LA Wins First 30/10 Loan
Big news in Los Angeles today: the ambitious 30/10 plan, which would leverage Measure R sales tax revenues to repay federal loans to build 30 years’ worth of mass transit projects in the next 10 years, has received its first federal loan:
Public transportation in Los Angeles today received a boost with the news of a large loan from the federal government. Metro will receive more than a half billion in loaned funds for it’s nine-mile Crenshaw/LAX light rail line, which will take riders between the Green Line at LAX and the Expo Line, which is currently under construction.
“Today is a very good day,” said Senator Barbara Boxer, who made the announcement this afternoon. $546 million dollars from the federal Transportation Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act (TIFIA) program will be handed over to Metro, which hopes to break ground on the project in the spring.
The $1.4 billion project was originally slated to be built in the 2020s, but the funding means the line could be operation by 2016.
A quote in the LAist post from Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa calls the money “unexpected,” but it is clearly a significant development in Villaraigosa’s and Boxer’s effort to make the 30/10 plan a reality.
So why should HSR supporters care about this? First, the 30/10 plan dramatically increases the range and amount of passenger rail service radiating from Union Station, where HSR trains will stop in LA. Lots of uninformed people claim nobody will take HSR to LA because they’d rather have their cars to get around town (an uninformed claim because if this was true, nobody would ever fly to LA from elsewhere in California – my wife just flew from SJC to LAX this morning, disproving this theory). If the 30/10 plan comes together, then an HSR rider can get off the train at Union Station and transfer to a Metro Rail train carrying them to many of the major destinations and density centers of the county.
Second, this also provides a chance to demonstrate that federally-backed loans are a sensible method of funding passenger rail projects. HSR is very different from an urban metro rail system, but to lawmakers it tends to look the same, especially in terms of funding. If the 30/10 project can get these loans, then it might generate new momentum for the National Infrastructure Bank, which could be a major new source of federal funding for our HSR project.
Outright federal grants, backed by tax revenues, are still the best way to pay the construction costs of HSR. But we have to be realists these days, and it’s clear that some form of loans will be involved. Those loans might come from private investors or from countries like China or Japan. But it’s preferable that they come from the federal government, where we have more control over the terms.
I’d change the title to “LA Wins First 30/10 Loan”, instead of “Grant”.
Robert Cruickshank Reply:
October 15th, 2010 at 3:38 pm
As soon as I saw the article show up in the Twitter feed I realized the error. Thanks for catching it too!
I think that in addition to loans directly from the federal government, CHSRA should also look into obtaining federal loan guarantees. That should open up a lot more private investment, in addition to improving the terms of the deals.
has this been covered yet?
Paramount Farms offers land for high-speed rail maintenance facility
http://paloalto.patch.com/articles/high-speed-rail-chief-communication-with-peninsula-cities-a-major-challenge
super funny.
Richard Mlynarik Reply:
October 15th, 2010 at 8:58 pm
Good to see that a better local environment and better local transportation service is never on the table with these fucking clowns.
PS Nobody builds anything but parks over trenched railways pretty much anywhere in the world except the most expensive of CBDs. No title to the land, huge design challenges, huge construction cost penalties, permanent ongoing maintenance and noise issues … gee, when the decision comes to building on any of a thousand empty parking lots anywhere on the Peninsula, or knocking down any of the thoussands of single story nothing buildings within a mile of the train tracks all on land you own with free title or doing massive construction, risk management, design and public agency yoga BS in order to build a rickety building over somebody else’s tunnel, gee, I wonder what every single building property management or REIT in the entire world would do?
Anybody who falls for this for a nanosecond is a certified moron.
DOES NOT COMPUTE.
rafael Reply:
October 16th, 2010 at 6:29 am
The most appropriate response to the question would be “reduced cross traffic accident risk and associated rail traffic delays, reduced risk of suicides on the tracks, elimination of railway-related delays for cross traffic, elimination of horn noise, elimination level boarding, increased Caltrain frequency, increased Caltrain connectivity to other peninsula cities plus downtown SF, reduced Caltrain operating subsidies on a per-passenger basis and last not least, the option of limited HSR service at peninsula stations”.
The latter could be delivered elegantly if HSR and Caltrain agree on a common platform height plus car width and, selected Caltrain stations were upgraded to dead straight full-length (400m = 1320ft) platforms. In that scenario, CHSRA would secure easements in perpetuity to leverage those stations subject to timetable integration as part of its complex right-of-way acquisition deal with PCJPB. Instead of a single mid-peninsula station for HSR, the timetable could then permit different HSR trains to stop at different Caltrain station, such that the 24-station limit in AB3034(2008) would arguably not be violated. Example: one HSR train/hour at RWC, another at Palo Alto, a third at MV, perhaps more at other stations. All of this might be offered only at certain hours of the day and on certain days of the week.
Spreading HSR service out over multiple stations would sharply reduce or even eliminate the need for expensive new for-fee multi-story car parks. After all, if you could board your HSR train to SoCal at a stop no more than a couple of miles from your home or business, it would be much easier to get there via kiss+ride, a taxi, a bicycle, a jitney shuttle or – oh, the horror! – a public bus. The fact that only a very small number of daily trains would serve your preferred stop would not matter much. Trips across the state are rare enough that you would arrange your day such that you could catch one of those trains, just as you would if you were boarding a plane. Note that we’re talking about residents of the mid-peninsula here, who don’t have access to public transportation that delivers them directly to either SFO or SJC. Operators care about station-to-station trip times. Customers care about door-to-door travel times, so a strategy for distributing HSR service across a large conurbation should in theory increase ridership.
Richard Mlynarik Reply:
October 16th, 2010 at 11:19 am
Very nice.
I’ve been saying that sort of thing for 15 years or more. (Very politely for more than 10 of those years, even)
So what?
Nice words.
Make sense.
Hooray.
But.
Van Ark isn’t saying that.
Bob Doty, the World Class Professional heading up the Peninsula Rail Program isn’t saying any of that.
Mike Scanlon, CEO of Caltrain, isn’t saying any of that.
All those morons offer is pain and disruption, with the eventual “benefit” of a ground level zero in your back yard together with worse local service, all backed up with threats that if you don’t do what they say right now then Caltrain will die. (As if they aren’t killing it as effectively as possible.)
This whole business has been an unmitigated political disaster:
* choose the highest-impact, highest-cost, lowest-utility, lowest-benefit route,
* then offer no hint of any local benefits, “compromise” only when it results in higher cost and worse impacts (= elevated structures vs berms, the former being much louder while providing the all important price escalation everybody love),
* offer no hint of any local service improvement (other than “do as we say or we take all our trains away and sulk in our bedroom until you do”),
* offer no hint of any local community benefit (east-west traffic/ped/bike porosity, non-fictional noise improvement),
* offer no hint that over-building and over-specification (number of trains, tracks, speed, etc) driven purely by consultant mafioso profit seeking might not necessarily be in the best interests of the humans being who live in the communities where they are public servants of public agencies,
* offer no hint of ever once having done due diligence on any cost-benefit or value-engineering front, sticking always to the maximum concrete, minimum intelligence, maximum cost party line/lie at every instant.
If they wanted to ensure the most legitimate opposition while throwing massive burning logs onto the fires of NIMBYism, they couldn’t possibly have done it better.
Morons. Clowns. Cretins.
It’s not “The Stone Pine Lane Gang” that is screwing up Caltrain and HSR in California, it’s the abysmal unprofessionalism of the agency staffers, who appear to live and breathe solely to do the cost maximization bidding of the agency consultants. Die.
Matthew Reply:
October 17th, 2010 at 5:48 am
Richard, regarding building on sites with 1 story buildings or parking lots, unfortunately zoning laws prevent that in many cases, or minimum parking requirements make it financially untenable. There will be plenty of nimby issues with any kind of upzoning as well. I agree that this is almost certainly the more feasible option in a rational world, but in the case of peninsula nimbys, I’m less optimistic.
Arthur Dent Reply:
October 17th, 2010 at 8:39 am
What do you think should happen in the areas which are zoned for 1 story on either side of the proposed ROW? Should an aerial which exceeds those heights be allowed?
adirondacker12800 Reply:
October 17th, 2010 at 8:51 am
The State and Federal government aren’t subject to local zoning ordinances.
Arthur Dent Reply:
October 17th, 2010 at 8:54 am
Who will own Caltrain’s ROW when they’re done? If it’s still the JPB, how does that affect compliance with local zoning ordinances?
Then there’s the question of: should they attempt to comply with the local zoning, even if they’re not required to?
Richard Mlynarik Reply:
October 18th, 2010 at 10:56 am
Matthew,
Money trumps everything.
Given a choice between spending several times as much money to attempt to construct a modest but structurally over-engineered structure atop a rail tunnel on land to which it doesn’t have title; spending a fraction of that money building on a lot anywhere within a mile of the rail tunnel but not astride it; and building somewhere else altogether, the real world financial reality is that the first option will never happen. NEVER.
(OK, there’s the Tokyo and London type CBD exceptions. But that’s it. SF doesn’t come within an order of magnitude of pencilling out — look at Transbay! Notice there are zero commerical structures over the buried rail? Hmmm. Why could that be? Meanwhile, SJ and PA don’t come within two orders of magnitude.)
Anybody who believes that development rights will pay for even 0% of trenching costs is deluding themselves. Sorry, nice and otherwise economically clued-in Palo Alto trenchy people. (The only feasible use, as we see everywhere around the world, are in fact linear urban parks. These cost extra money, they don’t pay for anything!)
Anybody official — like Van Ark in this instance — who states or implies or hints that such a financial return is even possible is deliberately lying for purely political reasons in order to sow misinformation among the non-advocates of the project. He knows it isn’t possible. He’s no dummy. (Never met the man, but he can’t be.) You don’t get into a position such as that by being able to make investment decisions guided by information of the type that 1 is a smaller number than 1000.
It really is that cut and dried, sadly.
Another way to look at it: take the several million incremental dollars per parcel extra it would cost to engineer even a modest building over a rail trench (one not designed in advance for such later development, guaranteed!), and instead use that to buy off a local election or local zoning commissioners in any of the penny ante cities along the line (in which category SF and SJ belong also). The return on investment is several times better: real money versus chump change. This is the way the real world works: I’ve seen it happen up close dozens of times locally.
Speaking of the Crenshaw Line, someone on a bus got shot in Inglewood today. It was gang-related so most likely the victim had it coming.
But I wonder how much light rail and all the investment that goes with it helps to calm these neighborhoods down.
Johnathan Reply:
October 15th, 2010 at 7:57 pm
I don’t think the Crenshaw line would do so, due to ridership expected only to be 12,700 daily, compared to 83,000 on the Blue Line. Redevelopment depends heavily on transit usage.
LAX travelers won’t use the Crenshaw Line, because it will take 20 min. to reach Expo/Crenshaw, Expo line transfer, and probably another 25 min. to Union Station. Flyaway bus would provide Central Terminal Area pickup, bypassing the landside people mover system that drivers and transit users would be forced to use.
Metro plans to extend the Crenshaw Line north to Wilshire, instead of tying it with the Expo Line for a direct Union Station ride. Until then, the Crenshaw trains will be empty.
Spokker Reply:
October 15th, 2010 at 9:22 pm
Blue Line did not see heavy redevelopment.
Johnathan Reply:
October 16th, 2010 at 2:45 pm
Thanks for pointing that out. I doubt that middle class workers with rail bias would be comfortable riding the Crenshaw Line, compared to the Blue Line. The Blue Line also helped out with access to downtown jobs and a walkable Long Beach city in the daytime.
It would have been better served by a BRT to Wilshire/La Brea that is 8~10 min. more than the LRT option, which means no time savings with a transfer at Expo/Crenshaw. The funds left should accelerate the underground Green Line extension into LAX’s Central Terminal Area and the Purple Line subway. That would benefit the underserved communities more.
Donk Reply:
October 15th, 2010 at 11:26 pm
Total waste of money. This will be the worst performing line in LA. This was simply a political gift to the previous county supervisor in order for her to agree to other lines being built in the county. All you need to do is look at the line on paper, it is obvious that nobody will use it. The only useful part is the leg up to LAX from the Green Line. The only positive I see is that this pointless project is now out of the way.
Realist Reply:
October 17th, 2010 at 11:01 am
Donk is right,
30/10 is a great idea. A crenshaw line that goes from nowhere to nowhere while avoiding stopping under the airport is terrible for LA’s long-term transit development. We need to build and support lines with high ridership/$ potential and show people light rail can be quick, convenient and support itself. Building a line that goes from basically an empty / hardly ever used stop to another similar stop is just sad while avoiding stopping at the airport is insane. Is there another city in the world that’s build two light rail lines that avoid the city’s major airpot?
People won’t support transit in the future when it’s clear it’s all about graft.
Donk Reply:
October 16th, 2010 at 8:32 am
Also the only reason this happened so soon is because Boxer is using this to show that she can make things happen for CA in congress in the run-up to the election. Good timing, huh? She better keep this up if she gets re-elected.
jimsf Reply:
October 16th, 2010 at 8:38 am
That’s little cynical.
Brandon from San Diego Reply:
October 16th, 2010 at 7:24 pm
Though, there’s probably some truth in that.
Risenmessiah Reply:
October 17th, 2010 at 8:40 am
Donk’s assertion is true, but it’s more of a way to help out Brown in South Central where voter apathy is high and there’s not a fellow African-American on the ticket this year.
However, it doesn’t really matter. That a piece of the 30/10 plan has been a approved is the big news here. The more projects that are built and ready in LA in advance of HSR’s completion, the more it aids ridership across the board.
thatbruce Reply:
October 18th, 2010 at 10:46 am
LAX travelers won’t use the Crenshaw Line, because it will take 20 min. to reach Expo/Crenshaw, Expo line transfer, and probably another 25 min. to Union Station.
Don’t forget about the Expo line -> Red line transfer either (at 7th/Metro Center).
Anyway, the main set of travellers who would use the Crenshaw line, particularly the northern section along Crenshaw itself, are those for West LA; ie, there is no reason for those travellers to go to LAUS.
The southern section of this along the Harbor Subdivision sets the stage for a direct connection between LAX and LAUS at some point in the future.
Flyaway bus would provide Central Terminal Area pickup, bypassing the landside people mover system that drivers and transit users would be forced to use.
This is not mentioned in the LAX Master Plan; Flyaway would be using the transit centre as well.
Johnathan Reply:
October 18th, 2010 at 11:02 am
Transfer at 7th Metro will be eliminated with the completion of the Regional Connector in 2019. Those heading for West LA would still get problems accessing Westwood within a reasonable amount of time, something that the current FlyAway Westwood route helps serve, which is still only 29% of the FlyAway Union Station ridership.
In regards to the Master Plan, it did state that “Vehicle access to the CTA will be restricted to FlyAway buses, service and emergency vehicles…” under Redeveloped Central Terminal Area (CTA) section in this page:
http://www.ourlax.org/program.cfm#description
Where’s the subway to Santa Monica? And why did Waxman hold it up for so many years? The rich don’t want the poor travelling underneath their mansions.
The Downtown Connector has to be built before this LAX-Union Station link will exist. While we all hope that happens, it is not a done deal.
Brandon from San Diego Reply:
October 16th, 2010 at 7:25 pm
The Metro website provides more information.
In other news. This is currently on the front page of the English Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gotthard_Base_Tunnel
With a length of 57 km (35.4 mi) and a total of 151.84 km (94.3 mi) of tunnels, shafts and passages, it is the world’s longest rail tunnel. Cost: 11,7 Billion CHF (~$ 11,5 Billion). Max speed: 250 Km/h. Why did they spend that much on a tunnel? Because they want to move on.
Emma Reply:
October 15th, 2010 at 6:19 pm
Did I mention it is 1/4 of the cost of CAHSR? THat’s why we really need more federal support.
Richard Mlynarik Reply:
October 15th, 2010 at 8:51 pm
So … because we in California have insanely inflated costs — for “design”, “management”, construction, “commissioning”, etc, wrong by a factor of two or more at nearly every stage — and because we propose utterly insane projects that maximize cost while minimizing utility (“Los Banos”) … therefore we deserve bigger handouts from the federal tooth fairy (rather than, say, a swift kick in the teeth)?
Stupidity is its own reward indeed.
Al Reply:
October 16th, 2010 at 12:11 am
Note the “35.4 mi” bit.
StevieB Reply:
October 16th, 2010 at 1:28 am
Total cost is over SFr13 Billion. The financing is being carried out through a special fund fed by a tax on oil products (25%), a heavy vehicle tax (65%) and 0.1 of 1% of VAT (10%). High Speed Rail in the USA needs a dedicated funding source.
Proposals have been made to change the gasoline tax to a percentage of the price, just over 8%, instead of a fixed rate. This would increase the tax as the price of gasoline increases. Too many in congress oppose raising the gasoline tax for much hope from that source.
rafael Reply:
October 16th, 2010 at 6:39 am
Switching from a fixed amount surcharge to a percentage would exacerbate both John Q. Public’s and the IRS’ exposure to the wild gyrations in the price of cruse oil. Far better to do what has already been proven to work in both Europe and Japan: simply raise the fixed amount to a much higher level.
Of course, it would be far too disruptive to implement a large sudden increase. Instead, the best approach would be to tack on an addition 1-2 cents in tax each and every month for at least a decade. Make it gradual, predictable and de facto irreversible. This will prompt car buyers, auto makers, truckers and their customers to pay extra for vehicle that deliver all the features they want plus higher fuel economy. Alternatives such as CNG, hybrids and all-electric cars plus simply driving fewer miles per year by switching to public transportation/bicycles for very short trips will also become more attractive over time.
Alon Levy Reply:
October 16th, 2010 at 10:29 am
What’s the total length of tunnel on CAHSR, again?
jimsf Reply:
October 16th, 2010 at 5:41 am
considering california’s contribution to the national economy and the fact that the taxes we pay here are supporting the loser states, yes, we do occasionally deserve large chunks of money when we need it. Its the least they can do.
Emma Reply:
October 17th, 2010 at 4:38 pm
Honestly. I have no idea what you are talking about. Brief: What is your point? Are you against CAHSR or for CAHSR? What I was trying to say is that every rail project is funded by the federal government no matter the cost.
Alon Levy Reply:
October 17th, 2010 at 5:15 pm
The Chuo Shinkansen maglev, which due to extensive mountain and urban tunneling is about as expensive as the Gotthard Base Tunnel per-km, was refused government funding. JR Central is planning to build it out of its own money, leveraging the Tokaido Shinkansen’s perennial windfall profits.
Emma Reply:
October 17th, 2010 at 11:28 pm
Yes, because it would be a waste. Maglev used to be the thing in the late 90s and early 2000s. But since Alstom has proven that conventional trains can reach just the same speeds, many governments dropped their maglev plans.
Alon Levy Reply:
October 18th, 2010 at 8:06 am
Alstom has proven no such thing. What it proved is that a shortened TGV, consisting of just three cars and two souped-up locomotives, could achieve maglev speeds. Production steel-wheeled trains are still limited to about 360 km/h, and in Japan they couldn’t get them above 320 due to noise problems.
The reason maglev failed to get government funding is just that it costs too much. By the same reasoning, I believe the government in the US should not fund projects with the same cost range as maglev, especially when the actual service level provided is merely conventional HSR.
Andre Peretti Reply:
October 16th, 2010 at 6:32 am
“Why did they spend that much on a tunnel?”
Because the Swiss intend to totally ban international heavy trucks from their highways. Passenger traffic only ranks second in their preoccupations.
So far, “Ferroutage” (piggy-back) was limited by saturation of existing rail routes. When the new tunnel opens, not a single truck will be allowed on Swiss roads unless its destination is local. Piggy-back trains will travel at 160km/h (100mph), passenger trains at 250km/h (156mph). Total predicted frequency is 300 trains a day. Large road-to-rail stations will be built to allow trucks to get on the trains as soon as they arrive, with minimal waiting time.
Note that France will indirectly benefit from the tunnel. Currently, thousands of trucks by-pass Switzerland and drive through French alpine valleys to avoid long waits in Switzerland. The new tunnel will make the direct Swiss route faster. The French Chamonix valley, now blighted by heavy truck traffic, is expected to regain its former tourist appeal.
This Swiss aversion for diesel fumes and noise doesn’t seem to be shared by Americans. While the Swiss decided to put trucks on electric trains, the Bush administration planned to build the NAFTA 22-lane superhighway for truck traffic between Mexico and Canada.
D. P. Lubic Reply:
October 18th, 2010 at 4:25 am
Yep, that’s why some call the GOP the “Generous to Oil Party.”
What would I do without links? Germany via Virginia:
http://www.railsolution.org/articles/Articles_Top_level/HupacFreiburg.pdf
General link:
http://www.railsolution.org/
Enjoy.
I will comment that LA Union Station needs a car rental facility the way the airport has one. Some visitors will want to rent a car, and the transit network is not going be complete enough to totally eliminate that desire for a *very* long time.
Kenb Reply:
October 16th, 2010 at 3:00 am
Union Station currently has Hertz and Budget car rental counters.
rafael Reply:
October 16th, 2010 at 6:44 am
The construction of run-through tracks for HSR will entail the demolition of a significant number of buildings south of LA Union Station. Some of the land freed up could be used for a for-fee multi-story car park accessed via a new ped/bike bridge sandwiched in-between the Gold Line and the heavy rail tracks.
Alternative: encourage HSR passengers who wish to rent a car to alight/board at Burbank, where there’s more affordable land to park a fleet of them.
thatbruce Reply:
October 18th, 2010 at 10:49 am
Unfortunately not; those are some fairly sharp turns that they (CAHSRA and Metrolink) are proposing to avoid demolishing too many buildings.
Richard Mlynarik Reply:
October 18th, 2010 at 11:19 am
It’s not that terrible, at least as shown in the LA-Anaheim Supplemental AA Appendix I.
(I’m not going to bother trying including a link since the cretins who suckered CHSRA for site “redesign” broke every single URL into the site and will doubtless do so again.)
That shows 200m radius curves, which are bad but not fatal approaching an all-stops station. Non-optimal, but well here we are in the real world.
Using just a tiny amount of creativity (beyond the scope of PB and PTG, of course, but normal everywhere else in the world), these can and should be eased out to ~250m radius with impact to at most one additional parcel.
Going significantly wider and straighter (ie faster), desirable as it that would be, clearly would involve a lot more property; my working-solely-from-maps-with-no-local-knowledge guess is that they might well have made an acceptable compromise here.
OT: TV coverage of the Burlingame story poles – apparently Caltrain officials called FRA, OSHA and others trying to shut down the story poles for fear they might fall onto the trains and cause a problem. If that is an issue with just story poles, how much space will they really need to construct HSR right next to an operating Caltrain?
http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?section=news/local/peninsula&id=7727752&rss=rss-kgo-article-7727752
jimsf Reply:
October 16th, 2010 at 9:57 am
I dont see why the structure needs to be that large to begin with.
Nadia Reply:
October 16th, 2010 at 11:34 am
not sure what you mean by that – the story poles or the actual HSR structure shouldn’t be?
jimsf Reply:
October 16th, 2010 at 1:22 pm
I mean why does the elevated structure need to be that large. One, it shouldn’t have to be that high if you do half and half and depress the streets. Two, why does is need to be that thick ( as depicted by the orange net) – and is this elevated or on a berm by the way- and as a side note, even if it is obtrusive, take a good look at adjacent area. Nothing but warehouses and parking lots etc. The area is already blighted so hsr there could at least add some landscaping and decoration to the currently ugly mess.
jimsf Reply:
October 16th, 2010 at 1:32 pm
take a good look at the lovely place they are worried about ruining…
gorgeous
Stunning
spectacular
oh no!
please. they should be thankful the project will bring in money during the construction, and that they can bargain for some of the hsr money to go for aesthetic improvements to the adjacent area. Right now its pretty dumpy.
Elizabeth Reply:
October 16th, 2010 at 3:06 pm
I think that is the question that the residents are asking.
A lot of what CARRD does locally is try and keep everyone in the room talking but it is hard when the CHSRA continually shoots itself in the foot. In this case, the first effort was probably the worst possible, most opressive aerial structure imaginable. We have tried to impress upon people the importance of leading with something that people can imagine being acceptable, instead of the “worst case scenario”. We are clearly not making a lot of progress on that front…
Arthur Dent Reply:
October 17th, 2010 at 8:50 am
Jim, you asked why does the structure have to be so thick — it’s actually going to be considerably thicker than the orange netting. The netting is 30′ wide, but the proposed structure will be around 80-120 feet wide.
http://burlingame.patch.com/articles/telling-the-hsr-story
Clem Reply:
October 16th, 2010 at 4:37 pm
It does, when it’s designed by tone-deaf consultants with delusions of grandeur, who plan to show Europe, China and Japan how it’s really done.
jimsf Reply:
October 16th, 2010 at 5:15 pm
even caltrans has won design awards over the years for freeway designs that are works of art in concrete. Even PG&E makes efforts to use special subtle coloring on high tension lines to make them blend into the surrounding areas. Surely they can design and elevated structure that is graceful and seismically sound. One that incorporates a graceful structure, with embedded textures, good coloring, and proper adjacent landscaping and streetscaping. That’s how we used to do it in california. I mean granted, there is only so much you can do, and interchange is an interchange, but there are things that have been done and even an hsr fanatic like me expects chsra to do these things. I assumed it would automatically be part of the deal. It has to be in order for californians to accept it. So they’d better get to work.
jimsf Reply:
October 16th, 2010 at 5:29 pm
Look see they can do if they try
and wow
side note – I guess if the nimbys had their way and they put the HSR on the 101 instead of the caltrain row, they would be saying that they are ok with this
(by the way, why does LA get this much investment – I mean talk about ginormous overkill just to move a few more cars around the grid…. jeeez and Ill be nobody in la even batted an eyelash or noticed that thing going up!)
Al Reply:
October 16th, 2010 at 12:15 pm
I’m guessing they’ll put more effort into engineering the HSR, so it doesn’t fall down, than they did into engineering the story poles. :)
I haven’t seen this reported here, but maybe I missed it.
The Governor vetoed the oversight provisions that were included in the appropriations for the Authority in the budget just passed. He left intact the money, but vetoed the strings that were attached.
This has started an uprising at least in some legislators minds. I copy below what the Daily Post wrote on this today (10/16/2010), since the Post is not on the internet. A background article appeared on the Palo Alto online system earlier. Expect to much more about this.
http://www.paloaltoonline.com/news/show_story.php?id=18589
[Note by Robert: I deleted the full text of the article - please do not post full articles here.]
Robert Cruickshank Reply:
October 16th, 2010 at 5:46 pm
As I’ve said, the November 2 election will be decisive in shaping the future of the HSR project. If Jerry Brown wins, I expect him to lead his own reshaping of the CHSRA – keep in mind that as Attorney General he has bee quite familiar with a lot of this legal wrangling.
And if Meg Whitman wins, then the project will be killed.
So Arnold’s veto doesn’t make a lot of difference here, though I expect HSR critics and opponents to scream about it.
synonymouse Reply:
October 16th, 2010 at 9:04 pm
Jer3ry Brown might seek another vote of confidence in the CHSRA project(ditto for Whitman)if he senses the project has become so borderline he becomes worried his legacy might be tainted by another Big Dig.
Speaking of Big Digs:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703440004575548280684121298.html?mod=WSJ_article_related
At least with Tejon California will acquire something memorable as opposed to mediocre – an expensive solution, yes, but an unqualified accomplishment, like the St. Gotthard base tunnel..
morris brown Reply:
October 16th, 2010 at 6:22 pm
Here is a link to the deleted article in the Post.
http://home.pacbell.net/mbrown5//HSR/veto2.doc
The Crenshaw Line is anti-HSR investment. Recent experience from Seoul shows that building transit connections to the local airport would make flying more convenient, reducing HSR ridership. The KTX had a small downtick in ridership, 1.3%, after Seoul opened a new subway line to its domestic airport. The only saving grace here as far as LA goes is that Crenshaw strategically misses all the important connections and destinations, so its ridership is likely going to be too low to be noticeably bad for HSR.
Spokker Reply:
October 16th, 2010 at 9:19 pm
The Crenshaw Line is not going to make flying more convenient. The LAX Flyaway bus already does that and does it better than the Crenshaw Line ever will.
Alon Levy Reply:
October 16th, 2010 at 10:34 pm
Yeah, most likely Crenshaw will end up a money waster rather than an HSR obstacle. But still, any attempt to make it better will make HSR worse.
Realist Reply:
October 17th, 2010 at 11:08 am
Sad, but true. The crenshaw line will hurt HSR though (even though nobody will be able to use it to get to the airport) because it’ll be much harder to build future feeder light rail once they build this. Everyone will point to it and say light rail doesn’t do any good and is just too expensive and just part of the pay-for-play political system.
I’d rather they did overcome the rideshare / taxi lobby and actually put in a real airport stop people could use this time so that future light rail isn’t viewed so poorly in LA.
Johnathan Reply:
October 16th, 2010 at 10:28 pm
I think public transportation mode share is very important for LAX, even if it comes at a price to HSR. LAX serves 60 million passengers, a third of that are international. Only 1.5 million of them are served by the FlyAway bus and insignificant amounts by Metro. The FlyAway saves 15 miles per person from driving (Wikipedia source). This leaves up to 900 million miles of driving that can be saved, even more if Metro delivers them to their final destinations.
The environmental savings cannot be understated.
Senator Boxer has advanced expanding the Transportation Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act (TIFIA) possibly at the expense of an infrastructure bank.
At a hearing of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works ,chaired by Boxer, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa testified as reported by dc.streetsblog
thatbruce Reply:
October 18th, 2010 at 11:00 am
I think this is the link you intended.