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This hole in the ground was to be the development that finally rid Sacramento of its "Cow Town" image and cured its lingering Fresnophobia known outside of California as "World Class City Syndrome." They've already ripped off the rst of the nation and state to fund their toy trolley that gives Houston a run for the title of least effective transportation project of the last decade so they decided to give the choo-choo a place to go. .jpg)
But, that's not all. Now that John Saca has defaulted on the $22m loan he used to start up the $500m venture the back room deals are coming to light. Turns out the California Public Employees' Retirement System (CalPERS) has been tightening the screws in its usual fashion as it seeks ever more lucrative deals to fund its ever more lucrative benefits. The Sacramento Bee has a great article at: http://www.sacbee.com/101/story/123792.html free reg may be required but is worth it. I've had a real reg for years with no evidence of misuse and the news and political alert email feeds are truely useful. Big fish, little fish, minnows like out lil' Casey; they are all starting to wash up on shore and the stink up the place. I've long said Excremento was going down this is just the tip if the iceberg.
36 comments:
Wait a sec... why hate on Houston like that? I take the Houston light rail pretty much on a daily basis from home in Midtown to my office at Rice, and I see plenty of other people on the train most of the time. It would be nice if they had managed to extend the line to the airports, or to have a second line going crosstown, but to have any light rail at all is an achievement in a city as anti-public-transportation as this. Consider that they're expanding I-10 between here and Katy (major suburb) to 12 lanes in each direction (!) without bothering to put in a commuter rail line that would actually be really useful.
Hey Rob, this is only one of the downtown condo projects that is having issues being built and financed here in Sac. Another one has received a loan from the city to continue moving along. I do appreciate the dream but am frustrated in reality.
If you haven't lived in Houston for most of your life, you wouldn't understand the logic behind the light rail. Houstonians have shown time and time again that they will not give up their cars willingly. The solution?
A car destroying battering ram disguised as a train.
So far it is more successful at removing cars from the road than anyone could have possibly imagined. So effective, in fact, that they've decided to change their voter approved plan to have the train shadow the new tollway down Westpark, and instead have it run right down the middle of the busiest club/shopping district this side of the Galleria.
Win/win!
Sweet!
That building would make a Sweeet flip!
Rob Dawg, where should I mail your $500 bird dogging fee?
-Casey
That's the sweetest $22 million hole I ever done seen! Does John Saca have a blog? He could be our replacement once Casey "goes under the radar." He should tentatively call it www.22millioninthehole.com
@Casey
When will you mail the payment? 2019?
why hate on Houston like that? I take the Houston light rail pretty much on a daily basis from home in Midtown to my office at Rice, and I see plenty of other people on the train most of the time.
The wham-bam tram is a collosal boondoggle. It is expensive and underutilized. Would you still like the trolley if fares doubled? Tripled? Quadrupled? Yes, by quardurpling fares you'd be covering the operating costs but not the total costs to the taxpayers.
It would be nice if they had managed to extend the line to the airports, or to have a second line going crosstown, but to have any light rail at all is an achievement in a city as anti-public-transportation as this.
At least you acknowledge that the choo-choo was rammed down the throats of an unwilling population.
Consider that they're expanding I-10 between here and Katy (major suburb) to 12 lanes in each direction (!) without bothering to put in a commuter rail line that would actually be really useful.
What's the disconnect? Rail cannot address congestion. It just isn't possible. Even rail advocates in the last few years have reluctantly accepted this fact.
"What's the disconnect? Rail cannot address congestion. It just isn't possible. Even rail advocates in the last few years have reluctantly accepted this fact."
Unfortunately, neither can 22 lanes of I-10. You only have to look at the 610/59 interchange at any time of day to realize that.
The toll roads have been working out nicely, though, especially with an EZ Tag. They are working on extending Grand Parkway into a third loop around the city, thus completing the Texas dream of resembling a giant bullseye for future alien invaders.
Anon 9:10am,
Why you gotta be a hater?
-Casey
Casey's house?
Now ya'll know I do not like to hate too much (not because I am a nice person, but because I do not want my comments to come back and bite me one day). But when I saw this kitchen with the mismatched cabinets and the 40' fridge next to the 13' range, I immediately thought of Casey.
Cheers!
The wham-bam tram is a collosal boondoggle. It is expensive and underutilized. Would you still like the trolley if fares doubled? Tripled? Quadrupled? Yes, by quardurpling fares you'd be covering the operating costs but not the total costs to the taxpayers.
I regard that argument as somewhat of a red herring; it's not as though the car drivers pay directly for (non-toll) roads, either -- not to mention the external costs of burning all that gasoline. Automobile transportation is subsidized on a massive scale in the USA, and I don't see the problem with leveling the playing field a little where public transportation is concerned. Personally, I find it very convenient to live within biking distance of work (walking distance, even, in a pinch), and it's incredibly useful to me to have another option available when I don't feel like dealing with traffic. I wish more people would make the same set of decisions I do, but barring that, I'd at least like to see the suburbanites bear a little more of the costs of their lifestyle.
As far as the car/train collisions are concerned, I've personally seen 3 since the line opened. In each case, a driver ran a red light or turned left in front of a train. Forgive me for not having a whole lot of sympathy for the car drivers there.
Finally, you may be right that a commuter rail line won't address congestion. I don't think expanding the Katy Fwy will do anything but encourage more people to move out that way, which would then result in the same daily clusterfuck we have now, but I guess we'll see. Mostly, I'm just frustrated by what I see as a repeated refusal to even attempt a credible public transportation system here -- but I guess that's what I get for moving to Texas. Just a couple more years until I can afford to buy a "sweet" house out west or in the northeast from one of the many Caseys out there.
prophet,
There is a myth about transportation that just won't die. You repeat it here but the myth is so pervasive I don't blame you. What happened in the late 80s and early 90s was the effects of the winding down of the IHS were being felt from two diretions. From one the tremendous economic impetus generated by the increased mobilty was in full force, people were driving more, faster. From the other end the fact that we stopped building caught up with the beginning of some shortsighted 70s inflation era decisions to defer mantainence. On top of this many newly developing urban areas, SoCal, PHX, Houston, etc. abused their land use discretion and oversubscribed the available capacity of their infrastructures. So, anyway; as these factors reinforced each other creating cogestion there were a few studies that sought to explain traffic in other terms than I just described. The most infamous was arguable the Hansen & Yuan survey that discovered that 90% of any new freeway capacity was filled within 5 years. This was the "smoking gun" transit proponents were looking for. Trouble is that after controlling for growth and unmet demand and ancillary traffic remodelling the data not only didn't support the Hansen conclusion but actually showed that adequate capacity reduced both congestion and trip travel. That's right negative induced demand for the areas studied. Nbody ever hears about that part of the discussion.
So, in the case of adding lanes; yes the marginal utility above 4(?) directional lanes is progrssively lower but it is not less than zero. A better solution is more centerline miles. Not coincidentally that is why toll lanes are successful, they are effectively more centerline lmiles and their usefulness has only a little to do with their funding mechanism.
Before I recently moved, the Sac Light Rail finally made it out to my area. Were I still working in downtown I would take light rail because the high rise building where I used to work would subsidize people who used public transportation with a $25 check each month. At the time, that was half the cost of a monthly pass. And from what I hear, the light rail trains from my neck of the woods were packed during commute hours.
The drawbacks of light rail are many though. During non-peak hours, it is just much faster to drive. Using the park-and-ride lots is just inviting people to brake into your car or steal your car outright. More security mitigated some of those problems. And then there is the crime or weird people on the light rail factor. A female co-worker of mine had such a bad experience once that she never again took the light rail.
Just some pros and cons.
it's not as though the car drivers pay directly for (non-toll) roads, either
Who told you that? Tried to avoid registration, insurance, gas taxes, parking fees lately? Care to visit the HF series at FHWA spreadsheets that show highway funding going back to 1926 to see that roads users do indeed pay their costs? Really, it is hard for some people to accept because they've heard otherwise for so long they assume it must be true but even the most agressive accounting can only come up with as much as 3/4ths of a penny per vehicle mile in subsidies and while that isn't acceptable is several hundred times lower than what transit receives.
I'm sure that traffic follows the 80/20 rule and you can use that for maximum efficiency.
For example 80% of the traffic is during 20% rush hour, right?
Going to take a nap now... calling the people in NM took a lot out of me this morning.
-Casey
Ca-lifornia is the place to beeee...
*Way* over market value is the Price For Meee!
Only the rich can buy houses in our neighborhood...
That'll keep low-income folks far away for good!
Yee-Haah!
Teh thing with mass transit is that you can't superimpose it on an already existing developed area to solve transportation problems. The underlying pattern of population distribution and such just makes it completely impracticable.
And superimposing light rail is just laughable.
The reality is that you have to build the transit infrastructure first, and then let the development coalesce around it. You just can't do it vice versa.
But what do I know, I'm only a civil engineer.
anon 10:21 says;
"But what do I know, I'm only a civil engineer."
Ask any transit weenie; you don't know anything. I on the other hand salute you sir. Well stated.
If mass transit is really futile, then some areas are pretty much screwed in the long run. For instance, I-5 through Seattle is already bad for a good 12+ hours a day. At its narrowest point the city is only about 2 miles wide, and the terrain leaves no place to put more freeway lanes without knocking down some skyscrapers first. As the cities to the north and south grow, traffic in that area is only going to get heavier, and there's no place to put it.
It's going to get really ugly once they knock down the Alaskan Way Viaduct.
ObCasey: Housing sales drop in 40 states
Ogg,
Don't mistake symptoms for disease.
the disease is the skyscrapers. Not the structures themselves but the density and peak loading they represent. Seattle has attempted to become more like Los Angeles. Wait, Ogg... put down the club. Really, I know, I know. Everytime you attend or learn about policy setting the thing you hear is: "We don't wnt to become like Los Angeles." Problem is the urban planners you've trusted all this time have been forcing solutions that push you closer to being Los Angeles. There's the rub.
Check out Pittsburgh sometime. Two lanes in and two lanes out in most any direction. Meanwhile, the Port Authority is cutting half of its routes because of an $80 million budget shortfall. A couple of years ago they were fighting to bring Maglev to the city. In order for it to work I believe it was calculated that fares would have to be $22. They may still be looking at that, but I am unsure.
But economics still reward density. Even in this age of modern communications, even in lines of business that don't absolutely require direct face to face contact, there is still value in it.
I'm not going to live out in the sticks forever. I have a pretty nice gig right now, but whenever that comes to an end I will almost certainly end up contributing to the density of Seattle or some other city like it. Why? Because that's where the work is. I have no doubt that urban planning plays a role in creating density, but the bottom line is that people move to wherever they think they'll be best off.
In my case, that means that when I move it'll be to a place where I can be well-paid for the work I do, and where I am likely to be able to find another job in my field quickly if I find myself out of work. Most of those places are major cities.
it's not as though the car drivers pay directly for (non-toll) roads, either
Huh?
In Texas, each gallon of fuel includes:
.1840 Federal HWY tax.
.2000 State HWY tax.
.0004 State Environmental fee.
Drivers don't directly pay how?
-jbjbj
@ JimBobJoeBobJim:
I don't know exactly how the numbers line up in TX, but in most states the gas tax does not fully fund road construction and maintenance. Significant funding, sometimes a majority, comes from other tax sources.
Ogg,
I am unaware of ANY highway project anywhere at any time that did not recieve majority user fee funding. Certainly there have been disproportionate fundings from user fees....
At 12:07 PM, JimBobJoeBobJim
In Texas, each gallon of fuel includes:
.1840 Federal HWY tax.
.2000 State HWY tax.
.0004 State Environmental fee.
Drivers don't directly pay how?
-jbjbj
Drivers may pay directly for roads, but they don't pay for the congestion -- and that's what adds costs to society overall, not the roads themselves.
For example, if most roads were just as busy at 2 a.m. as they are at 2 p.m., congestion might not be an isssue. But most people get far more utility out of driving at 2 p.m. than they do at 2 a.m.
The whole congestion issue reminds me of the classic "Tragedy of the Commons."
No easy answers, but I at least think it frames the question well.
Ogg,
You are very right, I was just trying to somewhat close the gap between drivers not paying/drivers paying.
Most municipalities don't get a penny of the taxes collected at the pumps. This isn't the case everywhere, but it the case in enough places that it's a reasonably safe assumption.
A lot of what you hear about bond structures created in localized areas are done by municipalities that want to do work/have work done outside of, or ahead of, state and federal plans.
-jbjbj
@Ogg,
could you let me know what are the 'good' 12 hours. I have to drive through Seattle next week and I've never seen anything, but a bottle neck.
Most municipalities don't get a penny of the taxes collected at the pumps.
Name one. It isn't true. Many municipalities like to claim otherwise but it isn't true. You say most, I say you'd be hard pressed to find one or two and then you'd discover special circumstances.
Name one.
Let me clarify my side a bit. As someone in the fuel business, we do not pay any taxes directly to any municipality, except in a few cases. I can only tell you about the region I work, which has only one, and thats Vicksburg, TX.
There may be arrangements between states and counties, counties and cities, but I don't pay directly into those arrangements, so I don't know what they are, sorry.
There may be arrangements between states and counties, counties and cities, but I don't pay directly into those arrangements, so I don't know what they are, sorry.
I'll expand:
There are always arrangements between states and counties, counties and cities, the feds and everyone else and everyone pays directly into those arrangements.
Rob,
I'd actually like to see the studies that show that there is less money collected from motorists than is spent on roads. Most OECD countries collect far more than is spent (I'm from Canada and this is certainly the case). Let's not forget that gas tax is just one part of the equation. There is also vehicle registration - and commercial vehciles get pummeled on this one - tolls, fines for moving violations and parking fees.
Perhaps, you could argue the point if you include boondogles such as the 'bridge to nowhere' in Alaska, and roads in the middle of nowhere (such as a lot of the hwys in the SW), won't pay for their own usage. However, on the whole I think that motor vehciles would be a source, not a sink.
@ recondite observer
3 AM is pretty good.
Ogg, Most of the construction on I-5 occurs in the middle of the night.
I drive into Seattle each day from the north and have success taking the express lanes. 35minutes to work. 25 on the way home.
Public transit take over an hour each way. Plus I have to stand up the whole way to Seattle.
@ Stupidtoo:
That just goes to demonstrate (not that I've claimed otherwise) that while I visit Seattle regularly I don't actually live there.
As for the express lanes, I'm sure they're slick but aren't they HOV-only?
Ogg, the express lanes are for everyone. They are quite handy.
Although, once you are already on I5 it is difficult to navigate to the express lanes. You must enter I5 at an express lane entrance or you will never make across the lanes of traffic to use them.
The portion of my commute that requires freeway drving is done entirely on the express lanes. I also work 7-4 to stay off the road at hi-peak.
The worst part of Seattle driving is the slightest weather inconvienece causes drivers to adbandon their cars in the middle of the road.
The key to city driving is having the worst car on the road. No one will dare cut me off in their BMW. My truck is full of dents and the headlights are duck-taped on.
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