Asm. Cathleen Galgiani Discusses HSR Jobs and Route in Merced
Assemblymember Cathleen Galgiani, one of the leading advocates for the California high speed rail project, spoke at the Merced Civic Center yesterday about HSR issues, including jobs on the project and concerns about the route from farmers. Here’s some of the more notable things she discussed:
Speaking inside the Sam Pipes room at the Merced Civic Center, Galgiani, D-Livingston, urged local and small businesses to bid on rail contracts or subcontracts. Small businesses that sign up to bid for a contract must have 100 or fewer employees and annual gross receipts of $l4 million or less over the previous three years, she said…
Said Galgiani: “94 to 96 percent of the work force will be our workers and the balance will be from engineers from other countries who have specialized technology to train our engineers.”
In fact, it could be 100% Californians, had the US government not abandoned its efforts to develop HSR infrastructure over the last 30 years. As a result, there are virtually no American HSR engineering experts, and those who do have such experience, like Bob Doty, received it on projects overseas. Galgiani did mention she supports creating a special program to train engineers in HSR at UC Merced.
Still, Galgiani reminds us that nearly all the jobs that HSR will create will go to Californians, and most of those will go to Central Valley workers and businesses. That’s precisely why the Obama Administration directed that the federal HSR stimulus funds assigned to California be spent in the Central Valley, which has some of the highest unemployment rates in the state.
The other big issue was the HSR route and its potential impact on farmland. According to the Merced Sun-Star article, there will be a hearing in “late February” to address ag concerns about the HSR route. I don’t have any details on where or when the hearing will be held, but I’ll try to get those for everyone.
This event seems to have been another indication of the strength of the HSR project. While there are some understandable concerns about the impact of the route on farmland, there’s also every reason to believe those concerns can be addressed – and of course, the tracks do have to go somewhere. It’s also good to see Galgiani continuing to show her strong leadership on the project through these kinds of public events.
I have to ask, what is so special about designing a high-speed railroad? Sure, it needs gentler curves and the treatment of grades may be different (you can actually go steeper than normal because you can take greater advantage of momentum effects, as the French discovered), and of course you there is electrification to consider. In California, you will also have to deal with earthquake resistance and maybe stronger-than-normal environmental protection laws, but other than this and a cetain level of sensitivity to things like town esthetics (something most highway engineers seem to lack), it should be a pretty straight-forward civil engineering job.
Some years back I had the chance to attend a railroad meeting in Virginia, sponsored by NARP and its Virginia associated organization, VARP. Among the things there was a slide show of the construction of a then-new high speed railroad that was just about to open between Paris and Lyons. What stood out for me about the photos (which were taken during late earthwork and bridge constructionstages, just before the installation of track) was how much the construction of this railroad looked like building a modern highway.
Now, equipment construction and electrification, and maybe a modern cab-signal/automatic train stop system (or its modern PTC counterpart) could be a different story, and everything has to be built to tighter tolerances than normal, but the bulk of the money and effort really go into that civil engineering. And so I ask, how is this so very different from a normal railroad, other than those wider curves and a potentially different grade treatment?
Alon Levy Reply:
January 22nd, 2011 at 8:49 pm
First, HSR requires full grade separation. This is the bulk of the cost problem in the Central Valley.
Second, HSR can almost never share tracks with existing traffic, so just leveraging an existing track and replacing rails and ties is rarely an option. So either way, construction is required – like, say, widening a freeway.
Third, the tight geometric tolerances can force a large amount of earthworks, viaducts, and tunnels. It’s not applicable to the Central Valley, but becomes important on lines that are not perfectly flat with an existing dead straight ROW.
James Fujita Reply:
January 22nd, 2011 at 9:00 pm
grade separating and not sharing is what gives the Shinkansen its impeccable accident record. that and obsessive Japanese tech perfectionism.
zen tea cups can have imperfections, never trains :)
Matthew Reply:
January 22nd, 2011 at 9:11 pm
I think D. P. Lubic’s point was that it shouldn’t be a problem for local businesses to complete the majority of construction. I don’t know how contracts will be assigned in practice, but I would be highly surprised if it weren’t the case that civil engineering would be largely done with local contractors.
D. P. Lubic Reply:
January 23rd, 2011 at 12:22 am
Or even the basic design; the big thing James Fujita and Alon Levy both mentioned–the dedicated and grade-separated right-of-way–is part of your initial construction standards, and is in many ways the concept behind the Interstate system. The technical perfectionism in operations and maintenance is the part that will be hard for us to achieve; I hate to say it, but this country has become more than a bit sloppy about this sort of thing.
Of course, as the freight railroad industry has demonstrated on its most heavily used main lines, at least the maintenance can be quite competent, provided the money is available to pay for it. That was a big chunk of the problem 40 years ago, when the industry was suffering from the twin burdens of overregulation and subsidized competition. Since then, one burden has been lifted, but the other remains–and even then, I think the deregulation program, while successful overall in terms of helping to restore financial health to the business, is still something of a mixed bag (i.e., difficulty with Union Pacific).
Of course, there is that problem with the cramped, expensive, deep, tight-curved approach to the Transbay terminal, but I’m not so sure I would entirely blame that on incompetent engineers as I would on, I guess, technologically incompetent money and real estate men, technologically incompetent politicians, and a certain civil engineering outfit that goes along with them and compromises the mission of its engineers.
BruceMcF Reply:
January 23rd, 2011 at 10:46 am
On the last, a shorter way to put it is that the local mandate from the SF voters to make it an HSR terminal was not taken seriously when the TBT was first designed, and project momentum has left them trying to fix a bad design after they blew the chance to make a good design at the outset.
Alon Levy Reply:
January 23rd, 2011 at 12:34 am
The (full) Shinkansen doesn’t share track, but it does share route – e.g. the Tohoku Shinkansen runs next to the Saikyo Line, built specifically to appease concerns from people in Saitama that the bullet train would do them no good.
The grade separation question is different. Of course HSR must be grade-separated, but some routes require more grade separations than others. California HSR uses an old railroad route, which passes through many small towns on the route crossing their streets at-grade. This is what’s driving the cost up.
By the way, as a corollary to the above issue with CAHSR, you can be assured that Florida HSR costs per-km will be significantly lower, since there’s already a secured grade-separated right-of-way.
D. P. Lubic Reply:
January 23rd, 2011 at 12:58 am
“. . . there’s already a secured grade-separated right-of-way.”–Alon Levy
Provided the new governor of Florida isn’t so crazy as to throw it away on highway expansion.
And by the way, a lot of people would say this initial segment in Florida isn’t worth much, but again, one must start somewhere, and like the Valley segment in California, this is meant to be part of a larger system.
Oh, how I wish the oil crowd didn’t have the influence they do. . .
BruceMcF Reply:
January 23rd, 2011 at 10:48 am
Well, we do produce about 1/10th of the oil in the world, so the oil industry is going to be influential. Too bad we consume 1/4, so we get to combine the worst of being a big oil producer and of being a big oil importer.
D. P. Lubic Reply:
January 23rd, 2011 at 12:52 am
I have a weird brain–someone says something, or even I think of or write something, and I recall some trivial thing that is sometimes only remotely connected with it. In this case, it is an article in Trains magazine from very early in the Shinkansen program (it may have been just before the line was to open to the public, and perhaps was in the testing phase).
This article was written by the main editor of the time, the late David P. Morgan, and one of the things my tickled brain cells remember was how familiar the original Shinkansen looked to him. Standard gauge, heavy rail, electrification, CTC with automatic train stop and cab signals, grade separation and easing of curvature, high-level platforms for level boarding–all of these were things he was familiar with in American railroad practice, though not in the integrated package as they came in the Shinkansen. Most of these “super railroad” elements were in use on the electrified segments of the Pennsylvania Railroad, and others–notably the automatic train stop/cab signal provision–were in partial use on about all the railroads in the country at the time on at least one division. This was part of an ICC edict passed in the 1920s as a way to promote these systems; it would be repealed in the middle or late 1960s.
And more brain cell tickling here–but wasn’t the original Shinkansen public schedule relatively conservative, with an end-to-end average in the 90 mph range? This would later be increased, of course, part of this coming from shaking the system down to get the bugs out, and part of it from increased confidence coming from operating experience.
adirondacker12800 Reply:
January 23rd, 2011 at 10:22 am
The Shinkansen and Metroliners had comparable run times. . . . If I remember correctly for a brief period Metroliner expresses, NY-Philadelphia-DC only trains, ran at an average speed of 91. The Japanese were going with the tried and true-ish, which at that time was the PRR between NY and DC. …. and yes for a brief period Metroliner run times were lower than Acela’s. They got it down to 2:30 for a few months…..
Alon Levy Reply:
January 23rd, 2011 at 6:27 pm
The all-stop Kodama trains ran at Metroliner speeds. But the Hikari was already faster – it averaged 170 km/h, which no non-HSR train I know of has beaten. The Metroliner averaged 140, briefly, and couldn’t maintain the schedule so it dropped back to 120.
I find it utterly depressing reading about the progress of this project. It is obvious that the American system is completely incapable of getting high speed rail built at any sensible price. The newest French line, the LGV Est, seems to have been delivered for $23 million per mile. (excluding rolling stock) Here in America, the ESTIMATES for the Central Valley are $70 million per mile, and the delivered cost is likely to be more.
That is at least THREE TIMES MORE than the French. French workers are notoriously lazy, working 35 hour weeks, getting 4 weeks a year of holidays and enjoying healthcare and other benefits that Americans can only dream of. The Bureau of Labor Statistics index of hourly compensation costs indicates that French labor is 30% more expensive than Americans (2008 data for manufacturing, http://www.bls.gov/news.release/ichcc.t01.htm) How can the French possibly build rail for less than us?
The French obviously work much smarter than Americans. The difference must be in the quality of the civil engineers and the quality of the management, and the excess of environmental rules and regulations in the US. The US also seems to have huge problems with government contracting. In the defense industry, almost every program is vastly over budget and behind schedule. The Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle for the Marines is vastly overbudget and is facing cancellation. Cost growth on that looks to have been a factor of three. The F-35 fighter for our airforce is way over budget. It is supposed to replace the F-16 fighter, but it will cost 4-5 times as much.
On the East Coast, the cost for the ARC tunnel was insane. It was many times greater than what similar tunnels cost in Europe. The US government is failing to deliver large complex engineering projects at any sensible cost.
Is this what a declining superpower looks like? A large part of the problem with high speed rail seems to be idiotic environmental rules which strangle our ability to build large scale infrastructure. However, US govenrment contracting also seems to be badly broken.
I have lots of issues with the design of high speed rail on the Peninsula, but I had hoped that it would work in the Central Valley. A flat, agricultural area would seem to be well suited for high speed rail. Looks like I was wrong.
Joseph E Reply:
January 23rd, 2011 at 1:19 am
“A flat, agricultural area would seem to be well suited for high speed rail. Looks like I was wrong.”
Have you traveled between Fresno and Bakersfield on Highway 99 or the San Joaquin train? There is agricultural land, but also a huge amount of sprawling industrial, retail and residential development. All those grade separations, to get the trains thru Fresno, Bakersfield and other towns, are driving the cost up.
Joey Reply:
January 23rd, 2011 at 9:02 am
Sure, it’s not just agricultural, but by anyone else’s standards, we’re still paying more than twice what we should be.
jimsf Reply:
January 23rd, 2011 at 9:37 am
of course we are. America is in the business of people making money, not the business of getting things done for the public good. You have to accept that because your are going to witness it the rest of your life. Thats why Ive said before that I can’t get worked up over a project not being exactly perfect. We don’t get exaclty perfect here. We are lucky to get anything at all. YOu take what you get and make do, or you go without. So stop worrying about the cost comparisons because they are meaningless. The only focus should be on keeping it moving and getting it done. You just have to get used to that.
Elizabeth Reply:
January 23rd, 2011 at 9:53 am
Seriously?
Isn’t this the attitude that perpetuates the bad behavior?
jimsf Reply:
January 23rd, 2011 at 10:10 am
This is the truth thats what it is. This is what the country runs on. You didn’t know that?
“freedom” + “capitalism”= do whatever you can get away with and whomever is best at getting what they want is the winner”
Then what you do is wrap it all up with a lot blathering about morality and pretty red, white and blue wrapping paper, and that makes it all ok.
For real. You didn’t know this?
schrodinger Reply:
January 23rd, 2011 at 2:38 pm
French people are also in the business of making money, but their government seems to do a better job of managing public works projects. A long tiime ago, our government did a better job too. (Hoover Dam, Apollo etc)
BruceMcF Reply:
January 23rd, 2011 at 10:53 am
And the reason it is “noticed” in the normally tame corporate-dictation press is that there is some interest saying that its OK to notice this time ~ so in part an effort to defend the much bigger trough of money for the roadworks that will be required if the HSR is not built, for those yellow bellied surplus suckers, and in part to defend the oil-addiction of the transport system that sucks down 1/6 of the world oil supply.
synonymouse Reply:
January 23rd, 2011 at 11:17 am
I-5
schrodinger Reply:
January 23rd, 2011 at 2:32 pm
I’ve travelled both 99 and 5. I’ve also looked at parts of the rail corridor on Google Earth. The rail corridor looked to be really wide, with almost all of the neighbors being industrial.
Anyway, if going through towns is a problem then swing west and avoid them. It’s not like the peninsula where there is nowhere else to go. It’s the environmentalist community which is forcing the project to use existing corridors and I think they and their laws are a big part of the cost problem.
Even so, I’ve been thinking about this, and realize that at every level American government always chooses the biggest and most complex solution to a problem. My town built a new library and it is as big and complicated as they could possibly get away with. Extending the old one would have worked just fine, but somehow that was never an option. The F-35 fighter has all sorts of features like stealth and vertical take off which add lots of cost and which the military could probably live without. BART’s Millbrae station is another example of a far more complex and expensive solution than was really necessary. It wasn’t always that way in this country. If you look at the existing Caltrain stations they are very definitely minimum cost designs. Compare that to the grandiose new terminals currently proposed for high speed rail.
Somehow the contractors and their buddies in government seem to be able to stick the rest of us with their complex and expensive designs. So in addition to really complex and expensive environmental laws, we have a big problem with government contracting producing over-priced projects.
Alon Levy Reply:
January 23rd, 2011 at 6:29 pm
The problem isn’t width – it’s grade crossings. Move the corridor to a greenfield route nearby that skirts all the small towns on the way, and most of the viaducts will go away, cutting costs.
schrodinger Reply:
January 23rd, 2011 at 9:39 pm
That sounds like a good solution. Low speed loops with grade crossings could carry stopping trains into the town centers if necessary, or parkway stations with good road connections could be built on the high speed track.
Joey Reply:
January 23rd, 2011 at 8:59 am
It is rather depressing. Spain recently completed the Madrid-Levante line for about $22 million per mile, despite much of the route being in tunnels and on viaducts.
I’m not even sure what’s driving up costs so much. By foreign standards, the entire 400 mile route could be tunneled for the current price.
Peter Reply:
January 23rd, 2011 at 10:03 am
As long as we insist in retarded decisions at every level, of course the cost will go up. Look at the clusterfuck of the TBT. Look at the FRA’s potential insistence on 100 feet between freight tracks and HSR…
jimsf Reply:
January 23rd, 2011 at 10:12 am
ok you aren’t going to change it so what you have to do accept it and move on. think of pretty things like livery colors and station landscaping. Its a lot less stressful. I’m rather fond of the blue and yellow they are using on the website myself.
BruceMcF Reply:
January 23rd, 2011 at 10:54 am
I do quite like the blue and yellow. Which university’s semi-pro football team colors are those, BTW?
jimsf Reply:
January 23rd, 2011 at 11:04 am
actually this yello black is what I really like. Funny thing, as much as I don’t like the ICE siemans trains, compared to tgv, in this pic I do like it. Turns out a lot has to do with that god awful white color scheme they use on ICE. UG…. LY.
But when you paint it this way, it actually looks pretty nice.
Peter Reply:
January 23rd, 2011 at 11:06 am
The colors are from SJSU.
Peter Reply:
January 23rd, 2011 at 11:10 am
Well, and Berkeley.
Donk Reply:
January 23rd, 2011 at 11:06 pm
All of the UC schools have some shade of blue and yellow/gold colors. UCLAs is probably the most different, baby blue and yellow/gold. UCLA = 2nd UC school after Berkeley, ie baby of Berkeley. Bruin = Baby Bear. Cal is the Bears and has navy blue. Hence UCLA has baby blue and is the Bruins. Sort of lame, but I like their colors. They once got voted best home unis in college football (I think it was an espn poll).
schrodinger Reply:
January 23rd, 2011 at 2:39 pm
Why 100 ft? Worries about freight train derailments?
Alon Levy Reply:
January 23rd, 2011 at 6:31 pm
Officially, yes. Unofficially, either UP is trying to extort money from the government, or the FRA is even stupider than we thought – it’s unclear.
Elizabeth Reply:
January 23rd, 2011 at 7:53 pm
The 100 feet appears to apply equally to BNSF, so I think the answer is safety concerns.
Peter Reply:
January 23rd, 2011 at 8:08 pm
I’m guessing van Ark said it at the 12/20 meeting, since he was missing at the 12/2 meeting? I was listening to the recording of that meeting, but I didn’t get to it yet.
Elizabeth Reply:
January 23rd, 2011 at 8:13 pm
No, it was at a different meeting.
CEO van Ark presented to the Public Infrastructure Advisory Commission last week and made this comment with regard to HSR in relation to existing freight rail right-of-way:
John Hummer (PIAC Commissioner): You mentioned you’re running on the BNSF, so the right-of-way issue is absolutely critical. Is BNSF going to sell you ROW?
Van Ark: When I say we’re on the right-of-way, that basically means we’re adjacent to the ROW. Most of the ROW in the US & CA is about 100’. For safety reasons the middle of our first rail must be 100’ away from the middle of their closest rail. That means, basically, we’re not in their ROW. We’re adjacent to their ROW. So we call it a transportation corridor. To answer your question, that means the ROW we have to procure or purchase is adjacent to their ROW. Of course in some instances the freight railroads own bigger spots because they have to have stations and yards and things like that. For them that’s pure real estate. And we would have to acquire some of that real estate as we’d have to acquire other real estate.
His slides, video link, etc. are at: http://www.publicinfrastructure.ca.gov/page.asp?o=cabth&s=PIAC&p=397607
HSR discussion begins at 3:22:28; Q&A is at 4:10:30.
Elizabeth Reply:
January 23rd, 2011 at 8:14 pm
Oops – not last week December 19th? (too quick cut and paste from another email).
Peter Reply:
January 23rd, 2011 at 8:26 pm
Can’t watch it right now, but the “requirement” isn’t one of the FRA, correct?
Peter Reply:
January 23rd, 2011 at 9:57 pm
Ok, van Ark mentions the FRA in his answer, but does not say that the 100 foot requirement is an FRA requirement.
Arthur Dent Reply:
January 23rd, 2011 at 10:26 pm
Back in July Tony Daniels and the Program Mgmt Team described an even more restrictive arrangement which requires “100 ft from HSR track to UPRR ROW (in the situation without berm or wall) not 100ft from RR track to HSR track.”
This is different from van Ark’s comments about middle of rail to middle of rail.
I found this on CARRD’s website under Progress Reports, July 2010.
http://www.calhsr.com/resources/progress-reports/
adirondacker12800 Reply:
January 23rd, 2011 at 11:32 pm
IF it’s so vitally important to keep HSR 100 feet away from the freight trains why isn’t the distance between their own tracks 100 feet?
MGimbel Reply:
January 23rd, 2011 at 11:59 pm
Because UP doesn’t want any big scary high-speed trains running any closer than 100 feet to them.
jimsf Reply:
January 24th, 2011 at 5:06 am
high speed trains have cooties.
adirondacker12800 Reply:
January 24th, 2011 at 7:52 am
Jim, we were there months ago. Caltrain has cooties which is why Caltrain can’t share tracks……
jimsf Reply:
January 24th, 2011 at 3:13 pm
Sounds like we need a uniter not a divider. Is George still available?
schrodinger Reply:
January 23rd, 2011 at 9:36 pm
Surely there should be other ways to deal with the derailment problem. Maybe have an earth levee between the lines, or slightly elevate the HSR route on retained fill. It is a shame that the regulator is trying to specify a solution to this issue.
It would also be a good idea to limit the liability of the freight railroad if a derailment interferes with HSR.
Alon Levy Reply:
January 23rd, 2011 at 6:37 pm
The cost difference is less than what you think. The LGV Est phase 2 construction cost is about $32 million per mile, not $23. And the cost of the CV segment is not $70 million/mile – it was a little more than $60 when it was Borden-Corcoran, but with the additional funding it will include cheaper segments to Bakersfield. I’m at this stage not sure what the cost of Bakersfield-Borden is, but if I remember correctly it’s on the order of $40 million/mile. The cost blowout comes mostly from the Fresno viaducts, and the extra construction effectively dilutes Fresno’s share.
Elizabeth Reply:
January 23rd, 2011 at 8:09 pm
It is actually MORE expensive. The borden to corcoran mileage included 11 miles of cheap crossover track (no grade seps). If you look at page 19 of this: http://cahighspeedrail.ca.gov/WorkArea/DownloadAsset.aspx?id=9442 , you will see the 65 miles has an asterick, with an explanation that it is only actually 54 miles of HSR.
And the costs failed to included electrification, communications equipment, maintenance facilities of any kind, elevated passing tracks in Fresno (not cheap).
The latest FRA grant (online at CHSRA) reveals that only $108 million is being set aside for these Amtrak related costs. So let’s strip out Amtrak costs from the $4.15 billion and call it $4 billion. Then we should add on $200 million for the cost of the second set of elevated tracks through Frenso, $600 million for electrification, hsr systems elements etc. Call it $4.8 billion for 54 miles.
That is $89 million/ mile and I think that may be low.
Elizabeth Reply:
January 23rd, 2011 at 8:18 pm
The costs from Corcoran to north Bakersfield are still very much up in the air and depend on the outcome of the environmental process. They would like to skip some expensive aerials through towns but would go through either ecological reserves or some of the primest of prime farmland, so it is not a done deal.
The cost from north Bakersfield to south Bakersfield will be VERY high. It is a very long (18 miles-ish) high aerial, with the same need to eventually have 4 tracks through the station.
Alon Levy Reply:
January 23rd, 2011 at 10:14 pm
If farmland were worth so much that it would add to the cost to put a 15-meter corridor through it, there would not be suburban sprawl in the Central Valley.
jimsf Reply:
January 23rd, 2011 at 10:24 pm
People think of the valleys production and think fertile. Actually the southern san joaquin valley is desert. The soil is sand. The only way they are able to farm there is with imported water, LOTS of it, and hearty doses of fertilizer, pesticides and other petrochemical additives. The good, rich farmland is up in the sacrmento valley, where there is ample natural water both on the surface and underground. In the winter there is more water than you can shake a stick at laying around all over the place. Its farm more lush and green up there. In the southern san joaquin, there are vast, vast amounts of worthless unused acreage, that with the application of water and chemicals, could be farmed. It matter of moving the sprinklers and spraying the chems in the right place. But its hardly a precious treasure.
Alon Levy Reply:
January 24th, 2011 at 12:17 am
That part of the CV is still fertile. It requires irrigation, but the water table is very high, because it was a lake and only got drained about a hundred years ago. It’s world-class prime farmland – it’s just vastly cheaper to acquire an ROW there than to build extra infrastructure. A greenfield alignment would take a single digit number of square kilometers of farmland, about four orders of magnitude less than the amount of CV land under cultivation.
That is at least THREE TIMES MORE than the French. French workers are notoriously lazy, working 35 hour weeks, getting 4 weeks a year of holidays and enjoying healthcare and other benefits that Americans can only dream of
That doesn’t sound lazy. That sounds smart. The French seem to understand the work is only one part of living, not the end all be all. Americans will work themselves into an early grave for an employee who would can them at the drop of a hat. If americans wanted a 35 hour week, and half the summer off, we could have that but american’s have an obsession with being the hamster in the wheel. Much to my dismay. some of us aren’t into that but have to chase along to keep up and survive. Do you ever see people jogging, and they jog with their dog and you look at the dog and you know he’s thinking, “why does she drag me out here at 6am in the cold and make me run down the street like this. I want to go home and sleep in my bed” I know how that dog feels.
The French obviously work much smarter than Americans. The difference must be in the quality of the civil engineers and the quality of the management, and the excess of environmental rules and regulations in the US. The US also seems to have huge problems with government contracting
They probably work smarter so they can get it done so it doesn’t interfere with their vacations. The US system is set up to be a giant legal con game. In america you are encouraged to do whatever you can get away with. Thats why the tax code is so convoluted. Designed for cheating for those who unlock it secrets. Freedom, innocent until proven guilty, lawyers, etc is just another way of saying “if you can do it and get away with it we celebrate that.” Everything is about “getting more” of whatever it is “for less” and everyone is trying to keep up with everyone else and no one knows why they are doing it. Im exhausted just thinking about it. I think Ill go back to bed.
Jim SF, you are so RIGHT about those French! For more detail (and just plain fun), I strongly recommend the book, “Talk to the Snail,” by Stephen Clarke.
http://www.amazon.com/Talk-Snail-Commandments-Understanding-French/dp/product-description/1596913096/ref=dp_proddesc_0?ie=UTF8&n=283155&s=books
A bit of background: Clarke is a British journalist who wound up working in France for a fair number of years, long enough to begin to understand the French a bit. Most interesting were his comments about that 35-hour work week.
Seems it was originally introduced as a way to reduce unemployment (apparently overtime is discouraged there), but there were businesses, including the one Clarke worked at, that did not normally require 7-day a week operations, yet still required meeting deadlines that were formerly performed in a 5-day week. In that situation, he noted the French were as productive as anybody he had seen. He essentially said the prize for the work was that regular 3-day weekend to be spent with their families. It was something worth the effort.
There was none of the nonsense we have here in which your prize for working is to be an “employee of the month,” which the French consider to be, well, stupid–stupid in that is something offered, and stupid that we accept this.
There’s more, including quite a bit about that “socialist” medical system, and comparisons with the British system, which from his descriptions, sounds a lot like our own. Of course, I’m not sure I like the way the French administer many medications–they go in easier at the other end, you French fools! Bah!
jimsf Reply:
January 23rd, 2011 at 7:43 am
Where I work, at certain stations, due to hours of operation, 10 hour shifts make it easier for coverage ( speaking of clerks here/station services) So when we work in those stations its 4 10 hour shifts and three days off. Still a 40 hour week but, with those 3 days off you can really get things done. Spend time with friends and family, and take short getaways, etc. In addition, it means only paying commute costs 4 times instead of 5 times. 4 days of parking fees, 4 days of bridge tolls, 4 days of everything instead of 5.
On a 10 hour shift you get a 20 minute break built in on the clock, but in locations with 5 days 8 hours you actually have to take 30 minutes off the clock. So you wind up stuck with an 8 1/2 hour day – paid for 8. (lets face it 30 minutes in the middle of the day isn’t enough time to do anything but choke down your bag lunch) There are so many businesses that could do a 4/3 but don’t. And the advantage would be that just like with flex time, you can spread out the impact of traffic. Why does the whole country have to get on the 405 at the same time every morning? Is that really still necessary?
BruceMcF Reply:
January 23rd, 2011 at 10:57 am
The Brits socialized medical care, the French socialized medical insurance. The Brits now spend 1/3 as much as we do to get about our level of performance, the French spend 1/2 of what we do to get close to best in the world performance.
Maybe having a well-rested, clear headed physician has something to be said for it.
hmmm I guess they are already planning this cross valley rail line down there
Peter Reply:
January 23rd, 2011 at 10:24 am
Change the verb tense to “past”, and you’d be correct.
James Fujita Reply:
January 24th, 2011 at 3:43 pm
The fact that they were even thinking about rail transit in 2003 is actually pretty encouraging.
Many rail transit systems have had false starts and failed attempts before getting off the ground. The valley wasn’t ready for “cross valley” rail transit yet, but make the announcement “yes, there WILL be a Hanford HSR station, so get ready” and I think they’d want to dust off those plans.
(Yes, I know you can’t just “dust off” old transit plans, but surely they can make some use of them…)
This in the CHRON today and the rest of the day Ill be bursting into a chorus!
Ding Dong! The Witch is dead. Which old Witch? The Wicked Witch!
Ding Dong! The Wicked Witch is dead.
Wake up – sleepy head, rub your eyes, get out of bed.
Wake up, the Wicked Witch is dead. She’s gone where the goblins go,
Below – below – below. Yo-ho, let’s open up and sing and ring the bells out.
Ding Dong’ the merry-oh, sing it high, sing it low.
Let them know
The Wicked Witch is dead!
There really is a god.
PeakVT Reply:
January 23rd, 2011 at 12:19 pm
The brand may be dead at the state level (though I think that’s a wee bit premature), but the Republicans’ crippling voter initiatives remain firmly lodged in the California Constitution. They may still have the last laugh.
jimsf Reply:
January 23rd, 2011 at 12:27 pm
That can be changed too.
Peter Reply:
January 23rd, 2011 at 12:31 pm
Especially as the Central Valley becomes more progressive (the population increase has to go somewhere), there will be less and less Republicans, even in the current red bastions in the CV.
D. P. Lubic Reply:
January 23rd, 2011 at 2:55 pm
What I found most interesting in that article was that the real gains were coming in the indepenedent, or non-affiliated voter field (which is where I happen to be). Many people who consider themselves true conservatives–and I have to say that includes me–have been greatly disappointed in the party that calls itself conservative. Its leaders claim to be on the side of “morality” and “family values,” but too many chase skirts (and sometimes pants!) in a fashion that would embarass the worst of the chasers on the Democratic side, they claim to be against abortion and for life, but when they have the opportunity to do something with it in six years of controlling both houses of Congress and the presidency they did nothing, they do not really want us to become energy independent because that means we weaken their oil-company friends, and of course they want to keep us in our cars because of that oil-company tie-in and because “cars are for real Americans and FREEDOM!(tm).”
And do you know what that FREEDOM!(tm) really stands for? It’s for the freedom of really large businesses to make as much money as they can while starving out local firms. Wal-Mart and large drugstore chains come immediately to mind–I have two major chain drugstores on opposite corners down the street from my house, about two and a half blocks away, both of which opened up within months of each other, and in an unincorporated town with a population of maybe 1,000 people which already had two local pharmacies! Four phamacies in an immediate area of 1,000 people! Why?
And this is what the Repugnant Ones really stand for? They’ve long lost me, and I can tell you, although my area is significantly Republican and we have a number of local offices with Republican politicians in them, quite a number of their rank-and-file, including some fairly prominent business owners (i.e., at least one very successful accountant) are greatly disappointed in their own organization at the national level.
But where are they to go?
The most popular comment from that article says a great deal about the Republican party as it is now:
andrewk829
9:57 PM on January 22, 2011
“I remember when Republicans were primarily pleasant, reasonable people whose beliefs were perhaps a little different than mine on some issues. I kind of liked a lot of what they had to say on fiscal responsibility. And at one time, they were independent of bible-thumping fundamentalist religious nuts. And they did not politicize science.
“They didn’t think that Democrats were Communists or that taxation is theft. They didn’t go on television equating the President of the United States with Hitler. They didn’t go on the Internet calling a black elected official names like O’Purple Lips, or his wife Aunt Jemima, and they didn’t attend rallies where racially stereotyping monkey dolls were sold.
“They didn’t urge their constituency to be “armed and dangerous” or say that it was perfectly understandable if citizens disappointed in an election take “Second Amendment remedies”. They did not shout “You lie!” (meaning “You Lie, Boy!”) at the President on the floor of the Congress.
“And they definitely did not, as Glenn Beck did on June 10, 2010, say in so many words that if conservatives are unable to persuade liberals to their own way of thinking, they should “just shoot them in the head”.
“States like California with educated, diverse, secular populations want nothing to do with this party.”
The sad thing is we need an alternative to the Democrats (this is not meant to be offensive, Jim SF), simply because a monopolly of any sort always bring problems. Unfortunately, the so-called “conservative” party of the Repugnant Ones is nothing but a collection of money-grubbing charlatans.
adirondacker12800 Reply:
January 23rd, 2011 at 3:12 pm
too many chase skirts (and sometimes pants!)
the mild ones chase skirts pants or both. There’s a Senator who isn’t particularly bothered that his prostitute spilled the beans about him and his fondness for diapers. Another one likes to be especially tidy in airport bathrooms. ( I guess that could be considered chasing pants but apparently the convention is to tap your shoes under the divider, so he was chasing footwear…. )
jimsf Reply:
January 23rd, 2011 at 5:22 pm
I always just figured that when when it comes to our representatives, and their various assorted, uh, “distractions,” look at it this way, they do after all, represent americans, in every way, and americans are pretty much a similarly distracted bunch, judging by the thriving 10-14 billion dollar porn industry here.
So power to the people I guess, and carry on.
I’m just wondering if our pacific crest trail is anything as spectacular as that one in Appalachia…
jimsf Reply:
January 23rd, 2011 at 5:25 pm
so he was chasing footwear
omg hello does anyone else think “nike ad” ! brilliant!
Peter Reply:
January 23rd, 2011 at 3:14 pm
“The sad thing is we need an alternative to the Democrats (this is not meant to be offensive, Jim SF), simply because a monopolly of any sort always bring problems.”
That problem is one for the conservatives to solve, not one for the Democrats. The Democrats already know what party they belong to.
Peter Reply:
January 23rd, 2011 at 3:21 pm
As in, conservatives need to decide what type of party they want to be aligned with: one dominated by the lunatic fringe, or one in which primarily sane people are represented.
D. P. Lubic Reply:
January 23rd, 2011 at 3:35 pm
Amen, Peter, amen.