$188,374.49 per parking space

This must be a new world record:

Help is on the way for people looking for parking and green spaces in San Diego’s East Village, but, if the city’s plan to build a new garage and park comes to fruition, it won’t be cheap for taxpayers. A large portion of the project’s overall project cost will be for a two-level underground 185-space structure that will be built at an estimated cost of a little under $35 million — that breaks down to a cost of $188,374.49 per parking space.

Note that the Trolley is just 1 block away.

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Above the Law

Why even bother having drunk-driving laws if they are not enforceable?

A judge told TV personality Katie Price she was lucky to avoid prison at her sentencing for a drink-driving crash. The former model flipped her car near Partridge Green, West Sussex, on her way to visit a friend on 28 September. District Judge Amanda Kelly, who handed Price a 16-week suspended jail term, said her “incredibly selfish” actions “could have easily killed somebody”.

District Judge Kelly, sentencing, told the 43-year-old, who has been banned from driving on five separate occasions, she had “one of the worst driving records I have seen“. “You appear to think that you are above the law,” she told Price.

If she can get banned from driving — on FIVE separate occassions — and still keep driving anyway, then yeah she is above the law.

Price was taken to hospital, where she told police: “I took drugs, I should not be driving, I admit it all.” The court heard a drugs wipe gave a positive reading for cocaine and a roadside breath test was positive for alcohol.

Joe Harrington, defending, said: “It’s a complicated driving history. Things tend to be quite complicated with this lady. “She does not deal with her problems, particularly with paperwork.”

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Here come the earmarks

Congressional earmarks, the notorious funding method for wasteful highways, are back. Here is how Solano County is proposing to spend their funding:

The [project] list will go to Rep. John Garamendi, D-Walnut Grove, and Rep. Mike Thompson, D-St. Helena, to be included among the 10 projects each can request for the earmark dollars. The first transportation project is for the Highway 37 and Fairgrounds Drive interchange project, which is viewed as critical for the Solano360 project as well as a general economic benefit to that part of Vallejo. The second is for the Vaca Valley Parkway and Interstate 505 Multimodal Improvement Project.

[…]

In the case of the fifth project – the $228.7 million Rio Vista Flood Risk Reduction Project – the request is for $150 million. The project is designed to provide 200-year flood protection to the city by “raising levees and constructing cutoff walls on several levees protecting the eastern and northern flanks of the city along (the) Sacramento River and raising vulnerable structures above (the) 200-year flood elevation within the flood zone.”

It takes a special lack of self-awareness to widen highways, while requesting funds to mitigate flooding from climate change.

Ok, but the highway projects include a bike/ped component, right? Because that is required under the Caltrans Complete Streets policy. Here is what EIR has to say about that:

The [Solano County] Bicycle Plan proposes construction of a Class I bike path along Fairgrounds Drive, from Marine World Parkway to Redwood Street. Under the Build Alternative, this bike path would be reduced to a Class II bike lane facility. Although the Build Alternative does not propose the construction of a separated bike path, such as the one proposed in the Bicycle Plan, the proposed improvements would establish the bicycle network connectivity the Bicycle Plan intended to establish along Fairgrounds Drive. As such, the proposed Build Alternative is not considered to be in conflict with the Bicycle Plan.

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Mayor Pete’s transportation record

There have been a number of such positive reactions to Buttegieg’s nomination to head DOT. People making such comments have probably not looked at his actual performance as Mayor….which is not good.

As Mayor, Buttegieg had a traffic signal removed from a busy arterial, directly in front of a bus transportation center. It was there that an 11 year-old was killed while trying to cross the street trying to get to his school bus. Four other intersections near schools also had traffic lights removed:

City officials had planned since May 2016 to install traffic signals at the downtown intersection where an 11-year-old boy was struck and killed Monday, and activation was expected next week, Mayor Pete Buttigieg said Tuesday. Following a consultant’s 2015 study finding that vehicular and pedestrian traffic at the corner of South and Michigan streets didn’t warrant a traffic light, the city placed a bag over the light Feb. 1, 2016, as it did at a handful of downtown intersections.

Following the study by American Structurepoint Inc., the city bagged and evaluated lights at four other intersections: Calvert and Michigan, and Calvert and Main. Those signals were put back in last fall because schools were located nearby. Broadway’s signal was removed permanently. One near the fire station on South Michigan Street was reactivated.

Buttigieg was asked whether he thinks the boy’s death was attributable to any mistakes made by his staff. “Any time anything bad happens in the city, finger-pointing happens,” he said. “I get it. I’m in charge. But I also think what you had here was professional engineers acting on recommendations based on expertise, and based on everything we knew, making the best decision that we could. 

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Caltrans to widen highway through ancient grove of redwoods

I’m sure this will greatly enhance the visitor experience of seeing these majestic trees:

The state’s long-standing proposal to widen part of Highway 101 in Richardson Grove State Park in Humboldt County, to make room for bigger trucks, took a step forward Wednesday when a federal appeals court said Caltrans had adequately considered any likely impact on towering, ancient redwoods living alongside the highway.

The project hit a roadblock in May 2019 when U.S. District Judge William Alsup of San Francisco rejected the state Department of Transportation’s conclusion that it would cause “no significant impact” to the environment. Alsup said there was evidence that the road-widening could suffocate some of the 300-foot redwoods — some of them 3,000 years old — cause root disease in others and worsen damage to trees hit by trucks that skidded off the highway.

But the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said Caltrans had conducted an adequate review, and found that the construction would not threaten the life of any old-growth redwoods. The court also accepted the department’s findings that the project would not diminish visitors’ enjoyment of the park by increasing traffic or noise from the highway.

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Did an OTS jaywalking sting operation lead to the death of Kurt Reinhold?

Kurt Reinhold was the black man shot dead on Sept 23rd by Orange County Sheriff deputies — for the crime of jaywalking. One unanswered question about this deeply troubling incident is: what was the OC Sheriff doing patrolling a commercial district in San Clemente?

According to the official narrative, the deputies were part of a homeless outreach task force responding to a report that Kurt was walking in the street. Another possibility is that they were participating in a State-funded jaywalking sting. Here is an announcement the OC Sheriff released two days prior to the shooting:

This blog has long criticized the OTS safety enforcement program, because it hassles pedestrians over picayune violations of the vehicle code. The video recording of Reinhold’s murder begins with him being visibly agitated over his minor “jaywalking” transgression, and asking where he was supposed to cross given the street’s lack of crosswalks. This has all the hallmarks of a classic OTS sting operation: pick a location with dysfunctional traffic engineering and then write lots of jaywalking tickets.

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The penalty for jaywalking is summary execution

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Well ok then

If you are a police driving instructor, you can do anything:

A police driving instructor who clocked 122mph in an unmarked patrol car on the way to a private meeting was cleared of 11 speeding offences today.

PC Paul Brown, 48, also jumped red lights and used the powerful BMW X5’s sirens and lights intermittently during the 17-mile round trip to discuss his son’s education at a college.

But in court today, the officer claimed he was practising his driving skills to ensure they were “up to scratch”.

Anne Walker, chairwoman of the bench at Suffolk Magistrates’ Court, said there was no agreed policy or rules for how police instructors should do their own training and record it. “We cannot be sure that Mr Brown did not undertake these two journeys while carrying out his own CPD (Continued Professional Development),” she added.

But Harry O’Sullivan, prosecuting, said the dad, a Norfolk Police driving instructor since 2016 and an officer for 18 years, had not been authorised to use the car for his training while driving alone to and from the college. “PC Brown was late for a meeting and drove the way he did, not out of concern to keep his driving up to scratch and perform CPD, but because he was late.

101mph in a 30mph zone…

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Over 500 killed each year from cars crashing into buildings

Another mind boggling metric of our dangerous roadways: over 500 Americans are killed each year from cars crashing into buildings. There are over 3,600 serious injuries from such crashes. Federal road “safety” agencies don’t bother to measure the problem let alone propose solutions (which is probably just as well as they would have restaurant patrons wear helmets and bright colors).

So it is left up to private groups, such as the Storefront Safety Council, to highlight the issue and propose solutions.

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As other cities pedestrianize their downtowns, Berkeley doubles down on cars

After months of construction, the new 2-block $10 million Shattuck “reconfiguration” project is now operating in downtown Berkeley. Whereas Shattuck used to split into a northbound and southbound leg, the road now makes the old southbound section two-way. The northbound leg is turned into a giant turn pocket:

If you find the above diagram confusing, the red arrow indicates the old travel path for northbound traffic (Shattuck West used to be one-way). So $10 million was spent just to streamline northbound car traffic at the Shattuck/University intersection.

The reconfigured Shattuck is now more of a traffic sewer (even the left-turns were eliminated). For drivers, this is really great because they can blast through downtown. For bicyclists though, the new road is stressful. To fit 4 lanes in this section, the traffic lanes were narrowed. While narrow lanes can sometimes serve to calm traffic, in this case the result is impatient motorists passing bicyclists with mere inches to spare.

The Shattuck reconfiguration project is one piece of a package of projects to increase automobile access to the downtown, including a new $40 million parking garage (LEED Certified of course), and additional “back-in” parking spaces along Shattuck East. While other cities are creating cycletracks and even eliminating car traffic in their downtowns, Berkeley is moving in the opposite direction.

Mayor Arreguin at the ribbon cutting for the new Center St. parking garage

Shattuck construction

Four car lanes, wider sidewalks — but no bike lanes or cycletracks

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