Just wondering….

I ran across this interesting article today. This article from a very unlikely source goes to demonstrate what we in the transit community have known for a long time, Americans can and do want an alternative to their cars.

This is from Commercial Property Online, hardly an environmental or transit-oriented publication. In their article, Commuter and Light Rail Driving Development in California :

The development and expansion of commuter rail systems in California has spurred a great deal of commercial development, a cross-sector expansion that most in the industry agree is only in its early stages.

The projects, which range from the proposed $40 billion high-speed rail connection spanning the 700 miles between San Francisco and San Diego to the more modest $200 million Sonoma Marin rail transit line (SMART) stretching 75 miles from Cloverdale to San Rafael, have been a boon for commercial developers, who have seen increased demand for development–especially near rail stations–as a result of the expanding lines.

“You’re seeing a lot of development at these stations, all generated by proximity to rail, and these would not have happened without the rail,” said [Transwestern Commercial Services west region president George] Garfield. “If our cities are to grow in a compelling way, rail will be a meaningful component of that.”

This demonstrates that being pro-transit, pro-environment can also be good business.

Personally, I am so glad that my wife and I brought a house within walking distance of both a light-rail line and Caltrain. Also I know that The Crossings development in Mountain View California is very popular and has a strong sense of community. (link to google map). People within that development, even when they are looking to move up, try to find a larger townhouse still in The Crossings.
The Crossings has a density of about 21 units/acre and is located at Caltrain’s San Antonio train station. On the other side of the train tracks, the 27-acre Mayfield Mall development will have 578 units for a similiar density of 21.4 units/acre.

This is what the EPA says about The Crossings:

The Crossings, located in the city of Mountain View, 30 miles south of San Francisco, transformed a failing 1960s auto-oriented mall into a vibrant neighborhood that offers a variety of transportation choices. The 18-acre infill project, developed by TPG Development, demolished the original shopping mall and replaced it with homes, retail shops, and a daycare center, all oriented toward the new San Antonio Avenue Caltrain commuter rail station. San Mateo Transit busses meet each train and connect to nearby communities. Narrow tree-lined streets and sidewalks and small pocket parks all combine to create a walkable and bikeable neighborhood. It takes residents less than five minutes to walk from any of the houses to the stores or to the commuter rail station, and two minutes or less to walk to a park.

The Crossings project was built starting in 1994 and as the EPA notes:

Citizens asked for low densities with open space.

Twelve years later, Mountain View residents came out saying that for The Mayfield Mall project … they wanted …(drumroll) a big park and that the proposed housing development would result in high traffic volumes.

But has that happened with The Crossings? Remember according to the EPA, The Crossings is “a vibrant neighborhood that offers a variety of transportation choices”. In other words, people aren’t driving!

Furthermore considering the prices in the area as blogged by burbed.com, the EPA’s comment about cost seems appropriate:

Using on-street parking places to meet minimum parking requirements allowed more land to be used for homes, increasing overall density [when compared to the overall city density of 7-20 units/acre].

Although priced at market rates, the compact design makes the units relatively affordable in the high-cost Silicon Valley real estate market.

So here is hoping for more rail development for more affordable homes!

The recent accident at Blue Grass Airport in Kentucky is yet another example of a Bush administration that sees no value in government. As a consequence, 49 out of 50 people died.

FAA: Tower staffing during plane crash violated rules:

The Federal Aviation Administration on Tuesday acknowledged that only one controller was in the tower, in violation of FAA policy, when a Comair jet crashed Sunday while trying to take off from the wrong runway in Lexington, Kentucky.

The acknowledgment came after CNN obtained a November 2005 FAA memorandum spelling out staffing levels at the airport.

The agency implemented the policy last year after a near in-air collision at Raleigh/Durham International Airport. At the time, only one controller was staffing the tower.

It should also be pointed out for those fans of privitization that having only one controller on duty is also the cheapest way to run a tower. Unless you happen to be on one of those planes that happens to crash, but hey that’s what insurance is all about, right? Think of the payday for your loved ones. They will be thanking you for being on that plane!

Tapestry (http://tapestry.apache.org)

• Tapestry @ Javaforge
  (http://howardlewisship.com/tapestry-javaforge/)

Eclipse (http://www.eclipse.org) plugin repositories

• AspectJ for 3.2
  (http://download.eclipse.org/technology/ajdt/32/update)
• Webtools
  (http://download.eclipse.org/webtools/updates/)
• Maven 2.0 (http://m2eclipse.codehaus.org/) (8/29/06 - Although for some reason it is not working correctly)
• Perforce
  (http://www.perforce.com/downloads/http/p4-wsad/install)
• Test and Performance Tools Platform (TPTP) Updates
  (http://download.eclipse.org/tptp/updates/)

Maven 2 repositories

• The Mojo project (http://mojo.codehaus.org/) (repos: http://repository.codehaus.org/org/codehaus/mojo/)

• AspectJ plugin (aspectj-maven-plugin)

• SQL plugin to execute sql from maven (sql-maven-plugin)

The BBC ran this article about funeral strippers.

Five people have been detained in China for running striptease send-offs at funerals, state media say. The leaders of five striptease troupes were held.

The once-common events are held to boost the number of mourners, as large crowds are seen as a mark of honour.

Well as they say ’sex sells’, so why not use it to sell a funeral, an otherwise depressing affair. Turn it in to something … interesting. Can you just imagine, parent forbidding their children from attending funerals and children wanting to go? This would be a twist wouldn’t it?

The Sierra Club was recently approached by Growth Options for the 21th Century, a group that wants to increase federal funding to expand freight railroad capacity.

My general feeling is that we should be very wary. The law of unintended consequences starts coming into play pretty quickly.

The railroads are multi-billion-dollar corporations with well-funded lobbyists and growing traffic volumes, including I might add, Powder River coal.

According to the June 2006 issue of Railway Age, the 141,641 coal carloads are 41.1% of the 344,772 carloads transported by all major U.S. railroads in 2006 to-date. Coal volume grew by 11.1% at the same time all other categories declined in volume (except for agriculture products). By signing on without question, the Sierra Club may be signing on to help make coal-fired plants more cost-effective.

The Sierra Club should not be in the business of providing a direct corporate assistance to any corporation unless the environmental movement extracts some sort of meaningful concession for something that the corporation would not otherwise do.

Freight railroads have not been a friend of passenger rail and the price of help in getting money should be a changed attitude.

For examples:

1. Minnesota’s Northstar commuter line which will begin operation on BNSF tracks from Big Lake, MN to Minneapolis was scaled back from 18 trains/day to12 trains/day. It was originally supposed to extend to St. Cloud, MN. The line in question is part of BNSF’s transcontiental route. Any improvements on that route should allow for the originally planned 18 trains/day. Those lost 6 trains represent 1200 more cars each day being driven.
2. The UPRR has been causing the Coast Starlight to be running up to 12 hours late.
3. The Coast Daylight project has been hampered by UPRR’s refusal to even state that they would permit it to run even if the state of California does contribute money toward improved infrastructure.

According to the May 2006 issue of Trains Magazine, January 2006’s tardy top 10 are:

Just one on-time Coast Starlight for the entire month of January!

From another Sierra Cluber:

Between June 30 and July 6, UP alone accounted for 1800 minutes of delay along the 124-mile Cascades Amtrak route (2 Cascades passenger trains/day, heavily subsidized by Oregon) between Portland and Eugene OR.

Recently, the National Association of Rail Passengers (NARP) wrote to the Surface Transportation Board urging enforcement of 49 USC 24308 (c), which requires Amtrak trains be given ‘preference over freight transportation…except in an emergency.’

Their letter reads in part:

Host railroads cause the majority of delay minutes. Amtrak’s April report, available on-line, shows that 54% of all delay minutes on long-distance trains that month were in two categories: “freight train interference” and “slow orders.”

In June, 2006, for example, just 15% of trips of the Los Angeles-Seattle Coast Starlight, which primarily uses UP, reached final destinations less than four hours late; the comparable figure for the Sunset Limited (UP) was 32%. On the shorter New York-Florida line (mostly CSX), only 57% of trips (including Auto Train) reached final destination less than three hours late. During the month, more than 100,000 passengers rode Amtrak trains that reached their final destinations over four hours late; the overwhelming majority of these passengers were on routes that use CSX or Union Pacific exclusively or primarily. By contrast, the Chicago-Los Angeles Southwest Chief (BNSF) and Chicago-Seattle/Portland Empire Builder (BNSF and CP) were on time (no more than 30 minutes late) 63.3% and 80.0%, respectively.

This suggests that UP and CSX do not take seriously 49 USC 24308(c), which requires that Amtrak trains be given “preference over freight transportation…except in an emergency” or where the Secretary of Transportation, in response to a railroad’s application for relief, has “established the rights of the carrier and Amtrak on reasonable terms.”

The fact that BNSF can post numbers that are so much better than UPRR and CSX’s proves that the tardyness is caused by corporate indifference, not by any inherent Amtrak issue.

Any Sierra Club legislation support should be tied directly to a requirement that any improvements make it possible to increased passenger rail service over the right-of-way (ROW) improved with federal dollars and that increased passenger service be permitted or on a parallel ROW. This would allow for the case of shifting freight traffic off of one ROW to make room for passenger rail.

The Sierra Club should know who is funding Go21 before we sign-on as well. We need to know who we are getting into bed with.

We should also not be forced into a false either-or choice of funding freight-only improvements at the expense of passenger rail or having more trucks on expanded highways. And certainly, we should demand that the above numbers be improved!

Maven has really come a long way since maven 1.0 I am using maven on my project and I am pleasantly surprised by the number of options and plugins that are available. Other than the Maven2 plugin for eclipse not setting up the project dependencies correctly, I have had no issues. The ability to download dependencies of dependencies is really nice.

Some maven2 research projects:

1. Tell maven that it should use the latest and greatest of a given file, no matter what the dependent pom.xml lists. Having one library say it needs log4j-1.2.9 and another specify log4j-1.2.13 is really annoying.
2. Get Maven to download the source files
3. Set up a maven proxy as discussed here.
4. Set up my project to automatically upload sources to external server as a backup measure.