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CrazyLittle posted:This is precisely why BART doesn't run to the north bay peninsula. (Marin, etc)
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Aug 26, 2013 18:43
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Arsenic Lupin posted:Actually, I was told that Marin opted in to BART and paid a special tax levy, but the extension was never built. The tax, of course, was not refunded. Not exactly. http://www.marinij.com/ci_15707690 They wanted to run BART across a new lower deck tacked on to the golden gate bridge. That was probably, but not definitely, feasible at the time. But after San Mateo County pulled out, the system was underfunded and BART organizers asked Marin County to withdraw their application. Marin paid for the study, but that's all. We will never know if, had Marin refused to pull out, that extension would have actually gotten built. loving around with the golden gate bridge would have been politically very difficult, and running BART through the marin headlands would have been really expensive too. And a lot of Marin-ites were against BART, out of fear that it would spawn suburban sprawl. Leperflesh fucked around with this message at 18:53 on Aug 26, 2013 |
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Aug 26, 2013 18:49
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Thanks for the information! I note that San Mateo County and Santa Clara County NIMBYs are trying to prevent high-speed rail's going down this side of the bay.
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Aug 26, 2013 19:07
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I also thought the original GG Bridge plan was going to have a second deck for trains as well...like the Bay Bridge .
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Aug 26, 2013 19:10
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Leperflesh posted:We will never know if, had Marin refused to pull out, that extension would have actually gotten built. loving around with the golden gate bridge would have been politically very difficult, and running BART through the marin headlands would have been really expensive too. And a lot of Marin-ites were against BART, out of fear that it would spawn suburban sprawl. Now Marin is getting the SMART which will ferry people from Santa Rosa to not quite the San Rafael ferry terminal.
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Aug 26, 2013 19:16
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Dusseldorf posted:Now Marin is getting the SMART which will ferry people from Santa Rosa to not quite the San Rafael ferry terminal. Hah, I grew up in Santa Rosa (well, Windsor) and would have loved better public transit but that thing is going to be a waste of everyone's time and money. It's going to be cost prohibitively expensive to use both the train+ferry to get to SF plus you have more points of failure/delays. The secret to a healthy life is to minimize connections/points of failure in a commute at all times so I'd rather just sit on the Golden Gate Transit (even if it takes longer). Hell, it isn't until Phase 2 that it's even going to go to Larkspur which is pretty stupid. Oh yeah, it's not even planned to go to our (admittedly super lovely) airport. Some of the proposed stops are also in weird locations and it's not going to be practical to convince people to get out of their cars and then have to walk 30 minutes to work/try to catch one of our randomly-timed lovely buses that may or may not even take them to where they need to go. Especially once all the 101 widening is finished and traffic no longer becomes (as much) of an issue. I suppose it's good to get the framework started because we'll need it eventually, but drat it's disappointing to see every public transit project ending up with some boondoggle jank attached that will kill it's effectiveness 
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Aug 26, 2013 20:33
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Xaris posted:Especially once all the 101 widening is finished and traffic no longer becomes (as much) of an issue. FYI, this is the number one misconception about widening roads. The bigger road will generate it's own traffic by spurring development and causing people to reevaluate their mode of commuting.
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Aug 26, 2013 21:42
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Dusseldorf posted:FYI, this is the number one misconception about widening roads. The bigger road will generate it's own traffic by spurring development and causing people to reevaluate their mode of commuting. Oh I agree and that's what I was aiming for. They've just about finished up widening the 101 on most sections which has alleviated some traffic (in the foreseeable short term) which will disincentive use of the SMART train and limited use of our lovely bus system. Development crashed pretty hard up there and most of the telecomm industry is long gone so it will be at least a decade before they reach the same congestion levels with just 2 lanes. It's quite unfortunate that it's easier to spend hundreds of millions on road widening than it is to buy more buses and pay drivers
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Aug 26, 2013 22:41
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Aug 26, 2013 23:35
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Dusseldorf posted:FYI, this is the number one misconception about widening roads. The bigger road will generate it's own traffic by spurring development and causing people to reevaluate their mode of commuting.
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Aug 27, 2013 00:07
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I like that Portland comes in better than LA, when it's only slightly larger than Long Beach.
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Aug 27, 2013 00:28
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cheese posted:Freeways reach a critical mass of lanes where additional lanes seem to do nothing more than encourage more people to use that freeway for their commute. I think you could probably make the 580 10x lanes each way and you would still have gridlock going eastbound at 5pm. That probably has a lot to do with people having to get on and off the freeway, since 10,000 lanes means nothing if everyone needs to be in one to get off the thing at some major street.
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Aug 27, 2013 00:44
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Mainly the problem is that people don't know how to merge (like a zipper, one new car per each old car) and don't know how to drive in stop&go traffic (coast at the average speed of the car front of you and try to never have to touch the brakes). If everyone did this then traffic would be orders of magnitude smoother. Unfortunately it only takes one rear end in a top hat who refuses to let anyone in or who is constantly racing forward then slamming on the brakes to gently caress things up for everyone else. withak fucked around with this message at 01:04 on Aug 27, 2013 |
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Aug 27, 2013 01:02
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withak posted:Mainly the problem is that people don't know how to merge (like a zipper, one new car per each old car) and don't know how to drive in stop&go traffic (coast at the average speed of the car front of you and try to never have to touch the brakes). If everyone did this then traffic would be orders of magnitude smoother. Also, when there's an exit everyone is getting off at, some people get over to the right early and wait in line, while others drive to the end of the queue and force their way in, which enrages everyone in the queue so that some people pull out of the queue and drive to the front in anger, and meanwhile the sudden merging forces people to slam on their brakes and send compression waves backwards through the line. And the people who are trying to merge at the head of the line block traffic in another lane, so now people in that lane are suddenly trying to merge left to avoid the stopped line-cutter mergers, and that causes people to hit their brakes or at least slow down, and it just cascades outwards and backwards. Like, for example, the 238 exit from northbound 880, which is always packed in particular because 580 between 238 and berkeley is closed to big rigs, so that's where they all get on and off of 580 heading out to I-5. If computers drove our cars we could double the number on the road easily, and they'd all be able to move at the speed limit. But anyway the real issue is that once a road hits capacity and traffic becomes reliably terrible, people seek alternate routes/modes. If you add lanes, the road actually attracts more traffic. People switch from other routes/modes to that road because it is reliably open. There are exceptions, but usually those exceptions happen because of limitations on development, such as greenspace. I think there are sections of 280 that are only very rarely bad, but it's because there's big areas of protected greenspace along the 280 corridor so people can't move there en-mass, attracted by the open freeway.
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Aug 27, 2013 01:11
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If NYC and SF are only separated by 1 point, I have to assume this is a logarithmic scale.
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Aug 27, 2013 01:35
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Leperflesh posted:Also, when there's an exit everyone is getting off at, some people get over to the right early and wait in line, while others drive to the end of the queue and force their way in, which enrages everyone in the queue so that some people pull out of the queue and drive to the front in anger, and meanwhile the sudden merging forces people to slam on their brakes and send compression waves backwards through the line. And the people who are trying to merge at the head of the line block traffic in another lane, so now people in that lane are suddenly trying to merge left to avoid the stopped line-cutter mergers, and that causes people to hit their brakes or at least slow down, and it just cascades outwards and backwards. Oh yeah gently caress that spot. Unrelated but I'm a pretty relaxed driver and let people in all the time yet there's one spot that I can't stand which is Wilder Rd right before the Caldecott tunnels heading West that everyone gets off and back on. I will loving make sure that anyone I see coming up in my right mirror who does that does not get the chance to get over and depending on my mood I'll even tease them with an opening before going nope.
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Aug 27, 2013 01:44
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Rather than walkscore, here are some plain old census numbers showing the percentage of commuters who use public transit to get to work. These are city-proper stats from 2010, for the top 50 cities by transit usage with over 100,000 residents: 1. New York, New York - 55.66% 2. Jersey City, New Jersey - 45.82% 3. Washington, D.C. - 38.30% 4. San Francisco, California - 34.05% 5. Boston, Massachusetts - 32.82% 6. Arlington, Virginia - 28.54% 7. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania - 27.19% 8. Cambridge, Massachusetts - 26.60% 9. Newark, New Jersey - 26.50% 10. Chicago, Illinois - 26.50% 11. Yonkers, New York - 24.95% 12. Daly City, California - 21.45% 13. Hartford, Connecticut - 21.19% 14. Alexandria, Virginia - 21.12% 15. Seattle, Washington - 18.19% 16. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania - 18.03% 17. Baltimore, Maryland - 17.64% 18. Berkeley, California - 17.36% 19. Oakland, California - 17.21% 20. Minneapolis, Minnesota - 15.18% 21. East Los Angeles, California - 14.85% 22. Buffalo, New York - 13.74% 23. Edison, New Jersey - 13.08% 24. New Haven, Connecticut - 13.03% 25. Richmond, California - 12.93% 26. Elizabeth, New Jersey - 12.37% 27. Paterson, New Jersey - 12.14% 28. Portland, Oregon - 12.07% 29. Stamford, Connecticut - 11.95% 30. Atlanta, Georgia - 11.43% 31. Los Angeles, California - 11.16% 32. St. Louis, Missouri - 11.03% 33. Bellevue, Washington - 10.78% 34. Bridgeport, Connecticut - 10.53% 35. Miami, Florida - 10.52% 36. Concord, California - 10.37% 37. Honolulu, Hawaii - 10.32% 38. Fremont, California - 10.30% 39. Naperville, Illinois - 10.15% 40. Cleveland, Ohio - 9.84% 41. San Juan, Puerto Rico - 9.46% 42. Ann Arbor, Michigan - 9.00% 43. St. Paul, Minnesota - 8.72% 44. Madison, Wisconsin - 8.57% 45. Providence, Rhode Island - 8.42% 46. Cincinnati, Ohio - 8.29% 47. Milwaukee, Wisconsin - 7.94% 48. Gresham, Oregon - 7.48% 49. New Orleans, Louisiana - 7.30% 50. Rochester, New York - 6.83% Of the 9 CA cities on there, 7 are in the Bay Area  .
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Aug 27, 2013 01:51
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Zeitgueist posted:I like that Portland comes in better than LA, when it's only slightly larger than Long Beach. Also, Chicago isn't in the top three. Granted, I've never been over there, but I hear people from around here in San Francisco rave all the time about how it's second only to New York.
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Aug 27, 2013 01:58
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Zeitgueist posted:I like that Portland comes in better than LA, when it's only slightly larger than Long Beach. Yeah, I think the conservative critique of the bold new thinking out of places like Portland and Boulder is somehow spot on (broken clock). These places are tiny and practically all-white. They're loving irrelevant to places I live. Also Portland drew a city boundary and then built loving sprawl inside of it, so it's quite possible they don't know poo poo about anything.
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Aug 27, 2013 02:49
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ProperGanderPusher posted:Also, Chicago isn't in the top three. Granted, I've never been over there, but I hear people from around here in San Francisco rave all the time about how it's second only to New York.
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Aug 27, 2013 02:58
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Rah! posted:Rather than walkscore, here are some plain old census numbers showing the percentage of commuters who use public transit to get to work. I had no idea that Concord or Daly City had over 100k people until this post. I never really go to them though. I don't know much about other metro areas, but could there be a bias in this list where other metro areas don't have as many cities over 100k preventing them from being well represented for this list, rather than the bay area being exceptional when it comes to public transport? I grew up in Fremont and if it can make this list, it feels like any city with some rail system should make it, since it felt like everyone drove everywhere.
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Aug 27, 2013 03:43
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You are receiving this broadcast as a dream...We are transmitting from the year one nine... nine nine ...You are receiving this broadcast in order t
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Pain of Mind posted:I had no idea that Concord or Daly City had over 100k people until this post. I never really go to them though. I don't know much about other metro areas, but could there be a bias in this list where other metro areas don't have as many cities over 100k preventing them from being well represented for this list, rather than the bay area being exceptional when it comes to public transport? I grew up in Fremont and if it can make this list, it feels like any city with some rail system should make it, since it felt like everyone drove everywhere. Actually, when you look at it at the metropolitan area level, the Bay Area comes out in second in the US for transit usage by commuters, after the NYC metro. It actually does have some of the highest transit ridership rates in the US. It's just that aside from a handful of other metropolitan areas, the US is really horrible for public transit. Here's the list for metro areas (MSA):  source: http://www.census.gov/prod/2011pubs/acs-15.pdf As you can see the MSA definition (metropolitan statistical area) splits the Bay Area up, and this is due to census methodology not playing nice with the Bay's geography-constrained development patterns. There are a total of 7 different MSAs in the Bay Area CSA: SF-Oakland-Fremont, SJ-Santa Clara-Sunnyvale, Napa, Vallejo-Fairfield, Santa Rosa, Santa Cruz, and as of 2013, Stockton (LA is the other notable example that gets split up a bunch by the MSA definition). Santa Cruz and Stockton aren't usually considered as part of the Bay Area, but the census does include them due to the number of commuters crossing between them and traditional Bay Area counties. Anyways, the larger CSA definition (combined statistical area) keeps the Bay all combined as it should be, and as I remember, the Bay Area comes in second for transit usage by commuters under that definition too. I can't seem to find the list for CSAs right now though. SF-Oakland comes in second for transit usage when measuring by urban areas as well....and yet again I can't find the list for that. I know I've seen it before 
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Aug 27, 2013 04:16
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agarjogger posted:Yeah, I think the conservative critique of the bold new thinking out of places like Portland and Boulder is somehow spot on (broken clock). These places are tiny and practically all-white. They're loving irrelevant to places I live. Also Portland drew a city boundary and then built loving sprawl inside of it, so it's quite possible they don't know poo poo about anything. Living in Portland does seem to be much more livable than LA by a long shot and the metro boundary was already more or less established around the sprawl. I do think low overall usage as a percentage it is at least partly because transit access is very centralized around downtown and along the river, while it is pretty minimal in large parts of the city. Portland has done a pretty good job with the resources it has, but it is still very car-centric as most small American cities (Portland is the smallest metro area on that list). There are two very different Portlands, one very dense, transit/biking/walking orientated and wealthier and a other which much more suburban, car-orientated and poorer. (The dividing line is probably 60-82nd street SE.) Edit: Also yeah, there are large parts of the metro area (Vancouver, Clackamas County) that are against any type of transit. Ardennes fucked around with this message at 04:40 on Aug 27, 2013 |
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Aug 27, 2013 04:17
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The real take-away from that last chart is that only about 13 to 15 metropolitan areas in the entire country exceed 5% of worker usage of public transportation. That is loving pathetic. It's what I was trying to get at earlier: yeah, BART is not great, but holy poo poo look at the rest of the country. By comparison, it's amazing.
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Aug 27, 2013 04:33
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VikingofRock posted:I've never understood why the people of Santa Cruz are so against the plans to build a desalinization plant. It's safe and necessary, and yet plans to pursue it were dropped this week because people were so against it. From what I've gathered from my parents who have decided to involve themselves in Santa Cruz local politics in their retirement, that feat was a combination of NIMBY-ism, the perception that desalination would not provide a relatively small amount of water, and the fact that the only people who ever publicly discussed desalination were against it ipso facto for irrational reasons.
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Aug 27, 2013 05:48
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If sincere, the Santa Cruz citizens (yes students can be local citizens too), who opposed the plant are correct on one point: water conservation is preferable to building plants which are so energy intensive, they are commonly nuclear powered (which would certainly be opposed in SC).
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Aug 27, 2013 05:55
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It sounds like it would be powered by fossil fuels which would be negated with offsets, which is a lot of carbon offsets.
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Aug 27, 2013 06:13
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Seriously, the state would do so well with a mix of nuke plants and solar (and wind) if we weren't so heavily in the grips of the oil magnates. I love that they've managed to suborn knee-jerk liberals to keep pumping those sweet petrochemical profits.
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Aug 27, 2013 07:00
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Ardennes posted:It sounds like it would be powered by fossil fuels which would be negated with offsets, which is a lot of carbon offsets. Carbon offsets are a Sopranos-waste management level scam of Biblical proportion waiting to happen. Groan. Either do a thing or don't. Don't do it and pay someone else not to.
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Aug 27, 2013 07:03
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Grand Prize Winner posted:Seriously, the state would do so well with a mix of nuke plants and solar (and wind) if we weren't so heavily in the grips of the oil magnates. I love that they've managed to suborn knee-jerk liberals to keep pumping those sweet petrochemical profits. Solar poses an issue in ag areas. Ag kicks yup a lot of dust and when that gets on solar, it can reduce efficiency. There are some cases working their way through the courts where they are trying to determine whether it may place some burden on the farms. Which is an issue as farmers are pretty powerful in the valley where many solar plants would be placed.
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Aug 27, 2013 07:05
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Well, what about like Death Valley and other assorted deserts? Not like they're good for much in the way of human use. And you can stick wind turbines on just about any hill not occupied by a NIMBY.
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Aug 27, 2013 07:10
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Grand Prize Winner posted:Well, what about like Death Valley and other assorted deserts? Not like they're good for much in the way of human use. And you can stick wind turbines on just about any hill not occupied by a NIMBY. Wind works well, though it is subject to weather problems. Death Valley is a national park. There are some major solar projects in the Mojave though -- they're not cheap or quick to build. There's also a surprising amount of fairly sensitive environmental areas in the desert -- it is fairly common to think of them as dead, but they're actually teeming with life, life that is generally more sensitive than in say a forest. Protecting that takes time and adds complication. nm fucked around with this message at 07:22 on Aug 27, 2013 |
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Aug 27, 2013 07:20
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I am not a nuclear nut, but if you want to be carbon free you will have to have at hydro-nuclear as a base load. That said, wind power has its uses and its price as gone way gone per kwh. Honestly, California has far from the worst carbon profile at the moment, but its use of natural gas probably needs to replaced.
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Aug 27, 2013 07:36
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Ardennes posted:I am not a nuclear nut, but if you want to be carbon free you will have to have at hydro-nuclear as a base load. That said, wind power has its uses and its price as gone way gone per kwh. I don't think you'll see Nuclear in large amounts in CA in the forseeable future. Seismic activity plus the perceived specter of Fukushima. Not saying it is wholly rational, but I believe it to be true. Then of course, we can have a debate over whether hydro, a huge source of power up north, is really "green."
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Aug 27, 2013 07:44
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nm posted:I don't think you'll see Nuclear in large amounts in CA in the forseeable future. Seismic activity plus the perceived specter of Fukushima. Not saying it is wholly rational, but I believe it to be true. Yeah, and thats why California probably won't be carbon free. Most people in any major city in California won't accept nuclear around them and many people in rural areas won't as well. Hydro is pretty complicated, especially in regards to aquatic eco-systems, that said, for the most part it just sits there and doesn't need additional resources for it to function. Coal, fracking or uranium mining are all problematic in their own ways. The solution right now seems to be the most sensible one is to tear down elderly/low power dams but retain the larger and more efficient ones.
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Aug 27, 2013 07:51
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An issue with solar-in-the-desert is the need to transmit the power to where there is demand. Power transmission is very wasteful which drives up the cost-per-megawatt. Solar is already significantly more expensive per MW than fossil fuel power, so that really doesn't help. Hydro is problematic because building a dam means filling a valley which means total destruction of the ecosystem occupying that valley. It also makes it much harder for fish to travel up stream (you can mitigate somewhat with fish-ladders and such but these are of limited effectiveness) which is part of why california's salmon are not doing well despite decades of protection. Rooftop solar seems to be a big thing these days and I like it for generating power locally (no transmission losses). It's not enough to replace centralized power generation by a long shot, but it helps.
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Aug 27, 2013 19:26
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Rim Fire is now at 180,000 acres burned, 7th largest in California's recorded history. Of the ten largest fires, seven have occurred in the past ten years. Twitter has tons of good info and photos (both on the ground and from space).
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Aug 27, 2013 19:51
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Leperflesh posted:Rooftop solar seems to be a big thing these days and I like it for generating power locally (no transmission losses). It's not enough to replace centralized power generation by a long shot, but it helps. What's more efficient in terms of energy saved, rooftop solar waterheating or rooftop PV generators?
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Aug 27, 2013 20:15
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Grand Prize Winner posted:What's more efficient in terms of energy saved, rooftop solar waterheating or rooftop PV generators? Rooftop solar water-heating is far more efficient. But, it only heats your water, so it's not a replacement for your electricity bills. And during the summer what most people use a ton of electricity on is running the A/C, and when you need hot water it isn't always sunny, so you still have to have a backup means of heating your water. PV solar means you can have batteries storing the sunshine for when you need it. Of course, you can do both, and that'd probably make sense.
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Aug 27, 2013 21:23
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Is there anywhere in the world where you can use geothermal besides Iceland?
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