SFO Gets A Yoga Room

The infrastructure in the US is falling apart, and there is no money to build high-speed rail. By comparison, the airlines have more money than they know what to do with. Case in point: SFO, which will spend another $4 billion on renovations.

San Francisco International Airport’s leaders announced Monday they plan to borrow more than $4 billion to pay for a 10-year building and renovation plan that includes a proposed 400-room hotel. Airport Director John Martin said the idea is to create a “world-class” experience in two domestic terminals as well as carry out “improvements” on the just over 10-year-old international terminal. He estimated the cost at $4.1 billion.

The spending is intended to bring the rest of the airport in line with the $383 million makeover of Terminal 2 which opened in April 2011. That terminal features California-living touches such as a yoga room, a wine bar and a restaurant that uses only local, organic ingredients.

One reason why SFO has $4 billion available to “loan” is because airline passengers only pay a portion of the cost for maintaining the aviation system. 70% of the FAA budget comes from ticket fees. And the TSA’s $7.6 billion budget for airport security gets just $2.5 billion from user fees. The FAA also received special exemption from mandatory sequestration cuts. It really says a lot about this country’s spending priorities when health and education programs get cut, but airport travelers have yoga rooms.

 

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NJT Won’t Release Hurricane Preparation Plans Due To “National Security” Risk

When superstorm Sandy surged into the East Coast, New Jersey Transit suffered $120 million in damage — because they had inexplicably not moved trains from the flood zone. Nobody responsible has been fired. And now the agency has declared their hurricane planning a State secret:

What NJ Transit did to prepare for Sandy remains largely secret. The agency that operates bus and light-rail and commuter rail services declined to release its strategy when requested under New Jersey’s Open Public Records Act. When asked for communications regarding Sandy preparations, NJ Transit released a 3½-page “Rail Operations Hurricane Plan” that was stripped of all information except for the title.

Agency spokesman John Durso Jr. said that detailing the agency’s storm preparation plans would create a security risk.

“Recent events including the uncovering of an al-Qaida-led ­terrorist plot targeting rail service reinforces why NJ Transit will not disclose sensitive information that could potentially undermine the security of our transit infrastructure, our customers or our employees,” Durso wrote in an email last week.

Apparently, NJT would have us believe that al-Qaida can control the weather.

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Amtrak Doesn’t Want Your Pet Either

Amtrak, the heavily subsidized rail operator, will carry your firearm, but is not eager to carry your bicycle. Nor will they carry your dog or cat. Amtrak won’t permit any pets on-board at all, except for guide dogs.

The only options for pet owners are driving, flying, or pet boarding. In the case of flying, pet owners are understandably skittish about sending fido through the airport luggage system, or in the cargo hold. So this is one market where Amtrak could be hugely competitive against the airlines — if only Amtrak management weren’t so sclerotic.

By comparison, SNCF in France has pet accommodation, as does Renfe in Spain. Even Via rail in Canada allows pets to travel aboard the luggage car.

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You Are Doing It Wrong

The whole point of BRT is to encourage pedestrian-scale development. If your new BRT busway requires cross streets to be closed, then you are doing it wrong:

In an abrupt reversal, the city has dropped all opposition to closing Flower Street to accommodate the New-Britain-to-Hartford busway. Mayor Pedro Segarra’s decision came after weeks of behind-the-scenes negotiations between city officials and aides to Gov. Dannel P. Malloy, who is committed to drive the busway to completion by early 2015.

The decision cuts off what shaped up to be a struggle over the future of Flower Street, a short north-south street that links the city’s Frog Hollow and Asylum Hill neighborhoods. Neighborhood groups were counting on the city to block the state transportation department from shutting off pedestrian and bike access, and appeared angered after the city pulled out of the fight.

A state hearing officer this month will decide whether the Department of Transportation may permanently keep bicyclists and pedestrians from crossing Flower Street between Farmington and Capitol avenues. The DOT says it will be too dangerous for anyone to cross two lanes of busway traffic alongside the Amtrak line, and instead has built a pathway to detour Flower Street riders and walkers to Broad Street.

Broad Street isn’t much of an alternative. It is a high-speed arterial for accessing interstate-84. Though I suppose it is better than this monstrosity:

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Another Stunning PB Screwup

When it comes to managing projects, Parsons Brinckerhoff (PB) is no stranger to controversy. Here is another screwup of a project involving PB, and this one could be very costly:

Metro could walk away from the troubled Silver Spring Transit Center if it isn’t satisfied with repairs Montgomery County will have to make to the $112 million bus-and-train hub, an agency spokesman said Wednesday.

Metro was supposed to assume control of the three-level structure at least two years ago. But an engineering report released Tuesday found the facility unusable and unsafe in its current condition, plagued by design and construction errors that led to cracked, inadequately strengthened concrete. The opening, delayed several times, has been postponed indefinitely, as officials devise a plan to address the problems.

“If we’re not satisfied [with it] we won’t accept it,” said Dan Stessel, Metro’s chief spokesman and director of communications. “If the facility is not safe or there are issues regarding its long-term maintainability, we have the right to not accept it.”

Parsons Brinckerhoff provided on-site construction project management, with responsibility for site structural inspection. As noted in the report:

PB’s structural engineer visited the site and reviewed the area of a pour before the pour for a number of deck pours and in each case, PB’s structural engineer eventually signed off on them (we can only find eight such reports for the eighteen post‐tensioned deck pours, including subpours, in the information provided).

There are notations in the RBB reports of cold joints forming in the concrete as shown in jobsite photographs (Attachment 13) (i.e., concrete hardening not at a pre‐planned joint) without indications as to the resolution of those unplanned joints, only that stressing was delayed.

In the information provided, we can only find PB approval of formwork removal and stressing record review for limited pours.

We can find only one inspection report in those supplied with notation of formwork inspection required of RBB, and then without detail.

Despite Project requirements, we can find no record of measurement of slab thickness, in situ clear cover determination, or of the deck finishing process in the RBB reports presented to us. We can find only several notations in the RBB daily reports regarding the concrete curing process used as to methods and/or time, and only limited records of in situ concrete deck temperatures. Also, there are no notations as to above slab wind break installation. We found no RBB inspection reports of the installation of the evaporation retarder called for or the curing compound called for, nor for any deck curing methods used in the non‐winter months.

There are several Project photographs that show workers using procedures that are not approved for winter concreting. Attachment 14 shows a worker spraying something, presumably an evaporation retarder or curing compound, on the concrete slab while walking on it. Another photograph shows a worker using a Rosebud acetylene torch (Attachment 14A) in an apparent attempt to heat epoxy‐coated reinforcing before a pour. In a third photograph, a worker is apparently applying some type of deicer on the reinforcing steel. During the period 10/02/10‐10/05/10, cracks began appearing in slabs in areas where no stressing had not yet occurred.

There is an expansion joint called for on the Contract Documents in the center of the ellipse at each side. The distance to the temporary Pour Strip on the East and West end is approximately 240 feet on the centerline of the radius and another 40 feet (280 feet total) on the outside radius. (A Pour Strip is an area of a slab left out during construction and then placed after adjacent concrete has been poured and has had an opportunity to shrink. It is not an expansion joint.) We would note the as‐designed Pour Strips themselves are substantially wider than the normal 3‐4 foot Industry Standard.

Read the entire report at: report-structural-evaluation-of-superstructure.

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FRA Administrator Joe Szabo “Re-Appointed”

Matt Yglesias wonders “if one of these days we could have a real technical expert run DOT rather than a politician.” David Gunn, former head of Amtrak, has made the same complaint. I’m obviously sympathetic, but it is the right idea for the wrong position. What I mean by that is that much of the technical dysfunction falls under the FRA.

It was on this date four years ago that the Senate confirmed Joe Szabo to head the FRA. And whereas Obama’s second term will be getting a lot of new blood, that does not appear to be the case with the FRA. The country will apparently be stuck with Szabo, which is not a good thing for advocates of intercity and high-speed rail.

His record over the past four years is dreadful. The FRA has budgeted over $12 billion on projects, without accomplishing even one mile of HSR line. And despite many promises, the onerous FRA regulations have, if anything, gotten even worse. The PTC mandate is behind schedule, and his FRA funded the idiotic Caltrain CBOSS project. The next two years will be critical — do we really want the guy who tried to paint the letter “F” on locomotives?

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MARC Is Spending $153 Million On New Railcars Without Bike Accommodation

MARC is one of the few commuter rail operations in the US that still does not permit any on-board bike access. Not even the off-peak and reverse-commute runs. By comparison, some heavily used systems like BART Caltrain offer considerable bike accommodation — even during peak hours.

One of the excuses heard from MARC staff is that bikes could become a lethal “projectile” in the event of a collision. This is one of those myths that just won’t die. There has been decades of operational experience all over the world, and I have yet to find a single instance of a passenger being impaled by a flying bicycle. And that isn’t to say it isn’t theoretically possible, but then again it is theoretically possible for anything onboard a train to become a projectile — strollers, luggage, iPads, or other passengers.

Even if one accepts the bike-projectile-of-death theory, there always the option of installing bike racks. And what better opportunity than a $153 million order for new Bombardier bi-levels:

Governor Martin O’Malley announced today that the Maryland Transit Administration (MTA) is investing $153 million to acquire fifty-four (54) new “multi-level” passenger rail cars for the MARC commuter rail system. The cars, manufactured by Bombardier Transport, will replace older cars that have reached the end of their service life, allowing MARC to provide additional seating capacity while expanding its existing fleet. The Board of Public Works approved the purchase today.

Seating capacity on board is greater than those of the cars that they will replace. They will come in three variations. Fifteen (15) new “cab cars” that contain an engineer’s compartment for operation will seat 127 passengers. Thirty-four (34) “trailer cars” will hold 142 passengers, and five (5) cars containing bathroom facilities will hold 132 passengers. The new cars will have a useful life of up to 40 years. When they come online, MTA will retire twenty-six (26) single-level passenger cars and twelve (12) Gallery style cars. Overall, the MARC fleet will expand by sixteen (16) cars.

Oh, and the new cars will have zero bike racks. Nor any other kind of on-board bike access.

80% of the funding came from the Federal government. Federal transit grants come with a long checklist of requirements, including ADA, Buy-America, and Civil Rights. Bike accommodation really needs to become part of the Federal grant approval process. No Federal transit dollars should pay for this kind of crap.

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FRA Not Cooperating on Acela-2

When Amtrak planned the Acela back in the 1990s, one of the design goals was to use an off-the-shelf trainset. That would avoid years of debugging and extra costs involved with designing a new train. Of course, it didn’t work out that way — thanks to the FRA. The FRA created so many special rules, that Amtrak had no choice but to build a custom train.

And has the FRA learned anything from that fiasco? You would have thought so, based on the joint press conference held by the FRA, Amtrak, and the CHSRA. The key message was that this time Acela-2 would be an off-the-shelf design, and that the FRA would do everything possible to help Amtrak achieve that goal.

Unfortunately, it does not appear that FRA staffers got the memo:

FRA believes that future high-speed operations will in comparison save on bids because of the increased number of trainsets and carbuilders that will meet the final rule’s standards with little or no modification compared to the number that would have met the prior rule’s standards with little or no modification.

FRA notes that, in commenting on the economic analysis for the NPRM, which attempted to quantify the benefits of the rule changes, Amtrak stated:

The assumption that the standards simplify the design process of the equipment and would save $2,000,000 per train set is false. The Acela example indicates the exact opposite to be true. The FRA rules, as existing and proposed, eliminate the possibility of purchasing off-the-shelf equipment. The engineering work required to design new compliant equipment alone would far outstrip any possible savings from the rules if there were any to be had.

FRA believes that the former rule would not have permitted many, and perhaps might not have permitted any, carbuilders to offer off-the-shelf equipment with little or no modification that would have met the acceleration requirements on track with geometry having the maximum allowable deviations. Under the final rule it is likely that several carbuilders could provide off-the-shelf equipment that will meet acceleration requirements on minimally compliant track. This will lower costs through increased competition, and use of existing designs. Further, railroads may now be able to order equipment without tilting mechanisms and operate that equipment at high cant deficiencies, thus saving the costs of tilting mechanisms and making the number of available trainsets even greater. Based on the above, FRA does not agree with Amtrak’s comment for the purposes of this final rule. It is not unreasonable to estimate that the equipment procurement benefits alone will justify the costs of the rule. However, even if FRA eliminates from consideration equipment procurement benefits, as a result of Amtrak’s comment, FRA believes the high cant deficiency and streamlined testing requirements would justify the costs of the rule.

This is mind boggling. Despite HSR being a top priority of the President, the FRA is still creating roadblocks.  You really get the idea that FRA bureaucrats are living under a rock. The ultimate responsibility, though, is FRA Administrator Joe Szabo. I’ll have more to say about him in a follow-up posting.

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Track Lube Gums Up Environmental Review

I am not of the opinion that CEQA law itself requires “reform”. In the vast majority of projects, the process works fine for all concerned. There is, however, a small number of cases where inexperienced or clueless Judges have made some really baffling decisions. Case in point: the Metrolink Perris Vally extension:

The court released a single-sentence ruling late Thursday, March 28, denying a writ of mandate filed by the environmental group Friends of Riverside’s Hills. The group sued the Riverside County Transportation Commission in 2011, claiming it had failed to address a number of environmental consequences of the commuter train plan.

Yet the full text made available Monday, April 1, shows Judge Sharon J. Waters ruled for Friends on five of 15 points noted in the project’s environmental impact report: the effects on soil, use of track lubricant, pedestrian safety, train wheel noise and construction noise.

Hopefully the project won’t get held up because the EIR failed to mention the use of track lubricant.

 

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Transbay Terminal Wins Coveted “Eyesore of the Month” Award

Congratulations to San Francisco’s Transbay Terminal project for being featured as the April Eyesore of the Month:

Behold, the proposed new San Francisco Trans-Bay Transit Center at First and Fremont Streets. Just What the world needs: another “Blob” building designed like a rampaging one-celled organism — a microphage or a man-eating amoeba. The architecture world feels compelled to come up with some new novelty stunt for every proposed new public building. (Notice how many of them look the same! So much for originality.)

And as bad as it is on the outside, it will be even worse inside.

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