Author: cheerfulchaotic

Didn’t find much of anything on maintenance or operation. These particular pages seem not bad in terms of estimating costs (and are fairly consistent with the bulk of what I’ve read).

A newspaper editorial discussing the future of rail near minneapolis. “Northstar would cost $3.7 million per mile, an exclusive busway, $10 million per mile and adding lanes to Highway 10, $12 million per mile” It also has an interesting bit on return on investment. But it’s very much a pro-rail political statement

http://www.abcnewspapers.com/2003/april/24ed.html

Examines the costs of building a bridge across long island sound, and, for a highway with 6 lanes (3 each way) and shoulders, they estimate $100m/mile (or about $16.6m/mile/lane). Trestle bridge estimates were twice that per mile, and suspension bridge 2.5 times as much per mile. Going back to ‘s original question which prompted this delving (namely, why the hell didn’t they make highway 1 a straight shot by making heavy use of bridges), from a pure construction cost standpoint, this may be a reasonable question, given that the snaking in and out along the coast adds a quite significant multiplicative factor onto the mileage.

http://www.nycroads.com/crossings/LI-sound-3/

Discusses the cost of streetcar programs that were constructed in various places, including the cost of cars. $2m/mile for the no-frills system built in Kenosha Wisconsin with refurbished street cars. $30m/mile in sf, including, apparently, alot of expensive and purely decorative features. But that’s street car stuff, and not light rail. It basically says that projects asking more than $10m/mile for street cars or $20m/mile for light rail ought not be funded. Note this is a pro-rail site.

http://www.heritagetrolley.org/artcileBringBackStreetcars7.htm

PERTS stands for Personal Electric Rapid Transport System. By which it means putting your car on a maglev frame, in essence.

http://www.crts.vt.edu/perts_fs.htm
http://www.crts.vt.edu/benefits.htm

Went out to Axum, and ended up at cafe flore, with this neat guy from Palo Alto (EE undergrad at cal, now does IP law). Met him from gaydar. I biked/barted there, he drove me back, and we were talking about a second date for thursday. Oh, and he’s hot.

and I have decided to write a little tv show to address the short comings of the major offerings currently out there. The name of the show will be Peace Bitch.

The title character is an incredibly hot belly dancing librarian who likes to bake and lives on a houseboat. During the day she fights crime (in a peaceful librarial sort of way with sexy arabesque undertones), and at night she parties til dawn. She will be played by Allyson Hannigan.

Her sidekick will be a nerdy fag, played by Charlie Hunnum or Seth Green, who admins the library servers and designs/constructs/maintains her crime fighting gear. He grew up in the country, and his father left him a pony.

zephyr makes me feel all warm and fuzzy.

Well, I have some new lj pics. Limited to 3 since I stopped paying. Oh well, catering to my virtual exhibitionist streak is not worth paying for. =)

Pester me if you want to see the originals at full resolution or whatever.

Last week’s stuff was all about why cities are so great. Why do people pay so much to live in them? Especially given the externalities of living crammed in with so many others.

Stuff about external efficiencies of scale (I don’t need a full time copy center, and neither does basically anyone else near here, but we all need one occasionally, and the more of us there are, the more profitable it is for them to stay open full time, with comparable stuff occurring in lots of other categories). Generally these types of services are useful to small dynamic enterprises, with unpredictable demand, and highly variable outputs (such as the fashion industry). Also the need for face to face communication in a variety of fields.

Another topic is the availability of public services and what not in higher density areas. Blah. I think I need to preview what I’m reading to get a better big picture view of the material in question.

I realize that pricing transportation infrastructure is a political minefield, and that many parties, including the construction companies, as well as the advocates for different modes of transportation will lie through their teeth to advance their own personal agendas. Still, would it be too much to ask to find something that provides a) costs per mile of the construction of highways, rails, bridges, intown roads, etc, and b) provides references supporting its claims?

somewhere between $2million/mile and $70million/mile is a rather broad range (for light rail, highway estimates are more consistent, $15-40million.

Bleh.

My laptop now has a text/curses based multinetwork chat client with logging, plays my mp3s, tabbed network browsing, a graphical mail client (a little iffy about that one, using mozilla mail), and lets me read my course readings, as well as functional wireless. All under freebsd. Thanks to for all the assistance in setting it up.

Now, about actually _reading_ those readings…. =)

Well, went to the beach with , , , , and Greg (whom I met once before briefly). Fires were made, tents were pitched. We cooked an interesting dinner including some tasty marinated mushrooms, and some barbequed chicken (which I didn’t partake of, but which, remarkably, smelled good to me). I had some smores – minus marshmallow. Went to bed with . Had peanut butter & jelly for breakfast, then napped while the other guys were cooking sausage & ziplock-boiled omlets. Explored the cliff-side beach, complete with little rock climbing adventures. Luckily didn’t get soaked. Fell asleep on the gut-wrenchingly winding ride back. Stopped in petaluma (I think) for interesting saloon restaurant. Ate a salad bigger than my head, then back home.

The trip was visually spectacular. I had a great time. I want to do much more camping.

Have since been procrastinating reading the stuff I need to read for class tomorrow. Interesting though it is. =)

I have a date for tomorrow evening, with a hot guy, woohoo. =) From palo alto. <grumbleirkgrumble>

Also, gaydar cut me off while I was chatting with other hot guy, who lives in sf. Why can’t they just do more advertising and give me unlimited messaging? =)

Give to the world what you want from it.

Do something you’re proud of, rather than what makes you feel good.

first class of Housing and the Urban Economy