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Re: Another LA Times article on CAHSR Howling Mobs, Mouse in (or maybe on?) Ecstasy, and the CHSRA
Author: BOB2
Date: 09-29-2018 - 20:24
You have two separate problems that came out with this hyperbolic and somewhat irrational public outrage in the Valley:
1) The years of nonsense and utter incompetence in how CHSERA developed and treated community input for this segment, that includes the institutional incompetence at LACMTA, in representing LA County interests in the project (as well as LOSSAN and ML). I was still doing some consulting on this issue as late as 2014, when these alternatives were first presented, and watched the utterly dysfunctional response by LACMTA, North County entities, and the musical chairs and incompetence at the CHSRA completely destroy their own credibility, over and over at a series of meetings I attended during that period.
2) The utter and complete loss of credibility by the CHSRA, which has undermined public support, is about testing the public's credulity, with the sheer incompetence and mismanagement of the entire project in almost every aspect, from its original inception to its current execution.
This second issue, is Statewide, and not limited to the howling irrational Valleyites with pitchforks and tar....
While these folks are making mouse's day, I agree that much of their ignorant Nimby paranoid rantings, are almost as absurd and delusional as his. So I agree about taking too much from some of that.
I learned to take "public" input with a "grain of salt", having dealt with ranting nutjob whacko loons who came to every Carpool lane outreach and EIS meeting protesting about how these "evil" carpool lanes were part of a "vast" "communist plot" "to take away your right to drive" (usually, in this case, in the OC, the same set of loons, including one woman doing her Ayn Rand impression, complete with a feathered Boa, a every "performance".....), way back when I worked on adding the lanes, in the early 90's.
Unfortunately, these folks with pitchforks are not entirely wrong. The CHSRA has been a spectacular fiasco due to multiple causes and failures, which is not a figment of their imagination.
These failures by CHSRA are things such as the underlying long term failures to do realistic and proper planning, the bloated price tag, the limited benefits, the utter chaos and mismanagement of public outreach and public participation, the complete lack of public confidence in their business plan or financial assumptions, absurd claims about the purported benefits... And, that ultimately this is a project, as is currently being designed and executed, at enormous cost, that does nothing whatsoever to improve mobility or access for them in any measurable way.
Marty Wachs has been a colleague, contractor, mentor, and friend of mine for about 30 years, since he was Chair out at UCLA, and later at the Institute for Transportation Studies. In these interview Marty always prefaces his conceptual support for HSR's benefits with that disclaimer about a "well planned and executed" HSR system. The CHSRA has simply never met the conditions of that caveat. It has never been planned or executed well, and as a result meets few of our real mobility needs, at enormous cost.
The irony is that this proposal would, even if it only achieve Mouse's conspiratorial goal of supporting the evil free market capitalist developers, by building the "evil dangerous killer" base tunnel in "earthquake" faults, if it were shared and used by affordable regional rail passenger services, provide this largely ignorant howling mob with some actual benefits, and service they could actually use.
1) The years of nonsense and utter incompetence in how CHSERA developed and treated community input for this segment, that includes the institutional incompetence at LACMTA, in representing LA County interests in the project (as well as LOSSAN and ML). I was still doing some consulting on this issue as late as 2014, when these alternatives were first presented, and watched the utterly dysfunctional response by LACMTA, North County entities, and the musical chairs and incompetence at the CHSRA completely destroy their own credibility, over and over at a series of meetings I attended during that period.
2) The utter and complete loss of credibility by the CHSRA, which has undermined public support, is about testing the public's credulity, with the sheer incompetence and mismanagement of the entire project in almost every aspect, from its original inception to its current execution.
This second issue, is Statewide, and not limited to the howling irrational Valleyites with pitchforks and tar....
While these folks are making mouse's day, I agree that much of their ignorant Nimby paranoid rantings, are almost as absurd and delusional as his. So I agree about taking too much from some of that.
I learned to take "public" input with a "grain of salt", having dealt with ranting nutjob whacko loons who came to every Carpool lane outreach and EIS meeting protesting about how these "evil" carpool lanes were part of a "vast" "communist plot" "to take away your right to drive" (usually, in this case, in the OC, the same set of loons, including one woman doing her Ayn Rand impression, complete with a feathered Boa, a every "performance".....), way back when I worked on adding the lanes, in the early 90's.
Unfortunately, these folks with pitchforks are not entirely wrong. The CHSRA has been a spectacular fiasco due to multiple causes and failures, which is not a figment of their imagination.
These failures by CHSRA are things such as the underlying long term failures to do realistic and proper planning, the bloated price tag, the limited benefits, the utter chaos and mismanagement of public outreach and public participation, the complete lack of public confidence in their business plan or financial assumptions, absurd claims about the purported benefits... And, that ultimately this is a project, as is currently being designed and executed, at enormous cost, that does nothing whatsoever to improve mobility or access for them in any measurable way.
Marty Wachs has been a colleague, contractor, mentor, and friend of mine for about 30 years, since he was Chair out at UCLA, and later at the Institute for Transportation Studies. In these interview Marty always prefaces his conceptual support for HSR's benefits with that disclaimer about a "well planned and executed" HSR system. The CHSRA has simply never met the conditions of that caveat. It has never been planned or executed well, and as a result meets few of our real mobility needs, at enormous cost.
The irony is that this proposal would, even if it only achieve Mouse's conspiratorial goal of supporting the evil free market capitalist developers, by building the "evil dangerous killer" base tunnel in "earthquake" faults, if it were shared and used by affordable regional rail passenger services, provide this largely ignorant howling mob with some actual benefits, and service they could actually use.
