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ChineseDaily Transit Links Roundup
Contributed by Fred Camino on April 8th, 2008 at 8:44 am
Image courtesy of Telstar Logistics.
- Will California High Speed Rail be a boon to the Silicon Valley too?
- I don’t know if I’d call 1,100 miles of rail “quaint” (especially considering the scant 73 miles we have today), but the Daily News takes a nostalgic view of the Red Cars.
- A two-fer on the Blue Line: light rail continues its destructive attack on humanity.
- U.S. Transportation chief wants gas taxes gone, replaced with tolls and congestion pricing.
Discussion
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Please keep discussions civil: exercise Troll Controll.
CA-AHSR keeps getting funnier. Now the first leg is supposedly Anaheim to San Francisco and the service date is 2020. $10 billion voted in November in a Presidential year on the heels of massive teacher layoffs in the middle of the greatest housing decline since the depression? Why even waste the ink on paper ballots. yes, another election cycle with paper. There won’t even be a chance to tamper with the results as planned.
My number one concern with congestion pricing is how much the Bush Administration likes it. Makes me think there must be something wrong with it…
Warm fuzzy 10 min video:
http://exurbannation.blogspot.com/2007/03/ca-ahsr.html
An errant Russian Thistle bush or songbird at 203 mph might as well be a bullet.
A link to your own blog? Kind of self-serving don’t you think?
HSR makes money, airports are overcrowded, it will decrease local pollution, it will increase the efficiency of rail service for most of the state, etc. Oh what’s that? Rob can’t look into the future?
Damien,
There are several somethings deeply wrong with true congestion pricing but that’s why we won’t ever get true congestion pricing. What is planned is more of a nonresident tax. The term is redlining but I’m sure the LAMTA will come up with a less inflammatory phrase.
I don’t trust the Bush plan not just because of Bush but because they’ve been too obvious about their goal. Their goal is the privatization of roads. It has nothing to do with congestion or anything else.
Since they came to Washington, their entire modus operandi has been “starve the beast” by cutting taxes and running crucial departments as badly as possible. They’ve starved infrastructure in this country in an attempt to create a crisis, and then they’ll use that crisis as an excuse to privatize. Thank goodness this guy’s gonna be out in January.
Don’t forget corruption with it comes to Bush, Cheney and the neo-CONS.
I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that Halliburton has a multi-billion dollar padded no-bid contract waiting in the wings to implement the congestion-pricing program.
And the main problem with privatization, and especially at this point (as you know, I’m not against privatization per se) and especially with the Bush crew, is that it becomes a matter of corporate/government collaboration, cronyism, where politically connected business friends will get carte blanche on our transportation systems. Of course, in my libertarian point of view, this is what the loss of our true private transportation system in the pre-auto days brought us… corporatism. Private enterprise is no longer that, but a co-op with government to screw us over in every facet of our lives.
It’s funny because when you look at Henry Ford’s rejection of the privately funded Lincoln Highway because he felt government should provide roads for autos, you see the birth of this intense corporate/government collaboration that pretty much defines our nation now.
Let’s see, a trusted link that I went to the effort to provide and checked to make sure works on a website that has no advertising. You sir have a word for that and it would be posted on this blog WITH advertising would it not? You also have a word that can make it better although all reading this knows that word will not be forthcoming.
Typical transit perspective. I pay for my own blog and get lambasted for be self serving on a blog that carries ads and this because i am directing people to topical content.
Hey, don’t pick on people that drop links to their own blog here! All the cool kid (namely me) does that all the time! A lot of times its easier than bringing a whole post over.
The basic theory of congestion pricing, that people that are causing the greatest strain to a transportation system should pay for the transportation system is a sound one. I was sad to read ealier today that the Democrats in the New York State Assembly sunk NYC’s Mayor Bloomberg’s proposal.
Oh, and you can read a lot more on NYC Congestion at http://www.streetsblog.org
That being said, everytime I see Mary “Bikes aren’t transportation” Peters pushing congestion pricing I cringe.
Ummm…
#1 I dont care if anyone posts links to their own blog here. That’s kind of how the blogosphere works. If you notice RobDawg’s name is also a link to his blog. That’s how it’s supposed to be.
#2 This blog doesn’t have any advertising… yet. The “Sponsor” sections are the sidebar are there in case I ever am able to attract advertisers (which I have no qualms with whatsoever). Right now they simply hold links to other sections of this blog. If you’ve seen an ad here, please let me know because I’d like to get paid for hosting it.
Which is to say, I’ve created and run this blog for two years for FREE, in case anyone thought otherwise.
And still no acknowledgement that my link was not self serving.
Fred, take the link, put it up here. Honestly, that was my intention. The video is pure sizzle and no steak.
[Disclosure: there is a "donate" link on my blog for paying clients of my reallife job.]
Fred, take all the money you can get. You’re worth it.
I coincidentally started my own blog this morning for a Santa Monica Blvd. subway.
ridethepinkline.blogspot.com
Nice, I’ll add it to the list in the Links Index.
Hmm. I’ve always found the 1,100 mile figure, while impressive, to be a bit misleading. The nature of LA’s development meant that many lines went from running in open, undeveloped countryside to sharing a lane of traffic. Look at this picture of Pioneer blvd and South Street in Cerritos, ca. 1915 and compare to this low res of Pioneer today.
In Central and West LA, this meant that what had been an almost grade separated network of trains was turning into a network of buses on rails. In fact, several of PE’s lines were converted into bus lines run by the company, some as early as the 30s. Increasingly slow trains led to the perception of rail transit as an outdated mode of transport, and cheap gas and newly built freeways helped lead to the current view of transit as welfare. What I’m saying is, LA has a long history of rail, but not much of that was truly grade-separated urban rail, or even Gold Line style, semi grade-separated urban rail.
Most of the interurbans were not grade-separated, they were streetcars. But remember, what slowed the streetcars was AUTO traffic. It wasn’t very long after the automobile was popularized that the world experienced the first traffic jam.
Rob Dawg:
I appreciate the link Rob, thanks. I actually posted that video around this time last year:
MetroMovies: California High-Speed Trains
Allow me a quick sec to say congrats to Dan W. You’re one of the best commenters out there and I love it when you drop in on Streetsblog because you always bring a wealth of information. It’s about time you set up shop with your own blog. I look forward to adding it to my regular reading list.
Speaking of the Red Cars, Disney’s California Adventure will be getting a replica of the Red Cars that will travel through it’s Main Entrance Plaza and Hollywood sections as part of it’s 1.1 billion dollar makeover. Hopefully more people will be exposed to this bygone era of California history there than in San Pedro.
Well, thank you, Damien. I love Streetsblog and greatly appreciate your writing as well.
Rob, what do you find “deeply wrong” with congestion pricing? Between this and your dismissals of Anthony Downs and Don Shoup, I hope you realize that you’re in pretty strong conflict with the state of the art in transportation economics.
The devil is in the details. Look at the perversion of “congestion pricing” in London. It isn’t congestion pricing now is it if residents pay a different amount than non-residents and some vehicles are even exempted. It just becomes a tax on behavior the government finds undesirable.
Anthony Downs has over the DECADES come around on all his old thinking about sprawl to my side. It may take a few more decades to convince him of his latest errors on transportation.
As to Don “Free Parking” Shoup, he won’t even so much as acknowledge the mass of evidence arrayed against his outrageous claims. He is still claiming that free parking is the number one determinant of modal choice.
The problem with congestion pricing is that what is being proposed is not congestion pricing nor are the revenues going to go towards congestion relief. Call it what it is a commuter tax and redlining and then try to sell it.