dereksagehorn.bsky.social
Interested in figuring out how to build better housing, transit and cities. Construction lawyer for CAHSR; advocate for East Bay for Everyone. Oakland.
1,192 posts
1,400 followers
300 following
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You could extend the claim re assumptions to transit/suburban rail service as well.
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The embodied carbon people seem to operate under the assumption that the current spatial distribution of uses and its attendant VMT/carbon footprint is and will remain optimal.
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It’s kind of ticky tacky—the broader point is not 100% without merit—but the thing is if you have a movement that hangs its hat on competence and hard truths it is sort of self-undermining to get details wrong in a national column
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Rather than generating debate on what type of state capacity we should build, for what and at what level of government...
the debate is at best about state capacity and regulation on a completely abstract level.
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My son has one. It actually shoots water and he loves it.
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Imagine being on Pope Pio IX’s Papal States railway advisory commission in the late 1840s.
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Yes — Senator Lena Gonzalez of Long Beach. She specially mentioned in a floor speech that she wanted SB 79 to support the South East Gateway Line.
bsky.app/profile/zenn...
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This is an extremely misleading article, which is unfortunately expected given the author.
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I found this utterly bizarre when using the A line earlier this year
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Capitol Corridor and San Joaquins no longer use Amtrak for rolling stock maintenance. They’re contracting maintenance through private firms now.
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Yep
Once Cal ITP is fully implemented I expect California services to abandon Amtrak ticketing and probably branding as well.
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California is slowly unwinding its Amtrak operations for the intercity services for this reason.
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Also stop sending me this
www.instagram.com/reel/DKkNax1...
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Here’s the soundtrack bff.fm/shows/hello-...
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Grinder
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> State should rebuild capacity by hiring engineers
> use design-build
…
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Transit Metropolis?
(I wish Cervero’s personal website was still up)
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Do you have any recommend reading on this?
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To fix this funding agencies need to:
1) invest in staff to evaluate and oversee projects
2) have leadership set a goal (eg low-income housing near transit)
3) empower staff to prioritize large awards that meet the goal and hold down costs
4) actively oversee projects through construction
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But for the wider public this hedge is a false economy.
6 different funding agencies with small positions means effectively no funders are aligned to rigorously evaluate project funding requests in terms of scope/schedule/benefits and push back on contingency draw down.
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Spreading many small positions in a large number of projects under the assumption 5 other public funding agencies will make up the difference certainly hedges risk for an individual agency.
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We know two things however:
1. Complicated capital stacks are associated with higher costs and delay (Terner; CLEE)
2. California and US are outliers compared to other developed countries in the complexity of capital stacks.
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Why?
1. Avoidance of responsibility if projects falters or fails
2. Inadequate staffing or expertise to evaluate NOFO responses and later change/draw requests.
3. Tying up large capital positions in a few projects (Cf. Small positions in many)
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Agree that there's an unwillingness for many public agencies to own equity risk and accountability if projects go south.
But we should want public funding agencies to provide oversight and scrutinize projects for best taxpayer value. That aligns incentives better imo
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If we could re-direct a tenth of the energy going towards #2 to #1 we might actually be able to deliver Clipper 2, transit cost project delivery reform, and deliver bike lanes at a reasonable costs.
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Both
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Good arg for a state run condo warranty program like British Columbia
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Yes! Betty Yee was the sponsor of 2022's AB 2305, a bill to to coordinate and consolidate funding for affordable rental housing into a single application. leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTe...
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Florida doing a residency in your city has got to be akin to Bernard Henri Levy arriving in a troubled country to get Western media attention.
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Oh wow
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Do you know if Yee supports streamlining and coordinating state-level affordable housing finance?
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You're arguing that hiring a staffer for one of the most vocal Left NIMBY electeds in the US had no impact on these orgs and their outlook on land use reform and construction cost reform?
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People are searching for a principled reason, but the most likely reason is that the American Economic Liberties Project hired Aaron Peskin's former chief of staff Lee Hepner a few years ago as "senior legal counsel" and he imported many of the anti yimby grievances into that network
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Also, SB 79 and SB 607 are two different bills and this person is conflating them.
SB 79 is about upzoning for housing, not data centers or whatever.
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Weekend service on Joaquin Miller Rd & Skyline Blvd is coming back in August with @rideact.bsky.social Realign! It'll be up to East Bay Parks to try to entice people to take transit up – there are plenty of lots up there that could be demand-managed thru fees
hikingbytransit.com/2024/09/14/r...
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On the other side of the equation, it seems strange to assume that middle class transit use trends are irrevocably fixed.
Places that have focused on steady delivery of incremental and coordinated service improvements (not utility replacement-BRT projects) have been able to draw choice riders.