The current seperation of the U of M Bus System and Ann Arbor Transit 
Authority bus system operating independantly of each other is absurd.
If students got a bus pass that is good throughout the "greater" Ann Arbor
-Ypsilanti area, they wouldn't need a car to get to Briarwood or live in an
apartment that is farther than an easy walk to campus.  If there were one
united system, buses would be used more efficiently, with fewer empty seats.
Even more importantly, these poor suburban kids who make up most of the 
student population would experience an automobile-less lifestyle and may 
loose some of their bias against public transportation, as something "only
the poor use."  Wouldn't that be an education.

21 responses total.

It's a good idea in principle, but I suspect the reason they are separate
is that the AATA costs too much, and the U figures it could provide
the on-campus service for less than the AATA.  People will lose
their bias against public tansportation when it's either more convenient
or less expensive than private transportation.

   I like the idea too.  Therefore it won't be done.  The UofM seems
to have the NIH syndrome a lot of the time; they create their own world
even when a more connected one might be better.

I live in a town where that was done a few years ago (Kent, Ohio/Kent State)
It works well around campus, but away from campus by more than a few blocks
you
either have to have an "extended-user" endorsement sticker ($45/yr) or
you have to cough up the required $1.20 to climb aboard.  It wasn't always
like that, but I understand that the locals freaked out when we students
started climbing aboard and just flashing our student ID's when they had to
dig pocket.  They had this problem comprehending the concept of a big student
fee that covered all these things......
So what we ended up with is essentially one bus system with two parts.  One
you can ride close to campus on aa student ID, the other costs. Either by
the year, or by the ride.

There is a little bit of this being tried right now.  U of M Hospital
employees are being given, free of charge, passes to ride the AATA
to and from work.  The University is picking up the tab.  The trial
will be up this August and I sure hope it's continued.

AAPS does that too, but it's not very useful.  The passes are only avaiable
to people who live more than 1.5 miles away from school and have classes that
get out after three.  And the passes are usable only for a very narrow time
window in the afternoons on school days.  It was much more practical a few
years ago when they were usable for a long period of time and available to 
everybody.  Even if I met the distance requirement (which is done "as the
crow flies"), the narrow time window would make it pretty useless.

To say that the cost to use the AATA is high ignores the real costs of 
owning and operating a car.  Sure, gas is cheap right now, and if you buy it
at Meijers or Speedway and run a tiny (even more unsafe than other cars) car,
your most visible costs are small, especially on a short trip (these trips 
are even cheaper on a bicycle).  Throw in oil and maintainance and repairs,
and it looks like a different story.  If transit serves your needs well 
enough that you can go from a two-car family to a one-car economic unit, the
savings are phenominal: the time element of depreciation, insurance, and 
financing.  If you tend to buy cars new the costs are astronomical.[D[D
As for convenience, alot of places are hard to get to via transit in Ypsi-Arbor
, but alot of the equation is attitude, the hurry hurry, instant gratification
of contemporary American society.  If you carry a book, you can make good use
of your time on the bus.  The "inconvenience" shrinks if you're willing to
walk a mile to stretch the areas served by buses.  Americans, and especially,
it's a fact, Michiganians especially, are overweight in excessive numbers of
people and lbs. over, because they never walk anywhere.  The ads for "health
clubs" kill me, because idiots are paying good $$ to do boring, repetitive
exercises while they take the elevator to go up one flight of stairs or drive
two blocks to the store or move to some extra-urban location to "get back to
nature" (buy a riding mower and never go anywhere w/o a ton-and-a-half of
steel).  The other element in "inconvenience" is waiting for the bus or 
transferring b. buses.  These can be peaceful times of contemplation and 
discovery, say of a used bookstore or coffee shop around the corner from the
bus stop.  Or a friendly chat w. a neighbor or a stranger or a strange little
old lady.  Finally, bus service only gets better with increased ridership.
The more people that ride, the more frequent the buses and the more extensive
the network of bus lines, even w. the possibility of enough traffic to 
   [A  to support express buses.  If you want to make the world better, you've
got to *take steps*.  I've said this elsewhere in the enviro conference, but
I'm not too proud to repeat myself:  Imported oil is 40% of our trade balance
of payments deficit.  Til this goes down we are not going to balance our 
governmental deficits or our personal finances.  In a related economic reality,
the US & Europe no longer enjoy the monopoly in manufacturing or engineering
we had 30 or 40 years ago.  We cannot expect a continuous font of high
paying jobs for the unskilled or the liberal arts major, or even for alot of
people with technical skills.  Clinton is shovelling plenty b.s. when he talks
of creating high paying jobs, and massive training programs.  Training for
what, musical chairs for a limited number of jobs?  To be competative in the
world economy, we have to lower the cost of living.  The biggest bloats in
everyone's budget is car-based transportation and big, energy inefficient 
detatched house.  
End of sermon.

My neighbor had a fire in their house.  I'm glad I live in detached housing.
We have an elderly friend how lives in an expensive condo.  We went to visit
her one evening and had a coversation over Pink Floyd being played next door.

Responding to #7- nEIGHTnxt: If you're so paranoid as to worry about a long
odds occurance as an apartment fire, check on any apartment for fire walls 
between units.  Fire walls aren't that expensive to include in construction,
but builders and landlords don't care about a building they're not going to 
live in.  They should be required by building codes, as they have been in
Chicago since the Great Fire, which, by the way spread between detatched 
houses.  As for noisy neighbors, a fire wall would probably stop that noise as
well.  Most people in most industrialized countries (in the cities) live in 
apartments.  The slob in the condo your friend got ripped off for (the 
construction obviously wasn't expensive, just the price) is just another 
American cowboy with no consideration.  I've lived in at least a dozen apart-
ments and never had a problem with noise.  Of course, most of these were in
Chi-town.

#0, I think that the students who can afford a car can afford
the bus to Briarwood, where they probably go to the movies 
after the bus runs, and those students would not be more
likely to use the bus service if it was free to such places.

I think the crux of the matter is that AA, and most cities
these days, are not set up for mass transit.  In the past, all the
shopping and a lot of the work was downtown, and mass transit
did a good job of taking people downtown and back.

Now, however, the major shopping venues are malls distributed around
a metropolitan area.  Masstransit cannot handle this situation well.

I think rather than try to get the AATA and UM bus system to merge,
you should strike closer to the root of the problem.  And the problem
is the way we plan our cities.

Good point, danr. Since malls have largely replaced "downtown" as 
points of aggregation, perhaps each mall should have a bus system
that readiates out from it as a center. 

It would also help if there were busses going in circles around the permiiter,
rather than all going to the same place downtown.  Now, if I am in one place
at the edge of town, and want to get somewhere else fairly far away but on
the same side of town, the only to do it with the AATA is to go all the
way downtown and then back out.

I really don't think fire walls will do much to prevent fires spreading
in a condo unit.  Metal studs, block walls, drywall and fire retaddent
roofs will.  Did anyone see the condo unit ablaze off 14 towards Livonia
this winter?  Yes, perhaps there need to be more codes in effect for such
construction, however will the price be afordable enough?  Given the much
and cheap much of the construction is today and the prices developers are
getting, I wonder how many could afford fireproof, well insulated, designed
to last construction?  I also know that single family dwellings can be built
much more efficently then they are today.  I have been looking at new con-
struction for almost 10 years now.  Big is better.  Cheap, poorly built
BIG houses fetch more $$ and sell better than a small well built house for
the same price.  Most 2400 sq. ft. houses have the same living space as
1500 sq. ft. houses built in the 50's.

The cruxt of the problem is social expectations.  Most of us were raised
to expect to own a car and to use it every time we go beyond the front
door.  Kids are driven to and from school so they don't have to trudge
through snow or rain, risk being picked off by a kidnaper and to prove
to your neighbor that you are good to your kids too.  Most people wouldn't
think of riding a bicycle 4 miles to work, especially if it gets below
40 outside.  I know of a Swiss high school exchange student who spent
a school year here.  She would walk about 2 miles to and from school
every day.  As soon as the schools caught wind of this, she was informed
that she had to take the bus!  Why?  Liability.  They were afraid she might
get hit crossing Plymouth!  No wonder Americans have a world-wide reputation
for being over weigh.

I've been biking to school pretty much all winter, even when it was down
below 0, and my school adminstrators seemed prety impressed.  NObody ever
told me I had to take the bus, or anything like that.

That's good to hear.  I too have been commuting to and from work for the
last 4 years, no matter what the weather.  Salt sure can turn a $500 bike
into trash fast!

From what I understand, the most important thing to do if you ride in the
winter, is to wash and repack your bearings, though I know not how 
frequently.  I certainly would immediately if I had ridden through a salty
puddle.

Repacking the bearings (as well as replacing the chain and all the cables
and doing verious other things) can generally wait until the end of the
winter, assuming the bike starts the winter in pretty good shape and
assuming the chain is kept lubricated.  Repacking all the bearings every
time I rode through a salty puddle would leave me with absolutely no time
to do anything else, as it is a rather long and drawn out process and
there are *a lot* of salty puddles out there in the winter.

Most bicycles today have "sealed" bearings so they require less
maintenance.  They aren't completely sealed so they do require some
maintenance, but certainly a lot less than bearings of 10-15 years ago.

Bearings are no problem.  I use grease designed for the lower ends
of outboard motors.  Great stuff!  Repacking once every two years
is good enough.  No rust and the grease is still in pretty good shape.

The drive train is what suffers!  Salt gets into all the pivoting parts
of the derailleurs and freezes them up.  I put a drop or two of oil on
all pivot points evry two or three days, including brakes.  My chain
(Sedis (sp?)) was new in the fall.  By spring a dozzen or more of the
rollers had fallen off with another dozen cracked and ready to go.  It
gets oiled before every ride.  The 17 tooth cassette cog had also lost
6 of its teeth.

My commuter has full fenders and I'd off most of the drive train if I
didn't have so many hills to climb between Miller/Newport and Industrial/
Eisenhower.  A Stermy Archer 3-speed hub would simplify things a lot!
I may lace one up for next winter and give it a try.

re 18:
        Well, if I could afford a new bike... (I've given up on new bikes
now, since I've discovered that I can get stuff that's almost as good for
a lot less if I get it used).

re 19:
        I've never had salt do that much to a drivetrain, althought I've
gotten stuff pretty rusty.  I was using a fixed gear this winter, unlike
the bike I'd bee using previous winters with both front an d rear
deraleurs, and had no problems with its drivetrian.  Fixed gears may be
the way to go in the winter.  It made the bike a lot easier to control in
snow, also.

Yea, I've used fixed gears in the past with good luck but my current
route is quite hilly and I want to be spinning when the temp. drops.
My knees have seen better days and I would like them last as long as
I do.

Nothing wrong with used bikes!  I have two that I've had for 20+ years.
Bought both for wholesale when I worked in bike shops.  I'm always looking
for quality used stuff to keep the commuuter on the road.

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