I've been planning to blog on my recent transit journeys for over a week now, and right now seems like a very appropriate moment to follow through. I am sitting on a nearly-full San Jose-bound Monterey-Salinas Transit Bus with free wifi! Yes, this is my first blog post authored and posted from a bus.

Almost two weeks ago, I started a transit conference-hopping business trip on Redwood Transit System airport-bound bus. I don't know if many folks realize it, but RTS is a great way to travel to and from the airport. $2.50 for a ride to the airport sure beats an airporter or paying for long-term airport parking. Curious to see airport bus arrivals/departures? Check out this schedule page.

Now, I know that flying is the most climate-change intensive ways to get around (check out Michael Winkler's comment on my blog), so my bus ride to catch a flight wasn't exactly a part of a sustainable journey. But darn, until there are better long-haul ground transportation options between here in Portland (see Kalia Scarla's recent article) a $99, 2-hour flight with free microbrew to Portland is hard to pass up.

But I do think promoting transit as a ground transportation option to and from the airport will be good for building support and ridership for public transit in Humboldt (especially with record levels of passengers flying in and out of ACV). It's a great way of introducing people to our local transit system who might otherwise not think to try it. Other systems like TriMet and BART work hard to promote and make their airport services prominent (BART has 10,000 daily riders to SFO - how many of those could be future choice riders, or are tourists or business travelers who decide they can do without a rental car for their trip?). That's why I asked the Humboldt Visitors and Conventions Bureau to link to RTS schedules on their website. Any other ideas for promoting RTS airport service?

Oh, speaking of TriMet's airport-serving MAX Red Line: its arrival times show up on baggage claim monitors and other displays in PDX. How cool is that? For more on how they facilitated this, check out this interview I conducted with TriMet's Chief Tech Officer and GIS visionary. Okay, must move on before I freak out get all slobbery about how cool TriMet is. Wait, just have to show you how great it is to pull up arrival information for a TriMet bus on my new iPhone: check it!

From Portland, I boarded am Amtrak thu-bus to Astoria. It broke down on my way to a transit conference! I'll just gloss over that one.

Fast forward several days, and I'm down here in Monterey at the CalACT/CTA conference ($89 flight later - we NEED carbon taxes — if its this cheap to fly, then I'm gonna, especially because to not fly at these prices would put me at a competitive disadvantage). Larry Pardi of AMRTS, and Neleen Fregoso of HTA are here too, and we've been having a good time. Nel was checking out some of the WiFi and vehicle location (that's so you can know when the next bus is coming) vendors. I had the pleasure of presenting on two panels, on Google Transit and new media. Gregg Albright, Caltrans Deputy Director of Planning and Modal Programs moderated one of the panels and said he checked out the Green Wheels site and liked what we're doing. He says they're working to make Caltrans more transparent so it will be easier for groups like ours to engage. Oh, and he's almost as big a fan of Google Transit as I am, and uses it all the time in Sacramento.

I arrived at the conference on Wednesday morning, the day after Tuesday's election. Everyone here is excited to see what new direction our country may take in transportation with an administration that's shown themselves to be much more transit friendly.

That's all for now. Signing off from MST Route #55, Aaron.

Wait!  Before I sign off, anyone want to join me for my first on-bus video conference?