Month: March 2012

  • High Cost Rail – Part 71 Jerry’s Magic Wand

    Our governor has waved his magic wand and lowered the estimated cost of our High Cost Rail Boondoggle by a full third — or minus $30 billion.  Boy, I wish he could do that with other parts of the state budget!  What a joke.  Or as the SacBee quotes Sen. Simitian on one of its blogs

    "We are a matter of weeks away from various budget deadlines," said state Sen. Joe Simitian, D-Palo Alto. "When the cost estimates are up and down and up and down by orders of magnitude here, I think folks are going to want to make sure we spend some time to understand how reliable are these figures, and what's the basis for the new estimate."

    All of this scurrying around to meet the June 15th budget date would be hilarious if it weren't Our Money and Our Community and Our Quality of Life.  But hey, what's $30 billion among friends?

  • Roosevelt School Honored

    The Daily Journal is noting Roosevelt for being one of the six County schools to make California Distiguished School status for 2012.

    The 387 schools identified Thursday join more than 5,300 public schools that have been designated or redesignated a Distinguished School since the program began in 1986.

    Although participation is voluntary, the award is highly sought after by schools in all areas of the state. Elementary and secondary schools are recognized during alternate years.

    I know BIS has achieved this a couple of times, but not sure about any of the other elementary schools or BHS.  Nice work, Roosevelt!

  • Hospital Demo

    I once worked on the 15th floor of a downtown office building and had the chance to watch another building be built right across the street.  The birdseye view of daily progress was fascinating.  I think large construction projects are intrinsically more interesting than large demo projects, but the latter has some appeal nonetheless.  So if you haven't been by the old hospital recently, here are two view of its ongoing demise.

    Old Hospital Demo3

    Old Hospital Demo1

  • Nationally Historic! 140 Years of Protection Rewarded.

    There is big news in old B’game!  Our El Camino Real trees have just been listed on the National Register of Historic Places.  Here's the back story: 

    Looking at the tree-lined streets of Burlingame today, one would be hard pressed to imagine a time when the San Francisco Peninsula was largely devoid of trees save for some native oaks dotting the hills.  Winds and cattle drives up the King's Road to South City slaughterhouses kicked up the dust.

    All that changed in the 1870s when a group of local property owners, intent on subdividing and marketing their land, hired Scottish landscape gardener and new immigrant John McLaren. The hope was to transform the area between Mills Creek and San Mateo Creek into an oasis of beauty that would beckon newcomers to the newly subdivided territory.  They succeeded!

    McLaren, who spent 14 years in San Mateo County in the employ of George H. Howard before being hired to oversee landscaping in Golden Gate Park, transformed 4 miles of the El Camino Real into a tunnel paradise of eucalyptus and elm. By the mid-teens, however, development pressures from El Camino property owners threatened the grove.  B'gamers have been fighting ever since to protect the eucs and elms.  I can recall old timers like Gloria Barton and Karen Key telling me nothing fills the City Council chambers like a threat to the El Camino trees.  Dare we mention the name "Tom" (even though he was a block off El Camino)?

    The historic designation of the 2.2 miles between Peninsula Avenue and Ray Drive is an amazing honor.  The Resource (officially called the Howard-Ralston Eucalyptus Tree Rows) however, is within the State Highway 82 right-of-way belonging to Caltrans.   That means its future may be as tumultuous as its past.

    As you walk, bike or drive along El Camino in B’game, look up first at the trees and then past the trees to give thanks!  Check these big boys out

    Eucs and truck

  • High Cost Rail – Part 70 Making Good Trade-offs = Maturity

    There are a few greybeard journalists who watch things on their assigned beats.  Dan Walters is one.  Daniel Borenstein is another who has recently come to my attention.  One could say John Horgan has the ethos but not the frequent deadlines of the others.  Tom Elias is another.  I saw his piece in today's Daily Post and I thought it was well-constructed but ultimately flawed because he missed the elephant in the room–High Cost Rail.  Let start with what he got right.  Elias pointed out that many of Gov. Jerry Brown's cost cutting proposals are not going to fly with the radical progressive nimrods that have the majority in Sacramento.  These nimrods live in an alternate fiscal reality.  Elias listed some of the cuts that Brown is proposing such as

    –$4 Billion in school funding "triggered cuts"

    –De-emphasizing standardized tests and change funding formulas

    –Cut early childhood development programs

    –Cut Cal Grants by more than half

    –Cut adult in-home health services and outside day care centers

    That's just the tip of the iceberg.  Recent articles talk about the cuts to the court system, pink slips for thousands of teachers, and the half a trillion dollars in unfunded pension liabilities.

    But yet Gov. Brown insists on building a railroad.  So what does our local Assemblyman Jerry Hill do this week?  Come out in favor of getting started on High Cost Rail on a shared track with Caltrain on the Peninsula.  That's right.  $100 Billion dollars are going to appear suddenly such that we can get to LA an hour or two slower than the airlines can.  Jerry is running for State Senate and barring some major event, he will win.  He is also a small business man who has had to meet payroll, but those sensible days are apparently over.  The only real hope for California's budget, schools, elderly, real transit options, and local commerce is Washington, D.C where spending this $100B is losing steam every day.

    I never thought I would get to this point, but thank God for Congress–or at least the House of Representatives.  At least there are some mature adults somewhere casting votes.

  • Suburban Shuttles Service B’game

    The Friday Journal section of the Wall Street Journal (March 16) has an article titled "The Hot Spot for the Rising Tech Generation" that is highlighting Noe Valley and the Mission as the scenes of intense bidding wars for houses and lofts.  Median home prices in the Mission grew 44% in December (year over year).

    The hottest properties are near corporate shuttle bus stops–where employees for companies like Google, Facebook, Genentech, LinkedIn and Apple line up daily for the ride to Silicon Valley.  Real-estate agent Amanda Jones calls it the "Shuttle Effect" and said proximity can command as much as a 20% premium.  Some real-estate agents said they're dying for a map of where the buses pick-up.  "When a listing gets deluged with people–that tells me it's close to a stop." said Ms. Jones.

    Some companies share a few of the same stops, occasionally leading to employees getting on the wrong bus.  Discussions can get animated about adding or moving a stop….

    I have seen the return side of this service in action here in B'game as employees spill out of 330 Primrose in the evening and board the shuttles.  We are on at least two routes that load in front of and on the side of the building

    Techie shuttle1

    Techie shuttle2

    We've talked about B'game as a long-time tech town and more recently as the site of a few start-ups; some of whom are willing to put up with sketchy power feeds from PG&E that wreak havoc on data centers that can't afford full back-up.  Having this kind of shuttle service is great exposure to B'game for the next generation of home buyers.  As the Journal article notes "they also want something (in the city) that they will be able to sell for more money in five years, when they might have to move to the suburbs for better schools."  That trend is everlasting.

  • Parklets on the Avenew?

    The same Wall Street Journal article as above also highlighted the growth of "parklets" in city neighborhoods.

    ..an Apple employee who takes the company bus to work, covered the driveway of his Victorian with a "parklet," a public space registered with the city featuring seating and greenery.  His crowning achievement: a topiary triceratops, dubbed Trixie, made of succulent plants.

    I'm guessing the city registration is for insurance purposes so the public can use it.  Parklets are under discussion as part of the downtown specific area plan.  The idea is to take over a parking space, add boxed plants and seating, and allow people and businesses more outdoor seating.  I haven't seen anyone argue on the Voice for less downtown parking so I'm not sure whether this discussion has any legs or not, but note the example above was a driveway of a house owned by someone without a car.

     

  • Pizza Honors

    Columnist Lou Pizarro in the Mercury Times notes that Pizza My Heart has earned some great recognition

    Pizza My Heart owner Chuck Hammers is thrilled to report that the Bay Area chain took top honors for "Best Traditional Pizza" this week at the International Pizza Competition in Las Vegas.  It's the first American pizza to win that prize since the contest started in 2008.

    The winning pie, and my guess for what your first order should be from the new Primrose Rd. location was decided thusly

    But this competition required chefs to use only two toppings from a list of nine traditional pizza toppings, and Pizza My Heart chef Leah Scurto and regional manager Tim Silva decided on a pepperoni and mushroom pizza.

    They have been hiring at the new location next to the latest store to embody the mallification of the Avenew area, GNC.  Here's the backside entrances

    GNC and Pizza My Heart

     

  • Mi$$ing Mosquito Money

    When I first moved to B'game a mosquito abatement officer used to show up occasionally, walk into my backyard where there was a fishpond and spray something into the water.  He was a nice old guy and seemed to just know the fishpond was there somehow.  He and the fishpond are long gone as is somewhere between $450,000 and $635,000 of county money in an embezzlement scheme hatched over on Rollins Rd. where the district agency is located.  The Daily Journal notes

    The district contacted the County Counsel’s Office which in turn handed the matter to the District Attorney’s Office which charged them with stealing more than $450,000.

    But the new news is

    The civil grand jury’s current docket is full so any investigation into the county’s mosquito abatement district and the alleged embezzlement of more than $400,000 by its former finance director may have to wait until the next term.

    Let's hope we see some of that money someday…$450K buys a lot of pesticide!  Here's the local office

    Mosquito Office sign

  • Why Can’t Caltrain be Smarter?

    Caltrain continues to try to hook itself to High Cost Rail thinking that the giant boondoggle will spill enough excess cash on the Peninsula to accomplish the upgrades it thinks it needs.  I say "thinks it needs" because it appears to be completely convinced that electrifying it's SF-SJ route is the only way to improve the service, yet all it has to do is look a little north to see an alternative.

    The Sonoma Marin Area Rail Transit (SMART) system is using smarter diesel train technology to get into service quickly.  The first 39 mile phase is due to be operational in three to four years on track that has been out of service for years.  But the pertinent aspect for us poor Peninsula residents is SMART's choice of Diesel Multiple Unit technology–a modern diesel approach.  If you don't want to wade through the 165 page spec, here is Wikipedia's summary

    A train composed of DMU cars scales well as it allows extra passenger capacity to be added at the same time as motive power. It also permits passenger capacity to be matched to demand, and for trains to be split and joined en-route. It is not necessary to match the power available to the size and weight of the train – each unit is capable of moving itself, so as units are added, the power available to move the train increases by the necessary amount.

    Distribution of the propulsion among the cars also results in a system that is less vulnerable to single-point-of-failure outages. Many classes of DMU are capable of operating with faulty units still in the consist. Because of the self contained nature of diesel engines, there is no need to run overhead electric lines or electrified track, which can result in lower system construction costs.

    These advantages often outweigh the underfloor noise and vibration that may be a problem with this type of train.

    And of course if Marin chose it, you know it's at least a bit green.  SMART says they "produce less than half the CO2, one-eight the NOx and one-fifth the particulate matter of a standard locomotive-hauled train."  Heck with that improvement, maybe leaf blowers can stay as they are in town!

    So the question remains, why can't Caltrain be smarter instead pandering to High Cost Rail and helping to ruin the Peninsula's downtown areas and the state's finances?

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