Scott McGown has started a Mac-users email list for CSUS. Here’s Scott’s invitation:
You’re invited to subscribe to the new MACUSERS-L listproc. MACUSERS-L
is a discussion list to facilitate the exchange of ideas and information
concerning the use and support of Apple macintosh computers.
It doesn’t say anything about campus-only, and I just subscribed from my gmail account so it looks like off-campus addresses are accepted, but: this is a listproc mailing list, and it’s especially finicky about off-campus addresses. In order to subscribe successfully, I had to send a plain-text (no HTML, no MIME!) message formatted exactly like this:
blank-line
SUBSCRIBE MACUSERS-L firstname lastname
END
Leave the subject blank and send the message to listproc at csus. edu.
This is a brand new list, and I haven’t seen much traffic yet. The only significant discussion so far has been re Parallels versus VM ware/Fusion.
I rode my bike to work this morning. I guess I just woke up on the “foolish” side of the bed! It was beautiful but cold: -2°C (28°F). With the “wind” chill from riding, it was about -8°C (17°F). The view coming over the Guy West Bridge was the high point of my ride–the deck of the bridge was rimed with frost:
Unfortunately, my camera/phone doesn’t do justice to the sight.
Monday’s Sacramento Bee had an article on Regional Transit’s recent problems with light rail operations. The most frustrating thing about the system running behind schedule (to me) is lack of notification. I usually don’t care if my bus is running 10 minutes late — I just don’t want to stand at the bus stop for an extra 10 minutes, especially when I don’t know how long I’ll have to wait. Near the end of the article, a passenger-notification system is mentioned:
In Washington, D.C., rail officials now send electronic alerts directly to commuters’ computers, cell phones and personal digital assistants.
Joseph and I discussed a similar system for the Sac State shuttle service, which routinely runs behind schedule at the beginning of every semester. Joseph’s idea was to set up an email list server with a separate list for each of Sac State’s three different routes. Transit riders would subscribe to the alert service for the route(s) they take, using their cell phone’s text messaging address, an alphanumeric pager address, or any other device capable of receiving email. Thus if the driver on route #2 is running behind schedule, s/he would alert the dispatcher, who would in turn send a single email to route #2’s subscribers. The email list server would then notify all the subscribers’ pagers, cell phones, PDA’s, etc. This same information could, with a bit more effort, also be posted on a web page or put into an RSS feed. Email list servers are very mature technology, and they don’t require much infrastructure. Such a system could be implemented on a commodity PC in a matter of hours. The only other requirement would be a decent internet connection.
According to the Bee article, RT’s future projects list includes a public information system for light-rail stations, costing $2,000,000. ?!? That’s crazy! RT should follow Washington DC’s example (or just hire Joseph for a few days) and send alerts directly to patrons’ alphanumeric pagers and cell phones. How much could such a system possibly cost? Granted that they have many more routes and riders than Sac State, but the basic idea should scale up very well by investing a bit more money in the hardware. Spending $2 million just on kiosks at light rail stations doesn’t make any sense to me.
Today’s Sacramento State Bulletin has an article on the University Village housing survey. Interesting how much emphasis is on the faculty responses, considering they are only about a third of the respondents (196/551). Given that:
Staff seemed particularly interested in the project, making up more than 57 percent of those who expressed an interest.
I think some of the earlier comments on this issue are spot-on: this project seems intended almost entirely for faculty. Troubling…
While I was searching for links to the University Village project, I came across some information on the city’s 65th Street/University Transit Village plan. This was started a few years ago, and parts of the plan are already being implemented e.g. the F-65 development on the southwest corner of Folsom & 65th. Although the city’s plan and the university’s project aren’t directly related, they are more-or-less adjacent and they share some design features and constraints (e.g. light rail, proximity to CSUS, Folsom Blvd). Hopefully the appropriate folks from the city and university are coordinating these projects.
A Nov. 2003 Sacramento Business Journal article covers the city’s plans to transform the area around the 65th Street light rail station into a transit-oriented village:
In the current plan, the two-lane, quarter-mile stretch of Folsom Boulevard that dips under the Union Pacific railroad trestle just south of the university campus is planned to be widened to four lanes. And its rolling curbs will be changed to elevated ones, so bike lanes and planting strips bordering sidewalks can go in.
I work at Modoc Hall, very close to the Folsom Blvd underpass, on the other side of which are several decent places to eat as well as other services I would use. I’d prefer to walk from my office to F/65, but this area is downright creepy even in broad daylight! I look forward to the widening of this underpass, and I hope it will encourage more pedestrian and bicycle travel along this stretch of Folsom Boulevard.
Another plan is to make Redding Avenue an alternate route into and out of the campus via 69th Street, linking the student housing going in on 65th, south of Highway 50. That’s no easy task, however, because the route has to separately cross over light-rail and freight-rail tracks, and some roadway construction is also necessary.
It seems to me that this almost has to be part of Folsom underpass widening. A direct connection to the campus at this location would a huge benefit!
Cox noted that transit-oriented development around light-rail stations in San Diego, San Jose, Portland and Denver have proved successful in their meldings of offices, high-density housing built above retail stores and light rail.
Hopefully the planners of University Village will keep the above point firmly in mind. Build high-density housing above vibrant retail space, with easy access to light rail, and you’ll have a winning project!
I dug up a bit more on the CSUS “housing village” project in the Oct. 24 CSUS Bulletin: University Village planning. Be sure to check out the concept plan — I found the text on the plan difficult to read, but well worth the effort!
Plans could also include a University House which could be used as a banquet and meeting space and possibly a residence.[B]
The size of the University House isn’t given, but appears to be approximately 6,000 square feet (each floor). The plan shows “first story entertainment, second story residence.”[P] Gee, I wonder whose residence that might be?
According to the Bulletin article, “…priority will probably go to faculty first because faculty are recruited nationally and internationally and therefore are more likely to be deterred when they see Sacramento Region housing prices.” Looks like the staff members’ comments on my earlier post are partially correct, partly not: staff won’t be priced out of University Village, they’ll be excluded due to their occupations! Granted, that is the worst possible interpretation of the Bulletin text. Hopefully there’ll be some reasonable balance between faculty and staff (including CSUS Foundation staff)!
There’s a (potentially) very interesting project developing at CSUS — a housing village which is going to be built on Ramona Avenue (across the freeway from the campus). I will probably not be able to take advantage of this myself, since I just bought a house in Sacramento about six months ago, so perhaps my input is less important than other people’s. But some features and design goals I’d like to see include:
- Mixed-use development, i.e. 2- or 3-story buildings with retail on the ground floor and apartments above. You want to go out for coffee? Walk downstairs, go down to the corner, and into the neighborhood coffee shop (or restaurant or video store or whatever).
- Transit- and pedestrian-oriented layout. People don’t need to abandon their vehicles, but at least don’t force people to use their cars for every trip they have to make!
- Good integration with the campus. This will be very difficult and/or expensive with the freeway, light rail, Union Pacific RR, Folsom Boulevard and Power Inn/Howe to contend with.
Some useful resources for this project include:
- Jane Jacobs’ Death and Life of Great American Cities. Published in 1961, this is still the bible of vibrant urban planning.
- Denver’s Transit Oriented Development page has some good points, although it has an irritating graphic which makes the page “jump” every few seconds. (Possibly this could be stopped by turning off graphics or disabling JavaScript?)
- Andres Duany’s The Traditional Neighborhood and Suburban Sprawl provides a good analysis of why suburbs turn out the way they do.
- Transit Oriented Development, from the Victoria’s TDM Encyclopedia.
- 13 points of pedstrian-oriented planning has many good points, but be sure to leaven this overly-concise list with a good understanding of Jacobs’ book.
Also see the survey results page.
Need a laugh? Check this out!
About a month ago, Sac State rolled out a new logo and “identity package” with much fanfare, complete with a page on the CSUS web site. My buddy Joseph posted this story about the new logo on his blog at the time the announcement was made. All fine and good.
Now fast-forward to today. Do a Google search on sacramento state logo. What’s the top result? Why, Joseph’s blog of course! It’s much more relevant than the official “identity package” web page. 
I’ve intentionally left out any links to the official site. Just doing my (miniscule) part to keep it from becoming result #1! 
You can always go to Google and scoll down a bit if you really want to see it.
Back in October of 2004, Alicebird and I set up an OBCZ in the coffee shop on the ground floor of our building. Things were pretty hectic, and I somehow managed to forget the email address I had associated with the OBCZ’s bookshelf, which I was hoping to use to register books that were dropped off without BCID’s. Well, I finally managed to dig up the email address, which is effectively the “username” one needs to log in. (I did keep track of the password at least!) So this evening I updated the bookshelf profile with the street address, hours of operation and a map link of the location.
There were also three unregistered books on the shelf: Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All, The Dead of Jericho, and The Green Mile. I registered all 3 of them to the OBCZ. I’ve been wanting to read The Green Mile for some time, so I figured it was a sign that it was sitting on the bookshelf–I took the book home, journaled it, and started reading!
nyisutter used to keep a list of crossing zones, but had trouble maintaining it. The torch has been passed to pachydomo. I contacted him with our OBCZ info and he added it to the California OBCZ finder page. I still need to do a little more work to get this crossing zone set up as well as I would like, but it’s a lot better than it was!
