Streetsblog San Francisco

How many times do we have to play the “adding capacity to reduce congestion” game? Really? Where has that worked? All the project is going to do is make East Bay congestion that much worse while adding to their car-dependant sprawl.

“Green” governor my ass. But I think this just falls in line with his robbing of the transit funds for the past couple years. Cars rule in California and there is still a long fight ahead of us.

This is isn’t just a waste of money, it’s an investment in death. It would make more sense for Arnold to buy about three F-22 Raptors http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F-22_Raptor and just occasionally strafe and bomb people in the area. He could use airline pilots who have lost their destructive leisure-industry jobs.

Also, can we get more detail on how the “6,000 jobs” thing works? I could see how there would be a lot of temporary construction work, plus people needed to maintain the extra road surface, but I don’t see how – even with ambulance and other emergency crews, hospital staff, coroners, grave diggers, and people who provide flowers for funerals, nor the caterers for the reception after the funeral and the people who make the nappies (diapers) for babies made to replace those who are killed – it adds up to 6,000 jobs. Maybe 5,000.

Bids came in lower than eng estimate, 275 mill. Compnies are trying to bid low to keep their companies afloat in this economy

http://www.dot.ca.gov/hq/esc/oe/awards/bidsum_html/6week_list.php

well, with that earlier post today on the study that confirms congestion never actually decreases when you build more highway capacity…

this is a great idea.

why is bay area planning so f—ed up?

so sad.

Well, if we jus got rid if some of the excess parking near BART destinations in downtown Oakland and SF, a lot more people might take BART. Oh, and if BART had reasonable group rates!!

Consider the following
1. Global Warming: Warming’s impacts sped up, worsened since Kyoto
WASHINGTON—Since the 1997 international accord to fight global warming, climate change has worsened and accelerated —beyond some of the grimmest of warnings made back then.
As the world has talked for a dozen years about what to do next, new ship passages opened through the once frozen summer sea ice
of the Arctic.
In Greenland and Antarctica, ice sheets have lost trillions of tons of ice. Mountain glaciers in Europe, South America, Asia and Africa are shrinking faster than before.
And it’s not just the frozen parts of the world that have felt the heat in the dozen years leading up to next month’s climate summit in
Copenhagen:
— The world’s oceans have risen by about an inch and a half.
—Droughts and wildfires have turned more severe worldwide, from the U.S. West to Australia to the Sahel desert of North Africa.
—Species now in trouble because of changing climate include, not just the lumbering polar bear which has become a symbol of global warming, but also fragile butterflies, colorful frogs and entire stands of North American pine forests.
—Temperatures over the past 12 years are 0.4 of a degree warmer than the dozen years leading up to 1997.
Even the gloomiest climate models back in the 1990s didn’t forecast results quite this bad so fast.
“The latest science is telling us we are in more trouble than we thought,” Janos Pasztor, climate adviser to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.
1. Global Warming: Resurgence of El Niño means that 2010 could yet be the hottest year on record.

2. Despite the big freeze Britain’s climate is getting distinctly warmer – and we may feel it this summer

3. The data is being studied but the conclusion will be that the first decade in the 21st Century is the warmest, since the Dark Ages.

Yes, the new Coldecott tunnel will be great! It will promote solo car commuting while mass transit, bus, trains and BART see a decline in riders, profits and employees. Way to go!
What could be done with the $420 million?
A. Keep mass transit running and
B. Speed up the Economic Recovery?
Or, would you rather wait and see electric cars going up the 4th Co

How about Global Warming? No problem, more and more Americans are becoming skeptic and, if they are right, it will all be one stale old joke very soon. Aren´t you glad?

From UK “It may be a hard notion to accept after a week that has seen the nation paralysed by snow and ice. Nevertheless, meteorologists are adamant that our world is still getting warmer. Indeed, many now believe that 2010 may turn out to be the hottest year on record.”
And, the decade ending this year, the Warmest Decade since The Dark Ages.

Britain may be shivering, the Met Office may have issued emergency weather warnings for the entire country and hundreds of trains and flights may have been cancelled, but our future is destined to be a hot and sticky one. And we are likely to feel the consequences sooner rather than later.

It is a point stressed by Doug Smith, a climate expert at the Met Office. “The hottest year on record was 1998 and some people have argued that if global warming is really taking place, we should have had an even warmer year since then. We haven’t, I admit. And yes, the weather is terrible at present.

But, I am sure things will change – and we won’t have to wait long.” Smith and other meteorologists say that for the past few years, temperatures have been prevented from soaring even higher than they did in 1998 thanks to one key factor: the El Niño warming of the Pacific. This phenomenon occurs at irregular intervals of between two and seven years and can last for months, pumping vast amounts of heat into the atmosphere. A strong El Niño occurred in 1998 and played a key role in heating the world to a record-breaking level. Unbelievers too often point out that compared to 1998, temperatures are less…. Gee! Do they know about El Nino?

In recent years, however, the Pacific has cooled thanks to a corresponding ocean phenomenon, known as La Niña . It depresses sea surface temperatures and has played a key role in limiting global warming since the turn of the century. As a result, global temperatures have been prevented from rising above their 1998 record level. That cooling has now stopped, however, and a new El Niño warming period has just started in the Pacific. “If that keeps up for the next few months, it will result in a great deal of heat being pumped into the atmosphere,” added Smith.
“The signs are that it will. If so, our computer models indicate that this year is more likely than not to be the hottest on record.
Even if it isn’t, I am quite sure a record breaker will still occur in the next few years.”

The headlines then will look very different from the “Britain in deep freeze” variety that have appeared over the past few days, though we should note a key caveat here. Soaring global temperatures do not guarantee hot weather for Britain. We may still get a poor summer, but that does not mean the world is not continuing to heat up, a point ignored by most climate-change deniers.
In fact, there is a world of difference between the British weather at any given time and the inexorable shift that is taking place in the climate of the planet, as Peter Inness, a Reading University meteorologist, makes clear. “Britain covers only a very small part of the globe. It takes up less than one thousandth of the world’s surface. The temperature here is almost irrelevant when considering the
issue of global climate change.”

A point that should be kept in mind as councils struggle to grit roads, cars and vans slither on the ice, exams are disrupted, and farmers battle to get food to their animals. Yes, we are feeling the cold but many other parts of the world are having no such problem, as Richard Betts, head of climate impact at the Met Office, argues. “It is true that Britain is having a spell of extremely cold weather, as is much of northern Europe and the United States. But at the same time, Canada and the Mediterranean region are having unusually warm weather for the time of year. We shouldn’t get so absorbed with what is going on in our backyard.”
This argument is also made by Inness – though rather more forcibly. “I think it is really stupid to say that the current cold weather proves that climate change is not happening. Climate refers to changes in the weather patterns over a 20- to 40-year period.
What is happening in Britain at present represents little more than a point on a graph.” This takes us to the heart of the matter. Meteorologists may make errors with specific long-range forecasts. (This winter was more
likely to be mild than severe, they thought.) There is no doubt about the overall trend. Each year, humanity pumps billions of tonnes
of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. The inevitable result will be global warming and major, catastrophic climate change.
It is a bit like playing Pooh sticks, says Betts. “When you throw sticks off a bridge, you know they will all be swept downstream. You just don’t know which one will move the fastest. It is the same with climate and the weather. We know the world is warming inexorably but we cannot say specifically which year is going to be the warmest. We can only indicate what are the general prospects of getting a record-breaking year. And despite the horrible weather at present, it is quite possible that we will get one this year.” The resurgence of El Niño means that 2010 could yet be the hottest year on record in the warmest decade on record, since the Dark Ages.

global warming? How about a no-idling law in contra costa? yesterday i was parked next to a parked and running car for 32 mins at a soccer practice. all the while the woman inside talked on her phone! it’s disgusting. people say californians are so healthy and green–I’m not seeing it! C’mon people turn your cars off instead of idling!