Ha ha ha ha HSR

The CA HSR provides comedy relief to an otherwise serious issue. In the news today is an article which will be used as the next target for mockery of their confused behavior.

It appears as though they've selected the ROW (Rights-of-Ways) with the BNSF as the proposed corridor through the Valley. The likelihood of having Warren Buffet cooperate with the State of CA is the best chance that the HSRA has of obtaining a possible corridor ROW.

The hysterical part of the news story is the proposal of building that old technology heavy rail train from Madera to Corcoran. Its course should be extended another 15 miles north so that it could at least connect the Chowchilla women prison to the Corcoran men prison. At least that would make more sense for destination reasoning. At least the route will make it convenient for Fresno residents to get to the Corcoran prison, perhaps Charles Manson will now have a chance to pick-up more visitors.

According to the reported figures, the heavy rail train will come under their earlier figures of $70million per mile with the cost of $64million per mile. That figure, however, assumes that none of the line will be at the $120million per mile cost of its 60 foot elevated proposed cost figures.

A New Technology Transit system would be a wise choice as an alternative technology choice. It would be able to provide a far superior mode of mobility that travels much faster and at a fraction of the cost the CA HSRA political force wants to give to their foriegn manufacturing associates.

Time for action

Yet another report; this one from US PIRG Educational Fund. While it does support the underlying aspect of the unsustainable automobile, it is nothing more than another study to say things are better in other parts of the world and does nothing to change the cause of our land use crisis.

This report suggests that we need to build a "high speed" rail network by 2050. One needs to keep this term in perspective. In the 1800s America built steam locomotives which pulled trains exceeding speeds of 90mph. Today's political push is to call a train traveling at a speed of 79mph: a "high speed" train. This bureaucratic line of rational is nauseating.

There is technology being developed that has computer simulated speeds of 4,500mph at a fraction of the cost of those 150 year old technology antiques.

Canadian proposal

Three times cheaper... www.ledovoir.com from Quebec talks about the efficiency of New Technology Transit instead of governments wasting more money on systems using 150 year old train technology.

Spatial Planning

We are at a place in mankind’s intellectual growth that planning for our future has to be well thought out. History is a great teacher; the current trends reveal patterns of failure.

One of the most relevant aspects of space planning is in the study of Fung Shui (http://www.fungshway.net). In regards to particular books on the matter, a Google search would provide many choices.

The importance of spatial planning is to focus on servicing small needs of the individual. Placement, according to the art of fung shui science is maintaining the flow of movement. The question becomes: is there a greater demand for the rhythm of flow than in spatial planning?

In California, there is a rush for the Metropolitan Planning Organizations (regional government planning departments) to comply with new State mandates to lower greenhouse gases. The overall attitude of these organizations is to increase land-use densities. There is a lack of understanding within the governmental planning community that increasing population densities causes greater harm to the environment with the automobile at its foundation. The automobile is wholly unsustainable. Building society on an unsustainable foundation results in, well: LA is the result. The outcome is sprawl with social, environmental, and economic decline.

Increasing land use densities does not work with automobiles as the primary source of mobility.

With society’s perpetual growth, we are leaning towards the necessity for sustainability. The only alternative to reach sustainably is to have sustainable transportation as the source of mobility.

Blending the movement flow with fung shui science, the methods of historic community housing trends, and using new clean technology transit modes will certainly get functional spatial planning success.

Elections

According to sources, the HSR will survive or die with the November 2010 elections. Gee, let's see do we vote for extending the status-quo to be maintained or do we continue the neglected transportation system?

When will politicians figure out that this is 2010? The public needs to be informed beyond the single minded political nonsense that refers to the antiquied heavy rail passenger train technology as job creation projects. Yeah, build a decent modern transportation system and it could actually be a transportation system project.

To hear the politicians claim the horridly expensive transportation are failure from the beginning and have to be referred to as "jobs creation" projects is unacceptable. New technology transit projects can be efficient clean transportation projects, they need public attention and informed politicians.

penalties

An interesting article from today's newspaper: http://www.fresnobee.com/2010/10/21/2127168/motorists-will-pay-for-dirty-air.html Seems people are being punished because the technology forced upon them is bad. Why are the consumers charged a penalty; shouldn't it be the producers of the product: the gas companies, the automobile manufactures and the tire companies? And; since the people of the San Joaquin Valley have been stripped of a transit alternative, is bus fuel less polluting than the fuel of an automobile?

Ninety years of land-use kayos has created LA as an excellent model of what unsustainable looks like. Western society has embraced itself as an automobile centric culture, this unsustainable base creates addiction. Environmental, social and economic decline is the product of a unsustainable land-use foundation.

To a comment about the economy

Necessity today for our society is to grow beyond the technological accommodations from the 1800s. Land-use planning has to change from the unsustainable foundation of the automobile to a mode of transportation that is sustainable. Trains were a wonderful invention back in the early 1800s, however, we have advanced technologically since then. Throughout the world, civilization has created less costly sustainable maglev (magnetic levitation) transit systems, with others being developed in the US that are even more efficient.

In less time than it would take the proposed old heavy rail train technology that the CA High Speed Rail Authority is pushing to be built, at its $70million to $120million per mile cost; a smaller vehicle system (which has direct to station destination capability) could be fully implemented with 1,000+ mile per hour capability for less than $15million per mile elevated. The comparison in reduced time to build is the lack of necessity for heavy structure engineering: those costs simply don't exist. Smaller vehicles weigh less and the structures have less weight to engineer and build.

Political tradition is the barrier to efficient transportation. Ignorance on behalf of the political officials is a detriment to everyone. The technique of "pork barrel spending" to achieve failed status-quo policy is a system doomed. Our current economic meltdown is the evidence.

Our current system of sprawl land-use is broken. New Technology Transit is the solution.