Mass Transit and Population Density - 3.a.

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I wish to correct a previous inaccuracy.  The current projected cost of the CA HSR is no longer $64B (up from the $33B originally put to the voters).  It is now $98.5B.  It is still projected to be cheaper than the projected alternatives because those alternatives have been continuously revised upwards to ensure that the HSR is projected to be cost effective.  Also Oceania is now at war with Eurasia and always has been.
 
I'm sorry - I just can't keep up - I mean I try, I really do, but there are only so many times you can keep checking.  They should stream the updated projections so we don't have to keep checking back all the time.  Or maybe have some running-count billboard like for the National Debt (which is bigger than the cost of the HSR, so far).  The HSR cost apparently goes up in discrete quanta of $33B every year so projecting the projections (projections squared, I suppose) leads one to conclude that by the time it is built, it will come to $1 Trillion allowing for inflation.  That will be okay, because by then the usage projections will have everyone in Northern and Southern California switching places daily.

This $98B revision comes courtesy of the LA Times which has the following articles:

1.  http://articles.latimes.com/2012/jan/17/local/la-me-bullet-exaggeration-20120117
quote: (the traffic) "claim is based on such exaggerated estimates, misleading statements and erroneous assumptions that it is 'divorced from any reality.'"

"the rail authority has rebuffed offers to have UC Berkeley, UC Irvine and UC Davis, which have among the top five university transportation departments in the nation, help analyze the bullet-train system."  (from a representative of Burlingame near SFO)

"Instead, the rail authority has relied heavily on New York-based Parsons Brinckerhoff, a contractor that helped fund the political campaign for the $9.9-billion bond measure passed by voters in 2008. Although the rail authority has more than two dozen employees, Parsons controls 108 people working on the project."

So a funder of the proposition is in charge of making projections that will keep him in business working on the project.  Sometimes conflict-of-interest goes beyond mere sordid corruption to become an art form.  This is one of those truly awe-inspiring times.  We are witness to new innovations in conflict of interest.  But fear not!  The HSR project has a special manager to ensure the accuracy of the estimates:

2.  http://articles.latimes.com/2012/apr/09/local/la-me-bullet-conflict-20120409

"Frank S. Koppelman, who was hired by the California High-Speed Rail Authority to ensure the accuracy of ridership and revenue forecasts, worked on projects for the company providing the estimates."

3.   http://articles.latimes.com/2011/jul/29/local/la-me-high-speed-ridership-20110729

"transportation experts at UC Berkeley [...] concluded last July that the patronage models were so unreliable that they could not accurately predict whether the train would be profitable or run severe deficits"

4.  http://articles.latimes.com/2013/apr/16/opinion/la-oe-morrison-kopp-20130416

Wherein Quentin Kopp (former head of the California High-Speed Rail Authority) opposes current HSR plans saying "I want to kill this iteration of it because it betrays the representations to the voters in November 2008"

And lots more like that there stuff.

Mass Transit and Population Density - 3

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A zombie idea is a brain-dead idea that continues to walk around being treated as if it has life when there is no intelligence behind it.

The zombie idea I would like to destroy here and in subsequent posts is the "Trains & Buses are Good - Cars & Planes are Bad" in terms of fuel efficiency, carbon footprint, and tax use.

The basic laws of physics say that "Work = Force times Distance".  So it takes the same amount of work to move a human from Sunnyvale to San Diego by train, bus, plane, or car.  The question then is which modes are more efficient and have a lower carbon footprint.

The standard argument against cars is that they run on oil and trains run on electricity so if the electricity is generated cleanly (say by wind or solar) then the train is better.  There are two problems with this.

Problem 1:  Electricity is NOT generated cleanly for 87.5% of the power.  It is generated mostly by coal (45%), natural gas (20%), and nuclear (21%).  The 12.5% clean power is mostly old fashioned hydroelectric (8%) with some wind (3%).  Solar (photo-voltaic) is 0.04%.  (If Solar PV grows 1,000% it will roughly equal wind.  In 2001-2011 solar grew 30% annually.)  So every time you see an electric train or bus just imagine it belching out big black clouds of coal smoke, some blue flames of gas, and lots of very, VERY long-lasting radioactive particles that no one wants stored in their state.  Also some dead fish (dams) and dead birds (windmills).  (Ewww!  Gross, huh?)
http://www.eia.gov/electricity/data.cfm#summary
 ( Consumption for electricity generation)

Problem 2:  We have electric cars now (we had them in 1867 but ...).  Anything that you can postulate about how "if only...", or "when..." we get large amounts of clean electricity to justify electric trains can also be used to justify electric cars.  Like the Tesla.

The proposed CA High Speed Rail will cost $68B (it was going to be half of that so $68B if there are no MORE 100% cost overruns) just to build - not counting maintenance and ongoing operational expenses. How much would it cost to set up an electric-car equivalent that would allow everyone who now flies from SJ to LA to pick up an electric car, have a Google self-driving robot take them on I-5 and drop them off at some station?

It turns out to cost about $100M for 1,000 electric Teslas and charging stations and another $1.8B to expand I-5 - under $2B.  And as clean as an electric train.  (detailed calculations below)

Still like High Speed Rail?

(to be continued)

Here's the calculation:


A GE Durastation Level 2 30-Amp car charging station is for sale at Lowe's for $5,500.  A Tesla Model S with 300 mile range costs $72,400 and seats 7 (call it 6 - no sense in feeling squeezed.)  There were 1.12M passengers flying from SFO to LAX in 2009, or about 3,000/day.  500 Teslas would carry those 3,000 passengers but let's allow for holiday traffic and buy 1,000 Teslas for $72M.  We'll put 1,000 charging stations at each endpoint and at the halfway point for another $15M and we aren't even up to $100M, much less $1B.  We will need to add a lane to I-5 in each direction at about $1.5M-$3M per mile so (300 miles x 2 lanes x $3M) = $1.8B.  So I'm just too damn cheap!  Ok!  Everyone gets their own Tesla!  With a Google robot driver to take them from SJ to LA and we're out $250M for the setup cost plus $1.8B for I-5 expansion = $2B.  Sorry, that's the best I can do.


sources:
http://www.railstotrails.org/resources/documents/whatwedo/policy/07-29-2008%20Generic%20Response%20to%20Cost%20per%20Lane%20Mile%20for%20widening%20and%20new%20construction.pdf

Cupertino Middle School Proposed Changes - 2

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On May 23, 2013, The Sunnyvale City Council discussed the request by CUSD to modify the Open Space Agreement.  First the City Staff discussed the effect on the open space for Sunnyvale for 5 minutes.  Councilman Whittum asked a few questions about environmental and traffic impacts.  Councilman Davis then asked some questions.

It was thrown open to the public.  There were 20 people submitting public comment cards.  The School board representative went first. (At 8:00 minute mark on video below).  Councilman Griffith asked some questions at the 12 minute mark followed by CM Whittum at the 18:15 minute mark and CM Davis at the 20 minute mark.

Public Comments began at the 21:10 minute mark.  The CUSD represetative returned to answer some questions at the 1:21:15 minute mark.  The vote was taken to NOT approve the modification and passed 7-0 at the 1:57 mark.

Mass Transit and Population Density - 2

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Optimal transportation planning relies heavily on "spoke and hub" configurations.   They resemble a bicycle wheel with a central hub and spokes coming out of it.  This is considered optimal whether you are distributing packages (Fed Ex) or people (Delta Airlines).  This keeps costs low since it ensures that all vehicles will be operating as close to capacity as possible.  Exceptions are heavy traffic areas like the NYC-Washington or Tokyo-Osaka corridors which can keep planes, trains and buses full and use direct flights.  For most situations, like the Bay Area, hub-spoke is optimal.

The current development of Sunnyvale is going to create the worst possible situation leading to more congestion, pollution, fuel INefficiency, and higher transportation costs all around.  It will produce a lot of little mini-centers scattered around with no central transportation system connecting them in any logical way.  We will become like LA, with no center and everyone commuting from everywhere to everywhere.

Here is why:  consider 7 points (P1, P2, ...P7) that need connecting. If you try to connect every point directly, you need to connect P1 to each of the 6 other points, P2 to each of the 5 remaining points (not counting P1-P2 which was previously connected), etc.  So you have to make 6+5+4+3+2+1 = 21 connections - roads, rail systems, bus routes, whatever.  If you use a hub-spoke system, you need only 7 connections to the hub and you are done - 1/3 as many connections.  If there are 9 points, 38 direct connections are needed but with only 9 spokes on the hub the ratio of connections needed goes from 1:3 to over 1:4. 

Hubs are workplaces like San Francisco and San Jose.  The spokes go out to living places.  Create a lot of hubs because every little town likes the low maintenance high revenue workplaces and you end up with a lot of point-to-point roads and severely underused (and therefore inefficient) buses.

If everyone is driving a car you need to build and maintain 21 roads connecting mini-centers.  Building, maintaining, and expanding roads is not free but it is nowhere nearly as expansive as inefficient public transportation.  If you want to install a public transportation system, you need to consider the cost of running a partly empty bus, plane, or rail car.  Running a bus over each of the 21 direct connections compared to the 7 hub-spoke connections is going to mean only 1/3 the ridership on each bus.  A bus needs an average of 9-18 riders to be as efficient as a Toyota Prius.  The average car fuel economy in the US will exceed that of the most efficient Prius within 25 years.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_efficiency_in_transportation#Buses

Of the $218 Billion (with a B) to be spent on transportation in the Bay Area over the next 25 years, 30% is to maintain roads, 65% is for public transportation, and 5% is for road expansion.

http://www.mtc.ca.gov/planning/2035_plan/index.htm

Mass Transit and Population Density - 1

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There are some well meaning people who believe that increasing the population density of Sunnyvale is a good thing because among other things it will increase ridership of mass transit in the area.  This will lead supposedly to a virtuous cycle of greater mass transit use leading to greater availability leading to even greater use of mass transit leading to ever less pollution, less congestion, and therefore more walkable, bike-friendly cities, etc., etc.

I share the goal of better mass transit but the problem here is in the numbers.

Consider the NY Subway system (see picture of a subway station below).  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City_Subway

The NYC Subway system is one of the most successful mass transit systems in the world - #7 in the world in terms of ridership, (just below Guangzhou and just above Mexico City) and #1 in the Western Hemisphere. 
c.f. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metro_systems_by_annual_passenger_rides .  

It has over twice the ridership of the next 14 urban heavy rail transit systems in the US COMBINED!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_rapid_transit_systems_by_ridership

AND - those next 14 include 2 based in NYC - one in Staten Island and the other for the NY-NJ commuter area.

So any data you read about how wonderful mass transit systems are has to include NYC to make sense.  Take out NYC and all the data about cost-effectiveness and congestion relief goes to heck. Next time someone tells you numbers supporting mass transit ask if those numbers include NYC and what they would be with NYC factored out.

So what about energy efficiency?  Even if you don't accept the idea of global warming, surely it is better to not have all those polluting cars on the road?  Well, the NYC Subway system consumes 2289 kJ(kilo-Joules)/passenger-km in 1995 vs 2427 kJ/passenger-km  for automobile travel.  (Joules are the metric unit for energy)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City_Subway#Overview

So the most successful mass transit system in the Western Hemisphere uses 94% of the energy of cars.  If you DO accept global warming the issue is clouded by where those Joules come from.  If a Joule of electricity is generated by coal (42% of US electricity production) it is far, far dirtier than the pollution coming from petroleum based cars.  An all-electric car like the Nissan Leaf has the carbon footprint of a 33 MPG car like the Honda Fit in Colorado, better in other parts of the country with hydro and gas powered plants like California, worse in heavily coal-dependent areas like TX and PA.  In 2006, more Watts of power were generated by coal in the US than in China.
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_power_in_the_United_States

There is, of course, no way that the Bay Area will ever achieve the population density of the NY metro area.  Even places like Chicago that would welcome the honor can't achieve it.

There are other forms of mass transit and other virtues to mass transit besides energy efficiency and carbon footprint.  It is inconceivable that NYC could work as well as it does without their subway system.  BART does wonders to relieve congestion on the Bay Bridge and I have been strongly in favor of "BART around the Bay" (BARB) since I moved here in 1982. 

I was horrified to read the former mayor of San Jose say they stopped BARB because San Jose's business community was afraid everyone would just take BART to go to SF so SJ would never develop a meaningful downtown.  The way to grow a city is to make it hard to get to?  Stupidity on that order is just breathtaking.

Cupertino Middle School Proposed Changes - 1

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On Tuesday May 7, 2013, a representative of Cupertino Union School District presented to the Sunnyvale City Council a proposed Open Space Master Plan Revision.  Several on the City Council spoke against the proposal.  CM Moylan made a suggestion that 6th graders could be moved to grade schools that had space.  He pointed out that 6th graders used to be in grade school, a very few years ago.  CM Davis then mentioned some suggestions from residents he had heard at earlier meetings. CM Whittum said that essentially losing open space was not a good thing and suggested the CUSD demographer was wrong about a small increase in student population - that Sunnyvale was going to be required to add many more housing units. Before moving on to the consent calender, CM Moylan seconded CM Whittum's comments and desire for a joint meeting with the CUSD board.

This 35 minute video requires Microsoft's Silverlight to be viewable.  That software is available here:
http://www.microsoft.com/getsilverlight/get-started/install/default.aspx

Evolution and Political Partisanship

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The recent discussion of the Censure of Pat Meyering suggested a sub-context to the differing views.  I have been thinking how that came out of human evolution. 

Evolution:  Go back several million years to our early ancestors.  They were more likely to be prey than predator.  Hominid's almost unique ability to see the color red probably comes from the fact that new tree leaves (sweeter and less acidic than mature leaves) have red veins - suggesting mostly vegetarian life.  Our ancestors were likely small (more like Capuchin monkeys than Great Apes) and like most species found the trees safer than the ground.  If you are swinging from tree to tree by your hands you really need 3-D depth perception or you'll be falling a lot.  (If you are throwing your entire body at a tree like a squirrel, you can afford to be off a little bit, as long as you have sharp claws to catch onto the tree.) 

This implies hominid eyes have to be facing mostly to the front to allow enough vision overlap for each eye to provide 3-D depth perception.  But individual prey animals want as close to a 360 degree vision as possible (like rabbits) to enable them to spot predators.  

 
Hominids gave up the 360 degree vision for the depth perception.  In order to compensate, hominids formed tribes so what one couldn't see, the others in the tribe could.  So if the tribe is the guarantor of your safety, then you owe your life to the tribe and must do everything to support it.  And that means you cannot compromise with another tribe over territory because to do so would mean less food for your tribe.

Now tribes become political parties and one is committed to that system of beliefs.  You cannot concede that the other party/tribe might be even partly right about some areas because to do so would appear to abandon your entire system of beliefs.  There is always the danger the other tribe would yell something like "HA!  You admit we were at least partly right about one thing so you must concede we might be right about other things!"  So partisanship has people contorting themselves in mental and verbal knots to not admit the possibility of any weakness, or error in anyone or anything in their tribe.

As to the City Council, CM Moylan and CM Griffith are Democrats, while CM Whittum is a Libertarian.  So loyal Democrats feel the need to support their tribe,regardless of how they feel about campaign contributions on the national level.

But for Sunnyvale, this is silly.  A Libertarian majority is not going to put Sunnyvale on the Gold Standard and a Democratic majority isn't going to nationalize the steel industry. 

I voted for both Moylan and Whittum and overall, I am glad I did.  They both seem to work together towards mutually shared goals I support and both sometimes make mistakes.  I.e., anything I disagree with is by definition, an error (but I am a forgiving sort).  City governement is about garbage collection and parks and paving streets and such.  National political alignment has little to do with any of that.  So it is possible to concede your guy is wrong in one thing while being right about most other things.