The Future is Here (Buses!?)

So, this weekend there was a conference called the Future of Urbanism at U of M. Geesh, I learned some interesting things but not all of them were at the conference.

Finally after way too long (I depend on my bike for local transportation most of the year) I took the AATA bus. I have never liked going to Ann Arbor because the parking situation is awful and so decided to bypass that by taking the bus. It took a while to figure out the routes and the stops (the map is quite small and does not show all the stops) and I can see how this might off put some people, but ultimately I prevailed and figured out the route (Route 5) and the time. During the week buses arrive about every 15 minutes, but over the weekend they are once an hour, which proved to be a problem, but more on that later.

The bus trip provided an opportunity to think about the relationship of EMU and buses. You see at U of M and WCC (Washtenaw Community College) they have bus passes for faculty and students. No so at EMU. It cost U of M about $1.9 million a third of which U of M is able to get the federal government to pay, but everyone there has free use of the bus! This seems like a tremendous advantage. On the 4 trips I took there were certainly some students on the bus, although I hardly saw any other professionals. Most everyone who was riding the bus were students, the elderly, or poor people who could not afford cars. But unlike a memorable trip in LA when I tried the bus (there was a local crazy aboard and someone who was throwing up, AND the half hour trip by car turned into 3 hours by bus) was clean, nothing disruptive and people were just fine. There is no reason not to use the bus, especially is you are going to parking space starved areas like Ann Arbor or EMU. Plus, the buses are hybrid that save over 100,000 gallons of gas, plus less pollutants in the air.

There are other things that make the bus trip difficult though. For example, the lack of sidewalks makes people walk in the street, or in the spring time mud, and very few of the bus stops have any shelter: Not good in a wet and cold climate like we have here much of the year. Fixing both these problems (for example Washtenaw Blvd. is the main drag and it has very few sidewalks. A person would have to be nuts to walk on the street or ride a bike.) would go a long way to making our area more sustainable transit wise.

I hear the Pres. Susan Martin may be interested in pursuing passes for EMU (or at the least discounts), which would be a great thing. It could certainly help our parking situation. I heard at one time we did have some access thru the Rynearson Lot near the stadium, but that was disbanded by Kirkpatrick sometime back in 2003 or 4. But today we have no passes. though The Ride is not expensive ($1.25 for most) it is still a lot for a student, and does not encourage you to take the bus, rather than spending time seeking a parking space if you arrive after 9 AM. Of course you could park in the North Lot, but it is pretty far and if you have to carry something in or walk during a bad winter day, or at night, well, it just isn't that great. Pretty far from the rest of campus. Most people want to park much closer, like the Oakwood lots. (Area circled in red are the north lots. Lower left hand lots are the Oakwood lots)

I came back on Saturday on the most traveled route, #5, along Washtenaw, which also has several other problems, but keeping the focus...during the weekend the number 4 route runs only every hour, and if you miss it you do what during the next hour? So I looked around on the routes and saw that Route 4 runs every half hour, still a lot to wait, but if I ran.......so I did and just caught the bus. Pretty good for me since I still can't figure my way around AA, mostly because I have avoided it for so long. It is a nice town (if I could afford it) but without parking and other things that EMU faculty sometime feel about the place.......(another time another story).

So what can be done? Fortunately there are a few others on campus who are willing to work on this problem and the solution of getting bus passes for our faculty and staff. I am one of those people but now more (Marti Bombyk, Ethan Lowenstein, and Steven Moore) are thinking similarly. Maybe there is hope.

Been a long time coming

Oh no! What's this? A happy girl?

Things are slowly but slowly changing at EMU. I haven't written in quite a while, I know, but I have been busy. the sustainability fever is growing at EMU and others are getting into it.

Last fall I wrote a proposal for a grant to help form a sustainability unit here and since that time I have been working on being a part of a group, which, since I have been here has not been easy. I have not fit in well in Michigan. Once again the prophetic words of my mentor ring out clearly: You can take the girl out of California, but....

So now, 10 years later Michigan is ready to move in the direction I was headed while still in grad school all so many years ago. But come to think of it, USC was also not ready to hear the kinds of things that were going through my (and many others) heads. I will never forget a professor there who told me when I started to talk about negative feedback: Chris, you have to stop being so negative.

I was negative probably way too much because she had no idea what I was talking about, even though there were scores of articles dealing with negative and positive feedback. I was interested in living in a steady state world, rather than the one I found myself in operating from crisis to crisis. Of course, I still live in that positive feedback world, the world where one small thin amplifies beyond control. It what happens when you work in a reductionist -fragmented way, the way we have all been taught, but which for some of us stuck in our craw.

So, now at EMU things are slowly changing. I have started another sustainable class (Sustainable Cities) and we are working with setting up some indicators for the city of Ypsilanti - something to measure how we are doing in being sustainable. Ann Arbor has indicators and we are using them amongst others to set up our own. It is a good way to study where our city is in relation to others, as well as to learn what are the elements of a sustainable city.

But beyond that movement, Liz Palmer has taken over the sustainable development class, and Tom Wagner is interested in teaching the sustainable cities class, and that may allow me to begin another class: this time on consumerism. Last October I was fortunate to be able to go to Vermont to learn about what is happening there in the way of sustainable education, and there I met Stephanie Kaza and she teaches a class called "unlearning consumerism" and that is where I want to go next. I am hoping that she and I will be able to continue our conversation and I will receive more inspiration from her on that subject.

But even more! has happened. My proposal for bringing other faculty into sustainability was granted and we had our first meeting last month. I have chosen to focus on three aspects of sustainability for each of our months:
1. local. What is happening in Michigan that we should be aware of.
2. more local. What is happening at EMU that we should be aware of.
3. bringing sustainability into the whole school. Where we can go next.

I have been fortunate to have speakers for each:
1. Janet Kaufmann spoke last month on how our dairies have changed in the past 10 years, especially in the Hudson area of south central Michigan. The dangers of factory farming has taken on its own horrors in our state. She has been talking and writing about it for years now. I was fortunate to meet her when I first arrived and kept contact. She stimulated a lot of conversation.
2. Steven Moore has been in our physical plant at EMU for a few years now and has been working to find more efficient means of using energy at EMU. He will be discussing the headway he has made. That will be this Friday in the library at 2PM.
3. Terry Link will be talking about what a sustainability director does. I met him now 3 years ago when he had this job at MSU. He has since left but has kept the way of thinking and kept in contact. He will add a lot of information to what we can do and how we can grow sustainably at EMU. April 9.

The faculty group I have been working with are still people that I still do not know well, but it is obvious that they are all committed to learning more about what sustainability is and how to incorporate it into their classes, and so it has forced me to go deeper into what I have learned and how I operate. I am fortunate to have this opportunity and look forward to learning from them as I teach.

It is a good case of negative feedback to make me work without going off because it moves so slow and I want to move faster. All this forces me to fill in blanks that I may have overlooked in my path toward the sustainable. but it is also positive feedback, that initial break with the continuum that changes everything. See I can be positive!