511 Contra Costa

Bike to Work Day 2010 in San Francisco. Photo credit: Bay Area Fair Trade Coalition
In an earlier post here at 511 Contra Costa we noted that commuter benefits for vanpooling and public transportation had been restored through the American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012 (HR 8) to be on par with the qualified parking benefit
For the 2013 calendar year:

up to $245 per employee withholding per month for vanpool and all public transportation
up to $245 per employee withholding per month for qualified parking, or
up to $490 per employee withholding per month for both public transportation and qualified parking

This is great news but how does one go about setting aside pre-tax income for a commute benefit?… Read the rest

Parking this way! Photo credit: S Jones
These days, chances are you’ve heard of peer-to-peer car-sharing a concept that continues to grow in  Contra Costa and allows people to borrow an available car from neighbors on an as-need basis.  The Walnut Creek based firm, Park Circa has developed an app that facilitates shared parking.
A new tool, Park Circa, brings the peer-to-peer concept to parking and lets people use parking spaces when private citizens don’t need theirs…. Read the rest

Are you curious to know how weather affects the number of people that use the new bike lane in the neighborhood? Or how traffic patterns change during summer break? Anecdotal observations are useful in finding the answer to these questions but sometimes nothing compares to having data at hand.Getting the data just got a little easier with the arrival of TrafficCOM – a device available to the public that counts and monitors the speed and rate of traffic…. Read the rest

A look at the interior of AC Transit’s new Gillg buses. Click the image for additional photos of the new buses Photo credit: AC Transit
Some good news for AC Transit riders– the transit agency recently acquired 65 new buses from Hayward based Gillig! The buses started being phased in March and will be replacing some of the agency’s older buses.
What makes these buses so great? Well, a number of things, including:

Low-floor accessibility

Stroller and wheel-chair areas
Catalytic reduction and gas recirculation system that makes the engines of these new buses 90-percent cleaner than the buses being replaced
Low-maintenance seating
Digital display of next stops

See the below video for other improvements are on the way for AC Transit and to see some views of what these new buses look like

Video credit: AC Transit… Read the rest

Chances are you have probably glanced at  BART’s schedule, which looks like this…

Pittsburg/Bay Point Schedule. Screen grab via: BART
But what would you saw a BART schedule that looked like this?…

This is the Pittsburg/Bay Point Schedule, but in a different perspective– click image to interact with it. Screen grab via: http://andrusia.com/visualtrains/
The above series of red lines, looked at in conjunction with the X and Y axis, actually correspond with where the Pittsburg/Bay Point BART train will be at a given time…. Read the rest

Cycling in the snow. Photo credit: Amsterdamize
When a quarter of all trips within the entire country are done by bicycle it’s difficult to imagine much could be done to make cycling more attractive in the Netherlands. Then the municipality of Eindhoven unveiled it’s spectacular aerial roundabout for bikes that lets cyclists fly over motorized traffic.
More recently the city of Groningen – where almost 60% of all trips are by bicycle – yet another innovation has come about to make cycling even more attractive and convenient…. Read the rest

Standing room only on BART. Photo credit: Michael Patrick 
In response to record levels of ridership, BART has unveiled a new feature to its online trip planning – information on the estimated levels of crowding on a train. Now when you use the BART QuickPlanner (also accessible in mobile form) it will show an icon with three heads, two heads or one head indicating “heavy crowding expected,” “moderate crowding expected,” or “light crowding expected,” respectively.

Note the icon with three heads indicating a crowded train…. Read the rest

Whether you’re an aspiring transportation planner, traffic engineer, planning commissioner  or just want to know what your street would look like with a planted median and bus stops, StreetMix is an excellent web-based tool that lets you decide how to use the right of way of a street. Similar to Blockee, which we’ve highlighted in a previous post, StreetMix is incredibly simple to use and is especially helpful for anyone to experiment with the “what if” scenarios. Let’s take a look at just how easy it is to modify the use a roadway with StreetMix…. Read the rest

Have you ever been unsure whether you should bike or take public transit to work? You’re not alone! Richard Pope of London recently blogged about his most recent invention, the bicycle barometer, which tells him if he’s better off cycling, or taking the Tube to work. Richard Pope describes it like this:
“The bicycle barometer takes data about the weather, the status of the tube lines I use to get to work, and whether my local station is open or shut…. Read the rest

(Five bicycles locked to bike racks, one bike rack locked to a sign post. Photo credit: Walk Eagle Rock)
Whether you’re going to your favorite restaurant for lunch or to the local grocery store to pick up a few items, bicycling is a great way to get there– especially as the days are getting longer  it’s a perfect time to take advantage of the gorgeous weather to hop on a bike…. Read the rest