The Political Process of CA's HSR Land Acquisition

There was a recent article (Feb 16, 2015) that provides an explanation of the land acquisition process for California's proposed antique technology high speed heavy rail electric train project.  

Related to the story was another article about Gov. Brown's ceremonial performance when the official shovel hit the dirt to begin the proposed HSR process.  He disrespectfully attacked his opponents calling them: "pusillanimous".  So, according to him: anyone with a brain to recognize 150 year old technology; is lacking courage and resolution: marked by contemptible timidity?  Meanwhile engaged politicians filch profiteering by being married to project contractors and the silenced public is called stupid.  So engrained with cataleptic rhetoric and insensate lifestyles, liars and thieves accuse their opposition of wrong.  

California High Speed Rail

A recent CA HSR op-ed article in the Fresno Bee, January 8, 2015, drew heavy criticism in its comment section.  As an observer following the HSR project over the past 22 years, the project has taken a turn and now has reached critical political vitriol and no longer has anything to do with transportation or the environment.  It has now gained political correctness status that dictates the mantra of hysteria.  If you now disagree at all with the proposed project its supporters validate opposition with name calling and categorize all such people to a derogatory manner.

The facts, however, still holds the proposed project without funding.  The proposed project still remains in court as a deception to the California voters.  The display of excitement when the two opposing sides stage a victory is like watching the crowd at a ball game.  In reality, the politicians are very aware that there is a billion dollars’ worth of government waste to be immediately distributed.  Local politicians are crying that Fresno “needs” the money and are positioned in a euphoric state surrounding the proposed project with jealous rage.

Politicians and their loyal following are a predictable lot.  When a project such as this is embroiled in a fight which requires only emotional reaction, it verifies a deceptive premise.  While it is true that California has to revamp its transportation system, new innovation is absolutely required.

In 2013 Elon Musk proposed his Hyperloop concept.  Many months later he was introduced to the ET3 technology.  California has the legitimate option of building a transportation system that travels 20 times faster than the antiquated heavy rail electric train and build it for one tenth the cost.  This system uses off the shelf technologies and is ready to be built.  Testing is done for any system that is built.  Here is a particularly interesting you tube clip of  ET3:

Cap and Trade

Here we go with mystery money intake for the HSR.  So, according to a recent article in the December 21, 2014 Fresno Bee, the new cap and trade tax is going to generate $1.7billion annually of which the politically bloated gravy train is going to rake in 25%.  That’s $425million to be allocated for operations and capital payback.  The antique train technology system costs $70million per mile, so the $425million per year will pay for a little more than 6 miles per year to be built.  Politics, however, employs other methods than logic when it comes to public suffrage.

Towards the end of the Bee article it mentioned the goal of AB32 was to lower the greenhouse gas emitted in California.  In the planning agencies this is termed a reduction in Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMT).  Who can tell the legislators that there can be no reduction to VMT in an automobile centric land-use environment without a transportation replacement?

There is only one practical way to realign our car culture, and that is with a transportation system alternative that can meet the mobility demands of our modern society.  This type of personal rapid transit system is less expensive to build and operate than the retired automobile highway system.  Transportation is the basic need to all urban growth.  Mankind has evolved intellectually over the past 100 years and transportation has to begin its necessary evolutionary growth.

New Urbanism

This blog asks a question: What is the process of attracting a following whom understand the importance of sustainable urban growth?  This understanding comprehends that transportation is the foundation to all urban growth and sustainable transportation is the basis for sustainable urban growth.

    

In recent years, popular discussion in community planning has produced many new terms, phraseology and ‘green’ legislation.  New Urbanism is the brain dead political direction which forces metropolitan residents into compressed living spaces with fatigued 19^th Century transportation.  Sustainable urban growth requires personal enrichment of all residents, rather than the profiteering of avaricious politicians and developers at the cost of the suffering general public.

There are three components to sustainable urban growth; environmental, economic and social.  There are elements of New Urbanism which provide some environmental and social sustainability, however, to honestly look at sustainable urban growth; the foundation of all urban growth is based on the area’s transportation.  As well intending as many of the participants of the New Urbanism movement are; Western society is a car culture.

Current Status of the Automobile Centric Society

There are visible signs of evidence showing the car culture has reached stagnation.  Ever noticed that all strip malls are a similar shade of brown?  Ever notice the stores are in the same place in every town?  Ever notice the same stores are in every strip mall?  Ever notice the same products are located in the same isles in the same stores?

Creativity has been replaced by replication.  The unsustainability of the automobile centric society is evidenced by many layers of inertia.

  

A high number of people who live in the automobile centric society have an affinity to their car; this inanimate affection produces a fear to be without it.  The inertia that resists change produces uncertainty and hostility against disruption.  Mental anguish can push away ideas which promote anything different or new.  New technology transit is disruptive innovation. 

New technology transit provides alternative methods of mobility but, does not remove the automobile.  It increases efficiency of travel time and eliminates traffic jams.  It is far less costly than the overall expense of the automobile and more efficient as a transportation system.

The clock is well into the 21^st century.  Trains of the 19^th century proved train tracks could carry loads of people and commerce.  The 20^th century gave a certain feel of independence with travel.  And now, as urban growth expedites instability, the 21^st century must prioritize travel demands to sustainable mobility.    

How to Reset an Unsustainable Society

Implementation of a sustainable foundation to an automobile centric culture

A community’s growth is paramount to its future.  Since the automobile is totally unsustainable, all automobile centric growth is also unsustainable.  By adhering to the claim “that’s just the way things are” and continuing to use automobiles as the foundation for community growth is the acceptance of willing ignorance for a destructive pattern of urban growth.  Urban growth in the US since the 1920s has altered its original transit oriented design from train and street car orientation to what it is today: urban sprawl; a conglomeration of unsustainable automobile oriented development.  To have a future that is sustainable, urban growth has to be re-established on a sustainable foundation with efficient mobility.

 

Many of the Western Society downtowns have lost their functionality as commerce centers.  To re-create commerce, these downtown commercial centers have to have a functional transit system to effectively use their original transit oriented design.  Throughout the country are examples of cities having patterns of land-use change by their abandoned street car system in the early 1930s.  Although these cities were built with transit oriented land-use designs they are now changed to automobile centric land-use design. 

Revitalization efforts in successful downtown areas include a mobility component carrying large numbers of people throughout the downtown areas.  These transit systems have served to reinstitute the function of the original transit oriented designs of downtown areas.  These revitalization efforts allow downtowns to once again maintain land-use positions of regional financial hubs of commerce.

The necessity of sustainable mobility is crucial to urban growth.

In the late 1960’s the federal government established National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), in 1970 California established the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA).  Although many people claim the laws are restricting and obtrusive, the intent of regulating guidelines creates a healthier environment.  It is an unfortunate consequence of politics that government regulations are manipulated by industries lobbying corrupted self-serving agendas of greed.

In 2006 California passed AB32 which set into law a target of air quality to meet 1990 measures by 2020.  In 2008 SB 375 was passed, which mandated the AB32 targets.  These mandate the MPOs (Metropolitan Planning Organizations) to find a way to comply with Air Resource Board (ARB) targets.  SB 375 augments CARB’s (California Air Resource Board) ability to reach the AB 32 goals by demanding regional greenhouse gas emission reductions are achieved from the automobile and light truck sectors for 2020 and 2035.  There are 18 MPOs in California the ARB will work with towards achieving its goal in the regional transportation, housing and land-use plans to prepare “sustainable communities strategy” (SCS) for each region.

 

These SCS plans were envisioned to reduce the amount of vehicle miles traveled in the most powerful way for California to lower its carbon footprint.  These newly enacted laws are designed to accelerate this necessary transition towards transit oriented urban growth, promote the rapid development of a cleaner, low-carbon economy, create vibrant livable communities; and improve the ways we travel and move goods throughout the state.

However, most of the MPOs and city planners are staffed by schooled workers regimented with a strict policy of compliance orientation.  There is a disproportionate absents of thought capability to “think out of the box” when the voice of their choir is “the box”.   There also is a necessary requirement to garner changed perspective to replace automobile centric urban growth.  The MPOs are caught up in “mapping” and newly marketed computerized techniques of modeling.   It is ludicrous to use the word sustainability and continue urban planning based on the automobile; while considering that an adherence to transit oriented urban expansion.  The resolve of city planners in accommodating SCS legislative mandates is forcing smaller lot size requirements onto tract housing developers.   This is the receipt for oblivious acumen.

 

The transit oriented design is not acquiescent to automobile use.  The consequence to this nonconformity is a dysfunctional land-use design.

 

Philosophically speaking, there has been a suicidal tendency of US society since the assassination of President Kennedy.  Western culture once had a goal driven direction of striving to greatness and achievement for the good of mankind.  Over the past five decades it has been caught in the vortex of self-seeking gratification and politics that elevates a dictatorship government by psychopathic narcissists. The grandiose speech of President Kennedy when man landed on the moon; was the last grand speech spoken by a politician regarding man’s instinctive nature to seek and explore as their directive to achievement.  The dichotomy of politics is that a bird needs two wings to fly: a left wing and a right wing.  Politics of the left have created an impaling ultra conservative social agenda that fails in letting people strive for greatness on their own merit.  Politics of the right declare that government is intrusive while at the same time invoking the over-regulation of intrusive government.

Where is the US space program that required innovation and created the long list of products we use today?  What happened to the promised Moon colonies, Mars exploration, and the achievement of innovation?  Where are the startling innovations of our bright future?  They were lost into the stagnation of deceitful social blight.  We need the jobs created from manufacturing in weightless environments, new technologies and building parts for further space exploration more than feeding on the lies of racism controversy.  Whose idea was it that declared it is better to give welfare money and nurture the dysfunction of doing nothing rather than having self-worth with a job and providing for one’s self? 

    

The status-quo of a non-sustainable culture is problematic on every level. 

    

Capitalism is market driven.  Capital costs in building infrastructure for a community wide transit system are expensive.  The only way to reach sustainable urban growth is to use a new form of sustainable transportation.  To expend $hundreds of millions for unproven technology is not a risk bureaucratically compelled personnel could support.  Hence, the ongoing deterioration of problem oriented urban growth.

 

Building a sustainable urban environment requires sustainable transportation.  Capital cost infrastructure outlays for new technology transit are the most affordable of all transportation systems.  There are three factors to sustainable transportation: environmental requirements, economy need, and social demands.  All three expanses are directly related to mobility and within the ability of private sector development. Legislative mandate has established guidelines for the private sector to develop sustainable urban growth and yet it is the political pursuit of corrupted status-quo that stagnates and disrupts the progress of sustainability. 

Current environmental, economic, and social problems are directly attributed to the arrangement of unsustainable urban growth based on automobile centric land-use design.  Convenience of the automobile is offset by the intrusive increase to their numbers, exacerbating the problems.

 

The demand for transportation is proportionate to the population. As the population is growing, transportation needs grow at a proportionally greater rate. With the growing population, there is an increased demand for land and mobility. Gasoline price increases at the pump will continue to increase with inflation, and depletion of oil supply.

The importance of introducing new technological industries into the automobile centric based society is economic growth of job creation.  As the industrial revolution began manufacturing and computers have led to the information revolution, mankind’s next step in intellectual evolution is the field of mobility. 

The automobile is not a sustainable technology.  The societal impacts from our car culture have blemished many areas of our lives and continue as the current state of urban development opposes the legislative concept of NEPA and CEQA regulations.  The necessity of sustainable mobility is crucial to urban growth.

The automobile centric urban society is incapable of carrying its ongoing pattern of economic, social and environmental destruction.  How then does a culture reset?  Through a natural progression of entrepreneurial efforts without the insatiability intrusion of greed driven political self-indulgence.  A cultural reset happens from sustainable urban growth by implementing new technology transit systems which allows sustainable transit oriented urban growth.  The significance of this is growth; for in growth there is environmental justice and social opportunity.

Advanced Transit Technology for Sustainability

New technology transit is the solution to building sustainable urban growth

Regarding new technology transit; in the process of disruptive innovation, there is a tremendous lack of understanding and much prejudges.  Many of the people involved in academic and other bureaucratic agencies wordsmith ‘new’ from status-quo.  The fact remains: there is no sustainability regarding the automobile.  It is foolish to regard automated automobiles or automated bus ticketing as advanced transit in the sense of referring such technology to sustainable urban growth. 

The innovation of new technology transit; also referred to as advanced transit is system technology; rather than merely a single type of vehicle.  There are two industry categories identifying vehicle size: PRT (Personal Rapid Transit) and GRT (Group Rapid Transit).  New technology transit systems fit into to the model for environmentally sustainable urban growth by using clean energy with advanced automated technology.  Some systems deliver the convenience of on-demand and direct to destination transit capability.  If the system technology isn’t automated it isn’t new or advanced.  Heavy rail train technology stems from the 1800’s, consumes massive amounts of energy and is not on the advanced transit list.  Energy efficient designs require the versatility of light-weight vehicle size.

System designs of advanced transit include solar electric generation for power, computerized operation: for increased vehicle frequencies and destination targeting, passenger stress relief of navigation, with low noise levels.  For public accessibility, existing public Rights-Of-Ways (ROW) can be used to implement this system technology and maximize a community’s overall economic productivity by reducing traffic wait times.  To afford increases of heavier ridership new technology transit is automated to comply with an increase in frequency of vehicle’s headway (distance between vehicles). 

In urban planning, demand for transportation is proportionate to the population.  As populations grow, transportation loads expand at a proportionally greater rate; there is an enlarged appetite for land consumption and a density increase of mobility.  By investing in an on-demand transit system, traffic congestion is eased through the use and application of this advanced technology.  By the implementation of new technology transit in regional urban planning, the increased traffic loads are mitigated. 

As the automobile is wholly unsustainable, even the compositions of its oil base surface streets are hazardous to ground water.  The massive proliferation of roads, automobiles and parking lots are ecologically tragic and too costly to continue as a viable resource for mobility. 

Magnetic levitation (maglev) advanced transit systems provide mobility solutions for true environmental sustainability.  In part, for efficiency in non-train maglev transit systems are the two fundamentals: weight and resistance. 

In comparing maglev; automobile technology requires a 3,000 pound vehicle to carry a single 200 pound load.  The advanced maglev technology transit system can carry a 500 pound load propelled by a ¼ horse electric motor (Lev-X).  The efficiency to advanced transit maglev technology is in its design of lightweight vehicle systems.  Without contact to the ground a maglev vehicle creates a virtually weightless or maintenance free efficiency.  Resistance caused by the friction of moving parts in an automobile causes horrendous inefficiencies.  There are no moving parts on a passive magnetic guideway: the load carrying vehicles are levitated by the magnetic force of the passive guideway; and therefore not attached as moving parts.

Maglev transit technology is sustainable transportation.  Sustainable urban growth requires maglev technology to proliferate.  The most efficient form of transportation is found with passive magnetic guideways.  Passive magnetic guideways are a different technological approach than the methodology used to electrify guideways with electromagnetism found in train technology systems.  Electrified guideway technology seen in the commercialized Transrapid train system in Shanghai and other train systems being developed are much more complicated, archaic in system design, culturally inefficient (time wasted to be taken to inconvenient destinations) and very costly.  The cost of building non-electrified guideway infrastructure for smaller lightweight vehicles is substantially more economic.  Smaller vehicle sized, non-train and direct to destination technology is efficient and sustainable.  

New technology maglev transit technology systems, projects completed or in development:

*HSST (Japan)

Rotem (Korea)

Maglevision (Philippines)

*Transrapid (Germany; Shanghai, China)

Autoshuttle (German)

*Central Japan Railway Co. (JR Tokai) (Japan)

*Yamanashi Maglev Test facility (Japan)

*Maglev 2000; aka: American Maglev Star - AMS (Florida), Magneticglide (Virginia, Danby and Powell)

American Maglev (Georgia)

Magnemotion (M3)(Massachuetts)

*Magplane Tecnology (Massachusetts)

Fastransit (NY)

Applied Levitation (CA)

Urban Maglev (General Atomics) (San Diego)

Modern Transport Systems (MTSC) (CA)

Knolle Magnetrans (CA)

Unimodal, (CA)

Lev-X (WA)

ET3, (Colorado)

Zhonghua 6 (China)

Beijing Enterprises Holding Maglev Technology Development Co. Ltd (China)

*Train technology, non-advanced system

Maglev systems can be designed to encompass global travel.  With no resistance and encapsulated in a reduced air tube for further reduction of air resistance; one maglev system in development has computer simulated its travel speed at Mach 6 with an efficiency rate incomparable to any other form of transportation system (ET3). 

High efficiency in new technology transit systems is found in the agility of vehicle size, smaller vehicles which weigh less; requiring less intensive infrastructure.  Another ingredient of non-train new technology transit technology is interactive computerization of vehicle and track (guideway) switching; which lowers system maintenance, increases safety and efficiency with bypassing unwarranted station stops. 

It is impractical to believe all passengers on a train in our modern society would have the same destination.  As a train passenger of the 2000s, why should any rider be inconvenienced to constantly waste their time for every other passenger to board and exit along the route, then be forced to be taken somewhere other than the door of their destination and obligated to obtain other means of transportation to and from a passenger loading station?  Trains provided a marvelous service for society’s transportation needs when train systems began delivering passengers in the 1800s.  In the early 1900s buses provided lower initial infrastructure costs and yet are not able to offer convenience of independent travel needs. 

A trip through Wikipedia would lead one to believe that all maglev transit systems are about trains.  Google searches pull up hundreds of articles written by onlookers who know little about disruptive transit technology.   “Trains of the future” or “transportation of the future” are the popular misconceived phrases.  Train technology began in the 1830s and the calendar says that was 180 years ago.  Train technology reached its peak of technological triumph in the early 1900s with steam engines.  Modern day train technology has progressed along with the hybrid automobile and yet, trains are a part of the past; not future. 

Western society has grown and there have been technological advances since 1830.  The trains that established Western society were replaced by the independence that the automobile brought in the early 1900s. Society today has diverse destinations and everyone has their own schedule.  Trains are incapable of providing this heavy schedule diversification of origination and destination location that our culture requires.

PRT (Personal Rapid Transit) technology is the only plausible transportation solution for future mobility and sustainable urban growth.  There are certainly incremental steps to reach significant system build-outs and GRT (Group Rapid Transit) systems are adequate technologies to carry transportation towards sustainable urban growth.