Utilizing train cars and locomotives for message marketing

Is something done by Metrolink, Coaster, and Amtrak California also.

Some Amtrak California locomotives have messages about not trying to cross tracks when the train is coming.

Flickr photo by SP8254.

This Coaster train car promotes the San Diego County Fair with a full-car wrap.

Los Angeles County Fair wrap on a Metrolink train car.

Even more about "choices"

Expanding choices to include better choice possibilities isn't enough to be satisfied with when dealing with policy, including land use and transportation planning, because people have all  sorts of choices available to them.


- Right choices
- Wrong choices
- Hard choices
- Easy choices
- Better choices
- Worse choices
- Optimal choices
- Suboptimal choices

I read an interview with Jane Jacobs and she responded to someone who asked her "why there weren't enough roads (for cars)?"

She responded: "You're asking the wrong question.  The right question is why are there so many cars?"

Similarly, the issue isn't expanding choice so much as it is, why aren't people making better choices?

Having choice isn't enough.  It's making the right choices.

And I am sure we all have examples in our personal life of not making the right choices or choosing the easy choice when it isn't the best choice, but it is easier.

I know I do.

Do individual actions matter?

One of the discussions in community organization and participatory democracy is do individual actions matter?

-- 'How Bad For The Environment Can Throwing Away One Plastic Bottle Be?' 30 Million People Wonder, from The Onion
-- Going Green but Getting Nowhere, from the New York Times

E.g., does my recycling really make a difference? Or does bringing my own bag to the grocery store make a difference (in a place where there isn't a bag tax)? Or picking up litter, since more people just throw more stuff the next day ("One piece of trash theory;" Don't Mess With Texas Research Results).

Does using public transit make a difference (umm, yes)?

Or getting an electric car over an internal combustion engine (in early stage of the technology, probably not, between the extra energy expended to create the car + greenhouse gas effects, maybe it will be better in late stages, + the induced driving effect--people believe that their driving of an electric car is less harmful, so they drive more,). Etc.

I know that I notice programs like the Certified Wildlife Habitat from the National Wildlife Federation. Communities in Maryland use it to be certified at the community and individual household level. Certified households get a yard sign, which is how I learned about it in the first place.

There is a "River Star Homes" project in the Elizabeth River Watershed in Virginia. Certified households get a yard flag.

I think these programs are important. Maybe feeling better about yourself because you buy an electric car isn't as good.

Although the overall impact is an issue. How much impact do you have? My street is cleaner because I pick up litter. But, seeing my examples, the households on the street that generate the most litter haven't changed their behavior. Or, Suzanne confronted someone who doesn't pick up after their dog. They just changed their route to avoid our block, and so now some other household gets to pick up after them, not just us...

New years post #4: How to Keep Resolutions and change behavior

The Wall Street Journal has an article on keeping New Years resolutions, "How to Keep a Resolution: Forget Willpower, Reaching a Goal Means Retraining Brain to Form New Habits."

I particularly like the graphic, which outlines the steps/plan for changing your behavior. From the article:

As the peak season for making New Year's resolutions draws near, most people, behavioral experts say, approach the process exactly wrong: They rely on willpower.

Willpower springs from a part of the brain, in the prefrontal cortex, that is easily overloaded and exhausted. What works far better, researchers say, is training other parts of the brain responsible for linking positive emotions to new habits and conditioning yourself to new behaviors. ...

Keeping a resolution requires a detailed plan, with emotional rewards when milestones are reached—and even a strategy when there's a setback. And don't wait for Jan. 1, experts say: Start planning now to increase your chances for success.

"Keeping a resolution isn't a 100-yard dash. It's a marathon," says John Norcross, a psychology professor at the University of Scranton in Pennsylvania.

Another article from the Wall Street Journal, "The Power of a Gentle Nudge: Phone Calls, Even Voice Recordings, Can Get People to Go to the Gym" reports on research that found that after 8 weeks of regular exercise, people were able to routinize new, more positive habits. The study specifically focused on providing support to people during the period, in order to help them make permanent changes. Support for behavioral change was crucial, but it could be as simple as phone call reminders.

This research (along with the work of the authors of the book Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness) was very influential on my thinking about what in bicycle and pedestrian planning is termed "encouragement," but which I think about in terms of the kinds of programming, support, guidance, and assistance that is provided to people to help them make the change to more sustainable forms of transportation. (It's outlined in the first 11 pages of this section of the Western Baltimore County Pedestrian and Bicycle Access Plan.)

We say that with regard to biking and walking, half of a household's daily trips are 3 miles or less, and many of these trips can be performed on a bike or on foot. When people complain that no one will walk or bike, that they only will drive, I think about it in terms of the plan in the diagram above:

1. Make a plan in advance.
2. Practice in advance exercising sel-control in other areas of life.
3. Think in advance about what might cause setbacks and slips and plan to avoid those things.
4. Plan rewards for yourself when you do new habits.
5. Practice focusing on your new habit instead of the old one.
6. Expect setbacks and slips.
7. Make a plan for bouncing back from setbacks and slips.
8. Plan punishments to help you get started, such as denying yourself TV.
9. Reduce other life stress if possible.
10. Use positive reinforcement 80% of the time, negative reinforcement 20%.

In 2007/2008, the Baltimore Metropolitan Council conducted a regional Household Travel Survey. Consistent with national data, more than 85 percent of all trips in the Baltimore region are made by automobile. Yet, based on the median trip distance recorded for a variety of types of trips, a great number of automobile-based trips could be shifted to walking and bicycling. (I know I need to look at the data for the DC region, but hey, I was working on a bicycle and pedestrian plan for Baltimore County.)


You can see, if the infrastructure and programming is in place, that significant numbers of trips can be shifted from the automobile to bicycle especially.

Driving and parking

On the way to the Bike to Work event at Freedom Plaza, I was thinking of a bunch of stuff around the idea of "epidemics."

I don't know if I am a fan of the idea that behavior to be addressed is best thought of in terms of public health, but it's still a useful way to go about things.

-- "Blocking the Transmission of Violence," from the New York Times magazine about reducing retaliatory violence-murders in Chicago;
-- Juneau, Alaska has cut electricity use in a matter of weeks by 30% due to massive price increases, see "A City Cooler and Dimmer, and, Oh, Proving a Point," from the New York Times
-- transit use is up and driving down, due to gasoline price increase
-- there is the discussion of obesity as an epidemic, because people tend to weigh comparable to their friends--if your friends weigh more, you do too... (NEJM -- The Spread of Obesity in a Large Social Network over 32 Years)
-- research on induced driving finds that from 15% to 25% of trips can be eliminated when the "cost of driving" due to reduction in capacity for whatever reason rises significantly.

So while riding I was thinking that a lot of this has to do with familiarity and comfortability and what is called reference group thinking. We tend to associate with people like us. We live in places where people are similar, etc.

More bicyclists, more walkers, more transit users, more people familiar with and comfortable riding buses will yield better transportation and mobility behaviors.

I was thinking about this too because of the Klingle Road controversy.

Rock Creek Park is supposed to be a park, but it's really a parkway, a highway amidst green stuff. Clearly, the community has managed to survive the closing of Klingle Road--it's been 16+ years that it has been closed, and it parallels Porter Street, which provides the road capacity needed by drivers.

But people want more road. And not for mobility purposes for non-cars, but for cars.

Given the extant capacity and demand is being met by the present road network, that Rock Creek Park is supposed to be a park, it's time to nibble back the epidemic of road use by automobile drivers...

Also, there is a new book by Tim Falconer, called Drive. A short piece from it was excerpted in the Toronto Star, featuring UCLA professor Donald Shoup, and his experience with promoting market-based parking solutions for Old Town Pasadena. Shoup attributes the revitalization success there to addressing parking issues not from the standpoint of building more parking, but for addressing the issue in meaningful ways. See "How the politics of parking can defile a city." From the article:

ONE OF HIS IDEAS was instrumental in that transformation. The city faced a common problem: Parking was free, but the few merchants who were still in business complained that it was inadequate. The people who worked in the stores took most of the spots, leaving customers to drive around searching for one – or just staying away. Meanwhile, the city had a vision of a revitalized downtown but no money to repair sidewalks, plant trees, increase security or take any of the other steps necessary to attract people.

Shoup recommended charging enough for parking to maintain an 85 per cent occupancy rate and using the money shoppers dropped in the meters to improve the neighbourhood. The revenue couldn't go into the city's general coffers; it had to be spent on the streets.

Once that happened, the business community started to invest, too – even sandblasting and renovating derelict buildings – and soon the shop owners, who had initially opposed meters, wanted to charge for parking until midnight. They wanted the money for the improvements, but they also discovered that their fears about scaring away customers were unfounded – anyone who really wanted to shop or eat in the area was willing to invest a few quarters.

As the area became more popular, the meters raised more money for more improvements, which increased the popularity. And so on. The city now collects one million dollars a year to pay for upkeep that includes sweeping the sidewalks nightly and steam-cleaning them twice a month.