Regional and Local Governments

That Giant Sucking Sound from San Jose

admin 2024, Regional and Local Governments, Roadways and Traffic

Unfortunately, large and exotic-sounding transportation projects tend to get far more than their share of attention. As a result, large amounts of tax money are often squandered on huge projects instead of being used to advance smaller and more deserving projects.

Take the current situation in San Jose for instance. BATWG recently sent two letters to the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority’s (VTA’s) new BART Phase II Steering Committee encouraging it to consider all aspects of the BART Phase II program and indicating a number of important questions of long standing in need of straight answers. Here’s an update:

The last official cost of the VTA’s original twin bore tunneling option was $4.69 billion, as set forth in the DEIS released in March of 2017. Since the FEIS was released in 2018, the VTA’s cost of first the 43-foot single bore option and then the 54-foot single bore option has gone from $6.9 billion to $9.1 billion to the current $12.2 billion, an amount that is almost certain to continue to rise.

If, as some believe, the twin bore tunnel option were to come in at $3 to $5 billion less than the five-story high single bore tunnel option, it would necessitate a careful and objective re-evaluation of the strengths and weaknesses of both options Unfortunately, in its habitually insular fashion, the VTA has never seen fit to release a definitive capital and operating cost breakdown of the two options. So at this point, no one knows for sure which option would be less troublesome. Current issues:

  1. A bonafide cost comparison of the two, together with an updated evaluation of the pros and cons of each, particularly regarding subgrade and other financial risks, is therefore warranted at this time.

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Tweaking Vision Zero

admin 2024, Regional and Local Governments

On December 19, 2023 the SF Chronicle, in an article by Nora Mishanec, shined the spotlight on the failings of SF’s City Government’s much ballyhooed Vision Zero program.

The program was instituted in 2013 with the objective of reducing the traffic fatalities in San Francisco to zero “within a decade”. Well, here we are 10 years later, and the traffic fatality rate remains pretty much as it did before the program was initiated.

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Why do Big Public Projects Cost So Much, Take So Long and Yield So Little?

admin 2024, Rail and Bus Systems, Regional and Local Governments

A Compendium of Trouble Spots

When it comes to developing major infrastructure projects, the performance of the Large Bay Area Transportation Agencies has been lackluster at best. It’s easy to write this off as inexperience, too many cooks in the broth, unwillingness to admit error, or plain incompetence. And those factors are unfortunately often present. But that’s not the whole story.

Here are a few of the largely ignored trouble spots:

Outreach: It is necessary to give people an opportunity to respond to proposed public actions. That’s what outreach used to mean. But in recent years it’s become much more than just giving interested parties an opportunity to weigh in. Instead, a great deal of effort (sometimes costing hundreds of thousands of dollars in consulting fees) is often put into asking everyone in sight what he or she wants by way of new transit. Does someone who hasn’t ridden a bus for 30 years have a good answer to such a question? Does someone worried about his job or sick child or looking forward to next Thursday’s bocce ball match? Probably not, but if the question is asked, people will try to answer it in some fashion. What is the value of this kind of off-the-top “input”? Answer: minimal.

Instead of beating the bushes to elicit as much abstract comment as possible, a better approach would be to first develop concepts sufficient to give people something to respond to, and then reach out broadly to let those who are interested have an opportunity to speak or write their opinions. This kind of outreach would improve its quality and usefulness and likely cost much less.

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Muni:  Struggling with Old & New Challenges

admin 2023, Regional and Local Governments, Roadways and Traffic

On October 16, 2023, Muni Director of Transit Julie Kirschbaum made an excellent presentation before a well-attended Save Muni meeting. During the presentation she answered many detailed questions about Muni’s roughly 70 transit lines and the numerous problems Muni faces every day ranging from maintenance issues to political and constituent demands to repeatedly vandalized bus stops. In spite of  financial shortages, she pointed out how Muni was working hard to improve its farebox recovery and on-time performance, as well as increase the mean time between failures and strongly discourage disruptive passenger behavior.

Here are two of the system-wide issues that were raised at the meeting:

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A Summary of Climate Summaries

admin 2023, Rail and Bus Systems, Regional and Local Governments, Roadways and Traffic

It is generally agreed that the world has been warming and that this has caused the melting of ice and, according to the EPA about 9 inches of sea level rise since 1880. There is also agreement that there is more man-caused greenhouse gas in the atmosphere than there used to be. And that’s about where the agreement ends.

The nature of the climate debate has shifted. There are now at least four ways of looking at the situation.

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Hydrogen is our Salvation: NOT!

admin 2023, Regional and Local Governments, Roadways and Traffic

California seems determined to rush into hydrogen-powered cars, trucks, ships, buses, trains, airplanes, you name it. Never mind that today 95% of the country’s supply of hydrogen is made from fossil fuels. And never mind that every kilowatt of green energy (from wind or solar) that is devoted to making hydrogen would be a kilowatt not available to meeting some other energy need.

What about efficiency? Does anyone in Sacramento care? According to Mechanical Engineering Professor David Cebon of Cambridge University, with the thermal energy loss of manufacturing, transporting and consuming the hydrogen thrown in, the average hydrogen-powered vehicle would operate at 30% efficiency, compared to a battery-operated vehicle that operates at 59% efficiency. Even hybrids do better than 30%. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JlOCS95Jvjc

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