Palo Alto delays talks of taxing businesses for transportation needs

A proposal to tax Palo Alto businesses to pay for traffic-reduction measures is not in the stars, or on the ballot, this year.

Palo Alto council members unanimously decided this month to put off until the fall a conversation about a local tax that would help pay for programs such as shuttles and bike boulevards.

The council followed the recommendation of City Manager James Keene, who asked for “a little bit of a time out” and said that city staff simply doesn’t have the capacity to support the type of comprehensive community engagement process that would be needed before placing such a tax on the ballot.


“Just speaking for the staff, I don’t think we have concluded that a tax would be a bad idea,” Keene said. “But the process that you’ve directed so far to get to that point, I think, is potentially inefficient.”

Council members and city staff need to define what projects a local tax would finance and the goals of a community engagement process before forming a transportation stakeholder group, though the council had approved such a group in October, Keene said.

Until then, proceeding with the public engagement process would just divert staff resources from other committed projects the city has, Keene added.

The same transportation staff members who would be involved in the local tax process already are occupied by projects such as the evolving Residential Preferential Parking permit system; design of new parking garages downtown and near California Avenue; changes to the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority bus system; working with the VTA on deployment of Measure B funding; and revision of the city’s comprehensive plan.

Vice Mayor Liz Kniss shared Keene’s concerns about overextending staff. She’s also worried about “tax fatigue.”

“We’ve just really pushed hard on Measure B: We supported the county on that. We delivered,” Kniss said. “There are promises that were made in Measure B and we’re really looking to have those promises fulfilled.”

Voters countywide approved in November an increase in sales tax by a half-cent, raising an estimated $6 billion over 30 years for transportation improvement, including a BART extension to San Jose and some projects important to Palo Alto, such as a Caltrain grade separation.

Because Palo Alto’s share of the revenue likely wouldn’t stretch far, the council discussed the idea of taxing businesses based on a company’s number of employees to generate revenue for local needs.

Former Palo Alto Mayor Yoriko Kishimoto said she hopes city leaders will allocate money for traffic reduction during the budget process this year.


“Actions and dollars do speak louder than words, and I know Palo Alto’s been talking a lot about (Transportation Demand Management) and (Transportation Management Associations),” Kishimoto said. “I know we’re talking about spending $50 million on parking garages. I don’t see an equivalent $50 million for reducing traffic and parking.”

http://www.mercurynews.com/2017/05/23/palo-alto-delays-talks-of-taxing-businesses-for-transportation-needs/

A Timeline of the Future of Transportation

Driverless cars are the future of transportation. Scratch that, the future is flying cars. Or maybe we should just go full steampunk and embrace giant airships. Actually, when you really think about it, who needs to travel anywhere when delivery drones will soon be able to transport any item imaginable to our doorsteps in a matter of hours?

Tech companies have become so enamored with changing the way we travel that they’re now stacking transportation revolutions on top of transportation revolutions. Even as Alphabet is finally introducing its driverless car fleet to actual customers in Phoenix, CEO Larry Page has also quietly invested in a pair of startups that are building flying cars. Amazon is entering the autonomous vehicle game to improve the efficiency of its logistics business, but it’s already been hyping delivery drones for years to fulfill the same purpose. And I wasn’t kidding about that airship: Google cofounder Sergey Brin is apparently building a giant zeppelin in a secret hangar in California.

It’s all enough to make your head do a doughnut. It’s time we parse through the hype to see when (or if) these society-reshaping technologies will ever be available widely to the general public.

Driverless Cars

Earliest Arrival: 2020

What seemed like a Silicon Valley lark just a few years ago is now one of the least outlandish transportation technologies in development. Uber is allowing normal passengers to ride in small fleets of autonomous vehicles in Pittsburgh and Phoenix, while Alphabet-owned Waymo began driving people around in self-driving cars in Phoenix last month. Dozens of other automakers, tech companies, and parts suppliers are racing to prove the viability of self-driving cars, and they’re often greeted by state and local governments with open arms. With so much time and money being poured into self-driving tech, fleets of self-driving cars deployed through a ride-sharing service are expected as soon as 2020, according to research firm IHS. Individually owned driverless vehicles available from car dealerships may come a bit later, between 2023 and 2025. “It’s a spectrum,” says Jeremy Carlson, senior autonomous driving analyst at IHS. “We’re not going from one vehicle today to 100 vehicles tomorrow. You’re going to see a gradual scaling up.”

Delivery Drones

Earliest Arrival: 2020

Hype about commercial drone flights reached peak insufferability in 2013, when both startups and major corporations tried to trick us into believing we’d soon have tacos, beer, and textbooks delivered to us via tiny unmanned aircraft. Amazon even landed a huge feature on 60 Minutes for Prime Air, a theoretical drone-delivery service that looked more like a marketing ploy than an announcement of an imminent new option for customers.

Finally, we’re seeing more practical drone implementation this year. Prime Air made its first delivery over public grounds in the U.S. in March, and even the goofy taco-by-drone dream may become reality now that Alphabet is using unmanned aircraft to deliver Chipotle to college kids at Virginia Tech. But we’re still nowhere close to widespread drone use thanks to the Federal Aviation Administration, which requires that drone operators keep their aircraft in their line of sight (companies can apply for individual waivers to the rule). The rulemaking process for drones has been slow going, and could be slowed even further by a White House administration that is trying to eliminate regulations rather than adopt new ones. Aviation experts say delivery drones might be implemented at scale by 2020 at the earliest, but this is a sector that’s been notorious for missing deadlines in the past. The future may be on hold for a while yet.

Hyperloop

Earliest Arrival: 2021

It’s been nearly four years since Elon Musk first unveiled his design concept for the Hyperloop, a mass transit system that would send people hurtling through low-pressure tubes in pods like those mysterious capsules at a bank drive-through. A pair of American startups are now racing to implement Musk’s ambitious plan, but they face challenges ahead. Hyperloop Transportation Technologies originally said passengers would be able to ride on its tracks by 2018. Now the company has pushed the date back to 2020. Hyperloop One, the competing startup, presented 11 potential transit routes around the U.S. in April, including lines between Miami and Orlando, Boston and Providence, Rhode Island, and Cheyenne, Wyoming, and Houston. Hyperloop One has at least completed a test track in Nevada, and it’s raised considerably more money than Hyperloop Transportation Technologies. Musk’s startup wants to build three of its U.S. tracks by 2021. That’s still a wildly ambitious timetable given challenges in purchasing land, ensuring passenger safety, securing government contracts, and attaining more private investment. But even if American development doesn’t pan out, the startups may be able to turn to foreign markets that are more eager to invest in experimental forms of mass transit.

For now some experts are skeptical that the transit option will ever be implemented broadly, especially if driverless cars make moderate-length trips less of a hassle first. “It would have to be in a place where there’s a lot of demand for traffic over a distance that is maybe too far to conveniently be driven by an autonomous vehicle but maybe not quite far enough for it to justify getting in an airplane,” says Tom Fisher, director of the Minnesota Design Center at the University of Minnesota. “It’s not going to be widespread. We’re not going to see massive hyperloops being built around the world.”

Flying Cars

Earliest Arrival: 2023

When someone gripes, “We were supposed to have flying cars by now,” they’re really bemoaning the fact that the American thirst for innovation that compelled us to literally shoot for the stars has devolved into serving people targeted online ads while they’re bored at the office. Well, guess what, disaffected youth of Twitter: We’re getting our goddamn flying cars. Kitty Hawk, an aviation startup backed by Alphabet CEO Larry Page, showed off a prototype of its first flying car in April and expects to begin selling the vehicle later this year (though it looks more like a contraption you’d hunt gators in than a Jetsonsesque car). It’s not just Alphabet that’s taking flying cars seriously either: Airbus showed off a flying car concept at an auto show in March, and Toyota has invested a small amount in a Japanese startup that wants to launch a flying car fleet in time for the Tokyo Olympics in 2020. If the technology advances as fast as its proponents hope it will, a regular person could be riding in a flying car as soon as 2023, the year Uber hopes to launch a flying taxi service. But there are plenty of hurdles to clear before that can happen, especially in the U.S. If the FAA is struggling to settle on regulations for small drones, it’s hard to imagine cars blackening the skies anytime soon. “I’m really skeptical that we’ll see large populations of people flying around in low-altitude vehicles,” says Fisher. “The hazard for that — not just for people in the air but for anybody on the ground — would just be too great.”

Airship

Earliest Arrival: TBD

In a clear sign that he’s hoping to boost his supervillain bona fides, Google cofounder Sergey Brin is secretly building a massive airship near his company’s headquarters in Mountain View, California. The airship project, officially operated by Brin rather than Google or its parent company, Alphabet, is being managed by a former NASA engineer named Alan Weston, according to Bloomberg. Weston has spoken publicly in the past about how a helium-powered airship could move freight at a cheaper cost than airplanes or even trucks. Airship delivery would also simplify logistics systems by allowing products to be delivered directly to their final destinations without being routed through airports or trucking lanes. No word yet on if or when this technology will ever actually be implemented, but it’s not just a Brin-backed moonshot. In December, Amazon was awarded a patent for a blimp warehouse that would float in midair and serve as a home base for delivery drones. Somehow or another, Silicon Valley appears hell-bent on getting a lot more people and things airborne over the next decade.

https://theringer.com/future-transportation-moonshots-flying-cars-hyperloop-delivery-drones-ad77f197a381

NYC is now the world’s most expensive construction market

It’s official: New York is now the most expensive city in the world to build stuff.

The Big Apple has unseated Zurich, Switzerland, as the world’s priciest construction market, according to a closely watched survey — boosted in part by the city’s sky-high construction-worker wages, which average $100 an hour.

Average total expenditures in New York have hit $354 per foot — a staggering stat that helps explain, for example, why it will take more than $3 billion to build the 57-story skyscraper at One Vanderbilt that’s slated for completion in 2020.

San Francisco comes in at No. 2 worldwide at $330 per foot, nudging Zurich to No. 3, according to the 2017 International Construction Market Survey by Turner & Townsend , which blames the strength of the US dollar and labor rates for jacking up US price tags.

At $280 per foot and $233 per foot respectively, Seattle and Houston also made the top ten.

North America had the highest outlays for labor but most countries surveyed averaged $28 per hour. Over half — 56 percent — of the 43 countries reported a shortage of workers.

Local developers aren’t going to get a price drop either, as the survey projects another 3.5 per cent boost during 2017 after last year’s 3.7-percent growth. In 2016, New York spending on construction hit an all-time high of $42 billion.

Carlo Scissura, president of the New York Building Congress wasn’t surprised by the results. “New York is number one in everything,” he said. “You have the coolest, best buildings and it’s an expensive place but we know that. The quality and the reward of New York is not matched by anything in the world.”

Rounding out the top five, Hong Kong is now the fourth most expensive place on earth to build. While construction costs in London rose by 5 percent, it was bumped from third to the fifth most expensive due to the depreciation of the pound sterling after Brexit.

At the other end of the spectrum, Bangalore, Beijing, Dar es Salaam, Warsaw and finally Nairobi are the five cheapest places to build.

Although the report warns President Trump’s protectionist policies “could threaten confidence and lead to volatility and slower global growth” it also predicts his promised deregulation could spur more investment while his proposed infrastructure spending “would create major opportunities for construction in the USA.”

Perth, Australia is the only place surveyed experiencing a decrease in construction charges. While lower oil prices, Russian sanctions and Brexit have depressed Dubai’s construction sector, Expo 2020 Dubai is expected to increase costs there as its projects are put out to bid and the best labor hired.

Low interest rates are fueling apartment construction globally but there are also worries about the sector peaking at the same time infrastructure spending is growing.

Due to high inflation, expenses rose by 27 percent in Buenos Aires last year, putting it at the top of the cities with Istanbul, another inflationary spot, next in line at 12 percent.


Costs could rise by another 20 percent in Buenos Aires and 10 percent in Istanbul over the next year. Elsewhere, in third place, costs in Johannesburg grew by 5.3 percent in 2016 with another bump coming of 7.5 percent.

http://nypost.com/2017/05/16/nyc-is-now-the-worlds-most-expensive-construction-market/

After Eight-Year Battle Over Reforming the Railroad Commission, Oil and Gas Industry Wins

A nearly decade-long battle between environmentalists and the oil and gas industry to reform Texas’ energy regulatory agency came to a close last week — and Big Oil won. Environmental advocates say the Lege caved to industry pressure, demonstrating the power of the oil and gas lobby in Texas.

Since 2010, the Railroad Commission (RRC) has been reviewed three times by the Sunset Commission, which audits about 130 state agencies typically every 12 years to ensure they’re still necessary and operating efficiently. Each review prompted staff at the Sunset Commission to issue scathing reports and identify “critical concerns” that hobble the RRC from effectively regulating the oil and gas industry and protecting the environment. But in the two previous sessions, lawmakers failed to pass bills that implement those reforms.

Last week lawmakers finally closed the loop. Industry lobbyists and regulators lauded lawmakers for passing House Bill 1818, the sunset bill that extends the RRC’s operation for another 12 years and makes modest improvements to pipeline safety and enforcement reporting requirements. One agency commissioner said the bill would ensure that the agency in charge of overseeing the oil and gas industry in Texas would become “even stronger.”

But that’s not how environmental advocates see it.

“HB 1818 basically does nothing,” said Luke Metzger, director of Environment Texas. “It allows the agency to continue business as usual … It’s a big, oil-friendly bill.”

Though the end of the eight-year struggle over the agency is likely a welcome respite for battle-weary lawmakers, HB 1818 carries few substantive changes and is largely a win for the industry. The 11-page proposal incorporates few changes recommended by Sunset Commission staff and sidesteps the most meaningful reforms. Provisions such as changing the agency’s name to reflect what it does — it has nothing to do with railroads — or limiting campaign contributions to RRC commissioners never made it into the bill.

“Before Sunset Commission even met, [the commissioners] had made up their mind,” said Carol Birch, a lobbyist for the consumer and environmental advocacy group Public Citizen. “Nobody would even talk to you about it. They just wanted this clean bill.”

That’s a response to past legislative fights, which in 2011 and 2013 became contentious before ultimately failing. As a result, Representative Larry Gonzales, a Round Rock Republican who chairs the Sunset Commission and filed HB 1818, and other members decided to avoid any controversial proposals that could keep the bill from becoming law this session. Since 2011, the Lege has also become less ambitious in its plans for the RRC, knowing that altering the governing structure of the agency and changing its name are hard sells. Members of the oil and gas industry have opposed those changes, claiming the RRC should keep its name because of its historical significance and that the current board structure works fine. Environmental advocates say HB 1818 — now headed to Governor Greg Abbott’s desk, where it will almost certainly become law — does very little to address their long-standing concerns.

Birch said many reforms haven’t progressed because there’s an implicit understanding that voting for them will be perceived as anti-oil and gas. That’s a significant concern for lawmakers in Texas, where the oil and gas industry is responsible for about 13 percent of the state’s GDP and is a significant contributor to legislative campaigns. A recent report from Texans for Public Justice, a government accountability group, found that the energy and natural resources industry is the top funding source for the state’s 181 lawmakers. The industry contributed 11 cents on average for every dollar lawmakers raised. Oil and gas lobbyists also significantly outnumber environmental advocates.

“There’s a handful of us and a gazillion of them,” said Birch. “They don’t come and testify on bills. They all do it behind the scenes.”

She likened the Legislature’s malaise to “battle fatigue.”

“They were trying to do something meaningful the first time they tackled it,” she said. “The next time they tried to do less. Each time they’ve tried for less and less to the point where they’ve completely given up.”

In 2011, the Legislature seemed somewhat more willing to take on the oil and gas industry. That session lawmakers passed a first-of-its-kind bill requiring oil and gas companies to disclose chemicals in fracking fluids. Lawmakers also came close to passing substantive reform that year. Both the House and Senate passed versions of a bill that changed the RRC’s name to the Texas Oil and Gas Commission and restricted commissioners from accepting political donations during non-election years.

But the bill ultimately failed. Lawmakers couldn’t decide whether the agency should retain its authority to conduct hearings over enforcement and gas utility issues. Members of the oil and gas industry opposed moving those hearings out of the RRC and lawmakers ended up deadlocked. In the end, lawmakers passed a “safety net” bill that temporarily extended the agency’s authority to operate for two more years.

The Sunset Commission went through the motions again in 2013. Having learned from their experience the previous session, the commission dropped changes to restructure the agency. But this time lawmakers got hung up on an ethics provision requiring the agency’s commissioners to fundraise only during the 17 months prior to re-election to reduce conflicts of interest. The RRC commissioners, chosen through partisan elections, lobbied against it and the bill languished in the House. Again, lawmakers passed a “safety net” bill extending the agency’s operations, this time for four years.
Lawmakers this year were much more careful about keeping the bill on track, and even Sunset staff appear to have lost confidence in the Lege. The 2016 report left out past recommendations to restructure the board and limit commissioners’ ability to take campaign contributions. And the Sunset Commission killed other controversial measures so they never made it into HB 1818. Instead, lawmakers added a provision to the bill that required RRC contractors to use E-Verify to check the immigration status of workers.

Meanwhile, bills that implement more controversial reforms, such as renaming the agency to Texas Energy Resources Commission and requiring it to post enforcement data online, have languished this session. They’ve either been left pending in committee or haven’t been called for a vote.

Birch, the Public Citizen lobbyist, pointed to an ethics reform bill that her group has been championing as an example. Much like past proposals, it would prevent commissioners from accepting political contributions during the 17 months prior to an election. The proposal was voted out of committee, but it was never placed on the House calendar and fell victim to legislative deadlines.

“Nobody wants to take responsibility [for helping pass the bill],” Birch said. “If they wait till the last second, they can just say they didn’t have time. It’s easier to explain that calendars didn’t have time, than say we don’t want ethics reform.”


In the end, politics and lawmakers’ instinct for self-preservation has put the environment and Texans’ health at risk, said Birch, the Public Citizen lobbyist. “They’re all just playing games at the public’s expense.”

https://www.texasobserver.org/after-eight-year-battle-over-reforming-the-railroad-commission-oil-and-gas-industry-wins/

Texas Supreme Court says landowners can sue over oil and gas contamination

The Texas Supreme Court ruled late last month that the Railroad Commission of Texas, the state’s oil and gas regulator, does not have exclusive jurisdiction over environmental contamination cases, which can be settled in court.

The decision came from a years’ long dispute between a rancher, Jimmy McAllen, and the Denver-based Forest Oil, which McAllen accused of polluting his property and exposing him to radiation. Forest Oil, now a part of the Houston-based Sabine Oil and Gas Corp., argued that McAllen couldn’t sue the company and seek millions in damages through the court system because only the Railroad Commission has jurisdiction over contamination cases. Forest Oil objected to paying damages in addition to being forced to clean up McAllen’s property.

But on April 28, the Supreme Court issued a ruling affirming the previous decision of an appeals court: McAllen had every right to sue, the court said, and that the law did not intend for the Railroad Commission to be a property owner’s sole recourse in pollution case.


“While the Railroad Commission may make determinations with respect to McAllen’s 27 contamination claims — indeed, it has already done so — it cannot thereby oust the court of jurisdiction to decide those claims or refer the decision to arbitration,” the court said.

http://fuelfix.com/blog/2017/05/15/texas-supreme-court-says-landowners-can-sue-over-oil-and-gas-contamination/

Fulton seeks Uber, Lyft, MARTA among options for senior transportation

With a wait list for senior transportation that was twice as long as the number of people being served, Fulton County was crushed under the weight of residents’ needs.

It doesn’t have the money for new services. Instead, it’s looking to direct users elsewhere — and to cull the list.

Wednesday, commissioners agreed to raise the age of residents who can request rides to doctors or grocery stores to 60, from 55. They also signed off on a new system to screen potential riders, in the hopes that only the neediest ones will rely on county services.

“There are better ways they can be served,” Fulton County Manager Dick Anderson said.

The wait list, which had reached more than 1,800 people, has been frozen for two years, said Kenn Vanhoose, division manager in the Fulton County Office of Aging. The county provided rides to 944 users in the first four months of 2017.

County employees have been calling people on the wait list to see if they still need Fulton’s services. By the time the workers make it through, they expect to have pared the list down to about 625 people

The remaining 1,200 that are being taken off the list are under 60 years old and will no longer be eligible for service, say they no longer need the rides, or could not be contacted. A handful are already receiving county transportation services

Those who remain on the wait list still will not have access to county rides

“There’s always going to be more need than we have money for,” Commissioner Liz Hausmann said.
Fulton already spends nearly $6 million to bring people to senior centers and doctors’ appointments. That’s far more than Gwinnett and Cobb, which each spend just over $1 million each on the service
.
The need for senior transportation is a problem that will continue to multiply. In the five-county metro Atlanta area, the population age 65 and up is expected to grow to 937,000 people in 2040, from 371,000 in 2015, according to the Atlanta Regional Commission. Mary Blumberg, the program manager for strategic planning and development for Aging and Health Resources at the Atlanta Regional Commission, said previously that the need for transportation metro-wide far exceeds the supply.

All told, Blumberg said, people on average outlive their ability to drive by seven to 10 years. Most have poor access to public transit.

“We are thinking about how we can expand the options,” said Pamela Roshell, Fulton’s director of aging and youth services.

Voucher programs, volunteer drivers and other solutions are in the works. But for now, the county is focusing on outside partners.

Those who remain on the waiting list and those who call in will be assessed for their level of self-sufficiency, Roshell said. Seniors who are mostly self-sufficient, but who feel uncomfortable driving in certain situations, will be offered access to a defensive driving class, taught how to use public transportation or shown how to use ridesharing apps like Uber or Lyft.

Those who have cognitive issues, aren’t able to use an app on a smartphone to hail a ride or can’t afford to pay full freight will be considered moderately self-sufficient, Vanhoose said. By the fall, the county expects to start a pilot program that would allow it to split the cost of rides on Lyft and Uber. He also said the county is looking into a service that can book rides on behalf of riders.

And those who most need assistance will be referred to MARTA’s paratransit program, to the Veteran’s Administration and to Medicaid for help, while they wait for county service. Vanhoose said he hopes that county ride service “becomes the safety net” for riders, instead of the first choice.

Those who already use county services will also have to go through the new screening to make sure they are best matched to services.

http://www.myajc.com/news/local-govt--politics/fulton-seeks-uber-lyft-marta-among-options-for-senior-transportation/hEhtQb2LxFTNECqLAnLWXO/

“CT Rides Week” encourages commuters to change mode of transportation

NEW HAVEN, Conn. (WTNH)– If you’re a commuter, you’re being asked to change your routine this week and maybe long term. It’s all part of “CT Rides Week.”

This week is really meant to encourage people to consider alternate modes of transportation when traveling to and from work. The train is one of them.

News 8 was on Shoreline East, traveling between Old Saybrook and New Haven. There are a number of people who do this commute every morning.That’s a number of people who help alleviate congestion on the roads, especially along busy I-95.

This week people are also encouraged to take the bus or even carpool. And the hope is that this change in routine will become a permanent thing at least for some people.

It’s no surprise that we have a number of bus way highways here in the state between interstates 95, 91 and 84. And all that sitting in traffic seems to be taking a toll on us. According to a study done by the National Transportation Research Group, all that congestion robs people of time and fuel.

People driving in the New Haven area spend an extra 40 hours a year, sitting in the car waiting. In Hartford. it’s 45 hours.

News 8 spoke to two computers on this train who travel Shoreline East every single day. One goes into New Haven the other into Fairfield. And both say they do it for convenience.

“Actually it’s more relaxing. I can catch up on my work, some sleep, and I don’t have to deal with the traffic and the parking in New Haven,” said Shari Sisk, Essex.

“It’s really for convenience. It’s for cost, it’s to be productive with my day because otherwise I would be spending 90 minutes each way sitting in a traffic jam,” said Jim Dahl, Westbrook.


Now every year, a hundred thousand people do this commute on Shoreline East between New Haven and Old Saybrook. And roughly 84 million people use public transportation every year in the state. Again the goal is to get those numbers up.

http://wtnh.com/2017/05/18/ct-rides-week-encourages-commuters-to-change-mode-of-transportation/