Don't let Frank Busalacchi see this

I know just the spot in Madison for one of these.

I recently had occasion to drive through one of the new roundabouts on Hwy 310 North of Manitowoc. Despite my previous comments, these roundabouts actually work. No need for me or the driver to my right to stop. We just slowed and safely zoomed through that crossroads. I think the key to successful traffic circles is a low volume of traffic. That said ... there is no way in hell to justify those things in a cost-benefit analysis. Nevermind the carbon footprint of all that pavement and asphalt.

HT - PM, via Instapundit.

Sanford - Flynn - McBride

You'd think someone with his track record would steer clear of these stories.

John Galt, M.D.

I found out today that a second one of the doctors I sometimes see is leaving my clinic.

It is probably just a coincidence that each physician is moving to a lower tax state.

Tom Barrett gets his trolley, Milwaukee citizens get a new source of constant irritation

Hand Tommy some paper towel, he needs to clean up.

Modern streetcars resemble light rail vehicles, but are smaller and less expensive. Otherwise, they spur the same kind of debate as light rail: Supporters say a fixed rail system stimulates economic development and provides a transportation option that is attractive to both visitors and residents, while opponents say it's too costly and isn't as flexible as a bus line.

As envisioned by Barrett, the streetcars would run in a three-mile loop that links downtown destinations to the Amtrak-Greyhound station. It would connect not only with existing trains and buses but also tie in with proposals for commuter rail and high-speed trains.

That loop could be viewed as a starter system that could be expanded later, said Barrett and Ald. Bob Bauman, another supporter.

"Once you have something in the ground, the debate will change from 'This is the end of Western civilization as we know it' to 'How do we get this line extended to Miller Park,' " the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and other destinations, Barrett said. That has been the pattern in other cities where light rail lines became popular despite the controversy that preceded them, he noted.

Unfortunately for Milwaukee citizens and visitors, the very thing that make the trolley the choice of Barrett and Baumann, were the things that doomed Milwaukee's early street car system. Steel rails will make the trolley a permanent fixture in Milwaukee, fulfilling their dreams of a metropolitan rail system. But those same rails will mean noise, uncomfortable rides, and delays for other vehicles on Milwaukee's street.

Claim as they will that their trolley is a "modern" form of transportation, their system will have all the features that led to the demise of Milwaukee's earlier streetcar system, 60 years ago.

I'm not feeling very charitable

From Raquel Rutledge's MJS article on the Wisconsin Shares taxpayer ripoff program.

The two-story house on 17th St. looks typical of the working-class homes on Racine's west side. Three bedrooms, one bath. Assessed by the city at $122,000.

Yet inside, a young woman has tapped into a home-based money-making operation that netted her and her three sisters more than half a million in taxpayer dollars since 2006.

And they did it with the blessing of the state.

All four had been in-home child-care providers. Collectively they have 17 children. For years, the government has paid them to stay home and care for each other's children.

Nothing illegal about it under the rules of Wisconsin Shares, the decade-old child-care assistance program designed alongside Wisconsin's welfare-to-work program.

With Wisconsin handing out deals like this, there is no reason anyone in this state would need help from private charities.

Screw 'em all. I'll waste that money on the lottery instead this year.

Rolling along

I was recently reminded of a business colleague who I would see numerous times a year in the 1990's. My friend William from Charlotte was paralyzed in a very unremarkable motorcycle accident while in college. He remained the consummate good ole boy, inspite of his lovely wife's efforts.

I knew him when we were in our 30's and early 40's. Of all the people I'd regularly see at my business meetings, William would put us all to shame with his athleticism and physical activity. Wheelchair basketball and racing were part of his routine.

William was always a gas to be around and he never slowed us down. In fact, he had to slow his chair to let us walkers keep up with him and he never let an escalator get in his way. He'd effortlessly wheel a 180 in order to ride up or down the moving stairs backyards. Bystanders would typically gasp when he did this. I also became a near expert at assembling and disassembling his chair to fit in a car.

William participated in a lot of charity events for paralysis causes. That, and with his engaging personality, made him well known around Charlotte. He would regularly work out in the gym at Hendrick Motorsports with Jeff Gordon's pit crew. He became well enough known nationally that a mono-ski manufacturer flew him to Colorado to test their prototype models. In his spare time he organized and participated in a handcycle marathon from Charlotte to the Atlantic Ocean as a fundraiser.

What reminded me of William (sorry Sheryl, but he's not Bill or Billy or Mac or Buddy) was this Elliot guy. The activities he lists at his "About" page sound like things my friend would do. I'd like to see how Elliott handles escalators.

Poll Results

The results of the fast food poll are complete. Here they are with the correct answer.

1. Wait until they finally decide to take my order.

Two votes - Wrong. If you chose answer #1 you are at the wrong restaurant. The reason you are at McDonald's is for FAST food. Waiting longer in that long line has defeated that purpose.

2. Pull in front of the woman and give my order at Window 1.

Zero votes - This is the correct answer. McDonald's is set up for this contingency. They took my order & money and had my food waiting by the time I made it to Window 2. The people in the cars behind me in the left lane were also appreciative.

3. Pull in front of the woman, then pull out of line and leave.

One vote - Wrong. Duh! What are you thinking?

4. Pull in front of the woman, pay for and take her order, and hopefully foul up the orders of the next half dozen cars.

Two votes - This is an alternate correct answer. If you don't mind eating and paying for random meals, this is the way to go. The confusion you leave behind will make the 3 Happy Meals and 2 plain Double Quarter Pounders with Cheese go down easier.

They deserve each other

From Madison's Capital Times news blog.

The bicyclist who felt "extremely insulted" when a fellow biker told him to get a light on his bike and ended up beating the commenter was arrested and tentatively charged with battery and disorderly conduct Wednesday, police said.

Dustin Dunlavy, 28, Madison, allegedly grabbed Colin O'Brien, 51, around the head in the confrontation on South Shore Drive the night of Nov. 26.

According to police:

The incident started about 6:30 p.m. on Nov. 26 as O'Brien was biking home on South Shore Drive, on the south side of Monona Bay.

Two bicyclists came up behind O'Brien, with one saying they were going to pass him on the left. As they passed, O'Brien said, "Get a light."

Dunlavy apparently asked him to repeat himself so he did, with the couple then telling O'Brien to mind his own business. Dunlavy apparently then tried to run O'Brien off the road.

The pair followed O'Brien to his home, where the light talk continued.

The female said it appeared O'Brien had plenty of lights and asked for one, so he gave one to her, but Dunlavy still was upset and clamped his hands around O'Brien's head, according to a police report.

The report added that he twisted O'Brien to the ground and kicked him in the ribs, but Dunlavy denied doing so when he was arrested.

Colin and Dustin are the same type of jerk who went berserk at Paul Soglin's suggestion that cyclists leave their bikes at home during blizzards. They are each holier than thou. All urban bicyclists are pricks. Period. There are no exceptions.

Suburban and rural cyclists have completely different DNA. We are reasonable people.

Drive-thru ettiquette

The other day I went through a McDonald's drive-thru to pick up lunch. It was one of the two lane drive-thru's, and things moved very quickly - left, right, left, right ...

Finally I get up to the board where I can pick out my Dollar Menu lunch. Left, right, left, right, right ... oops.

"Excuse me," I yelled in the speaker, "you missed my turn." No answer, as the woman in the right lane is having her order taken.

What do I do now? I can think of four main choices.

1. Wait until they finally decide to take my order.
2. Pull in front of the woman and give my order at Window 1.
3. Pull in front of the woman, then pull out of line and leave.
   
4. Pull in front of the woman, pay for and take her order, and hopefully foul up the orders of the next half dozen cars.

Take the poll, sidebar right.

UPDATE:

Poll results are here.

More scratch

After months of substandard writing, I have pulled my blog back up to it's rightful Genius Level. It must have something to do with the increased non-Obama subject matter.

Movie Reviews

For those unable to comprehend this highest level of discourse, please click here.

Not a good likeness

Why is Henry Winkler standing by a statue of Chairman Bob?

Brown Street at King Drive at 3:00 A.M.

This might not be the best place to be in the very early morning of August 30th.

The organizers of the Brew City's Best BBQ Competition have put a lot of thought into security, but another RiverSplash-like event will not surprise me.

I stand corrected. It is not really that unsafe, after all. There were only 3 murders within 4 blocks of this location in 2007.

Bad things happen in threes?

July 4 - We spent the evening at the neighbors, chatting around the fire pit, drinking adult beverages and watching them set off cheap fireworks. We even had some laughs at Al Gore's expense, needlessly burning trash and cheap lumber along with launching the smoking flashbombs.

After many successful launches, one of the devices fell on it's side while firing and shot a flare into the spectators. The burning missile passed to the left of most and to the right of me, striking the house behind me and landing on the brick patio 6 feet from me. Fortunately the firework just flashed and didn't send off burning shrapnel. A near miss, we should have learned from it.

We got lucky with that one, but not smart. We lit a similar device later that fell over too. It misfired in the opposite direction.

There's a reason that fireworks are illegal to use in Wisconsin. But those sales tax collections make it too lucrative for the state to stop the selling.


July 5 - I started the gas grill in preparation for cooking dinner and let it warm up for several minutes. When I went out to scrape the grill I noticed that the grill was not very hot. My first instinct was to push that igniter button again. Bad mistake.

An enormous fireball erupted from the grill. The fireball singed my hair and eyebrows, but that was not the worst part. A piece of corn husk from the previous night was ignited and blown out of the grill. It landed on my hairline and continued to burn. It was several seconds before I noticed and knocked it to the ground. Don't try this at home.





July 6 - I have reason to fear. Watch for news-chopper coverage of today's stupidity.

KRM - Been there, done that

Before there was a KRM, there was the MRK.

The Milwaukee Electric Railway & Light Company's Interurban railway included the Milwaukee-Racine-Kenosha line or MRK.

KRM - MRK, get it? Wonderful marketing job by these a-century-too-late hucksters looking to garnish your assets.

The earlier system was vastly more broad in its reach than just the MRK/KRM. Looking at the graphic below, it wasn't just Milwaukee to Kenosha. It went West to Watertown, and Southwest to East Troy and Burlington, and later North all the way to Sheboygan.



This interurban line was one of the finest commuter railways in the nation (This and the following quotes are from Path of a Pioneer by John Gurda.).

"The Midwest was the nation's center of interurban railway development and (...) Milwaukee had one of the finest systems in the Midwest."

At a time when roads were primitive; when automobiles were unreliable, unsafe, and uncomfortable; how could this state-of-the-art interurban rail system not succeed?

The various projects started and completed between 1930 and 1932, from the downtown Rapid Transit line to the Lakeshore Belt Line, required an expenditure of millions of dollars. Rapid Transit, wrote Roy Pinkley in 1930, "represents a huge outlay of money, but it is now established and will undoubtedly be of immense importance in ten years from the present time.

That thinking was wrong in 1930, and is wrong in 2008. This extensive and efficient interurban transit system quickly failed.

The TMER&L, a name once synonymous with the best in urban transit, became a corporate ghost, a failing presence that still lingers above the doors of the old red-brick power plants and substations ...

The interurban lines, long the beleaguered members of the transit system, were the first to go. Service between St. Martins and Burlington ended in 1938. In sharp contrast to the delegation of dignitaries that had made the first run in 1909, arriving to band music and speeches, only one paying customer rode the last car to the end of the line.

I interpret "long the beleaguered members" to mean that for decades the interurban had poorer ridership than either the TMER&L streetcars or buses. We all know how popular riding the bus is in Milwaukee County today. Why should we expect the KRM to do better than that? Or this?

The interurban lines operated at a loss, and no paying customer ever boarded a car on the Lakeside Line.

Whose brilliant idea is the KRM, and what data do they have to show that ridership will be better in 2038 than it was in 1938?

Tom Barrett's Trolley

Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett has championed the building of a trolley line to encircle the city's downtown area. The proposed trolley is to be run on rail tracks that will need to be newly installed in the city streets at huge expense and a tremendous inconvenience to motor vehicle traffic.

This new idea to install an old mode of transportation has been studied repeatedly with our tax dollars. But a better gage of it's viability can be determined from previous market research. Real life market research.

Although there is a nostalgic feel to running mass transit on rails, the historic reality is something else. The Milwaukee Electric Railway & Light Company (the predecessor to WE Energies) ran Milwaukee area commuter rail lines starting in 1896, expanding their service area by acquiring competing lines. But following World War I (within 25 years of the company's founding), ridership began its decline. That declining ridership continued until the last streetcar line was finally abandoned in 1958 (TM had divested their rail operation in 1952, after many years of trying to unload this money losing enterprise).

But this is more than a taxpayer funded look back in time. The romanticized nostalgia that Barrett envisions does not match the reality of trolley service. With the introduction of rubber tired rail-less streetcars (i.e., electric buses) starting in the 1930's, there was an outcry to get rid of railed trolleys.

As early as 1934, TM's managers were fielding citizens' requests to replace "the present cumbersome and noisy street cars" with trackless trolleys. As the requests piled up, the electric streetcar, long described as "the sturdy backbone of the transit system," became an endangered species , a situation with disastrous financial implications. Rail & Wire published an upper-case lament:

The public, after being carried back and forth by electric railway cars for half a century, is turning its back on the street railway car and is demanding rubber-tired transportation equipment. Owners of property along the street railway lines join the car riders in demanding this replacement by rubber-tired service, LONG BEFORE THE USEFUL LIFE OF RAILS, TROLLEYS AND RAIL CARS HAS BEEN USED UP.

- Path of a Pioneer by John Gurda

And ...

In 1948, when trackless trolley service came to North Third Street, Rail & Wire praised the demise of the "outmoded" streetcars that "caused passengers and motorists delays and annoyance." Roy Pinkley, head of the transit system since 1925 described the steel-wheeled car as an anachronism. "It has long been demonstrated," he wrote in 1952, "that street cars do not belong in modern traffic."

- Gurda

Sixty years later and the light rail crowd ignores this history.


File this under: KRM - Guilt by Association.

KRM - Rail service is unreliable or Madison to Milwaukee in 6 hours 44 minutes

Belling and Wiggy shouldn't get all the fun. My turn to weigh in on the proposed Kenosha-Racine-Milwaukee commuter train line.

This paragraph is from Belling's column.

If the transportation nightmare caused by the flood-related closing of Interstate 94 proves anything it is that car and truck transportation is a region’s economic and social lifeline. When "you can’t get there from here" becomes reality, it not only inconveniences hundreds of thousands of people, it can disrupt businesses and put communities in chaos (how would you like to live on the Highway 83 "detour" right now?).

Belling's tipsters failed him this time. He does not address one other aspect of the flood that makes train travel an even bigger loser. As demonstrated by the response to high water along I-94, car and truck travel can be inconveniently diverted to other roads so travel can be completed. Not so with rail.

The Amtrak run through Waukesha County has been shut down for three weeks due to high water undermining rail lines through Brookfield.

No way around it for rail travel. No detours, just close up shop.

Well, not quite. Those enterprising managers at Amtrak did find a way to bypass their unusable train tracks. They are putting their customers from Madison on the bus. To Chicago. So they can ride the train to Milwaukee.

The shortest duration offered for that trip: 6 hours 44 minutes.



I hadn't read about that in the KRMilwaukee Journal-Sentinel.

Counting my blessings - UPDATED

Put down your coffee and steady your seat. I am about to praise a government employee and the power company.

We had another big night of rain at my house, close to 5 inches by one local report. The sound of the rain beating against my house made for a poor night of sleep for me. The thought of more rainwater further overfilling the flooded stream or of my sump pump suddenly deciding to quit had me on edge. I had timed my sump pump last night and estimated that over 13,000 gallons were being pumped in a 24 hour period. I think that would cover my basement with 12 inches of water. The basement remained dry this morning although my yard is a soggy mess and the entire State of Wisconsin seems to be a flooding disaster zone. Here are two reasons why things are dry inside.

When we put in an option to buy this property in the early 1990's, we were warned that Waukesha County approval of a zoning variance was needed because the only building site on the 8 acres was within 75 feet of a flood plain. It took several months and many meetings with county officials before the review board finally voted to approve the variance. During this time, Mr. Jay Potter, a zoning administrator with Waukesha County Parks & Planning, advised us of how best to locate our home and helped us through the process.

Even after the variance was granted, Mr. Potter continued his interest. On the day they excavated our basement, there was Mr. Potter in his tall rubber boots examining the composition of the soil. At one point he stopped the excavation and said that the basement floor could be no lower than that elevation. Based on soil conditions, it was his judgment that the ground water in the area of our basement would not rise over that level. Based on the 100 or 500-year rains we received this week, I believe that Mr. Potter was correct.

I also have to hand it to WE Energies for the reliable power provided to my home. In the period since the early 1990's when WEPCO trimmed the trees around their distribution lines on my road, I have had extremely reliable power. I recall less than a handful of extended power outages at my home. Although I lust after that Honda generator, I cannot justify buying it based on excellent electrical service I receive.

P.S. I am knocking on wood. This post may create some bad mojo with the flooding gods.

UPDATE:
If you are in need of a sump pump, the Manitowoc Fleet Farm's selection looked to be untouched this past Tuesday. A heck of a drive from SE Wisconsin, but it beats a wet basement.

High water Sunday

Spring Creek has crested. Those grasses in the lower left mark the normal bank, and all the areas submerged to the right of that are normally dry. The mosquitoes will be thick this week.



Almost half-pipe on each of the culverts.



A panoramic view from atop my mound.



I had to MacGyver the discharge from my sump. The normal discharge is plugged somewhere and was causing water to spray into the basement. My local Menard's was selling out of everything sump and drainage related this morning.

Save the polar bears

Following up on this column by Hugh Hewitt, M. Simon may have started a movement to fight back against the anti-greenhouse gas Bush administration.

Start a cottage industry with standard forms and get those letters out to the United States Fish & Wildlife Service. Don't like City Hall in your town? File a letter. Hate the Saudis? File a letter. Down on Cezar Chavez? File a letter. Don't like Chinese imports? File a letter. Don't like Al Gore's mansion? File a letter. In fact file letters even for industries you like. Bury this decision under a blizzard of paper.

If this takes off, there is a potential positive unintended consequence to it. We can stall government projects and slow government spending. Just by targeting road-building project in Wisconsin, we can save hundreds of millions in the current budget. Here are some places to begin.

• Make them justify the boondoggle roads to nowhere being built in the state.
  
• There is no positive benefit to offset the green-space destroyed by roundabouts.
• Creating ethanol is now known to add additional greenhouse gas to the the atmosphere over using petroleum.
• That 499-space parking lot proposed for the park across from my house will need to be justified.
  

Let's get 'er done.

To fix the state budget, start here

Wisconsin gas stations are eligible for up to $5,000 in grants to help with installation of equipment to dispense E85 ethanol fuel blends.

The funds are being made available through the state Office of Energy Independence. Retailers may apply for up to three sites, and the funds will provide 50% of the cost of E85 equipment installation.

E85 is a blend of 85% ethanol and 15% gasoline.

"These grants will go a long way towards helping increase the availability of this renewable fuel in the state," said Josh Morby, executive director of the Wisconsin Bio Industry Alliance.

Arrrrrrrrrggggghhhhhhhh .............. another handout to big ethanol, straight from the budget that Jim Doyle cannot balance. Keep me away from my pitchfork.

HT - NewsWatch