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Atherton spent $145K to delay train electrification. The rest of us paid $400M

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Re: Atherton spent $145K to delay train electrification. The rest of us paid $400M

#91

Post by dlcarrier »

pfannkuchen wrote: post #73
pibaker wrote: post #40

Train electrification would at minimum reduce pollution from diesel trains, and in the case of Caltrain, improve train services and reduce the number of cars on the road. It is peak irony that a piece of environmental regulation is being used here to delay the upgrade works. On brand for California, of course.

Were the environmental regulations actually intended as roadblocks and the environmentalists were useful idiots, or did the regulations start out useful and get hijacked, or were they always bad but it was an unintended consequence? Like is the reason why free X is better is just because whenever rules are made, the maker of rules can be corrupted to make rules for corrupters? And corrupters always exist, so minimizi…

The regulation, called CEQA, was passed under Governor Reagan, to protect the environment. Back then, the environment had a different connotation than it does now, so it wasn't about protecting plants and animals but was more about keeping things the way they are now. It basically protects what we now call NIMBYism, and it succeeds at what it was passed to do.

It is often used to block projects that will reduce pollution or produce clean energy, because a building might be ugly or produce too much shade, which the regulation prioritizes.

Re: Atherton spent $145K to delay train electrification. The rest of us paid $400M

#92

Post by queenkjuul »

decimalenough wrote: post #45
danans wrote: post #30

> They lost. So why did it still cost us $400 million? Did the article provide a direct answer to this? I see the $20M delay payments to contractors and the rise of labor costs cited, but is that all?

The article's somewhat dubious argument is that the 2012 budget estimate was $1.5B, the actual cost by 2017 was $1.9B, and the $400M difference was caused entirely by Atherton's law suit. Which is obviously a bit sus, because the actual lawsuit froze everything for only around 18 months from Feb 2015 to Sep 2016.

Reasonable to think agencies involved would wait for the outcome of the lawsuit to act, no? So those 3 years in limbo were likely also attributable.

Re: Atherton spent $145K to delay train electrification. The rest of us paid $400M

#93

Post by queenkjuul »

pfannkuchen wrote: post #73
pibaker wrote: post #40

Train electrification would at minimum reduce pollution from diesel trains, and in the case of Caltrain, improve train services and reduce the number of cars on the road. It is peak irony that a piece of environmental regulation is being used here to delay the upgrade works. On brand for California, of course.

Were the environmental regulations actually intended as roadblocks and the environmentalists were useful idiots, or did the regulations start out useful and get hijacked, or were they always bad but it was an unintended consequence? Like is the reason why free X is better is just because whenever rules are made, the maker of rules can be corrupted to make rules for corrupters? And corrupters always exist, so minimizi…

I think it's the US fragmentation between city/county/state/federal, exacerbated by our asinine suburban municipality system. A town of 8000 has equal say to a city of 2M. Unless the feds insist (which they only do for highways and military installations) then it's incumbent on the state to wrangle its counties, which they were practically designed not to do.

Honestly LA's biggest problem, for example, isn't that the buses and Metro are insufficient (they might be) but that they're operated by 18 different agencies across 24 municipalities spanning 4 counties (made up numbers, but representative). Every tiny section gets to object, provide input, demand concessions, or outright refuse to cooperate. You see this to a limited extent with London boroughs, so i understand, but nobody seems to have mastered it like California.

Here in Chicago this has never been quite so bad, but it's still similar. The state just passed new rules to consolidate the Chicago area Transit systems. Thankfully we're drastically more functional than LA from the get go, and unlike LA, Chicago controls the vast majority of desirable land in the area, so the city has a lot more political power to ensure things keep working.

Regardless: the suburban/regional networks are massively worse than those within the city, funding is a nearly-annual state-v-city showdown, the state owns the highways within the city so they can override certain city decisions regarding bike lanes/bus lanes/trams....

The US is a mess lmao

Re: Atherton spent $145K to delay train electrification. The rest of us paid $400M

#94

Post by rsync »

reducesuffering wrote: post #20

Atherton resident Marc Andreessen Apr 18th 2020: "It's Time To Build" "We can’t build nearly enough housing in our cities"[0] Andreessen family 2 years later: "IMMENSELY AGAINST multifamily development! I am writing this letter to communicate our IMMENSE objection to the creation of multifamily overlay zones in Atherton... They will MASSIVELY decrease our home values"[1] [0] https://a16z.com/its-time-to-build/ [1] ht…

I am rarely in Atherton and have no connections to it.

However, I really appreciate both dense city centers and nicely organized single family home towns and neighborhoods.

So it makes perfect sense to me that one would advocate for the network effects of upzoning and building in dense, transit and service connected job centers ... and simultaneously be against breaking up an existing equilibrium in a smaller town.

Urban and sub-urban sprawl is an aesthetic and environmental disaster and it disappoints me that what was once a progressive imperative (working against sprawl) was jettisoned the moment it ran counter to economic self interest.

Re: Atherton spent $145K to delay train electrification. The rest of us paid $400M

#95

Post by smugma »

dlcarrier wrote: post #91
pfannkuchen wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Were the environmental regulations actually intended as roadblocks and the environmentalists were useful idiots, or did the regulations start out useful and get hijacked, or were they always bad but it was an unintended consequence? Like is the reason why free X is better is just because whenever rules are made, the maker of rules can be corrupted to make rules for corrupters? And corrupters always exist, so minimizi…

The regulation, called CEQA, was passed under Governor Reagan, to protect the environment. Back then, the environment had a different connotation than it does now, so it wasn't about protecting plants and animals but was more about keeping things the way they are now. It basically protects what we now call NIMBYism, and it succeeds at what it was passed to do. It is often used to block projects that will reduce pollu…

It was about the environment (response to wildfires). It’s just that shortly after it passed, the Supreme Court ruled that it applies to any project that needs government approval and subsequently became a NIMBY tool. CEQA + Prop 13 are the cocktail that are the center of almost all of California’s problems, which are fundamentally about housing.

Re: Atherton spent $145K to delay train electrification. The rest of us paid $400M

#97

Post by mslate »

refulgentis wrote: post #18

I agree completely and empathetically and vehemently with the idea behind the message. The slop & aggressively poor argumentation, the kind that I think would have caused me to fail it if I tried it in speech & debate in middle school , leaves me feeling empty. They keep saying $400M, $400M, $400M, $400M, and the only cost they came up with is $20M. It makes me uncomfortable to support the overall cause if this is ho…

That is a very uncharitable read.

Re: Atherton spent $145K to delay train electrification. The rest of us paid $400M

#98

Post by refulgentis »

mslate wrote: post #97
refulgentis wrote: post #18

I agree completely and empathetically and vehemently with the idea behind the message. The slop & aggressively poor argumentation, the kind that I think would have caused me to fail it if I tried it in speech & debate in middle school , leaves me feeling empty. They keep saying $400M, $400M, $400M, $400M, and the only cost they came up with is $20M. It makes me uncomfortable to support the overall cause if this is ho…

That is a very uncharitable read.

That is a very uncharitable read.

Re: Atherton spent $145K to delay train electrification. The rest of us paid $400M

#99

Post by AdamJacobMuller »

em-bee wrote: post #65
AdamJacobMuller wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It did not. In fact the article comes dangerously close to admitting that there is correlation without correlation, it opens with: > Here is the short version. In 2012, Caltrain budgeted its electrification project — the backbone of the Peninsula's transit future and a prerequisite for high-speed rail to ever reach San Francisco — at roughly $1.5 billion. By 2017 that number had ballooned to $1.9 billion. In between,…

you have to be fairly negligent to think you're going to build something in California without a massive legal headache that's not fair. the question was: did the legal headache cause the budget-overrun. predictable or not, your response does not show that it didn't.

Neither did the article and they are journalists, I'm just an internet commentator.

Re: Atherton spent $145K to delay train electrification. The rest of us paid $400M

#100

Post by AdamJacobMuller »

danans wrote: post #60
AdamJacobMuller wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It did not. In fact the article comes dangerously close to admitting that there is correlation without correlation, it opens with: > Here is the short version. In 2012, Caltrain budgeted its electrification project — the backbone of the Peninsula's transit future and a prerequisite for high-speed rail to ever reach San Francisco — at roughly $1.5 billion. By 2017 that number had ballooned to $1.9 billion. In between,…

> This is a legislative problem which it sounds like, for this narrow case, the legislature actually solved (shockingly to me). I find it hard to blame the residents of the city for exercising their rights. Filing frivolous lawsuits is also a right but we don't withhold our criticism of that practice. What Atherton did seems like the wealthy person's equivalent of that, down to it being dismissed. Legal? yes. Cynical…

I agree, and I do not take issue with the general complaint (frivolous lawsuits) I am merely pointing out that your ire should be directed more at the legislature not at the people.
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