Sunday, September 27, 2009

Sunday Night Notes

I had wondered if the 49ers or the stadium planners really understood how much transit would really be needed to serve the new stadium the way that it should be. Apparently some folks think they didn't think about it adequately.
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Check out these two pictures of neighborhoods. It really shows the difference between connected places and disconnected suburbs.
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400 miles of new road is really too much. And this is the most ridiculous quote ever:
The strategy is based on decades-old migration and birth statistics and on existing land- development rights. Long-range plans for roads to serve non- existent cities don't foster speculative sprawl, the planners say; they anticipate what's already in the works.
So basically they are anticipating and developing for sprawl. That's the most round about way to deny and prove the same thing at once I've ever heard. And it begs the question again why they can't build anticipatory rail lines without people yelling that no one uses them.
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Tram construction is blamed for rents dropping in Scotland. I wonder when they are going to develop a faster way to do these things.

4 comments:

Unknown said...

A US company, Stacy & Witbeck Inc, is able to built streetcar lines one block per week. That means from undisturbed pavement to 100% complete infrastructure in 7 days. They did it in Seattle and Portland.

davidj said...

I think that kind of speed requires a satisfactory configuration of the existing utility lines under the street (such as none). Clearly track-laying alone can be done quickly; what takes forever is relocating utility lines so that any later work on them will not require tearing up tracks or otherwise disrupting rail service.

Unknown said...

Though why not relocate other utilities later on? Also there is the use of shoefly tracks for doing other road work too.

Anonymous said...

What, pray, are shoefly tracks?