First things first. Sounds like the Monona transit committee needs to do some research and data gathering. Do we know where (and when) people work? Do we know how they get there? Do we know what they would be willing to pay in terms of time and money to consider automobile alternatives? Gasoline prices and transportation are going to become an even greater burden on our household budgets as time goes by. I'd like to see us get out ahead of the game in Monona. for once.
ReplyDeleteas for the comments about Monona/ Madison leadership and regional issues, agreed that we have a parochial attitude to overcome in Monona. We have had a city council members express the senetiment that if Madison is doing something, that's a good reason that Monona should not be doing it. Alder Wiswell actually put something in his campaign literatuare last spring that said Monona should not become another "aldermanic district of Madison!" Why say such a thing? I just think that's a terrible attitude to be expressing by one of our leaders! Why isn't our leadership expressing the desire to work with Madison while maintaining our own identity?
Speaking of Advantage-
ReplyDeleteWhat can be done about the noise from Willow Island?
I have listened to it for far too many Sat and Sun this summer.
It seems like it is happening much more this summer.
I mean, what can I do?
It would seem that noise polution is right up there with being green.
I am willing to write Robin is that the right person?
Agreed. The noise is getting to the level of a problem.
ReplyDeleteRegarding the Willow Island noise, I suggest contacting County Sup. Robin Schmidt. That's a county facility.
ReplyDeleteI agree; living a short block off the lake and up on Monona Ridge, the sound really carries to my house.
Schmidt wrote a column about it in the local bird cage liner. Here's the link to read it online: http://www.herald-independent.com/main.asp?SectionID=5&SubSectionID=127&ArticleID=219&TM=67595.34
ReplyDeleteIf Robin does not hear from people she may assume that Jim Guilfoil is the only person the noise bothers. I like Jim, but hearing from some fresh voices helps.
ReplyDeleteIf you think the Herald is bird-cage liner now, you should have read back in the 80's. I think they do a pretty decent job.