Well, the NCTD (North County Transit District - San Diego / North County) Sprinter launched service today. For those of you not aware, this is the new light rail train running from Escondido to Oceanside in San Diego, California’s North County region. It’s a boondoggle plain and simple and is a terrible waste of tax payer dollars. It only has a “…27% fare box recovery system wide…” (that means it’s subsidized at 73%! - even though they say “that’s pretty average for a transit system”. sheesh) As anticipated, it’s absolutely useless to me, the working commuter looking to take advantage of light rail to get to and from work. Here’s a little insight as to why. For me, time is most important, then cost. Since the cost of a coaster pass after work subsidies, discounts, and pre-tax money is ~equal to the cost of gas/maint on my car, it really just boils down to time for me.
Bottom line, the Sprinter->Coaster route costs me $1 more/month, I’d lose my freedom while I’m at work to go out to lunch or whatever, and my commute would double from an average of 2 hrs by car to an average of 4 hrs by rail. For that, I get about 60 minutes of time on the train to read or whatever each way and A LOT less time with my 3 young boys due to the extra 2 hours of commute time every day. The project is tens of millions over budget, years late, and you guessed it, way more than $1 short.
I’ve built a spreadsheet of what my schedule would look like (as of 3/9/08) which you can access by clicking the thumbnail at the bottom of the page and which should apply to anyone looking for a similar commute from San Marcos to Sorrento Valley…but first, a few notes:
The Coaster Connection (Route 972), even though it stops right outside my office, has limited hours… so for the two options that require me to walk, I’ve calculated 2.3 miles (via Google Maps) and a 20 min mile (note likely for me - but again, I’m giving them the benefit of the doubt) for a total of 46 minutes to walk to/from the station if I miss the shuttle.
It takes me 10 minutes to get from my house in North San Marcos (near Richland Elementary) to the Civic Center Sprinter Station, park my car, and get to the platform (if I really rush!)
Make sure you note the wonderful layovers I have sitting in the Oceanside Transit Station
A Monthly Coaster Pass - to best price option for my rail commute is a 3 zone monthly Coaster Pass at $142/month. I pay $27 post-tax, my employer (rated the best in San Diego by Fortune Magazine for such reasons as mass transit subsidies) pays $28.75. I pay the remaining $86.25 with pretax dollars (which, since my net tax is ~20%, saves me another $17.25.) So my net cost on a monthly rail pass that works for my commute is $96.
My car - I drive a Toyota Prius. I average 48 miles to the gallon (proof here). It’s 25.3 miles one way from my home in San Marcos to work in Sorrento Valley. Without traffic, it’s 36 mins door to door. With traffic, it averages 60 minutes but often varies to 50 minutes with light traffic or 70 minutes with heavy traffic. Gas to/from work costs me $75/month at $3.50/gal. Maintenance (on a prepaid maintenance package) runs $20/month with the mileage I drive. Total, $95 month ($1 less than the coaster pass)
Why a Prius? - I bought it the day they approved the carpool sticker legislation. Truth be told, I rarely have use for the stickers because the Sandag bureaucrats haven’t seen fit to put carpool lanes along my commute route (by 2012, supposedly…we’ll see if the stickers are still valid by then…guessing so with all the hybrid-loving legislators in Sacramento!) I’m fed up enough as it is with the lack of public-use lanes being built..but for the carpool lanes I’m supposedly paying for not being in either? come on…
All in all, as stated, the train does nothing for me except annoy me with its loud horn (they said it wouldn’t be loud - oops, it is - I’m hearing it as I write this late on Sunday night from the San Marcos/Richland area), slow service (takes ~45 minutes on average to travel between Oceanside and San Marcos), and now forces me to take a back road from my house to I-15 to/from work to avoid the traffic snarls on local San Marcos city streets thanks to the Sprinter coming through every 30 minutes (and that’s the only thing accounting for a 5 minute average increase each way in my commute time which I’ve already factored in to my time estimates. Thank goodness I don’t have to cross the tracks like many others do.)
I think it’s truly sad that I, a standard commuter working standard hours don’t have the ability to take a train from near my house to near my work and not have it cost me DOUBLE IN COMMUTE TIME. Arguably, I should be best slated to take advantage of the Sprinter service based on where I live and my commute. North County Transit District - you’ve done an outstanding job completely wasting my tax payer dollars.
If you click on the spreadsheet thumbnail below, you’ll see all of the times and how ridiculous they are.
Oops – looks like MobiTV doesn’t protect URLs to their content?? I’m guessing the fix isn’t easy either given that they’re trying to get HowardForums to remove the information regarding the publicly available URL and threatening takedown orders, DMCA violations, etc.
HowardForums is a great place. Howard has managed to amass a wide array of wireless knowledge that is often the source for how to do things your devices weren’t intended to do. Being in the wireless business myself, I even have to say that it’s caused me several security fire drills over the years… but in the end, you’re left with a more secure product/service and the benefit of knowledge. (I’m one for publishing security holes, if you can’t tell.)
UPDATE (3/7 2pm pdt): The Associated Press just picked up the story. What’s more interesting here likely isn’t the fact that the content is unprotected (they’ll find a way to do that, trust me) - it’s the fact that MobiTV is trying to get Hofo to take down a link to publicly available content. They’re stating that the method in which the link was retrieved is what’s not authorized at that the ‘fruits’ of those labors are illegal. I’m not a lawyer, but I’m not sure I’ve seen something tested in court along these lines - have you?
2nd UPDATE (3/7 5pm pdt): Well, it looks like everything’s ok in HOFO land for now. MobiTV’s president stepped in and apologized (jees, do you think the fiery heat turned up by everyone this afternoon had anything to do with it?) Aside from that, I feel like the guy’s still a blithering idiot (he spells web ’site’ as ’sight’) - but hey, that’s what spell checkers are for, right? Still, based on Howard’s “I guess everything’s ok now” comment, I can’t help but think that something’s still lingering under the surface here… I wonder if we’ll ever know. Kudos to Howard for standing up to ‘the man.’
I gotta say that I’m plenty upset with car manufacturers these days. Quality is in the toilet and just when I think I’ve helped myself, I realize I’ve only hurt myself worse (literally)
For those of you that don’t know, I went after Acura (Honda) back in 2005 after going through no less than 4 transmissions (while under warranty) in my 2001 Acura 3.2CL Type-S. While the initial pro-bono lemon law attorney did crap for me, the one that I actually paid got me a settlement that I’m not allowed to discuss
Fast forward to the present - and I’m stuck in a similar mode with Toyota (note that we traded two Honda vehicles in for two Toyota vehicles since the last fiasco). Unfortunately, it seems to have gotten us nowhere. With the latest Toyota quality fiascos, and now, personal experience with quality issues, things are just getting worse.
So today, I’ll let you view first hand what’s going on with my 2004 Toyota Sienna XLE Limited. Note that this video is poor on quality due to the fact that I snapped it with my mobile phone but at least it’s real video of the problem occurring. My local Toyota dealership wasn’t interested in viewing this but the good news is that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration was!
Here’s a quick description of what you’re seeing: My Sienna has an automatic lift gate. You push a button on the overhead console or on the key fob and it opens the rear lift gate. Very cool, very convenient - and easily one of the things that drives the options price up on the price of the vehicle. The bad news, sometimes it starts closing immediately after you open it… you know, right when you’re trying to put something in the trunk or take something out? Or worse, when your child is retrieving something. It does this without warning, no alerts, nothing… and let me tell you, when it comes down, it happens so fast, you don’t know what’s happening. It literally starts crushing you, and with significant force I must say. I’m a big guy (6′0″ tall, 230lbs) and when it catches me off guard, it’s even hard for me to get a stance and push back on it. It’s bashed my wife on the head probably about 30-40 times in total. The good news is that the latest set of struts they put on the rear lift gate in an attempt to fix the problem (that they, of course, could never replicate), seem to be doing the trick (fingers crossed). I’ll stop rambling and let you get to the video –
Some qualifications for this video:
There’s 1.5″ of clearance between the lift gate and the top of the garage (where the garage door is rolled up open) - it does not hit the garage at any point (never has.)
This is before the last set of struts they put on the lift gate
The van is on level ground in the garage and has just been driven approximately 80 miles in the evening in ~40F temps when this video was taken
To open the lift gate, the button the key fob was pressed once.
Only beeps on the way up; none on the way down
The video was taken on 12/29/2007 - the vehicle is a 2004 Toyota Sienna XLE Limited - no accidents, all regularly scheduled maintenance
The struts had already been replaced twice I believe when this video was taken
To Toyota’s lawyers, I’ve taken great pains to ensure that I’m only stating witnessed facts in this post. Should you ever decide to recall these lift gates and make things right, I’ll be happy to give you appropriate positive credit in this article. Until then, I’m genuinely worried about the similar Toyota vehicles on the road with this problem and your lack of proactive attention to do anything about it.
Stay tuned for more Toyota defects - I’ve got a ton. Up next, the crazy things my Prius on-board computer is doing as of late.
