jamisonwieser:

I woke up this morning to a news report that the 15% of Californians would likely vote against the water bond based on the $11.1 billion price tag, though a majority would be willing to vote for a cheaper bond.

Likewise the study found a majority of Californians now oppose the $58 billion California High-Speed Rail project.

Both the water project and the High-speed rail line don’t seem that expensive to me given the importance of safe, clean drinking water and the alternative to high-speed rail is three times as much on roads that still couldn’t carry the capacity.

And that’s the thing that gets a lot of the opposition is about big numbers and not the actual merits, relative costs and the scale of these mega-projects.

High-speed rail service to Disneyland will be the end result of hundreds of interconnected projects. Many are already underway and will start paying off in other ways long before the last spike is driven.

Along the Peninsula, HSR will share the Caltrain corridor and this week the CA High-Speed Rail Authority approved its share of electrification funding.

The old diesel trains could be ditched by 2019 in favor of all-electric propulsion according to Caltrain’s Jayme Ackemann. …

Caltrain modernization, which boasts a cleaner approach to travel, will arrive a decade before high-speed rail service to Los Angeles becomes a reality.

Maybe we just need to reframe the costs for statewide projects. $0.058 trillion looks a lot smaller than $58 billion.

citybreaths:

An elderly couple in China declined a deal to move out of their home to make way for a highway. But China’s infrastructure development is unstoppable. The result: the highway was built around the house.

Source: China Daily.

and a more recent photo from the guardian.

Here at the EBBC headquarter staff is checking in with partners and election officials to get the latest news on Measure B1.  As of this morning’s election results, Measure B1 has received 65.54% of the vote, just one percent shy of the 66.67% needed to pass.

But all is not lost! There still are sufficient absentee ballots to push Measure B1 past 2/3’s, and it’s going to take all of us thinking really happy thoughts! 

We are in contact with the Alameda County Registrar of Voters Office and they plan to provide a further count update this afternoon. We are hopeful that a significant majority of the remaining tens of thousands of absentee ballots to count are from the North County, where your outreach efforts have had a tremendous effect.

However, it could take weeks to know a final count. Thank you again for all your incredible work on the campaign. You have brought a wonderful sense of community and team building to EBBC that has already made us a stronger organization. 

B1 would help fund the new bus rapid transit service via Telegraph Ave. (photo)

About half the funds raised by Measure B1 would be devoted to mass transit operations, maintenance, and some construction. AC Transit alone would receive $1.4 billion to operate and extend bus routes and services across the county. Hundreds of millions more would go toward modernizing BART and improving other rail corridors. Local streets and roads would be repaved, beautified, and made safer and more efficient for cars, buses, bikes, and pedestrians with $2.3 billion. Transit-oriented real estate redevelopment around bus and BART stations (also known as smart growth and TOD) would get $300 million. Even highways, usually the domain of the state and federal governments, would see $677 million. And it would all likely be used to leverage even more federal and state dollars, boosting the value of local tax dollars several times over.

Measure B1 also would greatly benefit bicycle and pedestrian projects. They would receive $651 million if the measure passes, including $232 million that will be directly allocated to cities across Alameda County for projects of their own choosing. “This measure will literally complete a county bikeway network,” noted Dave Campbell of the East Bay Bicycle Coalition. “Some are paths, some are lanes, some are bike boulevards, but everything built will be safe and comfortable bikeways.”

Finally, because only 1 percent of Measure B1 dollars can be spent on administration costs, 99 percent of funds will go straight to transportation. 

learn more about measure B1 and the history of the Bay Area’s transportation infrastructure deficit: ebx, 03.10.12.

also, the official YES on B1 website.

China’s love affair with the car has blossomed into a torrid romance. In April, nearly a million people poured into the Beijing International Automotive Exhibition to coo over the latest Audis, BMWs, and Toyotas. But China is in danger of making the same mistakes the United States made on its way to superpower status — mistakes that have left Americans reliant on foreign oil from unstable parts of the world, staggering under the cost of unhealthy patterns of living, and struggling to overcome the urban legacy of decades of inner-city decay.

by peter calthorpe, on foreignpolicy, 09.2012.