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Long Beach has temporarily suspended container stacking limitations

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Re: Long Beach has temporarily suspended container stacking limitations

#161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Your land value would skyrocket by allowing apartment buildings That is too far away. That may or may not happen In the short term, the supply just increases significantly. Probably also the traffic and other infrastructure use. Not that I disagree or agree with nimby. Just pointing it out because you only point out one side.

Imagine 2 empty parcels of land in downtown Manhattan, one can have a giant skyscraper of any height built on it and the other has to be a single family home. The parcel of land with no restrictions is going to be worth exponentially more because you can built a massively profitable structure on it, the other one is so regulated that it isn't worth any where near as much. The more profit you could derive from a parce…

Let's not imagine an unlikely scenario. None of this is likely true for US' cities.

> someone would come in and buy it off your hands for a huge premium.

This is still a far future.

> If your house was rezoned for apartment buildings and the demand existed

It's still better for you that only demand exists, but not supply.

To be honest, I doubt nimbyists are even interested to move. They just want their neighborhood to stay relatively the same (quiet, fewer people, safe, less crowded).

Either way we look at it, this kind of points are likely cons, not pros.

> sure but that's why you want to build more pedestrian friendly neighborhoods and public transit so people don't have to drive everywhere.

I laughed a little, assuming this is a US city.

Again, I don't own a house, so it's not that I agree or disagree with nimby. But I can understand why nimby hates new buildings next to their houses. It's just a lot more cons than pros.

Re: Long Beach has temporarily suspended container stacking limitations

#162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you know who Ryan Peterson is? He's not an "outsider", he is the CEO of a digital supply chain company. He's a "foremost expert", to be sure.

No, he isn’t an expert, and people in logistics consider him an outsider who is a CEO of a startup that makes software that is helpful for a certain set of concerns within supply chain management. Making software for an industry does not make you a foremost expert.

> Making software for an industry does not make you a foremost expert.

I think it does, if your company is valued at 3.2 billion, does $830m in revenue, and has 10k+ customers (as of 2019) [1]. You probably know what you're doing at that point.

[1] https://getlatka.com/companies/flexport#:~:text=Flexport%20h....

Re: Long Beach has temporarily suspended container stacking limitations

#163

I thought that Flexport CEO's tweet stream was really great - had a ton of insightful, first hand information and made the problem very clear. Especially import was the feedback loops showing how the system was essentially deadlocked, in the classical sense of the term.

I work at Flexport, Ryan is the real deal.

Re: Long Beach has temporarily suspended container stacking limitations

#164
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just no. Zoning is extremely important. You should not be allowed to build a factory in the middle of a neighborhood next to a school. There are certainly bad zoning laws but to say they are all bad is just ignorant nonsense.

You don’t need zoning to stop that. You can regulate against nuisances directly - for example: no industrial noise levels within 2000’ of an existing neighborhood. You also don’t even _need_ to do that because it’s uneconomical: land in a neighborhood is worth too much per square foot to be used for industrial development.

Unless it's a black neighborhood, in which case it's cheap enough to bring in big polluters?

A default assumption that industrial processes are safe unless specifically regulated to say they're dangerous sounds like a shell game. The industry will chge between dangerous pollutants fast enough to be one step ahead of regulators, or pay regulators off to allow their pollutants.

It's right to assume all industrial work is dangerous

Re: Long Beach has temporarily suspended container stacking limitations

#165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not? It sounds like you think this is obvious, but it isn’t to me. I live in an area with occasional grandfathered-in exceptions to zoning rules. There’s a cafe run out of a house, and a butcher shop run on a residential street corner between houses. And its absolutely lovely! I would have no problem with people making things (“a factory”) next to a school.

That must be so, since you said it. Do you acknowledge, though, that many people would not like a factory next to their house? How about a foundry? How about an airport? And do you think that people's preferences ought to be taken into account by their local government? If so, there's no argument here, you just have your own opinion.

I am asking to be convinced ("why not?"). I'm not trying to convince you myself :)

There are alternative mechanisms for getting peoples' local preferences. City- or county-wide zoning maps rarely change, and - at least in Seattle - don't seem to respond to individual citizens desires or concerns in the way you imply. Are zones really the right tool for the job?

Re: Long Beach has temporarily suspended container stacking limitations

#166
post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The guy in charge took a paternity leave for 2 months and no one in the media even noticed.

>The guy in charge took a paternity leave for 2 months and no one in the media even noticed. Don't worry, once people did notice, it did take long before they started ridiculing him for spending time with his family.

Many people manage to spend time with their family and respond to work emergencies. They don't get paid as much or as much media attention, tho. So they don't really count.

Re: Long Beach has temporarily suspended container stacking limitations

#167
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s not really true. It’s perfectly possible to directly regulate, prohibit and/or tax nuisances and externalities directly without zoning.

But the key is who regulates, prohibits, etc. If that power is local, NIMBY always wins. These decisions must be made at the state level. Cities are way too fractured into myriad municipalities competing for jobs and "quality" housing.

The power is with rich locals.

I'd assume state power is with the same rich folks, so it's still NIMBY, but the state can force it on poor locals. Woooo

Re: Long Beach has temporarily suspended container stacking limitations

#168
post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't need zoning laws for that. The UK doesn't have them, yet still has pretty stringent controls ("planning permission") on what you can build. Explanation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoning#United_Kingdom Each area - typically a district, which is a sub-unit of a county or city - has a "local plan" which is decided democratically by the local government. "The plan does not provide specific guidance on what…

“We don’t have speed limits, but instead a system where different classes of roads have a preset range of overall maximum velocity.” Does a zoning law by any other name smell as sweet?

Not quite. UK planning isn’t highly prescriptive, and made up extremely narrow and limited classes of building (like single unit family home).

Instead the plans set out browser goals, such as designating a area as being primarily residential with an objective of reducing traffic and increasing walking.

If you can submit a plan that show what you want to build fits with outline, you can probably get permission. That means it’s perfectly possible to build a shop, or an office, or restaurant in the middle of a residential area. All of those things would increase the walk ability of the area, and reduce the need for residents to own cars.

Equally just because a plan doesn’t indicate you can build a specific type of building, doesn’t mean you can’t get permission for. But you would have an uphill battle to convince planners that deviating from the local plan is necessary.

The result is that pretty much all of the UK has mixed use development. You find residential area right next to light industrial districts. You find shops and restaurants scattered through neighbourhoods, and find flat in the centre of commercial districts (just don’t complain about the noise).

Re: Long Beach has temporarily suspended container stacking limitations

#169

A little off topic, but these ports don’t usually store so many empty crates, so why do we have them now? Are we not exporting at the same rate? Is that even what empty crates are used for? I’m assuming they aren’t sent back to (mostly?) China empty. I read something about the prices to ship out of the US being very high, but isn’t the price coming in also similarly proportionally high, yet we still have a backlog of…

> A little off topic, but these ports don’t usually store so many empty crates, so why do we have them now? Are we not exporting at the same rate? Is that even what empty crates are used for? I’m assuming they aren’t sent back to (mostly?) China empty. My understanding is that the us doesn't send all that much back to china, and that it was a problem for a while but wasn't the bottleneck until recently.

I'm surprised it isn't worth it at some level to send a boat load (literally) of empty containers back? I know not every ship will just do the round trip ChinaLA but presumably at least some number of them would.

Re: Long Beach has temporarily suspended container stacking limitations

#170
post #95

Everyone's focused on Ryan's comments about stacking, and the subsequent win there. Amazing job, Ryan, and thank you Robert Garcia for being a man to take one on the chin (for this solution not coming from your team) and for then doing the right thing. I am seriously impressed by not seeing any NIH (not invented here) behavior here. But why stop there? Ryan suggested 5 courses of actions, and made it clear that we ne…

Also, isn't someone from the government supposed to be in charge of this? Shouldn't they be out there finding out what's happening? It seems odd that no one has tried this, yet as someone who has worked in a factory, I can easily believe that the absentee managers have no idea what the hell actually goes on among the workers. You need to spend significant actual time, to the point of working actual shifts, to get a c…

I am sure you noticed that Ryan gently exposed those in charge of not doing enough by repeating the ship captain's comments that Ryan's team was the first to ask to get a tour of the port from the ocean side. Granted, perhaps those in charge have their own boats or are using helicopters, but the lack of action does make me wonder.
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