Our dog has taken to chewing up the covers of hardcover library books. Never chews up softcovers, and never chews up our own hardcovers, although we have many. Just library books that don't have the plastic covers on them. She chewed up Moby Dick from DK1's school library, which I'm not sure we've come clean about yet, and now she chewed the corners off of Serious Farm by Tim Egan, which is one of our favorite books by one of our favorite authors. (If you have kids, check him out.)
We returned the book and got an email that day from the library saying uh-uh-uh, you need to pay us for this book. They wanted to charge us $15 for the book and $7 for a "processing fee." We know from past experience that if you present them with a usable copy of the book they will charge only the processing fee, so I went on Amazon and found a used hardcover copy ("very good condition") of the book for, get this, $0.01. That's right, 1 penny. Of course, there's the $3.99 service charge, but it still gives us a total of $4.00, meaning that, with the processing fee, my dog's chew toy will cost us $11 instead of $22. We also get a slightly chewed copy of Serious Farm for our trouble.
If I could figure out a way to get my dog to stop doing this, it would cost even less.
Wednesday, March 3, 2010
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
I'm sick of debt
I'm writing today from a place of frustration. I have been pursuing what I think of as a fairly simple and frugal lifestyle for quite a number of years now. I can remember discovering the Tightwad Gazette while I still lived in New York, which is over 15 years ago. I don't buy expensive clothes or a lot of video games or fancy electronic equipment. We have two cars: a 12 year old beater and a 6 year old slightly-less-beater. We very rarely eat out. We don't go to movies very much or other entertainment unless someone gives us tickets. I don't really even give that much to charity, in the great scheme of things. I have thought and written about frugality and sustainability extensively and have tried to apply most of the low-hanging fruit principles of the frugal lifestyle to my own life.
Yet we continue to have a hard time staying within our monthly budget, and we continue to struggle to pay down a substantial amount of credit card debt. I don't understand it, and I'm feeling really frustrated about it.
The thing is, while DW's paychecks have been a little inconsistent lately, she's earning a good deal more now than she was last year at this time, meaning things should be getting easier. I put a few numbers into a simple budget spreadsheet last night, and it looks to me like, counting just our fixed expenses and including debt service, we should be running a surplus of a couple hundred dollars every month. But we're not - we consistently have to take money from our emergency fund to make the monthly nut. The conclusion I reach is there are substantial random (unbudgeted) expenses that are hurting us. And I'm not even really sure what they are.
The reason I stopped working on this blog was because I felt that I didn't have anything to teach anyone because I wasn't getting anywhere. I picked it up again because just letting things go on this way is not going to solve my problem. DW and I have to raise the level of seriousness with which we think about and address this problem.
The first step has to be figuring out where the money's going, and getting to the point where we're living within our monthly means. This means squeezing our monthly expenses, such as canceling cable and changing auto insurers, but is also means figuring out where we're spending this mysterious money that isn't in the monthly plan.
The second thing (well, a related thing) would be to build our emergency fund back up to about $2,000, so that extraordinary expenses - such as auto repairs - don't have to go on the plastic.
And the third thing is paying down this damned credit card debt. I went back and looked a previous posting I made about the debt snowflake, which is where you pay the minimums on all your debts except one, and you put all extra available funds into the highest priority debt. At that time (October 2008) our two cards had about $7,000 each on them, and I predicted that if I followed the snowflake program the debt on the highest interest rate card (mine) would be retired by ... June 2010. Well, I'm here to tell ya, it ain't gonna be. As of March 1, my card at about $5,700, and DW's is up to almost 9. So we've essentially gotten nowhere in a year and a half. And it's because we keep putting non-fixed but reasonably expectable expenses - kids' clothing and shoes, car repairs - on the card. And I of course debted the equipment for the TV transition.
I redid the snowflake the other day, and it's basically the same story as it was the last time: if we do it as prescribed, and maybe throw in another month's payment with our tax refund, my card will be retired in a year, and DW's a year after that. That of course depends on not using them anymore.
To recap, here are the steps:
1 - get our monthly expenses under DW's and my combined income, including debt service and the snowflake payments, and including reasonably expectable ongoing expenses that we've been putting on the cards. This will have to be a combination of squeezing fixed expenses and figuring out and eliminating all the pissy little expenses that don't present themselves so easily.
2 - build the emergency fund back up to $2,000 so there's a some leeway for larger extraordinary expenses such as car repairs.
3 - Discontinuing use of the credit cards and paying them down with the debt snowflake method.
The thing is, when I look at what's supposed to happen after the two cards and DW's car are paid off, there's actually quite a bit of money there, even with ongoing payments on my student loan debt stretching off to the horizon. We make a decent, middle-class salary, certainly enough that we should be able to save a little money and even buy stuff with cash once in a while. Right now, that has to be the goal - and we need to get serious about meeting it.
Yet we continue to have a hard time staying within our monthly budget, and we continue to struggle to pay down a substantial amount of credit card debt. I don't understand it, and I'm feeling really frustrated about it.
The thing is, while DW's paychecks have been a little inconsistent lately, she's earning a good deal more now than she was last year at this time, meaning things should be getting easier. I put a few numbers into a simple budget spreadsheet last night, and it looks to me like, counting just our fixed expenses and including debt service, we should be running a surplus of a couple hundred dollars every month. But we're not - we consistently have to take money from our emergency fund to make the monthly nut. The conclusion I reach is there are substantial random (unbudgeted) expenses that are hurting us. And I'm not even really sure what they are.
The reason I stopped working on this blog was because I felt that I didn't have anything to teach anyone because I wasn't getting anywhere. I picked it up again because just letting things go on this way is not going to solve my problem. DW and I have to raise the level of seriousness with which we think about and address this problem.
The first step has to be figuring out where the money's going, and getting to the point where we're living within our monthly means. This means squeezing our monthly expenses, such as canceling cable and changing auto insurers, but is also means figuring out where we're spending this mysterious money that isn't in the monthly plan.
The second thing (well, a related thing) would be to build our emergency fund back up to about $2,000, so that extraordinary expenses - such as auto repairs - don't have to go on the plastic.
And the third thing is paying down this damned credit card debt. I went back and looked a previous posting I made about the debt snowflake, which is where you pay the minimums on all your debts except one, and you put all extra available funds into the highest priority debt. At that time (October 2008) our two cards had about $7,000 each on them, and I predicted that if I followed the snowflake program the debt on the highest interest rate card (mine) would be retired by ... June 2010. Well, I'm here to tell ya, it ain't gonna be. As of March 1, my card at about $5,700, and DW's is up to almost 9. So we've essentially gotten nowhere in a year and a half. And it's because we keep putting non-fixed but reasonably expectable expenses - kids' clothing and shoes, car repairs - on the card. And I of course debted the equipment for the TV transition.
I redid the snowflake the other day, and it's basically the same story as it was the last time: if we do it as prescribed, and maybe throw in another month's payment with our tax refund, my card will be retired in a year, and DW's a year after that. That of course depends on not using them anymore.
To recap, here are the steps:
1 - get our monthly expenses under DW's and my combined income, including debt service and the snowflake payments, and including reasonably expectable ongoing expenses that we've been putting on the cards. This will have to be a combination of squeezing fixed expenses and figuring out and eliminating all the pissy little expenses that don't present themselves so easily.
2 - build the emergency fund back up to $2,000 so there's a some leeway for larger extraordinary expenses such as car repairs.
3 - Discontinuing use of the credit cards and paying them down with the debt snowflake method.
The thing is, when I look at what's supposed to happen after the two cards and DW's car are paid off, there's actually quite a bit of money there, even with ongoing payments on my student loan debt stretching off to the horizon. We make a decent, middle-class salary, certainly enough that we should be able to save a little money and even buy stuff with cash once in a while. Right now, that has to be the goal - and we need to get serious about meeting it.
Thursday, February 25, 2010
TV Update
Yesterday I canceled cable TV - monthly savings: $38. I kept the basic basic service, which means I'm continuing to pay $15 a month for the over-the-air channels, which I think might include CSpan. We don't have a roof antenna or a digital converter for our analog TV, and while there's supposedly a doohickey you can plug into the computer to get the broadcast channels, the guy at Best Buy didn't know what it was and I think DW's patience for the capital outlays for this project are wearing thin. Maybe we'll reexamine the broadcast issue a couple of months down the line when the Xbox and the rest of the system are paid for.
The new calculations:
Xbox $190, remote $55, playon software $40, ethernet cable $11. Total capital expenditure: $296.
Monthly savings: $38 per month = 7.78 months until the thing is paid off.
Meanwhile, with Playon you don't get live broadcasts, you get video chapters that you can load up and watch. So for instance you open ESPN, choose the folder "MLB" from among the available options, and then choose from among, say, a preview of the Marlins pitching staff, an interview with Frank Thomas, and a recounting of the winners and losers of the off season, each the length of a story on SportsCenter (which is mostly what they are). Some of the other options have full episodes available: I've been watching the Dog Whisperer on Hulu the last few nights, there are 5 episodes of that available at a time. I've also been using "plugins," which are additional, kind of lay-engineered connections to other channels that you can download here; not all of them have worked for me, but the PBS one does, which is good; there's a bunch of American Experience on there I could spend a good deal of time working my way through. I think that this, plus what's available directly on the internet, should work just fine.
So between that and canceling the Times, I'm spending $70 / months less than I did last month. I'd like to get over $100. Next stop: auto insurance.
The new calculations:
Xbox $190, remote $55, playon software $40, ethernet cable $11. Total capital expenditure: $296.
Monthly savings: $38 per month = 7.78 months until the thing is paid off.
Meanwhile, with Playon you don't get live broadcasts, you get video chapters that you can load up and watch. So for instance you open ESPN, choose the folder "MLB" from among the available options, and then choose from among, say, a preview of the Marlins pitching staff, an interview with Frank Thomas, and a recounting of the winners and losers of the off season, each the length of a story on SportsCenter (which is mostly what they are). Some of the other options have full episodes available: I've been watching the Dog Whisperer on Hulu the last few nights, there are 5 episodes of that available at a time. I've also been using "plugins," which are additional, kind of lay-engineered connections to other channels that you can download here; not all of them have worked for me, but the PBS one does, which is good; there's a bunch of American Experience on there I could spend a good deal of time working my way through. I think that this, plus what's available directly on the internet, should work just fine.
So between that and canceling the Times, I'm spending $70 / months less than I did last month. I'd like to get over $100. Next stop: auto insurance.
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
Purim
This weekend is the holiday of Purim, which is sort of the Jewish version of Carnivale, the day when we dress in costumes, make fun of our rabbis and teachers and generally have a good time. It falls on Saturday night this year, which makes it even better, since there's no concern about having to get up for school or work the next day.
There are four main ritual obligations (mitzvot) to be performed on this holiday. First, to hear the Book of Esther recited in public. Second, to give gifts of food, called mishloah manot (literally, sending food). Third, a festive meal, and fourth, gifts of charity to the poor. These are based on the following section from the Megillah (as the Book of Esther is called in Hebrew):
Of course, this is another of those areas where one can get really caught up in keeping up with the Schwartzbaums. It is quite possible to spend a lot of money on elaborate mishloah manot meant to impress your friends and neighbors, although tradition would hold that it's better to fulfill this mitzvah to the minimum required and to give the rest of the money to the poor. In fact, Maimonides makes this point quite explicitly:
The question of what a person of lesser means should do in order to fulfill the mitzvah of mishloah manot was the subject of an interesting Rambam sent to me by my friend and colleague Rabbi Rick Brody this week.
Rick raised the interesting question of whether this the trading of meals to fulfill the mitzvah of mishloah manot would apply to a potluck. To which I would say, yes; trading food is what potlucks are all about. Rick then goes on to ask whether two fellows of modest means simply showing up at a communal potluck and putting food on each other's plates would fulfill the mitzvah. To which I would say, no. It is a core Maimonidean principle that even people who receive public assistance are required to give tzedakah in some amount, however small, because to deprive them of that obligation is akin to depriving them of their very personhood. So too with a potluck. A person may not be able to bring a lot, but they have bring something. Once they do that, they have fulfilled the "trading with one's friend" codicil that the Rambam is setting out, and they can feel they have fulfilled the mitzvah.
Previous Purim-related posts: Reconstructing Mishloah Manot, and Another Thought...
There are four main ritual obligations (mitzvot) to be performed on this holiday. First, to hear the Book of Esther recited in public. Second, to give gifts of food, called mishloah manot (literally, sending food). Third, a festive meal, and fourth, gifts of charity to the poor. These are based on the following section from the Megillah (as the Book of Esther is called in Hebrew):
And Mordechai wrote these words and sent scrolls to all the Jews in all of KingMishloah manot are to include at least two different kinds of food; that is, foods that require two different brakhot (blessings) be recited over them. So, for instance, dried fruit and pastry. The more the merrier, of course, so if you can figure out a way to include three or four different kinds of food in there, that's okay too. Candy or nuts would be a third brakha. These packages are to be sent to at least two different people.
Achashverosh’s provinces, both near and far. To establish for themselves the 14th day of Adar and the 15th day as well, for every year, as days that the Jews were delivered from their enemies. On these days, the month was turned for them from anguish to joy, from mourning to a day of gladness; and these days should be days of feasting and joy, and sending portions each to his friend, and gifts to the poor. (Esther 9:20-22)
Of course, this is another of those areas where one can get really caught up in keeping up with the Schwartzbaums. It is quite possible to spend a lot of money on elaborate mishloah manot meant to impress your friends and neighbors, although tradition would hold that it's better to fulfill this mitzvah to the minimum required and to give the rest of the money to the poor. In fact, Maimonides makes this point quite explicitly:
It is better to increase gifts to the poor than to make for oneself a big meal or to send more portions to friends, for there is no greater or nobler joy than to gladden the hearts of the poor, the orphans, the widows and the strangers.The minyan (prayer community) we once belonged to in Philadelphia, Dorshei Derekh, had a great way to make sure that people observed the mitzvot of sending mishloah manot and of gifts to the poor - that is, that they didn't do the former too much and the latter too little. The minyan would collect monetary donations from everyone - between $18-50 - and use the proceeds and additional donated goods (including baked goods etc., but also little non-food treats such as pencils, stickers, etc.) to put together quite a nice little package of mishloah manot, with the leftover money given to tzedakah. Packing the baskets (donated clementine boxes) was also a communal activity; this would be a good youth group activity. Everyone would get the same food basket on the holiday, and would have fulfilled both the obligation of mishloah manot and the sometimes overlooked obligation to donate to charity.
The question of what a person of lesser means should do in order to fulfill the mitzvah of mishloah manot was the subject of an interesting Rambam sent to me by my friend and colleague Rabbi Rick Brody this week.
One is required to send two portions of meat, or two kinds of stew, or two other kinds of food, to one's friend, as it is said, "to send portions of food, each to his friend" (Esther 9:19). Two portions, to one person. And someone who sends to more friends is to be praised. And if he doesn't have any [to give], he should exchange with his friend: this one should send that one a meal, and that one should send this one a meal, in order to fulfill the mitzvah, "to send portions of food, each to his friend." (Mishneh Torah, Hilchot Megillah, 2:17)That is, if one is too poor to send gifts of food, one should instead trade meals with a friend. It so happens that Danny Siegel, the "mitzvah man" who was our scholar in residence this past weekend, brought this very same text, saying that this constituted a leap of faith on the part of the poor person, because you could never be sure the friend would reciprocate, until he did.
Rick raised the interesting question of whether this the trading of meals to fulfill the mitzvah of mishloah manot would apply to a potluck. To which I would say, yes; trading food is what potlucks are all about. Rick then goes on to ask whether two fellows of modest means simply showing up at a communal potluck and putting food on each other's plates would fulfill the mitzvah. To which I would say, no. It is a core Maimonidean principle that even people who receive public assistance are required to give tzedakah in some amount, however small, because to deprive them of that obligation is akin to depriving them of their very personhood. So too with a potluck. A person may not be able to bring a lot, but they have bring something. Once they do that, they have fulfilled the "trading with one's friend" codicil that the Rambam is setting out, and they can feel they have fulfilled the mitzvah.
Previous Purim-related posts: Reconstructing Mishloah Manot, and Another Thought...
Monday, February 15, 2010
Technology 2: Moving Away from Cable TV
In a recent post I mentioned that I was thinking about getting off cable television for internet content. Well, that transition is nearly complete.
I've haven't had cable TV very much over the years. I grew up without it, of course, and my parents got it after I'd already left for college. It came very late to New York City where I lived in the late 80s, although I had it for about 2 years when my folks got me a nice TV for my birthday one year. After I moved out of NY, first to my grandparents' house in the country and then to Israel, I didn't have it at all. In fact, I didn't have television at all for about three years. When we moved into our own place we had had broadcast only, which when I shared it with some of my students led some of the more chutzpadik among them to infer - not without reason - that it was due to the poverty wages I received as an Israeli high school teacher.
When we were in Philadelphia for rabbinical school we didn't have it, again because we were poor, and then in Chicagoland we also didn't have it, more out of principle at this point that anything else. As baseball content moved more to cable and then Jon Stewart became a thing it was clear that I was starting to miss something, but we just never felt it was enough of a priority to get it, even when we (more or less) could afford it. As a note, we used plug-in rabbit ears and were able to get to get most of the available broadcast channels.
When I moved to Wichita I brought a TV with me (DW and the DKs came about four months later) and for some reason the electric rabbit ears didn't work. I also got broadband internet for the first time at that point (until 2007 we used dial-up) and I just had them put cable in at the same time. So that was a little more than two years ago, and we have basic cable, no pay services and not the extra digital tier, since we're still using the no-longer-so-nice (and non-HD) TV my folks got me 15 years ago.
Lately, though, as we've been looking a little more carefully at where our money's going, the $50 per month we've been spending on cable has started looking at me funny. I keep thinking of this line from Tightwad Gazette 3, in an article about whether people who are in desperate financial straits have really done all they could to get out of them:
But I'm just not prepared to go back to the electric rabbit ears. How are you gonna get them back on the farm after they've seen Jon Stewart?
And it so happens that lately I've been seeing some articles that speak about moving to a cable-less existence:
We have a Wii, and Playon does work with that, but Wii is not as supportive a platform for streaming (the picture is bad, I'm let to believe) so I bought a used Xbox from Ebay ($190) as well as a remote that can handle the set-up ($55, also used from Ebay). The software costs something too, not sure how much yet (there's a two week free trial period), so if it costs $50 the total investment will be $295, which is about the cost of cable for six months.
In addition to this initial cost, the disadvantage of this system is that it's more limited programming-wise. Microsoft has a Windows Media Center application that allows you to watch Internet TV on the PC as well as recorded content on the Xbox, but so far there's no way to watch internet TV directly on the Xbox, which means I'll be watching a lot more TV on the PC in the future. (Fortunately we have a nice big monitor.) Most of the shows I watch are available on line - Stewart and Colbert, Charlie Rose, Cspan. Whatever few narrative shows we watch we usually get via Netflix anyway. Sports is going to be a challenge, although now there is some content (actual games) available via espn360, which our ISP, Cox, is providing, and which may be available through the Xbox before too long. I may also feel the need to drop some bread for a internet baseball subscription, which would raise the price of the project a bit; we'll have to see how much baseball is available through espn360.
I haven't actually canceled cable yet because the kids are interested in the Olympics and I'm already paid through the end of the month anyway. But I'll get to it. So for the next six months I'll be putting the cable money into our credit card bill to pay off the cost of this project; after that, it'll be gravy. Whether this approach turns out to be a money saver in the long run only time will tell; but given the availability of content on-line, it certainly doesn't seem like we need to be paying on an ongoing basis for cable TV any longer.
I've haven't had cable TV very much over the years. I grew up without it, of course, and my parents got it after I'd already left for college. It came very late to New York City where I lived in the late 80s, although I had it for about 2 years when my folks got me a nice TV for my birthday one year. After I moved out of NY, first to my grandparents' house in the country and then to Israel, I didn't have it at all. In fact, I didn't have television at all for about three years. When we moved into our own place we had had broadcast only, which when I shared it with some of my students led some of the more chutzpadik among them to infer - not without reason - that it was due to the poverty wages I received as an Israeli high school teacher.
When we were in Philadelphia for rabbinical school we didn't have it, again because we were poor, and then in Chicagoland we also didn't have it, more out of principle at this point that anything else. As baseball content moved more to cable and then Jon Stewart became a thing it was clear that I was starting to miss something, but we just never felt it was enough of a priority to get it, even when we (more or less) could afford it. As a note, we used plug-in rabbit ears and were able to get to get most of the available broadcast channels.
When I moved to Wichita I brought a TV with me (DW and the DKs came about four months later) and for some reason the electric rabbit ears didn't work. I also got broadband internet for the first time at that point (until 2007 we used dial-up) and I just had them put cable in at the same time. So that was a little more than two years ago, and we have basic cable, no pay services and not the extra digital tier, since we're still using the no-longer-so-nice (and non-HD) TV my folks got me 15 years ago.
Lately, though, as we've been looking a little more carefully at where our money's going, the $50 per month we've been spending on cable has started looking at me funny. I keep thinking of this line from Tightwad Gazette 3, in an article about whether people who are in desperate financial straits have really done all they could to get out of them:
Some people won't abandon cable TV. This may seem like a small point, but to me, cable TV is a sort of barometer. Anyone who is deep in debt and spends $25 a month for cable clearly hasn't "gotten it." A frequent excuse is that "we can't afford any other entertainment, so we fell this one expense is justified." ...(This of course applies to the Sunday NY Times as well.)
But I'm just not prepared to go back to the electric rabbit ears. How are you gonna get them back on the farm after they've seen Jon Stewart?
And it so happens that lately I've been seeing some articles that speak about moving to a cable-less existence:
- "Cable Freedom, Aided by a Mouse," from the Times technology page, and
- "Ways To Watch TV Without Paying An Arm And A Leg For Cable Or Satellite," from the website Bible Money Matters, which I found via Google I can assure you.
We have a Wii, and Playon does work with that, but Wii is not as supportive a platform for streaming (the picture is bad, I'm let to believe) so I bought a used Xbox from Ebay ($190) as well as a remote that can handle the set-up ($55, also used from Ebay). The software costs something too, not sure how much yet (there's a two week free trial period), so if it costs $50 the total investment will be $295, which is about the cost of cable for six months.
In addition to this initial cost, the disadvantage of this system is that it's more limited programming-wise. Microsoft has a Windows Media Center application that allows you to watch Internet TV on the PC as well as recorded content on the Xbox, but so far there's no way to watch internet TV directly on the Xbox, which means I'll be watching a lot more TV on the PC in the future. (Fortunately we have a nice big monitor.) Most of the shows I watch are available on line - Stewart and Colbert, Charlie Rose, Cspan. Whatever few narrative shows we watch we usually get via Netflix anyway. Sports is going to be a challenge, although now there is some content (actual games) available via espn360, which our ISP, Cox, is providing, and which may be available through the Xbox before too long. I may also feel the need to drop some bread for a internet baseball subscription, which would raise the price of the project a bit; we'll have to see how much baseball is available through espn360.
I haven't actually canceled cable yet because the kids are interested in the Olympics and I'm already paid through the end of the month anyway. But I'll get to it. So for the next six months I'll be putting the cable money into our credit card bill to pay off the cost of this project; after that, it'll be gravy. Whether this approach turns out to be a money saver in the long run only time will tell; but given the availability of content on-line, it certainly doesn't seem like we need to be paying on an ongoing basis for cable TV any longer.
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
Book Review: Pedaling Revolution
I just finished Jeff Mapes' Pedaling Revolution: How Cyclists are Changing American Cities, and I want to post a brief review before I have to bring it back to the library.Mapes is a political reporter at the Oregonian, which means he lives in Portland, about the most bike-friendly city in the US. The book is about the growth of bicyclists as an organized political force over the past, say, 30 years; the benefits of cycling for a city; how various cities (Portland, Davis, CA and New York (!)) have planned so as to make themselves more amenable to cyclists, and chapters on the safety concerns and health benefits of cycling.
One of the early chapters is dedicated to a visit to Amsterdam, considered the mecca for cyclists. European cities have not always been as bike-friendly as they are now; making them so has taken a combination of social contract and government encouragement and support (read: investment). The basic difference between European and American cities when it comes to cycling is that European drivers (and policymakers) accept that bikes have a right to be on the road, and that it is the car's responsibility to be careful of them. In America, most drivers - if they think about cyclists at all - consider them a nuisance at best. The attitude of our society to the biker's right to the road is exemplified when one thinks of bikers killed by motorists and the generally light consequences (to the motorist) that result. In Europe, if a motorists hits a biker, it's a big deal. Here, it's considered that the biker getting what he* more or less deserved.
*American cyclists are likely to be male; in Europe the ridership is more gender-balanced, primarily due to increased safety
The underlying assumption of Mapes and the scholars, activists, and cyclists he speaks to is that there is strength in numbers, meaning that the more cyclists there are in any given city the safer cycling will be - cars will become accustomed to looking out for them, and the city will make the necessary accommodations in planning.
Of course, the easiest thing a city can do to accommodate cyclists is painting lines on the street and inculcating a "share the road" ethos. In some cases where the streets are too busy for that, other options include a cycletrack, which is basically a separated cycle track set off from the road, sometimes between parked cars and the curb. Some cities put their roads on what are called "road diets," taking away lanes to make room for bikers and making the traffic calm down.
As you will read in depth on my mate John's vital blog Cycling in Wichita, most of the biking accommodations in Wichita are recreational, i.e., bike paths that go twirly twirl twirl and don' t you get you from one place to the other very fast at all. If you try to use bikes for travel you find pretty quick that most of the arterials are not where you want to be on a bike. 40 mph, two lanes right up to the curb.
There are some roads which could serve as bike routes with little loss to the convenience of motorists; I think of 1st Street on the east side going downtown. Some other roads would need to go on a diet to be useful, such as Douglas between Rock and the entrance to Eastborough, which is something of a miniature race course.
Which leads to the question of why a city like Wichita should make any accommodations for a mode of transportation which probably accounts for less than 1% of the travel in town. Shouldn't transportation policy be centered around the kind of transportation that most people want to use?
Well, there are a couple of things to say about that. First, surveys consistently show that more people would ride bikes if they were safer and more convenient to use. And as I said before, more is more, and the more people we have riding bikes the more people will see it as a reasonable option and will join them. And this is a topic that I plan to spend some more time on in the next couple of days in another context, but cycling has so many health benefits, as well as benefits to the livability of a city, pollution amelioration, etc., well, it just makes a lot of sense for some of the copious amounts of money the city, county and state spend on road construction and spend, say 2 or 3% of that on improving bike infrastructure.
The final chapter in Mapes' book is about getting children to bike. Let me throw in a quote:
A government travel study in 1969 found that 87 percent of all kids who lived within a mile of school walked or biked. ... That changed over the ensuing decades as traffic become more intense, parents became more fearful, the neighborhood school became less common, and two- and three-car households became ubiquitous. By 2001, only about 15 percent of kids were getting to school under their own power. And... as few as one-third of students who lived within a mile of school walked or biked.He mentions how traffic patterns can be particularly intense right around schools, and that nearly half of students who are hit by a car on their way to school are hit by people driving other kids there too.
I know all this is true for us. Take a look at this, the location of my kids' elementary school:
Webb is a busy arterial and, just to the south of this picture, Central is one as well. There are hundreds of cars and dozens of buses going in and out every day. We live 1.8 miles away, and I think my wife may have walked it once or twice, but I never have. And there are no bike racks at the school.As Mapes points out, the people who are the most ardent bicyclists, and the most ardent bike advocates, tend to be those who have good memories of biking when they were younger. We don't have much of that, these days. And that doesn't give one a lot of hope that the kids who never biked will grow up to be the ones who change the paradigm about transport in this city or this country. Something needs to be done about that, before it's too late.
And a good first step is reading Mapes' book!
Tuesday, February 9, 2010
The End of Newspapers
Well, we finally canceled home delivery of the Sunday New York Times. I couldn't even do it myself, had to have DW make the call. I feel like I lost a loved one. Savings: $32/month. Of course, I'll probably buy it from the newstand periodically, so I'm going to have to set a limit on that, lest I lose the financial benefit. So, say, twice a month? In which case the actual savings would be about $20/month.
I also went from seven days to Friday-Saturday-Sunday on the Wichita Eagle. The paper early in the week is a real embarrassment, readable in about 45 seconds, and even later in the week it's no great shakes. It wasn't bad when we got here but they laid a lot of the interesting writers off, stopped Doonesbury and it's really gone downhill. Friday is worth reading because of the arts section and well, Sunday is Sunday. It only saves about a buck and a half per week but I really felt like I was getting angry when I saw it, so it's better to do without.
I also went from seven days to Friday-Saturday-Sunday on the Wichita Eagle. The paper early in the week is a real embarrassment, readable in about 45 seconds, and even later in the week it's no great shakes. It wasn't bad when we got here but they laid a lot of the interesting writers off, stopped Doonesbury and it's really gone downhill. Friday is worth reading because of the arts section and well, Sunday is Sunday. It only saves about a buck and a half per week but I really felt like I was getting angry when I saw it, so it's better to do without.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
