If you are tired of complaining about the traffic on Facebook (and everyone is tired of reading about it!), then take the ferry. It's only $1 and I took it this morning and loved it. Not to mention it's very relaxing. Park your car, board, pay the lady, sit back, enjoy the breeze & watch the sunrise on your 10 minute ride. Beats the heck out of sitting on a questionably stable bridge, getting angry, wasting your gas, and being late to work. :) Happy Hump Day!Water taxi to ferry people across river; Spirit of Jefferson will operate during morning and afternoon rush hours for at least two weeks, by Braden Lammers (News and Tribune)
Wednesday, September 14, 2011
Not quite the Bosphorus, but there's a water taxi running through it.
My friend Jennifer posted this on Facebook. Granted, she has a job in downtown Louisville. What I like is her upbeat attitude in meeting the commuter's challenge.
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WHAS reports only 58 people used the service this morning.
Given Jennifer's lovely description, I'm tempted to take the ride and I don't even work in Louisville.
I'm with John.
Anyone know of a potential Kentucky docking location on this end of the locks?
I heard reports that they needed 300+ people per day to make this work and to keep it going.
With out trying to start a fight.
I meet with a customer today that lives in Jeff and works at Humana. They told me they would not use the service because they like the freedom to go where and when they want by using their car.
This is early but may show how hard it is for people to give up that freedom. Plus if you get to the river/ bridge you are almost home free.
I also heard an idea of more local bridges in exchange of the downtown bridge and support a EE bridge now. I like the sound of that.
Unfortunately, I'm afraid the ferry will only be feasible for people who live in downtown Jeff or Clarksville near the river. As Jeff mentioned, once you get to the river, you're basically there, and if you spend an hour in traffic just to get to the river, it won't really save any time. A ferry service would be extremely helpful for folks in New Albany/Floyd County, but then the ferry would have to go through the locks, which as I understand makes that infeasible.
"I also heard an idea of more local bridges in exchange of the downtown bridge and support a EE bridge now. I like the sound of that."
That idea has been around for quite a while and, like every other sensible suggestion, was immediately nixed by the Bridges honchos.
You can see a summary of it from Steve Wiser here. (PDF)
A more detailed explanation is here. (PDF)
Wiser also offers other alternatives.
Thanks Jeff,
I could not remember the mans name.
I guess if they want to continue the ferry and if don’t get 300 people daily, they’ll have to subsidize it....just like virtually every other road and bridge in the country.
As far as the the desire to always use one's own personal vehicle:
That will always be allowed. If people want to foot the cost of that themselves, they can. What shouldn't happen, though, is that everyone else be denied the opportunity for alternatives because of it.
Once there are significant alternatives in place, bridge tolls wouldn't be as big a deal as people could choose to pay them for the added "freedom" or not. That's how it used to work when we had tolls on the Second Street Bridge-- and commuter rail and ferries.
It's also worth noting that in a highly developed transportation system, mass transit choices do little to curtail personal freedom.
If you're typically within an easy walk from a stop, public vehicles are frequent, and you can get across town in a relatively short period of time (as it is in cities all over the world), you're really not giving up anything other than the added hassles, expenses, and dangers of driving.
Obviously a ferry alone is not a total transportation solution.
I’m just asking, what political philosophy mandates that roads be subsidized while ferries and buses be self-supporting?
A good point, Dan. Transit solutions are always denigrated for not being self-supporting. Meanwhile, roads and interstates consume more federal tax dollars than almost anything besides the military. It's an obvious double standard not rooted in sound fiscal policy.
I meet with a customer today that lives in Jeff and works at Humana. They told me they would not use the service because they like the freedom to go where and when they want by using their car.
I understand this sentiment. Currently, metro Louisville trails many other cities in traffic jam alternatives. There's only so much you can do in the short run.
When I visit a city with well planned trains, buses, etc., I like the freedom to go where and when I want without a car, without worrying about parking. I save money on gas and parking garages and enjoy spending it instead at local businesses.
Louisville will not become such a city overnight. The question is what kind of city it will be 20 years from now. I’m not convinced that just doing it the same ol’ way we’ve done it for the past two generations is really the most forward looking way to design a transportation system.
HOV (High Vehicle Occupancy) lanes have been common in the Northeast for 20 years. Can any bridge support an HOV lane, it does cause more carpooling. Or your children being forced to go everywhere with you so you can use the HOV lane...
Ferry service from new Albany to Louisville - now that's a concept. Also would probably be cheaper to build a subway line under the river than $4 billion for more highway.
"HOV (High Vehicle Occupancy) lanes have been common in the Northeast for 20 years."
I would think that would be a great idea it could be made to work with what we have. Along those lines and this will be a very unpopular idea with some. What if you where a single rider, I wonder how a express lane with a Toll would go over. Example say you could have a thru lane 2 or more people would be free and get you thru all that gridlock and if your where a single driver you could pay a $2 to $5 per trip to travel in that lane an that could go toward the cost of making the changes and future bridges.
Just an idea.
Don't everyone yell at me at once. Lol
Everything I see seems to support the fact that federal dollars for transportation falls way behind defense (24%), health care (23%), pensions (20%), welfare (12%), interest (7%), "other spending" (5%), education (4%) and then transportation (3%) - and to be accurate, state contributions are greater than the federal expense line.
Now, this doesn't even count the fact the federal government is running two wars "off the books" (thanks President Bush!) by using "continuing resolutions." If you had those war expenses fairly and accurately reflected in the budget, the percentages of everything except defense would be much, much smaller.
Here's a link to the budget numbers:
http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/budget_pie_gs.php?span=usgs302&year=2011&view=1&expand=101213404417&expandC=571&units=b&fy=fy11&local=undefined&state=US
As I can't seem to find the calculations to which I was referring, I'll defer to Bill and stand corrected on percentage of transportation spending. I obviously garbled something.
Dan's point about subsidies and self-sufficiency, though, survives my mistake.
Bill Lind of The American Conservative Center for Public Transportation points out that user fees, including gas taxes, usually only cover about 58% of road costs. As I've pointed out before, we then have to spend heavily on an individual level on top of that as a road alone doesn't actually move anything.
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