DRIVING DENVER

2007-03-29T20:06:00.000-07:00

MY NEW BLOG ADDRESS IS http://DrivingDenver.blogspot.com/

I will archive all the old stuff as I go...

2007-03-28T20:16:00.000-07:00

Sitting around the Rock Pile at work, the smokers believe we are being discriminated against.

The Rock Pile is what we called the smoking place in High School. It was at the end of the North Wing at Thomas Jefferson High School, by the Industrial Arts classes. In my Senior Year, we had Senior Hall where you could smoke inside. In college, we would make an ash tray out of the silver lining of the cigarette pack, smoke in class. When I started working, most of the problems were solved over a cigarette. My father died at an early age, probably because of smoking (Camels).

Habits are hard to break. I have tried to quit many times, I was fairly successful several times. Most recently I started again because I missed that socializing, but also because I rebelled at the anti-smoking campaigns. It makes me want to wear neither my seat-belt nor my motorcycle helmet. It seems that we are rejecting our history. Smoking in bars, and especially in Casinos, seems like it should be the last bastion of the evil curse of smoking. Let us die with dignity! Let smoking die with dignity!

Rocky Mountain News Rocky Talk Live recently had a contributor who said, "I have said many times that the 80 percent of us who don't smoke will triumph over the 20 percent of you who do. That's the way it works in a democracy. If you don't like it, you know where the door is." Wow, isn't that the same argument they used for Segregation not too long ago? Why do we need to control the lives of others?

2007-03-28T07:38:00.000-07:00

I PITY THOSE POOR CAB DRIVERS.

Cab driving was the only job I ever REALLY had fun at. I did it for some 12 years, and then I worked in the phone room at Yellow for 6 years. (I was fired for Union Duties, but that is another story.)

The taxi drivers need to realize that they have to pay for insurance, dispatching services, gas, car upkeep, even accounting. With the new bill proposed they still will need all that, and even if they omit dispatching (and thus serve no public at all), add the $10,000 plus per year their company needs to pledge for serving the handicapped, they will still make no money to speak of. You need to take in about $30 per hour when driving. Hauling people (handicapped or not) and getting $8.10 for 15 minutes of work will not do it unless you can do 4 trips like that in an hour. It doesn't work! It takes you another 15 minutes to get another call, go and pick them up, etc. Maybe a Car Service like you see in New York City would work: pay a subscription fee and/or $20 minimum for a short trip.

2007-02-03T21:36:00.000-08:00

Clearing the Snow in Denver: For Mayor Hickenlooper: I don't know if your advisors have been sheltering you from the truth, or if you have just developed an odd form of snow blindness, but here is reality:

The news says you claim that "only half of the 14,000 blocks in Denver have been cleared of snow," but I have my doubts that ANY streets have been completely cleared. Even major arteries like Colorado Boulevard have lanes in places that are impassible because of ice. If Colorado Boulevard is someone else's responsibility (as a highway), then please tell me a single street that is really completely cleared. Even downtown has blocks of ice that force cars to park somewhere else. Look at Broadway from 18th to Colfax.

Okay, maybe you mean streets that are somewhat cleared. Even around the schools where it was claimed that the streets were cleared after the 2nd week, the streets are cleared to pavement at no more than one lane. The feeder streets around my house (the streets with paint and traffic lights) are Yale and Dahlia. Both those streets have huge piles of old iced snow along both sides. When we get a little warmth, the streets become flooded and then ice over. When we start getting real melting, every single sewer grate will be covered with ice and the flooding will be worse. There is not one single bus stop that has been cleared along those streets to the curb, so even if homeowners could get to the sidewalks, there is no sense in clearing them.

The smallest side streets are just ice-packed, so we can get through them fairly well. The worst streets are secondary streets like Dartmouth, they are streets necessary to get to the small side-streets and so have had tremendous numbers of vehicles driving on them. That is where the ruts come in; my car is rather low, I scrape bottom anywhere along Dartmouth. You should have had those secondary streets cleared long, long ago. You say that Monday you will start putting out contracts to help clear the city blocks. Thank you, we will see how it goes.

2007-02-01T21:15:00.000-08:00

If your Starter is Going Out--you know, sometimes it turns over and sometimes it just clicks a little--you might be able to last a year or more while it goes. It works better in warm weather, and better when the engine is warm. I found only one reference on the internet to a possibility of messing up your engine, it didn't sound too likely.

What finally happened was this: one day we started the car and the starter just kept going. You couldn't turn off the engine or the starter. I thought I might disconnect the battery, would that work or not? Before I got to that point, smoke started pouring out of the starter and finally stopped. The engine was apparently not damaged, but I had to replace the battery; it burned up as well as the starter. It was only a couple years old, but I guess I can mark it up to a learning experience. A bus driver told me later that he once had a job keeping generators charged. When one of the starters went out (stuck on), there were explosions, fire, and huge destruction. By the way, my 1994 Camry was made in the U.S.A., and it shows.

2007-01-27T17:54:00.000-08:00

CLEARING THE SNOW: Denver has never before had so much snow sitting on the ground for so long (not in my lifetime, anyway). Snow here usually melts and goes away in a few days. I hope we will learn lessons from this snowstorm. We still have neighborhood streets everywhere that are piled with snow causing nearly impossible driving. After no plowing, the streets have become thick rutted ice. Only the highways and main streets are in good condition, and even the main streets still have too much snow to get to the sidewalks and bus stops. The individual cities are responsible for clearing the streets around bus stops, individual property owners are responsible for the sidewalks to the bus stops.

My proposal is to have contractors (as the city does now), but have little contractors with little plows and snow blowers to do the neighborhoods; have them on call to start plowing whenever the snow hits 3 or 4 inches or so. It might have to go through the Department of Transportation rather than through the local governments. Use the big equipment to haul away the snow if necessary.

Give these contractors (and any big equipment doing major streets) instructions to:

Do not block any cars.
Do not block any bus stops (50 feet clearance would be nice).
Do not block any driveways.
Do not block any sidewalks.
Do not block any sewer grates.

Of course if lots of cars are parked along a street it may not be possible to keep clear of everything, but even the act of moving the snow when only a few inches have fallen will help to keep the piles down. If these contractors have time within their contract, they could also clear sidewalks, especially for the elderly and disabled.

2007-01-26T22:14:00.000-08:00

Colorado's Labor Peace Act has made the state a strange place within the labor movement/anti-labor movement. Our newly Democratic Legislature and Governor may move our state closer to either a Right to Work state or a Right to Union state. But I think that it will not really change much at all. It would make it easier to require Union Membership, but the truth is that when a given company has reached the point where a Union is necessary (evil management), they will have no problem getting MORE than 75% of the employees wanting a union anyway.

Some are saying that repeal of the Labor Peace Act will be "unfriendly to business," but that is not true. The Right to Work states are the states that businesses do NOT want to move to (states like Oklahoma and Arizona as opposed to states like Missouri and California, for instance). The Right to Union States have higher quality of life, as well as MUCH higher income.

2007-01-25T20:52:00.000-08:00

WHAT IS FAIR Holiday Pay.
On December 22 and December 29, Denver was devastated by snow storms that made it impossible for most people to get to work. State and local officials recommended that people not travel except for an emergency. Because these days were on Fridays, RTD made sure that we would miss our Holiday Pay because we had "an unexcused absence" the day before Christmas and the day before New Years. We missed pay for one day, why take away the holiday as well? That is just mean spirited.

Okay, we are in the Transportation Business, we need to go and help the traveling public. MAYBE we could have gotten to work if RTD had provided a way to get there and get home again. The buses really weren't running very well, the 46 bus where I live did not go down Dahlia very well at all. Why don't we REALLY encourage employees to take public transportation with a guaranteed ride home program of our own, and pay for missed time if it is the bus's fault that we get there late. We could be your ears and eyes to the REAL bus and light rail service, you could make some of the money back with fines given to the sub-contractors (they really are the ones who miss the most!)

2007-01-24T20:47:00.000-08:00

Okay, I have really been putting a bunch of things aside, soon I will talk about the elections, the snow storms, and anything else I can think of.

2006-08-21T06:49:00.000-07:00

TRANSIT SONGS and driving songs have been updated. Please let me know what else I need to include in these. Any great lyrics you know?
Transit songs, Another One Rides the Bus
Driving songs, They Paved Paradise and Put up a Parking Lot

2006-07-22T10:41:00.000-07:00

RTD has had private contractors running many of their routes since May 1988. The legislation requiring this was originally sponsored by Bill Owens, before he was elected Governor of Colorado. Ostensibly, it was supposed to make RTD more efficient by adding competition to the bus lines. What it really did was to eliminate Union jobs and move that money to foreign corporations, paying much lower wages to the workers.

I am the first to admit that any company that exists without competition needs to have outside action to shake them up every so often. That applies especially to a bureaucracy, it even applies to a Union. I know this sounds vaguely Republican, but it is true. The problem lies in just what the results of the action are. If the desired action of the privatization law was to lower the wages of bus drivers, then it has succeeded. If the desired action was to make bus service more efficient in Denver then it has failed.

Efficient bus service means buses on time, serving the needs of all the public, and providing a pleasant trip for all. The RTD mission statement is "To meet our constituents' present and future public transit needs by offering safe, clean, reliable, courteous, accessible and cost-effective service throughout the district."

Statistics on the private contractors are very hard to come by. We do not know how RTD decides or counts the complaints or problems that exist. When asked, the management line is that private contractors provide service very comparable to RTD routes. The statistics they release show that private contractors are only slightly worse than in-house routes.

But as one who takes the complaints over the phone, I can tell you that the private contractors are much worse for running on-time, bus break-downs, driving incidents, and courtesy. I personally think that if RTD were to treat their divisions as they treat private contractors, then they would have better statistics to report.

The riding public is aware of the differences. They report "that bus is always late," meaning any time of the day or night. On some routes, people have quit complaining because it just never changes. Recently, RTD has been providing the private contractors with newer buses (apparently because newer contractors were smart enough to insist). That has improved matters greatly, since they do not have to rely on their underpaid mechanics to maintain the buses.

One of the public's biggest complaints is that "the drivers don't speak English." Bus drivers are required to call out the stops where another bus is connecting, and to communicate with passengers on ADA issues, etc. RTD assures us that all contractors are required to hire only drivers fluent in English for this reason.

There are not many private contractors running our fixed-route buses. There are only three companies that are able to run the routes, and historically each company before them has gone away, often because of their own management problems. There don't seem to be any other companies anywhere in the US who can take over the routes, so it isn't really free competition to speak of. The current companies running 50% of RTDs routes are:
... Laidlaw: Originally a Canadian Company, Laidlaw emerged from a bankruptcy in 2003 as Laidlaw International. Now listed on the New York Stock Exchange, They own Greyhound.
... First Transit: First Transit is owned by FirstGroup plc, a British Corporation. They are the United Kingdom's largest bus operator.
... Veolia: Currently changing their name from Connex, they are a French company. Since their acquisitions of Connex and ATC, they have become the largest private transportation company in the U.S.
... I will have more about these Contractors later.

Cal Marsella, RTD CEO, has stated several times recently that he would like to privatize more of RTD, including the Light Rail. When you think about it, what he is really saying is that he does not want to run transportation services. He wants to only run the administration services. In fact, he could privatize administration services too; that might be more to the point of privatizing. I guess that would put him out of a job too, though.

2006-07-22T10:34:00.000-07:00

an old Denver Tramway Corporation Bus, circa 1958. Photo from RTD.

2006-06-27T21:14:00.000-07:00

Don't Cross the Solid White Line -
The solid white line is there for a reason: wait till you are past the solid line before you change lanes. Think about it: you are going around somebody you can go around a little later, and irritating all kinds of people when you do it.

Don't Drive Next to a Bus -
or a truck, they cannot see you! They have an extended blind spot. Remember your blind spot? Many people have forgotten about them. Drivers of most large vehicles have the ability to detect a vehicle driving next to them with electronics, but don't take a chance! drop back behind them or go around them!

2006-06-01T21:52:00.000-07:00

SPEEDING ON I-25

Now that T-Rex has some nice wide lanes and smooth driving, the traffic has edged up, up, up. Driving through what used to be the narrows, we now go fast, fast, fast. Faster than the normal 10-miles-an-hour-over-the-speed-limit. I guess it's true, the nicer the road the faster we will go. I always have to get out of the left lane if I only want to go 65 now.

THE REAL SPEED LIMIT seems to be 10 over the posted limit. I used to think it was maybe 20% over, but now people go 45 in a 35 zone, 65 in a 55. Apparently only a school zone or a police car can make us go anywhere close to the speed limit.

2006-05-04T01:00:00.000-07:00

Suggest Some Good Transit Songs
*********
I'm making a list of driving songs and transit songs.
Click on the link to see the lyrics.

TRANSIT SONGS:

Another one Rides the Bus - Weird Al Yankovic
Bus Stop
Charlie on the M.T.A. - Kingston Trio
Chattanooga Choo Choo - Glen Miller
Down by the Station
Gone to Look for America - Simon and Garfunkel
The Magic Bus - The Who
Swing Low Sweet Chariot
To Morrow - Kingston Trio
Waitin for the Bus - Z.Z. Top
The Wheels on the Bus go Round and Round - for kidspage.

PLEASE send me your suggestions to (EMail address): DrivingDenver at aol.com

DRIVING SONGS,

Baby You Can Drive My Car - The Beatles
Beep Beep - The Playmates
Cross Town Traffic - Jimi Hendrix
Dead Man's Curve - Jan and Dean
Fun Fun Fun - Beach Boys
G.T.O. - Ronny and the Daytonas
Hey Little Cobra - The Rip Chords
Hot Rod Lincoln - Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen
Seven Little Girls Sitting in the Back Seat Kissing and Hugging with Fred - Curls?
Little Deuce Coop - Beach Boys
Little Old Lady from Pasadena - Jan and Dean
Maybelline - Chuck Berry
Me and Bobby McGee - Janis Joplin
409 - Beach Boys
No Particular Place to Go - Chuck Berry
They Paved Paradise - Joni Mitchell
Shut Down - Beach Boys
Surf City - Jan and Dean
Taxi - Harry Chapin

What else? (This list was originally started April 14, 2006)

2006-04-30T21:26:00.000-07:00

We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children.

--Native American Proverb, quoted in RTD's Monday Morning Q

2006-04-18T23:09:00.000-07:00

DON'T DRIVE IN THE LEFT LANE.
DON'T DRIVE IN THE RIGHT LANE.

Some pet peeves when driving on the highway:

The left lane should be for passing if you can manage it. Leave it open for those idiots who are always running late.
The right lane should be for entering and exiting the highway, or for slow moving traffic. Really, get out of the way there too!

People who drive faster than me are jerks.
People who drive slower than me are idiots.
People who drive the same speed as me are really the worst of all.

2006-04-12T21:06:00.000-07:00

RTD Welcomes us back!

The RTD blog on paper, the Monday Morning Q, is RTD manager Cal Marsella's communications with his employees.

Cal, You do a great job speaking and writing to us. You are really excellent at promoting your point. The only error that I saw was your implying that the RTD Board of Directors was being attacked by the union. Far from it, we found that the Board was very enlightened. They have said they would make sure future negotiations go much smoother.

As you might expect, most of the employees I spoke with did not change their views after reading your defense. It was nice of you to admit that you based our raises on selected average wages in the region, and the high raises of upper management were based on national or international wages. I hope that in the future you at least base our wage raises on comperable cities: cities where the cost of living and inflation rates are similar. Maybe you could even use cities in states where there are no right-to-work-for-less laws. The lack of such a law in Colorado helps to keep the average wages in Colorado well above the states around us.

And by the way, we do support better wages for supervisors and middle management as well.

2006-04-10T22:14:00.000-07:00

The RTD strike is over.

On April 7, 2006, ATU 1001 Union members voted to return to work. The proposal brought a good raise in contributions for our Health Insurance. It passed by 81%, though there was still considerable disgruntling about the lack of respect.

I was originally going to say that nobody won in the strike, and that is true (as is true of every strike), but perhaps I can put a positive swing on it: everybody won something.

RTD won their $200,000 extra pay for every day we were out. RTD was also able to save face by maintaining their budget: still a $1.80 raise over 3 years. And hopefully they won because they can now improve their dialogue with the union.

Union members won because we helped lower our out-of-pocket Health Insurance contributions, and we did get a higher raise up front. We won because we saw very gracious customers supporting us, and thanking us for returning so soon. We won because the RTD Board members learned that they were kept in the dark during negotiations, and they will insist on better communications in the future. They, after all, are supposed to be the ones running the company. We also got free coffee and doughnuts when we returned to work.

Governor Bill Owens won with the the memorable quote that will secure his place in history: "This union reminds me of the youngster who murders his parents and then throws himself on the mercy of the court because he's now an orphan." Only a lame duck politician could compare 1750 of his constituents to murderers.

The Transit-Riding public won with new appreciation of what the RTD employees do for them. Thank you very much for your support! We hope to never allow you to be put out again.

2006-04-08T15:16:00.000-07:00

How RTD Employees ended up striking

On March 29, 2006, RTD presented a modified proposal to the Union. The terms were somewhat improved, but it was not really much of a movement from the proposal that was rejected by 95% on March 26. To stress the importance of the matter, the Union notified RTD that we would strike on April 3 if there was no contract. The Union Executive Board suggested the members approve this proposal, since nobody wants to go through a strike, and because the Health & Welfare fund was in jeopardy if a prolonged strike would come about.

A Union is the most democratic institution there is. Everything that is done, every decision, every penny spent, has to be approved by the membership. This isn't just a Representative Democracy, it is a true Democracy. The company was aware of this, but they still did not heed the Union's warnings when we asked for more money up front, and more for health insurance. (See my previous posting.) You could say we were pushed. And in fact the Colorado Department of Labor had set up a link for RTD employees to apply for unemployment insurance. They believed we would qualify as being locked out.

The Union members rejected the proposal, though not by a large majority. I believe the members voting against it had simply reached the end of the rope when it came to being abused. Raymond Hogar, a Professor of Management at CSU, says unions seldom strike for just money, they strike out of principle.

RTD set a certain amount they would spend on their union employees, disregarding the tremendous raises they had given to top managers during our wage freeze. They never moved from this amount. Even during the strike, they took out a $500,000 contract to "protect their property." Since RTD's main income is from sales tax revenues, they received an extra net income of $200,000 per day because they did not have to pay us. That is well over 1 million dollars a week, according to RTD spokesman Scott Reed. (Reed's salary had gone up 31% to over $118,000.) The union certainly did not want to strike, only RTD could come out ahead.

That is why we had wanted binding arbitration from the beginning. The people who suffered from the strike were the Riders and the Union Members. And when you consider how many handicapped people, elderly people, poor people, children and just plain commuters it affected, you have to ask: why didn't RTD consider those people?

RTD said that they didn't want binding arbitration because the last time they were forced into it, they had to pay more than what they had budgeted. The Union proposed that any reasonable person looking at the facts would have given us a reasonable contract.

Looking at the Blogs and other comments, it is easy to see who supports Management regardless of the facts (and who supports Labor regardless of the facts, for that matter.) Those who call for privatizing the rest of RTD don't know that RTD already has a lot of trouble hiring enough drivers and mechanics, and as the economy improves they will find themselves facing the same for all the lower-paid employees as well.

The private carriers pay less than RTD (especially considering health insurance), but they don't force their drivers to work hundreds of hours without days off. RTD Manager Cal Marsella says that if they didn't have to force overtime from the bottom, it would work better. But the truth is that, most of the time, ALL the bus drivers who schedule their days off during the week will be forced to do overtime nearly EVERY DAY. That is how you end up with bus drivers who work for long periods without any days off. They have split shifts that force them to be at work for 12 or more hours to get 8 hours of pay.

I think that if RTD treated their employees a little better, encouraging an occasional day off and treating sick people to sick pay, it would go a long ways towards solving any problems they may think they have.

2006-04-08T11:23:00.000-07:00

RTD STRIKE, how it started

On March 26, 2006, the Union ATU Local 1001 voted to reject RTD's "Last, Best, and Final Offer."
The following letter to RTD was written on March 28, 2006. It tells the reasons for wanting a better contract. It shows some of the disrespect we received: while managers received raises averaging $9,000.00, we had no raises at all.

We need a raise now.

In 2003 we believed you when you said the company could not afford raises, so we took a wage freeze.

In those 3 years, we have lost nearly 10% of our buying power due to inflation. The inflation rate in 2005 was about 3.4%.

The company has gained by that inflation (and by the improved economy) with increased sales tax revenues.

Your proposal of 15 cents a quarter will just about keep up with inflation in the next 3 years, but does nothing for the problems we have accumulated. Our credit card balances will never recover.

You may think we make a good living, but things have changed. The median income in Colorado is over $40,000 a year (for a single wage-earner family). What cost $1 in 1968 is now $5.

We need affordable health insurance.

Before 2003, we paid $66 a month for health insurance.

Even at the current rate of $190 a month, there are many people in our lower-paid group who cannot afford it.

You know that the rate will rise dramatically this year, and the next years as well. We need to provide our families with health insurance we can afford.

We are dependant on you to maintain our families.