by Angela Miller
I am very excited to say that yesterday we heard through a press release that we were one of the Public Transit entities chosen by the US Department of Transportation to receive part of the funding from the green transit portion of the stimulus program.  One of the hats I am happy to wear at the District is that of leading the Sustainability program for the District.  I’ve previously blogged about attending some of the APTA Sustainability meetings, and on our desire to create a plan for the District.  But this is the largest sustainability project I’ve been able to facilitate since my arrival at the District.

This grant will allow the District to build on its basic commitment to the three elements of sustainability:  economic, social, and environmental.  We were awarded $2 million to build on our plan by investing in more innovative solar power installations at the District, and in to install plug-in vehicle charging stations at some of our rail parking facilities for our customers. 

The application process was highly competitive, with only $100 million available for Green Transit initiatives across the entire United States.  My organization was one of 43 entities receiving the funding, and received one of the largest awards in acknowledgement of the business case and ROI analysis put forth.  The project includes:

• Demonstrating the feasibility of deploying solar technology in the Rail right-of-way, thus leveraging space that cannot be utilized for other purposes.  Makes idle property more productive and possibly revenue-generating
• We will also be installing solar at maintenance and administrative facilities to offset power needs at those locations.
• Deploying parking spaces with charging units for plug-in vehicles as a value to our customers.
• Installing solar carports at some parking lots to both provide power and provide better parking options to our customers. 

This grant award is part of an overall commitment to sustainability that includes other steps like an energy-efficient data center, replacing parking lot lights with more efficient options, the creation of a new Compressed Natural Gas fueling station, our approach to transit-oriented design for transit centers and stations, the use of solar along the COASTER right-of-way to power our wireless security system, the replacement of older buses with CNG-powered vehicles, paratransit, and our commitment to being a long-term sustainability partner with the communities we serve.

by Angela Miller
We haven’t formally announced it yet, but yesterday NCTD went live on Google Transit finally.  This was a nearly 9 month effort to get our schedules loaded into the Google Maps tools.  Now when people are looking for directions in San Diego County, they can also choose to find the optional public transit path with next departure times.

The thing that is really nice about this tool is that it consolidates information from NCTD, San Diego Metropolitan Transit System, Amtrak, and other southern California transit entities so that it doesn’t matter who is providing the service you can still easily plan the trip.

Anything that makes public transit a more convenient option for the community is a good investment in my mind.  And unlike some of the other technology investments, this one cost the District almost nothing and should have a significant return.

My plan is to now jump off of this and leverage this tool to provide better information for the community through kiosks, and devices for our security and customer service teams that help all users better plan their trips.

Also thought I would mention that there is a SPRINTER application in the iPhone Applications Store.  I’m not endorsing it, but it is there.  This application was built by an independent third party developer using just our paper schedules.  My intent is to make our schedules available in the Google Transit Feed format on our website for any developer who might want to create applications.  Exciting stuff.

by Angela Miller
On Friday we kicked off the data center project at NCTD, and rarely have I been so excited about the probable success of a project.  Our vendors are Roel Construction (Rob Netzer) and Logicalis (Bob Mobach).  We were lucky to find vendors that have such competency and experience in data center design, and specifically in the requirements for attaining LEED certification.

This is a large undertaking for a small entity like NCTD.  While I can justify the project purely on the long-term anticipated Return-on-Investment, the deal was sweetened by meeting all of the requirements for the Federal Stimulus program.

The overall project has several elements that will hopefully qualify it for LEED certification, including:

• The anticipated reduction in power demand and increase in power utilization efficiency in the facility
• The re-use of the building, and materials within the facility for the project (for example, we are supplementing our green fire system instead of replacing it, we’re going to reuse doors instead of purchasing new ones, etc.
• The ability to reset the ambient temperature of the data center much higher – we expect to set it around 80 degrees instead of the 68 we maintain today
• The installation of over 220 Kw solar system onsite to more than offset the power draw of the data center
• The use of in-line cooling instead of the two air handling units currently in the room (these will be recycled for other purposes in the District)

In addition, as I’ve mentioned in previous posts, the District has been committed over the last two years to slowly introducing greener, more sustainable approaches to our information technology infrastructure, including virtualization and consolidation, switching to blade server technology, replacing older equipment with more energy-efficient equipment, and testing desktop virtualization.

All of these steps make solid financial sense for the District – an especially important consideration given the tight financial times we are currently facing.  I could not in good conscience recommend these investments if I could not show solid ROI for our troubles.  While we want to be an agency with a priority on sustainability as part of our mission, it is logical that we could not choose to make these investments if they required a corresponding reduction in service or positions at the District.  Instead, choosing to follow the more sustainable path will realize direct operating cost savings on a monthly basis for the District.

We of course face some challenges to our ambitious timeline.  One of those challenges is the delay of a system migration project by 90 days after its anticipated completion.  This project is attempting to move our Prime System applications (installed in 1986) from a minicomputer to a client-server web interface.  We cannot risk downtime on this environment and therefore out-of-the gate may see a 90-day delay.  But every IT project faces challenges, and I am confident the team will find an approach that gives us what we need.

Over the next several weeks I will be blogging about the adventures of upgrading our data center.  Hopefully in March I will be able to say that we’ve completed the work and that we are on track with our ROI.