Vision Zero and reality

How will Vision Zero prevent accidents like this by 2024? It won't and it can't because Vision Zero is nothing but a slogan.

How dumb will the SMART system be?

Streetsblog loves trains almost as much as it loves bikes, because they aren't cars. But what they are is a 19th century technology that's expensive to build and maintain.

The big questions about this system: How much will complete build-out of the system cost, and how much will it cost to operate after it's built? Rail system boosters routinely exaggerate the benefits of these systems---especially how many passengers they will carry---and minimize the costs to build and operate.

Later: See Richard Hall on SMART's inflated ridership numbers.

A reader supplied a Robert Moses quote that illustrates the attitude: ''Once you sink that first stake, they'll never make you pull it up.''

See also Megaprojects and Risk, a book that found a pattern in hundreds of major projects around the world:

Cost underestimation and overrun cannot be explained by error and seem to be best explained by strategic misrepresentation, namely lying, with a view to getting projects started (page 16, emphasis added).

Dick Spotswood on a few of the problems the SMART system faces.

From Richard Hall

Coastal Commission and "the development community"

Michael Owen Baker

From the L.A. Times:

It's becoming harder and harder for me to describe in believable terms what goes on at a California Coastal Commission hearing. But I'm going to give it my best shot.

In the past week the circus came to Santa Monica, where demonstrators, still angry about last month's firing of the agency's Executive Director Charles Lester, booed commissioners and called on them to resign. "Our Coast is Not for Sale," said one sign...

The commissioners who fired the world's leading authority on the Coastal Act claimed he wasn't a good leader. But as they struggled in Santa Monica to figure out how to find a replacement, it became more evident that the leadership problem was with the commission. 

And who'd want the job now, after Lester's observation that the commission "seems to be more interested in and receptive to the concerns of the development community as a general rule"....?

See also this.

Making A Killing