Podcasts about Caltrain

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Play Episode Listen Later Mar 24, 2021 8:55

BART and Caltrain are increasing the number of trains due to more riders.Bruno Mars singing before he was famous at a wedding!More people are on the roads now compared to early on in the pandemic.Man loses $1 million lottery ticket and finds it hours later!Couple drops their wedding ring in Lake Tahoe during their ceremony!Bay Area winery will pay you $10,000 a month to work for them and live rent-free!

March 1, 2021: Stimulus negotiations: Pressure turns to the Senate to close deal on Covid relief

KGO 810 Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 1, 2021 33:02

BART, Muni, Caltrain would be big winners in Democrats' COVID stimulus bill. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Guest Host Michelle Bouchard from Caltrain Interviews SEPTA's Leslie Richards

Commuter Rail Conversations

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 24, 2021 42:48

In this episode of Commuter Rail Conversations we're talking about pivoting: taking over a multi-modal agency during COVID while staying focused on core principles and preparing to host major international events in a five-year horizon.Just as she took the reins at SEPTA last year the COVID pandemic upended life in Philadelphia. The framework Leslie Richards brought with her was revised during an unpredictable first year as general manager. But throughout, she maintained focus on her core values to deliver for her employees, for Philadelphia, and her UPenn students.Joining us for the conversation is Caltrain's incoming executive director Michelle Bouchard, who is linked to Leslie as a fellow Brown University alumna and Woman in Rail awardee. You won't believe these two dynamic women started the conversation as strangers. Key takeaway: SEPTA and Caltrain both are in good hands with Leslie and Michelle at the helm during these extraordinary times.

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The Coast Starlight (2)

US Rail Journeys – The MrT Podcast Studio

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 30, 2020 20:59

The Coast Starlight (2) – US Rail Journeys Series 2 Episode 22 South to San Jose: The Coast Starlight (2) starts with the conductor announcing that we’ll shortly arrive in San Jose. We’ve just gone through Santa Clara. As we approach San Jose we pass a Caltrain depot. Caltrain runs commuter services between San Francisco … Continue reading "The Coast Starlight (2)" The post The Coast Starlight (2) appeared first on The MrT Podcast Studio.

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KZSU NewsUpdate: Back on Track--Transit Election News + Headlines 11/09

KZSU News

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 9, 2020 5:00

In this election edition of "Back on Track," Ken highlights the passage of the Peninsula's Measure RR, along with statewide Propositions, Board of Directors results from BART and AC Transit. Plus, transit headlines this week, which include fare collection beginning on AC Transit's Line 1T and the closure of Caltrain's weekend-only Atherton Station. "Back on Track," hosted by KZSU News Director Ken Der, takes a deeper look at how Bay Area transit agencies are recovering from the wide range of issues caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

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KZSU NewsUpdate: Back on Track--Taking Transit to Vote + Transit News 11/02

KZSU News

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 2, 2020 5:00

VTA has a new map highlighting 99 polling places in Santa Clara County with the closest bus and rail lines to each one, plus Marin Transit is offering free transit service on local routes in Marin County in an effort to get out the vote. Plus, this week's latest transit news, including Caltrain's proposals to improve off-peak and weekend service levels by mid-December. "Back on Track," hosted by KZSU News Director Ken Der, takes a deeper look at how Bay Area transit agencies are recovering from the wide range of issues caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

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City of Belmont | New Bay Area Development Projects #1

Bay Area Real Estate Insights | Tech Realtor Spencer Hsu

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 22, 2020 4:47

Welcome to my new series! We will be reviewing what developments are happening in every city across the Bay Area. Many of you that are local here see projects and construction happening but did you know that most cities have plans to redevelop areas over the next 15 years? Let's learn about how Belmont is set up right now.There is approximately 2,955 acres in the current city limits with an additional 62 acres of land contained within the planning area. 46% of the land is dedicated to residential land use which is a very small ratio compared to most cities. This is why Belmont is such a popular location for their privacy. Amongst the 46%, 41% of the land are Single Family homes. 4% of the land has multifamily units and there are some duplexes in the Sterling Downs and Homeview neighborhoods. So where are we heading to? The biggest projects coming down the pipeline is the Belmont Village Mixed use land and the Corridor mixed used land projects which are right across from each other. This is a 2035 General Plan but it gives you an idea what will be happening as there are projects already underway. Take a look at the map here. You can see that the changes will be mostly near the Caltrain station between Ralston and El Camino Real. Most of these areas will be much more dense with condos, apartment rentals, affordable housing, and mixed use retail space on the ground level. What are examples of these projects? Here are a few coming that you can expect over the next few years. Here are pictures of Artisan Crossing. This complex will be a 4 story 250 unit multifamily residential building ranging from studios to 2 Bedroom units. 15% will be affordable units. Another development will be 800-803 Belmont avenue.This will be on the south side of Belmont Avenue and will have a total of 125 residential apartments. They will range between 1 to 3 bedroom units. Another development will be called Firehouse Square. This will be on the corner of El Camino Real and O'Neill Avenue which will be a 4 story mixed used building with 65 affordable rental units, 3,748 square feet of retail and commercial space on the ground level, and 15 townhomes which will be for sale at market rate. The last one at this time is the project on Hill Street and El Camino Real. This is a 100% affordable housing project and will be a 37 unit residential project. These are slated to all be one bedroom rental units. Companies like Google and Facebook have poured hundreds of Millions of dollars for these types of affordable housing developments. I hope this was helpful to see what is coming down the immediate pipeline in a quiet town of Belmont! Leave a comment with what you think and if there are any cities I should cover next! -- If you are tired of renting in the Bay Area, are a home owner looking to do a trade up for a bigger home, or are thinking about selling your home, I would love to connect! Click on the link and let's set up a time to talk!

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Election 2020: Measure RR Would Fund Caltrain with Sales Tax

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Play Episode Listen Later Oct 21, 2020 19:14

Facing a pandemic-induced plunge in ridership and ticket sales, Caltrain is asking voters in San Francisco, San Mateo and Santa Clara counties for a lifeline this November. If approved by a two-thirds majority, Measure RR would impose a one-eighth cent sales tax increase to fund Caltrain’s operations, maintenance and capital projects. Caltrain says that the tax would generate about $100 million annually. We’ll break down Measure RR and what’s at stake for the beleaguered commuter railroad.

Democrats slam Republicans rush to confirm Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett

KPFA - The Pacifica Evening News, Weekdays

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 15, 2020 59:59

Comprehensive coverage of the day's news with a focus on war and peace; social, environmental and economic justice. Democrats slam Republicans rush to confirm Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett. President Donald Trump and Joe Biden hold separate televised town halls in lieu of debate. President's plan to send $200 prescription card to seniors ahead of election, criticized. Peninsula voters to decide fate of Caltrain with Measure RR, a tax to fund the service. Poll finds Californian's of both political parties say more funding needed to reopen schools safely. The post Democrats slam Republicans rush to confirm Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett appeared first on KPFA.

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Democrats slam Republicans rush to confirm Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett

KPFA - The Pacifica Evening News, Weekdays

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 15, 2020 41:10

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KZSU NewsUpdate: Back on Track--Caltrain's Measure RR + Transit News 10/12

KZSU News

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 12, 2020 5:00

This week, Ken takes a look at how the ballot's Measure RR is attempting to (literally) get Caltrain back on track by proposing a 0.125% sales tax for San Francisco, San Mateo, and Santa Clara Counties. Plus, headlines from this week's transit news, including service changes on VTA. "Back on Track," hosted by KZSU News Director Ken Der, takes a deeper look at how Bay Area transit agencies are recovering from the wide range of issues caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

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Measure RR: Eric Garris

Civic

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 26, 2020 29:29

In this discussion about the regional tax proposal to fund Caltrain, Measure RR, Eric Garris, a San Francisco resident who submitted the official opposition to the measure, lays out his argument against it.

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Measure RR: Adina Levin

Civic

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 26, 2020 29:30

In this conversation about the regional sales tax to fund Caltrain, Measure RR, Adina Levin, executive director of the nonprofit Friends of Caltrain and co-founder and advocacy director of the nonprofit Seamless Bay Area, explains how Measure RR got on the ballot and what it would enable Caltrain to do.

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Inside the NIMBY Mind, with Jordan Grimes

The Henry George Program

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 3, 2020

Jordan Grimes has been live-tweeting Livable California calls over the last year, and comes on the show to share his insights into the ideology and political framework of California's NIMBY conspiracy. Learn more about Joel Kotkin, Jeffersonianism, what 'WIMBYs' are, and what the left should do about it. Also some brief updates on anti-eviction bills and whatever the hell was going on with Caltrain.

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Phil Matier: Caltrain Closer to Avoiding Shutdown

Phil Matier

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 5, 2020 2:16

Caltrain is a step closer to getting the funding it needs to avoid shutting down. KCBS Radio news anchors Jeff Bell and Patti Reising spoke with KCBS Radio and Chronicle Insider Phil Matier to find out where they are in the process.. See omnystudio.com/policies/listener for privacy information.

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Covid Is Pushing Some Mass Transit Systems to the Brink

WIRED Business – Spoken Edition

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 27, 2020 5:32

Riders are skittish. Cleaning costs are soaring. Some, like the Bay Area's Caltrain system, face an existential crisis.

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Episode 35: Caltrain Defunding

Well There's Your Problem

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 24, 2020 114:50

We're here to talk about our favorite subject: Trains LIVESTREAM, TINY DELAWARE IN CITIES: SKYLINES, 7/25, JESSICA SCARANE FOR SENATE, JUSTIN IS ON AT 12 NOON EDT, LINK: https://www.twitch.tv/jessica_scarane DONATE TO BAIL FUNDS AND ETC AND PROVIDE THE RECEIPT TO US VIA TWITTER OR E-MAIL AND WE WILL SEND YOU THE BONUS EPISODES: https://www.phillybailfund.org/ https://www.communityjusticeexchange.org/nbfn-directory https://secure.actblue.com/donate/bail_funds_george_floyd https://secure.actblue.com/donate/ms_blm_homepage_2019 E-MAIL IS IN THE CHANNEL ABOUT PAGE slides: https://youtu.be/QjEI3Ko-kp8 presidio bay: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ZWhFAh4JSc interurban_era's twitter: https://twitter.com/InterurbanE interurban_era's channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCC_qV-wGVow_HapR93TeW4A bigmoodenergy's metros video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ACTp-ebzhP4 buster keaton, it's actually called "one week": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hHo1cvbDIpA someone remind me if I need to link anything else patreon: https://www.patreon.com/wtyppod

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The Future of Funding and Mobility as a Service with David Zipper

Engineering Influence from ACEC

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 22, 2020 27:30

ACEC welcomes David Zipper onto the show to discuss the future of infrastructure funding in a post COVID economy and the future of Mobility as a Service (MOS). David Zipper is a Visiting Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School's Taubman Center for State and Local Government, where he examines the interplay between urban policy and new mobility technologies. David’s perspective on urban development is rooted in his experience working within city hall as well as being a venture capitalist, policy researcher, and startup advocate. He has consulted with numerous startups and public officials about regulatory strategy. David’s articles about urban innovation have been published in The Atlantic, WIRED, Slate, and Car and Driver. His 2018 article in Fast Company was the first to apply the the “walled garden” framework to urban mobility. David has spoken at events including the Consumer Electronics Show, SXSW, and the FIA Conference. He focuses on topics including Mobility-as-a-Service, the uses of transportation data, the future of micromobility, and linkages between public transit, city regulations, and private shared vehicles.From 2013 to 2017 David was the Managing Director for Smart Cities and Mobility at 1776, a global entrepreneurial hub with over 1,300 member startups. At 1776 David connected hundreds of entrepreneurs to urban leaders eager to deploy their solutions, and he closed millions of dollars in partnerships with cities and corporations worldwide. He continues to be a Partner in the 1776 Seed Fund.David previously served as the Director of Business Development and Strategy under two mayors in Washington DC, where his responsibilities included attracting businesses to the city, promoting entrepreneurship, and overseeing economic development strategy. David led support to Washington’s first startup incubators and guided the city's response to the emergence of ride hail services. Before moving to Washington David served as Executive Director of NYC Business Solutions in New York City under Mayor Bloomberg. David holds an MBA with Highest Honors from Harvard Business School, an M.Phil in Land Economy (Urban Planning) from Cambridge University, and a BA with High Honors from Swarthmore College. He has been selected as a Truman Scholar, a Gates Scholar, and a Baker Scholar. Transcript: Host:Welcome to another edition of Engineering Influence, a podcast by the American Council of Engineering Companies. I am pleased today to welcome David zipper onto the program. David is a visiting fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School's Taubman Center for State and Local Government where he examines the interplay between urban policy and new mobility technologies. David's perspective on urban development is rooted in his experience working within city hall, as well as being a venture capitalist, a policy researcher, and a startup advocate. He has consulted with numerous startups and public officials about regulatory strategy. David is a published article appearing in Wired, The Atlantic, Slate, and Car and Driver. He's spoken to groups such as the consumer electronics show South by Southwest, and focuses on topics such as mobility as a service and micro mobility and the linkages between public transit city regulations and private shared vehicles. David was also one of the panelists on the ACEC Research Institute's most recent round table discussion on the future of engineering focused on the future of funding in a post COVID-19 environment. And David welcome onto the show. Really great to have you. David Zipper :Thank you very much. It's a pleasure to be with you. Host:So that was an interesting panel. I listened to it a couple of times and I would imagine, I guess it's safe to say there was a universal agreement that the recovery is going to be gradual at best. After COVID-19 with your perspective from working in city hall and having that local political experience, how do you see this playing out where really the rubber meets the road? You know, you're talking about metropolitan transit agencies, you're talking about, you know, people get trying to get to and from work. How do you think COVID-19 is going to impact cities? David Zipper :That's a big question. And there's lots of different ways to answer it. And frankly, the answers are going to be different based on the, the nature of a transit agency versus a county government or a city government. But I can certainly maybe I can offer some, some overall thoughts up front and we can go into whatever detail that you like. But but yeah, in the short term you've seen transit agencies and local governments and state governments really just scrambling to keep the lights on as it were. Adjusting transit routes. Sometimes bringing up capital projects to do, to go faster because there's fewer people on the roads and there's fewer people flying at airports. So you can do airport expansions all faster. There's fewer trains running. So you might be able to more easily do capital projects. David Zipper:But that's really like a, a sort of a short term band-aid because the money's running out fast. We're already just, just today, actually, as we're recording this, there's been news about a $20 billion plus budget gap over the next couple of years in New York City's MTA, that's going to have to get closed. And the biggest transit agencies are feeling the pain first because they are really using their farebox revenue. The fairs that we all pay when we take transit they've used what they, that they collected yesterday to pay today's operating expenses. And in the big cities, that's a big chunk of their revenue, transit revenue. Transit ridership has fallen through the floor because people are uncomfortable on transit, even though it's the data suggests it's relatively safe, as long as people wear masks, but you've already seen, for example, in San Francisco, Muni, the transit service, there is consolidated routes really in a huge way, Caltrain in the Bay area, its future is up in the air there's discussion of whether to do a new tax to save it. David Zipper :And the transit agencies are going to feel the pain a little bit later because most of their revenue comes from state and federal governments that, you know, their budget is already allocated for this year, before the coronavirus hit. But there'll be a rolling impact there. And then for, for, for states and cities to, to you know, state the obvious they can't print money, they have to meet their, their - they have to make their budgets align so they can have a deficit. So what that means is that you're seeing some projects postponed, you're seeing layoffs and the Cares Act at the federal level. It gave a bit of a lifeline a few months ago when the coronavirus first hit there's discussion. Like again, as we're recording this there's discussions on Capitol Hill about a new federal investment program, it's unclear if that's going to have money for states, cities, deities, and for transit agencies, if it doesn't, I expect we're going to see pretty intense contractions and layoffs and pull back on capital projects and all of those levels. Host:It's been in my experience, you know, formerly on Capitol Hill and, and, and, and just watching this from time to time with all the surface bills that kind of come on, you always have that partisan divide when it comes down to the usual argument is that, you know, Republicans want to have the move towards devolution, but it was always that argument that, okay, we're going to Republicans would fight against Democrats who wanted to have bike trails or greenways or things of that nature, rails to trails, things like that. And then the Republicans were always going to fight against transit because they just wanted to make sure that that highway trust fund was kind of boxed in for roads. Host:Given the fact that we're in this new environment now, we're, it seems the federal government is more willing to provide aid, to deal with, to soften the blow for COVID-19. Do you think that any of those old entrenched arguments might shift, just because of the willingness to put money on the table to actually create assistance programs, do you think this might be an opportunity to break the paradigm and potentially have that money going to, you know, state and local transit agencies more freely? David Zipper :I wish I could say yes. I can't because there's a, I think unfortunately the you know, we used to say decades ago that transportation is a nonpartisan issue is simply not true anymore. The, the there's a professor at UC Santa Barbara named Clayton Nall. He wrote a book called the Road to Inequality. And in which he writes about how in the last 50 years transportation funding and particular transit funding has become remarkably partisan. David Zipper :Even to the point that if you live in a Democratic area, like say the Bay area or the New York area, even if you never take transit, you're more likely to vote in favor of referendums, referenda in favor of transit than, than any those who who'd be elsewhere, that doesn't apply in other parts of the country. So transit has become a democratic issue, which to me is unfortunate because frankly, the more people who are riding transit, the less congested roads are including those roads that are being used by some exerbs and suburbanites who are more likely to be Republican. So I would love to, to hear to, for your hypothesis to be held, to be the whole true. But from everything I've seen, like, for example, with the Cares Act you know, Schumer and the Senate and its allies had to hold out longer to be able to get a few billion dollars more for transit, it seems like it was done despite Republican opposition, as opposed to a sort of like heralding, a new breakthrough, which I wish it would on a nonpartisan bias. Host:That's something that was kind of brought up a little bit on the panel, but it wasn't really delve deep really more, more than just a couple of questions and just comments on it. But the push pull between of course, the large metropolitan areas in, on the coasts and your larger cities in the interior, but then you have those swaths of, let's say, you know, like I said, exurban or rural areas, how do you think the funding's going to be effected for projects in those smaller cities or, or areas between the two coasts? David Zipper :Well, a lot of it, right, it's going to depend on, on one, what happened to the budgets of state DOTs, and that's what, that's what those small cities and rural areas are really relying on. And this is a point that was made by Jeff Davis on the, on the panel. David Zipper :You know, even if there is stimulus money from the federal government is provided with a very generous match for highway projects for small towns. And for rural areas would say, I don't know, four to one federal match or whatever it is. There's still a one in five, 1 dollar of every five has to be put up by the local and state governments that at a time when income taxes are collapsing and tax revenue from hotels and restaurants, it's just drying up. It's not clear the extent to which States and local governments can even meet very modest matches. So if I were an official at a, in a small city or small town or a rural county, that's what I would really be worried about is to say, look, if I get a generous program with a low match, can I even meet that? I may just be grants. Yeah. Host:And that, that kind of goes into the segway to the idea of the integrated mobility or the mobility as a, and where the private sector might be able to in some way, step in. I mean, it's the few - Consumer Technology Association and CES. I've been out to a couple of their shows and seen kind of the idea of, you know, mobility as a service. The idea that you know, you might be able to have - deleverage maybe transit. And so in some way where you can actually then have vehicles, which are not so much owned, but private shared vehicles or some kind of autonomous systems, some, some cities are starting to try to get pilot programs on the road already for autonomous buses and things of that nature, which are private public partnerships. That's all nascent a little, you know, it's not fully developed. Where do you think the opportunity is for some of these technology companies that are, that are focused on mobility, and that's a big change. I mean, just the change between transportation to the concept of mobility is not so much what you own or what you have, but how do you get from point a to point B? Host:Do you think It's an opportunity for the private sector kind of enter and, and treat this as a, as a business opportunity? David Zipper :Maybe, maybe I wrote an article in Slate two months ago that noted how truly unusual this moment is, and that you know, ordinarily, there's a lot of research that shows it takes a lot to get you or me or anybody to change how they travel. We're creatures of habit when it comes to commuting, right? We have a given route we take to get to go to work or to the grocery store, to the gym or to the school. And if we're biking or if we're taking a bus, or if we're driving, we're probably going to stick to that. It takes a lot to get us to change. Just inviting you to change or me to change is probably not going to do much. David Zipper :It's really hard. What does get people to change and individual change is if you have a shock, like a like you have a new child born, and your habits have you have to move around, or let's change, maybe you change where you live, you move where you get a new job. That's an individual shock though, or a household shock. What we're undergoing now because of COVID is a society wide shock where everybody is rethinking how they travel, because they may not be going to work anymore at all. And they, if they took public transit, they may not be comfortable doing that. Now they may not be comfortable at being in ride hail the way they used to. There's lots of trips, millions of trips up for grabs in terms of how, what the new mode might be. And frankly, this is sort of a rationale for the cities to quickly put up bike lanes and, and new infrastructure that it can, can encourage people to not default to driving, which can feel like the safest route. David Zipper :It's just not sustainable at scale for cities. So the question becomes to get to your point of like, what's the role of the private sector in this? I would say that there is potentially a role for private sector actors, whether it's operators like scooter companies to step in and be able to provide, for example, a lower priced options for the short term, or maybe monthly rentals, which companies like Spin and I believe Lime have moved toward providing now as sort of a product that fits the market right now to encourage people who are not going to be, who might otherwise default to driving, to take another mode. That's more environmentally friendly, it takes up less space. And then you get into mobility as a service, which for those who aren't familiar, I would assume that everyone knows about MOS. Maybe I should define it really quick, because I don't know if all of our listeners are engaged in that. I Know some of the larger players in the engineering space are, but... David Zipper :Yeah, it's still a new field. It's a lot of people are excited about it and transportation planning and policy and technology, but it's still in its early days. The idea behind mobility as a service is to say that if we can sort of take all of these various options to get around a city for those who don't drive and knit all those options together. So you've got transit in there and scooters and ride hail and car share and bike share, and whatever else, put them all on one platform that MOS platform, it lets people choose how to get from point a to point B on all of those collective options and purchase their ticket, or a ticket that's a combination of modes on that platform. You can actually take away some of the friction, the annoyance factor of having to jump between apps and figure out which is the best service to get you from point A to point B. David Zipper :This is a need, MOS advocates claim, that really didn't exist 20 years ago when we had a very sort of fixed number for decades, really of a number of ways to get around town. You walk, bike, taxi, drive transit, but now we've got these other new modes and MOS can make a little bit simpler to navigate. So, and there's a bunch of companies that provide this now, like City Mapper and transit and so forth. And so on Google Maps, you could argue as a MOS provider in some ways. So the, the role of MOS in this particular moment that we're in is potentially a powerful one because lots of people are again, figuring out how to travel because they're breaking their old habits about how to get from point A to point B and MOS platforms can inform those decisions. David Zipper :And perhaps if the government gets involved, especially could nudge some of those decisions to be, to be resulting in a trip that's other than driving and potentially other than transit, cause people are just uneasy with it right now, for reasons that are in a lot of ways. Understandable. So is this a moment for MOS? Maybe? I would argue that these platforms are really reliant on the underlying quality and comfort of the services that they knit together. So you need to be able to provide comfortable biking and scooter lanes in a city to make people consider those options. You need to be able to provide reliable transit, to get people, to consider that which is, you know, sometimes a problem in American cities. But I do think this is a moment where MOS could be an interesting area of exploration Host:Or at least an area a time where federal policymakers can start looking at this and integrating it into, you know, long-term, you know, policy that, cause I know that, you know, Uber for example, was, was very active on the Hill talking about their fully integrated model where it's, you know, it was the combination when, you know, Uber taxi was kind of first coming out and they were talking about, we'll take an Uber to they're there, I guess, hanger or whatever they're going to consider, you know, get on an Uber taxi that will fly you to the next facility where you can go and take an Uber for your final destination. And you know, that kind of a kind of integrated, you know, closed loop system. David Zipper :Yeah, I mean, that's a little that's going to suit Uber's needs. I'm not sure cities are going to be that excited about everybody jumping into helicopters. Host:Exactly. David Zipper :I think that the high speed rail argument of saying, okay, you can take a high speed rail route to, let's say Washington DC to New York, but after you get off the train, then what? David Zipper :Correct. Host:It's how do you, how do you connect a route and how do you connect that high speed rail line termination to all the different options you can get to get to your final destination without having to get a car or, or, or reliant on one form of transportation over another. David Zipper :Yeah, I think the idea is if you're choosing between driving, flying or taking the train wouldn't it be nice if you could basically with one tap, be able to purchase your train ticket and know that there will be a, just for example, a Lyft car waiting for you because that, that car was summoned knowing that your train is running seven minutes late and it's pulling up just two minutes after the train gets into the station and you're, you've got a seamless sort of transfer from the train to ride hail onto your destination. That's the idea behind MOS, that's an inner city vision of MOS. Usually to be honest, MOS advocates are thinking more about travel within the city. So maybe the argument there would be, you know, I want to go to the place in Fairfax County, I'm in DC and to get to Fairfax County, Virginia, I need to do a combination of transit to ride hail or transit to scooter. David Zipper :And I can in one fell swoop purchase, determine my route, purchase the ticket and know that I'll have a seamless transfer when I get, when I pop out of the Metro station in Fairfax. Host:And then again, you know, a lot of this has been on the tech side because of developing the technology to allow that seamless integration of different mobility solutions. But on the engineering side, the people who are designing the infrastructure to actually enable this to happen. And that's really, you know, our core constituency from an engineer's perspective. What do you think the top, what do you think maybe a few of the, the main things that they should be looking at, or they should be paying attention to? If, they see opportunity to, you know, design the infrastructure to support systems like this. David Zipper :Yeah, I'll mention a couple of things. You know, one is the, again, the topic I wrote about a month ago I feel like there's a lot of people live in cities who suddenly have a new appreciation for their sidewalks, you know, as we're all stuck at home, trying to get exercise, to avoid going stir crazy. You realize that a lot of our urban neighborhoods have terrible sidewalks and some don't have any at all, especially in the South and the West. And I I think we've got, there's a good chance and I frankly, am hopeful that there is going to be a window of opportunity to consider sidewalk products - and sidewalk infrastructure is real infrastructure. It's less expensive than building a tunnel, but for those of your the engineers that are members of the organization that are trying to think of how can I really tap into what public leaders are thinking about now, if you can incorporate high quality wide, well lit, accessible sidewalks into your proposals for renovating a given district or into a new project. David Zipper :I think that this is a time when that's going to be thought of a little bit more directly and more constructively. I think that that also these new bike lanes and, and that are being developed, I don't see them going away. I frankly think that's also opened the door to considerations of some new technologies that will also have infrastructure needs. And I'll give one example that I'm really interested in, which is, which is parcel delivery. There's an argument that the coronavirus is a great catalyst or an accelerator of trends that are already underway. I think everybody knows that people are buying more stuff online than we used to. Now it's even more stuff than we did a few months ago. And there's been moments of sort of bullishness for sidewalk drones. I personally think that's going to take a while. David Zipper :Partly because our sidewalks think like we were talking about earlier, but the other option is is something I am actually kind of bullish on, which is e-cargo bikes, or electric cargo bikes, which for those of the audience who've been to Europe, they're widespread in Germany and other European countries. And they could be, they can utilize the existing infrastructure in cities. And most of it, at least the city of Boston is, but not an RFI today. July 21st, I think is today's date to basically invite suggestions from the private sector about what sort of infrastructure upgrades might be necessary in terms of depots to collect parcels and various neighborhoods as distribution nodes, things like that. And I, this is an area where I'm bullish in cities for the next five years. I think cities are gonna recognize that they can reduce congestion, improve neighborhood quality of life and, and utilization of existing infrastructure. David Zipper :If they shift some of these UPS, DHL, USPS trucks that they take up space and double park and can be pollutants instead utilize E cargo bikes, Europeans can do it. And I think we can too. And a lot of our cities. Host:Those are really two good points. He and I, and I, it's always kind of sad when I see a drone and Fairfax or one of the, you know, robot parcel delivery or package delivery drones get caught up on a stump or something on the, on the sidewalk and Fairfax city. It's kind of sad. David Zipper :But it happened. There was a viral video and Friendship Heights, one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in Washington over the weekend where you see the sidewalk drone got stuck because the sidewalk got too narrow. And I myself tweeted about him saying, because the guy who saw I was like, Oh, this I helped a little guy. David Zipper:It's kind of cute. I'm like this, isn't cute. If it's a person in a wheelchair, like we've really blown it with our urban sidewalks. And this should be a moment when we should be really investing in them. That's a very good point. Host:Well, David, I do appreciate you coming on the show. There's a lot to talk about here. I'd love to have you back on the show so we can talk about really these mobility issues when it comes to, you know, the interconnection of technology and mobility, how it all kind of ties together. You know, it's something that we'd like to explore a little bit more. Because I think our members are always looking for what, you know, what is the next thing what's going to be the next area that we might be able to invest in. And I think that, that these issues are going to be top of mind. Host:And yeah, and I do appreciate your time. And you mentioned that article. I mean, what else do you have coming out? Where should people be looking for the the article that you're writing now? David Zipper :Yeah, I'm actually, I've got a couple articles coming out in the next week or two. I write a lot about new forms of urban mobility and new technologies, and also about sort of the interplay between local policy, especially around transportation and automobiles and transit. So, so those who are in, if you're interested, you can always reach me on Twitter. I post all my articles there people can send me DMs. If they've got a question it's easy, it's a zipper, just my name at David Zipper. And then for my articles I actually have a website where I put them together. Cause I do write across a number of platforms and that's just as easy again www.davidzipper.com and you can find all the articles there. And I even have a little newsletter. I put out once a month with the stuff I've been writing and thinking about in these topics, because especially in the current environment, so much is changing so quickly. So I appreciate the opportunity to come join you and talk about some of these changes. Host:It was great to have you on and again, follow David and David's zipper and look out for his upcoming pieces. And we'd love to have you back on. So David have a great rest of the week stay as cool as possible when this heat wave and stay healthy. David Zipper:I'll go for a socially distance bike ride. Host:There you go. There you go. David Zipper :Thanks a lot. It's great to be here. Host:And you've been listening to Engineering Influence brought to you by ACEC.

covid-19 american new york director new york city europe strategy washington service state germany san francisco west european executive director washington dc partner dc south uber mba states republicans managing directors atlantic democrats senate car funding democratic ces driver business development dms bay southwest metro wired capitol hill ups sxsw mobility slate adjusting lyft fast company harvard business school google maps inequality transit usps cambridge university lime dots cares act smart cities michael bloomberg local government fairfax harvard kennedy school schumer dhl mos uc santa barbara mta consumer electronics show american council visiting fellow rfi muni jeff davis swarthmore college fairfax county after covid understandable consumer technology association high honors seed fund baker scholar mobility as a service highest honors caltrain gates scholar taubman center david zipper acec clayton nall

Car wash. Alex Trebek. Bay Area family trying to move. Mother-daughter donation. CalTrain.

family bay area donations alex trebek car wash mother daughter caltrain

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 22, 2020 9:13

Jack and Carolyn talk car washes. Alex Trebek opens up about his wife and how she is handling his cancer diagnosis. A Bay Area family is getting creative in trying to buy a house. A mother-daughter donation goes national. CalTrain may have to shut down for good.

Phil Matier: The Battle Over Local Control of Commuter Train Service

Phil Matier

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 22, 2020 3:21

A proposed sales tax for the three counties served by Caltrain, that would be San Francisco, San Mateo and Santa Clara, is turning into a battle over local control of the commuter train service. KCBS and Chronicle Insider Phil Matier joined KCBS Radio with more. See omnystudio.com/policies/listener for privacy information.

battle service san francisco train santa clara commuters san mateo local control kcbs caltrain kcbs radio chronicle insider phil matier

Caltrain is struggling to stay in business.

The Morning Breezecast

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 21, 2020 2:19

Caltrain is struggling to stay in business.

struggling caltrain

Political Fight Threatens to Derail Caltrain Funding Amid Coronavirus Pandemic

san francisco political silicon valley funding amid coronavirus pandemic threatens santa clara derail san mateo caltrain

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 21, 2020 28:18

Caltrain, the light-rail system that runs from San Francisco to Silicon Valley, faces dire financial straits after a 98% drop in ridership during the coronavirus pandemic and now, a dispute over a key future funding source. Caltrain officials are pushing to put a 0.125 percent sales tax measure on San Francisco, San Mateo, and Santa Clara county ballots this November. But the fate of that measure is uncertain after two San Francisco Supervisors blocked that board from voting to put it on the ballot. We look at the future of Caltrain as officials warn of a possible shutdown.

Funding in the New Normal - An ACEC Research Institute Roundtable on the Future of Engineering

Engineering Influence from ACEC

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 17, 2020 65:24

On July 16, 2020 the ACEC Research Institute held the last roundtable in its "Future of Engineering" series. The event brought together some of the most respected thought leaders in the infrastructure space to discuss the financial effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the future of funding for infrastructure projectsPanelists included:• Rosemarie Andolino, Former Chairman of MAG USA and CEO of International Development, Manchester Airport Group• Anirban Basu, Chairman and CEO, Sage Policy Group• Jeff Davis, Senior Fellow, Eno Center for Transportation• David Zipper, Visiting Fellow, Harvard Kennedy School’s Taubman Center for State and Local Government• Moderator: Joseph Bates, ACEC Research InstituteTranscript:Daphne Bryant:On behalf of the ACEC Research Institute's, Board of Directors, welcome to our third round table in the series, the future of engineering. A big thank you to our donors who have made this session possible. We have a great group of thought leaders here today. As you can see on your screen, they're going to share their insights and expertise with us on the future of funding in our new normal. Now without further ado, it's my pleasure to introduce two of my colleagues from the ACEC Research Institute, Joe Bates, who will serve as our moderator for today's session, and Kevin McMahon who will be monitoring the chat box and fielding your questions during the session, Joe, it's all yours.Joe Bates:Great. Thank you, Daphne, and thank you all for joining us today. First, I'd like to introduce you to our panelists that we have with us first there's Rosemarie Andolino, Former Chairman of MAG USA and CEO of International Development, Manchester Airport Group in the UK, where she oversaw the development of MAG's North American and global airport services business. She currently serves as an independent board member and advisor to various for-profit and not for profit organizations. And previously she served as the Commissioner of the Chicago Department of Aviation, where she oversaw the management and operations of one of the world's busiest airport systems that comprise of O'Hare and Midway International Airports. Rosemarie, welcome today. I'd also like to welcome Anirban Basu. Anirban is Chairman and CEO of Sage Policy Group an economic and policy consulting firm. Headquartered in Baltimore, Maryland with an office in Indonesia, the firm provides strategic analytical services to energy suppliers, law firms, medical systems, government agencies, and real estate developers among others.Joe Bates:In 2014, Maryland governor Larry Hogan appointed Anirban Chair of the Maryland Economic Development Commission. He also serves as the Chairman of the Baltimore County Economic Advisory Committee. Welcome Anirban. Next I'd like to introduce Jeff Davis. Jeff is a senior fellow with the Eno Center for Transportation and is also the editor of the Eno Transportation. Weekly. Jeff has worked on Capitol Hill working on various legislative budget process oversight and parliamentary procedure issues. He also worked extensively on the FAA, Amtrak and surface transportation reauthorization laws in the late 1990s. His current work focuses on analysis of the federal budget, federal transportation budget, and his longterm trends in transportation, funding, and policy. Finally, I'd like to welcome David Zipper. David is a visiting fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School's Taubman Center for State and Local Government, where he examines the interplay between urban policy and new mobility technologies.Joe Bates:David's perspectives are rooted in his experience working within city hall, as well as being a venture capitalist policy researcher and startup advocate. He has consulted with numerous startups and public officials about regulatory strategy. So thank you all for joining us today and welcome.Joe Bates:I'd like to go ahead and get started and jump right in to get a, sort of a feel of what's going on with the economy. As everybody knows, the US economy, as well as the engineering profession was hit quite hard by the pandemic and the last business impact survey that ACEC conducted showed that over 80% of firms said, they felt that the economy was in worse shape today than it was on March 1st before the pandemic really took hold. So clearly there's a lot of pain going on out there. There's a lot of stimulus efforts that have happened, but Anirban, I'd like to turn to you and ask you to give us an overview of what's happening with the economy right now and where you think it's going in the next five years or so.Anirban Basu:Yeah, well look, the recession is dated to have begun in February. According to the national Bureau of economic research is Business Cycle Dating Committee. I think by late April, it was over in late April. That was the nadir for mobility of Americans based on cell phone and other data. You know, Governor Kemp in Georgia started opening up the economy on April 20th. And there was a lot of cash that had been built up in the economy and the household sector because of those $1,200 checks for $600 in federal subsidies for unemployment insurance benefits. So the household savings rate went from 8% pre-crisis to 33% by April. The economy opens up in May guess what? We get job growth, 2.7 million jobs added in may. We followed up in June 4.8 million. That's not consistent with recession. And so it felt pretty good. Didn't it?Anirban Basu:Retail sales surging 17.7% in may then again, bouncing back in June felt really good. And then what happens Florida? It's always Florida. For some reason, Florida, Arizona, Texas, Georgia Governor of Oklahoma is now COVID-19 positive. So the surgeon reinfection has put the entire economic recovery in doubt. And we can see that some of these reopenings have been postponed. Some of them have been reversed. We've got the initial jobless claims today at 8:30 AM Eastern Standard Time. And they were somewhat disappointing the market's down today. So I was looking forward to a third and fourth quarter. That was very robust in terms of the economic expansion. It might still happen because people don't seem to care that there is this viral spread. They're just going about their lives. I'm in Ocean City, Maryland today. No one out there on the beach is wearing a mask. I can tell you, and they're not social distancing. They're just going about life. As, as if it's normal, you would know that there was a pandemic. So for right now, the economic outlook is very uncertain. I just think that the economic expansion will continue through the end of the year, but it won't be nearly as dramatic as I had hoped up until about a month ago.Joe Bates:How long do you think Anirban that the overhang will stay with us? You know, there's bound to be a vaccine in the early part of next year think pretty much everybody is banking on that right now. So let's say we get a vaccine, you know, things return back to normal in terms of how society functions sometime next year, what's the longer term outlook are we gonna, is this like 2009? Are we going to be sort of suffering for a while? Or do you think it's going to be a lot shorter than that?Anirban Basu:Oh no. I think it would be longer than that. And I'll tell you why, you know, after 2009, you know, the economy sort of came back to life, you know, I mean, we pumped a lot of money into the economy. We recapitalize the banks, the federal reserve increases balance sheet from $800 billion. Pre-Crisis the four and a half trillion dollars during and after the crisis. So, you know, the money disappeared as the housing market collapsed. You know, that's what caused, you know, 2008, 2009, we put money back into the system, bam LinkedIn's economic expansion, American history, and very little inflation, booming stock market. It was fabulous. And we entered with that momentum in January and February of 2020. And in February we added more than a quarter million jobs this time. What do we have? We have shattered government finances, state, and local. We have a commercial real estate sector that is in deep recession and will take years to recover, right?Anirban Basu:Empty storefront, shuttered restaurants, vacated office suites. And so that weakness lingers, we've got lots of debt on various balance sheets, household balance sheets, corporate balance sheets. And of course, governmental balance sheets and especially the federal government, right, which in June ran nearly a $900 billion deficit for one month, you know, $64 billion dollars. So you put all that together. I think it is possible to talk about a double the procession. And in fact, it is conceivable that we'll have that double dip this year. If, you know, if you agree with my proposition that we were in recession, we came out of recession. We could go in back into recession this year. And then at some point in the future, once this new, next round of stimulus works its way through the economy, you can get another recession thereafter. So there's, you know, a w and then another V on top of that, it's a really risky moment in economic history and the policymakers have to get this right. And those are political outcomes they have to get right. And political outcomes are rarely, right. So, I mean, that's where we are right now, very uncertain place.Joe Bates:Great. Okay. Anirban, thank you for that perspective. I'd next like to focus on a question for Jeff as as some of you probably know who, who have looked at the ACEC business impact study that we conducted 90%, nine zero, 90% of firms reported obtaining a PPP loan to bridge the summer and spring trough that many expected. The question here is, will clients start new projects once we get through the summer, or are we gonna continue to struggle through next year? Jeff, what do you think?Jeff Davis:In terms of the regular the regular federal infrastructure programs, the federal side of the spending hasn't been affected yet by any of this coronavirus? The, the, the question is always really the degree to which the level of the government that can print its own money. The federal government is going to step in temporarily and assist the levels of government that can't print their own money, state and local. And so you saw a little bit like $150 billion of aid to state and local governance was in the last traunch coronavirus relief the S the house back zone wishlist bill about a month ago, three and a half trillion dollars in one bill that was going to have like $500 billion from state governments. None of that set aside directly for state DOTs, but that's the fundamental question you gotta answer is if you're going to provide a, to state and local governments, does the federal government single out transportation as being privileged and give it a special carve out of money and leave everything else up to state local politicians to determine the priorities, or do they make transportation aid subject to state and local decisions in place that you know, weighing it against the needs for education, budgets of corrections budgets of all the other things that state governments do.Jeff Davis:There is zero consensus right now in Congress of whether state DOTs in particular should receive a special targeted round of assistance. That's not subject to state and local governments determining where to best allocate the resource. The Senate Majority Leader McConnell is going to introduce his own coronavirus bill next week. They've got a July 31st deadline for leaving town, at least the house for five weeks, and also unemployment insurance rent. So extended unemployment's going to be in that bill at some rate. We're not sure if the special $600 bonus will be in there or any kind of bonus at what level McConnell wants to put at least $75 billion in dangling a carrot financial aid and school systems that open on time in late August, September. And the only other thing I know about that bill is that he's determined to keep the price tag below $1 trillion.Speaker 4:So you're going to have you have a House bill, a three and a half trillion, the Senate trying to max out at 1 trillion, and they're going to have between middle of next week and July 31st to figure out what that goes. So, because it doesn't do any good, the federal government putting out money at 80% federal share for highways, if the state or local DOT can't afford its own 20%, or is uncertain, whether they're going to have the dedicated revenues over the next X number of months to cover their 20%. So that's the basic issue is the uncertainty of government tax receipts at the state and local level is going to start tampering all this.Joe Bates:So, so if I can press you on this just a little bit, Jeff, and I'd also like to get David's thoughts on this. You're saying the federal money is there. So are projects going to be effected. And if so, in what way?Jeff Davis:Cash going out the door for federal infrastructure programs has not really been affected at all yet by coronavirus, but for the big highway and transit programs, those are reimbursable dollars. The government signs a contract upfront only after the state government pays the contractor do they come to the US Department of Transportation and get reimbursed. So the dollars leaving the door and the treasury is a lagging indicator. Unfortunately, it's the most up to date indicator we have as far as monthly basis. We'll find out next week, hopefully on the obligation to the grant agreements actually signed between the federal government and state local government for infrastructure we'll hopefully have enough later quarterly total on that. And they're about to move to monthly reporting on that. So we can finally get something other than anecdotal evidence, you know, from States, state DOT here, or city transit agency there on how much they're curtailing their future spending plans in light of the coronavirus revenue uncertainty, but at the federal level, we don't quite have the data yet on just the degree to which the federal governments, local and state government infrastructure partners are rolling back activity, looking to the future yet.David Zipper:Yeah. And can I follow on, on that? Is that.Joe Bates:Yeah, go ahead, David.David Zipper:Yeah. And, and just cause I do a lot of work in particular with urban transportation, like the transit agency is I can sort of speak from that perspective and everything that Jeff is saying is, is I think true and the lack of certainty, the lack of clarity at the federal level sort of filters down to transit agencies, being very concerned or cities being very concerned about future cash support, which leads them to make decisions now about future planning. And I can give a few examples of that. You can see that that very simply some of the groups that are hit the hardest by this right now, it would be the transit agencies that live off of their farebox revenue. They're using the farebox revenue from last week to pay their bills from this week.David Zipper:So just this week, there's been a big controversy in the Bay area where CalTrans may or may not get the funding. It would need through a special sales tax to be able to continue. And there's it's kind of incredible for his affluent areas, the Bay Area, serious conversation about CalTrans ceasing service. And if that happens that actually, and I want to make this clear since given the audience here, it's not like you can just turn off a transit agency and then turn it back on. You're losing mechanics, you're losing specialized knowledge about the technology and the vehicles that it's very difficult to emulate. And you look over New York with the MTA saying that they're going to have money to get through August. And they're the, the, the director was saying yesterday that she's being forced to go through the whole org chart, to lay people off and then sort of compounding these problems.David Zipper :You've got, especially in New York, for those who may be there, you've got the Trump administration are sitting on decongestion pricing, which would have otherwise provided a $15 billion cash infusion into MTA at a time that really needs it. So, there's plenty more examples I could cite, but I would simply say, you know, this is a time when in the urban transportation side, which I would imagine is of interest to many in the audience. You're seeing a lot of leaders being forced to assume the worst, because there's just no clarity from the federal government about whether there'd be a secondary infusion like there was with the cares act, which is forcing them to hunker down and, and make some really difficult decisions.Jeff Davis:And at the state level, most States operate under constitutions or laws prohibiting them from running a deficit. So the deficits are cash in cash out. So they've got to arrange their, their future spending commitments based on anticipate the latest anticipated future tax revenues. And that's why they have to particularly curtail slow spending capital programs early and upfront to try to make sure that they don't run a deficit six or eight, six or 12 months down the line when the bills are coming due and being paid.Joe Bates:Rosemarie, I want to get you in the conversation here is what else how do you see since we're talking about the public sector here in public funding, how is the public funding going to affect the airlines? The airports, obviously the airlines got a little bit of assistance in the last month or so maybe not as much as they wanted, but what's your take on the public funding and how that's gonna affect the airline sector?Rosemarie Andolino:Well, I think you've seen two things, right? Not only did the airlines get some money, but airports did as well. Right now I think everybody is in a cost constraining mode, right? No spending, looking at ways to actually conserve money and continue the projects that have been funded or continue moving along. The things that have you know, make sense, but, longterm projects, new terminal developments, where if they haven't already again, been funded are going to be placed in a whole holding pattern right now, due to the fact that we need to see where the world's going. We need to see what type of demand there will be. I think this aligns, however, with large capital projects needing time to plan things out in order to before construction. But what will the future look like? That's going to be the challenge that we face.Rosemarie Andolino:And I think that's where we need to focus. Our time and energy right now is looking at what are going to be the needed things that our ports are going to need to put in place. If you think about 9/11 and what occurred after 9/11 TSA, we have all these check-in facilities. Now, you know, you have the meter greeter halls that now have all these security measures in place in places like Chicago's airports, older facilities, most U S airports weren't built to handle that type of impact in our terminal facilities. However, now what you see is going to be another layer of potential demands or needs of policy changes, which we won't even know for a while yet what's going to happen. So I think at the moment, airport directors, airlines are still trying to understand what is going to need to happen for, you know, the issue we're dealing with today, the pandemic we're dealing with today, but what then does the future bring, what do we have to plan for for the next phase of the next? What is?Rosemarie Andolino:The one thing I will say about our industry is, you know, the aviation sector has always been an indicator in the economy, right? It kind of leads because of the fact that you have to book your travel in advance. You start seeing where the spending is going. You start seeing what the airlines are putting in place, whether the demand is for the next three months, what's going to be happening in the fall. So this is going to be a time now where we're going to see the booking. So what's going to be booked by carriers and what the demand's going to be. You know, as cities are kind of hunkering down again, putting in more restrictions of travel, what's that next phase going to be, and what are those impacts going to be? And that's just phase one. We're not even into our fall phase two yet of what could happen.Rosemarie Andolino:But on the positive note is the aviation industry has always recovered stronger than where it was before. So ideally, you know, we could see these trends, you know, and recovery happened quickly. However, we're still out three to five years in that recovery. And what we'll come back first will be that domestic travel, right? The leisure travel, domestic travel, what's still on hold right now, which is kind of the bread and butter of the industry is business travel. And that is a key importance to the success of the entire, not only aviation industry, but hospitality industry as well. We talked about, you know, the entire economy at the opening of restaurants, et cetera, that all feeds from travel aviation and business.Joe Bates:So I want to ask a couple of followups here, Rosemarie, you talked about the short term and then the long term. So let's break that down in terms of funding, how are the airports and the airlines going to do the things they need to do in the short term? Where are they going to get the money from for that?Rosemarie Andolino:Well, again, I think there's been, there's been some money that has been passed around recently. I think everybody's looking at what's going to be the next phase. Is there going to be another CARES Act two? Or is it going to be the HR 2 and there will be, will there be provisions in that for and again, we'll the neck, there'll be another round of care act funding, right? So those two things are going to be extremely important. I think right now, in terms of where they get the money is again, what they've already issued. So airports are reliant on garbs right? General airport revenue, back bonds that have already perhaps been issued for key projects or AIP money that has come from the federal government and airports have, are they, they are longterm, they plan three, five years out. So projects I've already been planned designed, perhaps they're going through the bidding stage now for construction, you know, depending on what part of the world you're in. So that's work is going to continue. What the question will be is major, you know, terminal redevelopments, right? Major projects. When you have additional capacity right now in the, in, in the market, the question really is, are you going to retrofit your facilities, use that money to retrofit your facilities, to perhaps close down some concourses to consolidate the operations. You know, it's impacted everybody from the cleaning people that are, you know, the cleaning crews and cleaning these large facilities to the operations of concessions. You talked about the airlines, you know, the airports, there's so many jobs and activities that are part of aviation. So many behind the scenes that you don't realize that are, again, especially with key facilities like that are huge. Cargo has continued, you know, the demand for cargo high value cargo.Rosemarie Andolino:So a lot of retrofitting for those aircraft have been carrying cargo. Passenger carriers have been carrying cargo now more, even in, not only in the belly of the plane, but they've converted, you know, the passenger seating to carry cargo as well. So, you know, that has been growing and has been stable. But in terms of getting revenue, collecting money from what the normal revenue creations would be like, you know, the Passenger Facility Charge the concessionaires, all of that has basically come to a halt. It's just trickling it. And so that's where the focus will be on O&M, right? In terms of the maintenance of your facilities, I think to take advantage. Well, when I was at O'Hare, we were in a decline. It was the recession when we were building the $8 billion expansion program. And Kevin will remember this many airports were actually closing down their programs because of what was ahead.Rosemarie Andolino:We were actually moving forward because of the down in traffic, gave us the ability to actually build those runways, the infrastructure that normally has to be, you know, that's normally impacted with high volumes of operations, give you a little bit more flexibility in that construction of those major impacting projects. So for airports like Utah, who have said, we're going to continue to go forward, you know, they're continuing to build their facilities to get it done, save money on delivering it faster, right. And build, you know, it's, it's in that stage of what it needs to be complete. But for most airports, it's really going to be functional improvements that they're going to be needing to make with the money they have. And you, you know, reprioritizing, perhaps fundings of projects already out to actually move that money to do functional improvements for current environment.Joe Bates:Okay. So it sounds like, you know, things there for the moment in our airport space, the projects are continuing, but the question is a bit more longterm than this....Rosemarie Andolino:Major projects, yeah. Major change projects, I think are just pulling, are going slower. It hasn't completely, unless it's like a hotel development or certain things of that nature, and depending on where the stages and they are on their development. But if they're in the preconstruction, I think they're starting to go a little slower before they put the shovel in the ground in order to manage the future. Right. Because this is a three to five year recovery. It takes usually three to five years to build some major projects.Joe Bates:Sure. Anirban what are your thoughts about the airline industry and in particular, as you look at the sort of the macro economic movements here?Anirban Basu:Oh, I think there'll be a rapid bounce back. You know, you said it earlier, we're going to get a vaccine at some point, right? Come on Pfizer, come on, Maderna, come on, Berry, jeez. You know, Regeneron, Gilliad, somebody, you know, start up your computer, get some test tubes out and do this because that's, what's going to solve this problem. That's the only thing that can do it. It's not going to be a cause of our good behavior and our mask wearing. We don't seem capable of that. And so you can see the pent up demand out there. You can see that people want to travel right when Disney opens up. But I think the best example of this was when the Las Vegas casinos opened up and the long lines to try to get into those places. People want to live like that. They want to go to professional sports games.Anirban Basu:They want to do all of those things and allow that requires travel. And so once we get a vaccine and you know, obviously people are talking about how long they'll take to get people actually vaccinated. It's not just discovering the vaccine, but actually operationalizing it. But once that happens, I think you'll see tremendous traffic increases at some point in 2021 itself. I really believe that business travel is going to come back. I love these Zoom meetings. I really like this. This is fun, but there's nothing like that coffee break after a long speech, getting ready for the next speech and shaking the hands with sponsors and others. And so I think that comes back pretty, pretty, pretty quickly. I think, I think it comes back more quickly than most economists wouldRosemarie Andolino:On antibiotic. I think right now, if I could add, you touched on the fact of the what's happening, right? This is the leisure market, right? These airlines are offering right now, very discounted prices, just kind of fairs for travel. A lot of packages out there. You've got your choice, right? Because, but the reality is you can't social distance on a plane, right? You can wear your mask. But there are some challenges associated with that and where the risk is not being taken as in the business community, right. Business companies don't want to take that risk. And again, that's a key driver for the changes in the airline economy is that business traveler.David Zipper:I think we all agree. We need a vaccine. I might just connect actually the airport question with issues of a broader ones about transportation projects. I may a glimmer of hope for the airlines. Other not for transit is that for the foreseeable future, people are not comfortable taking transit. Ridership is down around 50% and ride hail trips are way down too. So what that suggests to a lot of people, myself included, is that one source of revenue for airports, meaning parking facilities, make it a bit of a boost, which is something that has not been the way it's going for a while. You disagree with that?Rosemarie Andolino:Yeah. Parking facilities have been consolidated again. There's really, there's no demand for parking right now. There's excess, you know, there's plenty of supply in terms of parking close proximity to your terminal if you're departing at the moment. So parking at airports is challenging. I mean, look at the rental car industry as well. You've seen Hertz in bankruptcy. You're going to see consolidation there. Yeah.David Zipper:Yeah there's no question of that, I guess for the next year though, I think I would expect, I find to make a bet. I would put more money on people on parking revenue for airports to come back faster than transit ridership.Jeff Davis:And over the next month or the next year or so, the data we have indicates that the best infrastructure performing there's going to be are hot lanes because what's going to be slow is to come back to, we get a vaccine is carpooling particularly with this DC, the DC area, and a couple other places had a thing called slug line where complete strangers would line up in certain places in the suburbs could be picked up by other complete strangers and share their air and their car for 15 minutes. So to go downtown, to be able to use the, the, the express lanes, that's going to be the last thing that comes back in all transportation and so hot lanes where you can pay extra money to use the carpool lane.Jeff Davis:If you think to getting there is important, or if, if, if the lanes are being congestion managed at all times, like the new I-66 is here what we've seen Transurban reported the lanes they run in China, and there are a bunch of them now actually have more ridership as a month ago than they did before Coronavirus. So at least in the time being, not, not longterm and until we get a vaccine, single occupancy ridership, and the toll lanes that that make revenue directly from people who are willing to pay our may even do better in the interim than were doing before.Joe Bates:So now Jeff, that's assuming that we have traffic like we had previously, right? If, if people aren't going into the office, then maybe we're not going to have the same level of congestion. I don't know. What, what do you think about that?Jeff Davis:That's true. Okay. We're going to, I anticipate sort of slow quasi reopenings and I forget, how, how, why did this spread out? Some of the places that went to a, to a terminal congestion can kind of congestion pricing anyway, like Interstate 66, Northern Virginia is now told all morning that those, the congestion based set by computer where that you know, the toll varies minute by minute to try to keep traffic at 45 miles an hour, wherever I think it is. So things like that once I unfortunately if we're, if we're like, if a vaccine takes two years there, there, there has to be significantly more reopening than we have in urban cores to get through the two years. You can't have two years of shut down. So to the extent that there's going to be some kind of reopening vaccine or not single occupancy cars or cars occupied by immediate family members only are going to be where it's at in that short term. And then it's a question of once we do get a vaccine of digging out of those habits and trying to get back to the changes in, in using different modes that we were trying to get to before the coronavirus.Joe Bates:Okay. So I want to go back and talk just a little bit more about the public sector. And before we turn to the private sector, in terms of projects and Anirban, I want to direct this one to you, how are the States and localities going to make up for the revenue shortfalls they're seeing, you know, the, the tax revenues are way down, people aren't spending as much. How are they, how are they gonna survive and continue to fund their portion of these public projects?Anirban Basu:I mean, there's only one way isn't that, right? They have to have a system called the federal government. I mean, that's, it mean it had been pointed out by Jeff. I believe state local governments have to balance a budget every year, but the federal government doesn't and the federal government right now is looking at a 10 year Treasury yield of 0.615%. There's actually a really good time for the federal government to borrow. I know the national debt is 26 and a half trillion dollars. I get that at some point, we have to start paying some of that back. I understand that, but we're in the midst of a pandemic crisis and state local governments have already laid off 1.5 million workers in recent months. If that continues, then that will really stifle the economic recovery we all want for this country. And so that's, that's it.Anirban Basu:I mean, how else are you going to make a billions of billions of dollars of lost revenue? If you try to increase taxes, if you're in New York or Connecticut or New Jersey, guess what happens? People move to Florida, you know, so there's a limit to what you can do in terms of revenue enhancement. Now you can, you know, told more roads and so on and so forth. There's some of that, there's no, there's less elasticity there. So customers have to use those roads to get to wherever they're going. And so maybe that makes sense, but otherwise it's really the federal government. And that I think you're going to see this month is some kind of stimulus package with monies for state and local governments. That's going to help a lot on the capital side and on the operating side.Joe Bates:Okay. David, anything else to add on that subject?David Zipper:Yeah, I mean, in the absence of federal funding, I, the only other options I see are, would be new tax revenue at the local level. And Audubon's right, that there's a cap to what you can do there. And as we saw in San Francisco earlier this week, even there, in a particularly affluent city, they didn't want to do a very small sales tax raise to fund Caltrain. So what you end up with are, I'm just not just talking about transit. You know, recently he was looking to push out the purchase of a bunch of electric buses for a couple of years, and there was a $15 billion program up in Boston to convert commuter rail, to be a regional rail with 15 minute headways and being all electric. That's now a little bit on ice so that they won't say that explicitly.David Zipper:I mean, this stuff is just going to get postponed unless there's an infusion of federal dollars. Cause I tend to agree with Anirban that there, there might be bits and pieces of additional revenue. You could get it at the state and local level through tax raises, but it's not, it's not anything close to enough.Joe Bates:Okay. I want to take a second to remind the audience that we do have the Q and A chat for, for questions and also the chat box. At the moment we don't have any questions or, Oh, Kevin. Okay, go ahead, Kevin.Kevin McMahon:We just got one. The question is the panel is painted a very good picture of demands in aviation and transit, particularly being in down short term major infrastructure clients, or feeling the uncertainty of commitment from the federal government on funding. What would you advise most of our listeners who are running engineering firms in terms of, of their employee base, should they be looking to you know, really be frugal in terms of hiring plans over the next year? Or do you see any type of demands that would encourage folks to go out and hire additional people.Joe Bates:Who wants to take that one?Anirban Basu:No, I was going to say, you know, like I've been saying it to, you know, whether you're an engineering firm, CEO or whatever company that happens to be, what are we in right now? We're in cash preservation mode, that's it? You know, we're trying to hold on to liquidity. I mean, that's it, we're trying to make payroll now. You know, the other part of this is there will be an economic recovery. There was after 2008, 2009, there will be this time around. And so who do you want to be with you as that recovery begins? You want the best and the brightest engineers and your stars, your stars, your star engineers, whoever you really need to be part of the team. And so the, you know, you go down, you know, person, you know, person by person on your team and ask the question, do I need this person? And it's an unfortunate situation. We don't want to throw people out of work. That's not what this is about, but at the end of the day, if your enterprise doesn't survive, you're no good to anybody including yourself. And so I think that's the mode we're in right now. There's just too much uncertainty to be in any other mode,Jeff Davis:The goal of the federal aid right now is, and should be trying to hold things level to try to keep the amount of total amount of federal state, and local money going for infrastructure type projects to be the same as it was going to be had coronavirus not happen. And then you've got a separate question of the great, the great infrastructure backlog, but I think that's going to have to go on the, on the back burner shortly in terms of just trying to maintain temporary directed aid, whether it's to revenue replacement to state governments or whatever, trying to tread water until coronavirus is over it. And then next year try to do some kind of broader infrastructure boost above the current spending levels that we're, that state local governments are now struggling to maintain. So it was a bad, it turned that it was a bad time to bring up infrastructure bills this year because of the focus is much more on preserving the funding that we've already got going at the state local level versus trying to build significant new dollar amounts of new capacity above that, which I think is going to have to wait till next year.Joe Bates:Rosemary were you wanting to add something to that?Rosemarie Andolino:I was going to add onto what Anirban said was the fact that, you know, do you have the right people is really the question, because I think again, as airports look to look to the future, airlines are looking to what is going to be necessary to make their customers feel safe and to continue to facilitate travel. What are the things that that, that are going to be needed at airports? And I think we need to look to engineers and others to help us understand what types of technologies, right, whether it's cleaning and sanitation, if it's technology for contactless opportunities to service customers better, and it contactless sweat, what are the types of things that need to be brought into place again, to create functional enhancements of the facility today for better service that customers can rely on and feel, you know, again, give them the comfort and safety for their travel journey.Rosemarie Andolino:So I think, and for the future. So I think that is a key important component. I think also part of what's been discussed in Congress as well. And Jeff, you could probably add more to this, but the Congress is looking at, if we are going to make investments, we want those investments then to put our infrastructure in a better place, right. To make it better than it was. Many airports are older facilities and are retrofitted. How do you take those facilities that you have today and whatever investments you make make it so that they're better for the future sustainable green, you know, less energy in terms of technology. Those, I think are some of the things that can be worked on now. And again, you know, do you have to UV light, you know, baggage as it's going through baggage systems, you know, what is going to be the future? And I think getting the bright, you know, engineering groups that are out there, the people, the right talent to help think these things through and come up with solutions and ideas are going to be extremely important again, how do you minimize costs and investment, but come up with great solution,Joe Bates:Kevin, it looks like we've got some more questions in there.Kevin McMahon:Thank you, Joe. There's, there's a couple of questions. One I'll ask the panel right now is, conventionally, infrastructure has been seen as a, as a great type of stimulus funding mechanism to get people back to work. It seems like nowadays more of the stimulus is funding. Those aren't just giving laid off employees cash versus creating jobs. Ins't this the perfect environment to create an infrastructure bill that would think big and get people back to work. Why is that not as robust in the discussion as some of our panelists, some of our listeners think it should be?Joe Bates:Jeff, do you want to start us off on that one?Jeff Davis:Yeah. well, first of all, your aid needs to be targeted and what your problem is. And immediately, you know, as of June 30th, the number of people employed in heavy and civil engineering construction seasonally adjusted was down 8% from February.Speaker 4:...Seasonally adjusted is pivotally important in outdoor activities like construction, but that 8% is 85,000 jobs. I'm not sure that that should be the prime focus of federal recovery when you've got 5 million people out of work just in the hospitality and restaurant sectors alone, but not to mention, you know, the million or so state, federal, state, local government employees you know, 400,000 people in transportation. You know, the infrastructure everyday of automation of complication means that infrastructure spending as a way of just providing jobs as stimulus is a little less effective than it was back in the good old days. So even though, you know, we definitely, as a country need to be spending more money on infrastructure, focusing on infrastructure as a job creator is probably not the right answer when all of the jobs, the majority of job losses are not from people who were probably going to want to retrain to go work in construction.Rosemarie Andolino:You know what though, Jeff, I think on top of that though, is the benefit of with low traffic, right? With low utilization of our infrastructure today because people are staying at home still to get minimized impacts, right? Greenhouse gas impacts, minimize congestion impacts all of the things that also come when you actually do more with a, you know, kind of a respite here where there aren't as many constraints on your current infrastructure, can you, it's easier to close down lanes and to, you know, to build more. The challenges we have, let's say the Myrtle Beach corridor. I know the Congressmen there had been struggling many, many years because it's a definite destination for the drive market. And, but the roads there are built for the local traffic not to handle the ingress and egress of the swells of people that come and drive into the marketplace.Rosemarie Andolino:So it causes major conduct congestion for those living there and for the, you know, the community at large, to make those investments today, while traffic is low, it will be a win win for again, when that traffic, when that curve starts, you know, that that color starts rocketing up again, to be able to accommodate them efficiently and to grow the market. Because with the delays that the experiencing last year, you know, they're going to start to lose, they would have lost start losing traffic. So if we could fix a tent to the problem today, so that it will, we're prepared for that future growth again would be ideal. And if it creates jobs and feeds families that's right.David Zipper:Yeah. Yeah. There's a variety of transit agencies are doing exact same thing of trying to do the capital investments on an expedited timeline now to take advantage of the fact that few people are riding, same thing goes, a few people are using a bridge, easier time to do repairs. It's less disruptive and that will provide some efficiency gains. The problem though, is that you know, capital budgets are different from operating budgets, certainly for transit agencies and for everybody else. And and it's the farebox revenue that's gone down 50% plus in many places it's coming back very slowly and there simply isn't enough money to keep the operating operator, to have the lights on effectively. That's where I worry. Although I think all the points Jeff made about recognizing that transportation is part of a much larger economy, which is where other parts have been hit even harder is a worthwhile thing to keep in mind so that we can maintain perspective.Joe Bates:Kevin, do you want to ask any other questions before we move on to the private sector?Kevin McMahon:Yeah. I'll just ask one question, Joe. And it relates to really, there's a few questions I'll try to collapse into one. Is there any chance that Congress will do anything before the election and you know, like suspend NEPA from, for the next six months or anything like that, or are we sort of in a really holding the Fenn vote until this whole election plays out?Jeff Davis:I don't think legally they can suspend NEPA the, with anything they did calling them the emergency would be, would be instantly drawn out in court. But the Trump Administration just yesterday released the final regulation on reforming all of the NEPA on amending all the NEPA regulations comprehensively. The first time since they were issued in 1978 and putting hard two year time limits on a lot of these process. So, like I said, the regulation was released yesterday. It should be officially printed in the Federal Register in the next couple of days and take effect 60 days after that, I'm sure the environmentalist are gonna Sue, but that was the combination of, of the entire Trump Administration NEPA regulatory agenda for last four years as it came about yesterday. So I'm not sure how much they're going to be able to do in in addition to that, between now and the end of the year.Joe Bates:All right, let's go ahead and move on to the topic of the private funding private projects, you know, this is sort of a whole other animal here what's going to happen with you know, apartment building, home, building a high rise construction. Are we going to see a credit crunch? And, you know, I saw a piece of information this morning. It said home builder sentiment is back to pre coronavirus levels, which really surprised me. So, David, what do you think is going to happen here in the private sector?David Zipper:I, well, people still need places to live. I'm not sure how much they're going to need places to, to work in the same way as we did before. So you know, I think I would look for resurgence coming from the residential side faster than I would expect to see it on the, the office development side, particularly in the dense cities like we're where I'm based in Washington, DC, where I've already heard murmurings about possible conversions from corporate into into residential. I think that's going to take some time to play out, but I would have every expectation that residential would come back before commercial. And then there is the next question of where is it going to be in a central city? Is it going to be in the suburban, is it going to be, is this the big moment for some of the like second tier cities like Denver and Boise and salt Lake city to suddenly suck some of the talent away from the big, expensive coastal megalopolises? I tend to be a little skeptical of that for a variety of reasons. But I will note just to say that there is something happening that the rents in San Francisco year over year are down over 12%, which is higher than any other market.David Zipper :So that does suggest at least that by the way, San Francisco has the highest rent in the whole country. So it does suggest there is some movement now, at least temporarily of people who can move and go live with family, or just relocate for a while that they are I think, and this is, I think it's a bit of a shaky time for, for a market like the Bay area. But you know, I always, my attitude is always, it's, it's easy to overestimate the duration and extent of a change when you're in the middle of it. So I wouldn't quite if I had the chance, I wouldn't sell off all my my buildings in Manhattan just yet, let's put it that way.New Speaker:And Anirban, what are we looking at in terms of a credit crunch? Are we, do we have anything to worry about there is the Fed providing sufficient liquidity in the markets and are the private projects going to have problems getting funded?Anirban Basu:Oh, I think the credit crunch has already begun. Third reserve can create as much money supplies at once. It can't force banks to lend, and there's nothing bankers like less than defaults and delinquencies, they hate it and ends careers and it destroys the quarterly financials. So yeah, it's already begun. And, you know, with respect to, you know, some of the comments David was making very good comments. I think this is the decade of the suburbs. The previous decade was the decade of the cities. Millennials turn into their twenties and large numbers, often renting very expensive apartments, driving density, but, and, and this was going to be the decade of the suburbs, even without COVID-19, but COVID-19 makes it even more so, so owner occupied part of the residential market is flying high - homes are flying off the shelves. Condos are selling freely in all markets, even in Connecticut.Anirban Basu:But I'd say that multifamily market will be much more challenging going forward. You're going to see a real surge in vacancy rates in multifamily America going forward. And of course, that's going to further perpetuate that credit crunch and then commercial real estate forget about it. It's already in crisis and will be in crisis for many years to come. Because again, of all those empty office suites, abandoned storefronts, shuttered restaurants on and so forth. So the suburbs will fare better than the cities, but commercial real estate generally will be in quite bad shape.Joe Bates:Rosemarie. Do you have any thoughts on this topic?Rosemarie Andolino:Well, again, living in an urban environment in Chicago, I would agree that you're starting to see, you know somebody joked about people moving to Florida, right? There's the, there's been a huge influx of people relocating. And I think you're seeing that from a lot of major cities. I mean, people whether it was the, you know, the COVID that hit New York and Chicago and other locations and people then relocating to what they thought were communities that were less exposed or had things under control, which has now basically inverted, right? So now those communities are challenged, but you've got distance, you've got, you know, more against, you're not as crunched in together, right? As in an urban environment, you have some more freedom. So to actually, you know, be outside and have space away from people. So I think there there's definitely that exodus happening and you know, with the change of offices and you know, some of the leading technology companies, right, that are out there are saying, don't come back. You know, we don't need you to come back to the office for a, you know, let's revisit it in a year or two years. So if that's where most of the key employment was, and if they can all work from home, you know, will they be buying them a nicer, more expensive home and spending their money there. If they're not moving around the country as much, either in travel.David Zipper:If I could, it was an interesting thing that just happened. I think it was today, if not today, yesterday, Airbnb, which I think is a really interesting company in the midst of all this, just announced that they're going to go, they're back to doing an IPO. And what's interesting is they got hammered hard. They had to raise a down round of capital because when the coronavirus hit people did the whole, like one night or two night business just disappeared. But now they've created this whole new market and the CEO, Brian, Brian Chesky talks about this of month to two month rentals, where people are going into a cabin here, there would have you. And it's true that some of the largest employers in the country, some of the tech companies in particular said, we're not going to require people to be back throughout 2020. It opens the door. And then Airbnb has really fast recovery with this creation of a new longterm rental market, which by the way, is driven not by urban locations. Does lead to me to the question. I think anyone who goes beyond asking the question is saying, they know more than they really do of whether some of these, some people are going to decide, you know, what, for the foreseeable future, I really don't need to live in a central city with my family anymore. How that plays out. I don't know, but it's interesting to watchRosemarie Andolino:Well, and if I can add to that, I think what the additional factors is going to be in the next few weeks, it's really going to show its head is if people, if school districts are not going to require kids to actually go to school, then parents can relocate anywhere and spend the next three months, six months, as you said, in different cities or different communities. You know, cause they can learn from anywhere they can work from anywhere and the children can learn from anywhere. So that's, I think is going to be a key factor coming up that hasn't actually shown itself yet.Speaker 5:Kevin, do we have any questions on the private sector side of things?Kevin McMahon:Yeah, there's there's one, one one quick comment that one of our Connecticut participants, Anirban, really liked your comment about wow, when people are moving to Connecticut, it's shocking. So you got some air airtime on that, but Joe, the question is about some private, some public ports in inland waterways. Is that really just dependent on the economy and freight movement? Or what does the panel think about that space?Joe Bates:Who'd like to take that one.Rosemarie Andolino:I think the cruise ship cruise industry in terms of passenger cruises is challenged right now. So I think in terms of ports, for the purpose of the hospitality industry, the travel industry, that's a longer term recovery than even aviation. You know, so you're looking more from, you know, four to seven years. It's just, how are they going to deal with those issues?Jeff Davis:The the, the big trillion dollar infrastructure bill, the House passed last on July 2nd, didn't really deal with ports and inland waterways and harbors that much because the bill that passed the house was a Democratic only messaging exercise. And they were very close to a bipartisan two year reauthorization bill for those programs that passed committee in the House yesterday, it's past committee in the Senate the month ago. And it's one of the few things that actually make an inaccurate law on its own before the end of the year. And in addition to authorizing a few new, large projects. They're also trying desperately. They found that they finally found a budget gimmick in the House. That'll work to unlock that nine and a half billion dollars. That's been collected over 30 years in the Harbor Maintenance Trust Fund and not spent. So that may get an act of the law this year, finally separate from any other infrastructure package which would really open the flood Gates on a lot of much needed harbor dredging capacity improvements, et cetera.Joe Bates:We only have a few minutes left here. So I'd like to ask each of you to peer into your crystal ball. This is my final question, which I like asking on these, these round tables. And the question is, I'm going to start with you on a bond. One is a two part question one, and you've, you've gotten into this a little already, but how long will this recovery take for us to reach levels that were pre COVID and not only how long will it take, but what's, what are the, what's the critical thing that has to happen for the recovery to proceed?Anirban Basu:Oh, it'll take years to fully recover from this. I mean, I think the initial period of recovery has been sharp will be sharp going forward, even with some of these reopenings being postponed and some of them even being re reversed, but but it's going to take years. I mean, if I asked you the question, you know, back to you, how long did it take us to get to a 50 year low in unemployment? It took us 50 years. I mean, the economy was really shockingly good coming into this pre-crisis period. And we entered, as I say, 2020 with so much momentum. It's going to take a long time to put that back together again. And we in America, what's it going to take to really get back bipartisanship, right? The radical center re-emerging so we can work together so that something like a tip O'Neill and Ron Reagan on a Friday afternoon, going to a Georgetown pub to talk policy that could happen again in this country. And that's, what's going to take, cause we have unskilled immigration policy. We have unsettled infrastructure policy. We have global trade fragmenting and uncertain trade policy. And by the way, that relates to the port's outlook, as well as it turns out you put all that together. That's what we're going to need bipartisanship.Joe Bates:Okay. Rosemarie, what about you? How long will this recovery take? And what's the critical piece to proceeding?Rosemarie Andolino:I believe right now, I think it seemed when this whole hit, I should say we were at like the 19 North, the 1954 levels of, you know, in terms of aviation and travel. You know, after 9/11 we saw a 30% decline in travel, but it was one region right? Here, this is global. And in April we saw an 80% decline. And what really was moving was those that had to move, you know, whether it was medical professionals, meaning to move locations. You're seeing that come back with some leisure travel, but I think again, the business community is going to be key because that is the higher spend that the airlines and others need. And that is really the bigger indicator. I think you're looking at, I mean, 2022 really before you'll see kind of the comeback here, because I think we're at least a year out from a vaccine, because again, we talked about that that's going to be key for people to feel comfortable and safe. The one thing we have in the United States is short haul traffic and domestic traffic, right?Rosemarie Andolino:So you can travel essentially within the 50 States with less restrictions. So I think people, whether they travel by car, but by air they'll feel comfortable getting on the flight for an hour with their masks and, you know, better cleanliness the activities that have occurred on aircraft now. So you're going to continue to see that consolidation, I think will happen fairs for probably then, you know, start going up in that regard. But international traffic, we're still looking at probably 2024 before that really comes back. So, you know, it's gonna, it's gonna be a while. Ideally, you know, the industry itself there are things that need to be done right, to make travel better for everyone, whether it be the passenger, the airlines, or the airports, whether it's funding. We talked about NEPA and, you know, constructability of programs, et cetera, and implementation.Rosemarie Andolino:So I would hope that during this time Congress can take them and the leadership can come together from the different organizations to actually solve those solutions so that when traffic does come back, when we are earnestly building, you know, new programs, bigger projects, you know, building the terminals of the future for our airports that have not had those investments in many, many years, that we're able to do those with great technology with simplified processes and proper funding so that they can continue to be the economic engines that they have been for communities across the country.Joe Bates:Great. David, you next and we'll close it out with Jeff.David Zipper:Sure. I find this question. It would be a lot easier for me to answer if we were talking about Canada or about Holland, because there, you're talking about basically like the, the V I think, which is like, you basically have the virus come, you, you provide some, put some cash in people's pockets to make the economy be, be put it in a coma basically. And then you come back out and if we're talking about those countries, you can see that already at this point was made earlier that auto traffic is back up and it's already higher than the peak rush hour to auto traffic is higher than it was before t he virus in places like Longxeuver in China and, and Shengen. But we, we frankly blew our chance to do that in this country.David Zipper:And you know, and I actually worry about how bad I think things could actually get much worse in the next few months, as people start losing their homes, being foreclosed on as unemployment benefits run out. I don't think we realized that we are on the precipice of things, getting a lot worse with a lot of people in the middle class or lower middle class being unable to just survive and who knows what that's going to do. It, that that actually leads to political questions that go far beyond you know, the demand for certain types of engineering services. But I will say that it's going to take a long time before we're going to be, we need a vaccine. And even with the vaccine, I think it's going to take a long time in the United States to see a rebound in, in, in critical parts of the economy, especially for engineers, such as office construction. We're a long way away from that. I think we're a long way away from it with regards to to urban transportation. And to be honest, like, like the most important things to do now in my view is to be honest, to call your elected representatives and tell them we absolutely need more stimulus money in people's pockets. Now that's my personal view.Joe Bates:Great. Thanks, David. And Jeff, what about you? And then after your comments, Jeff, we're going to go to Daphne to close us out here.Jeff Davis:In terms of additional federal dollars for new infrastructure you know, new projects, new structures, new routes. I don't expect any action on that this year because Democrats, particularly in the House and Republicans are a light they're light years apart on the relative priorities, they believe should be given to highways versus transit and mass transit and Amtrak, the whole rural, urban divide. And every day, that gets closer to the election with the polls, where they are Democrats saying, why would I bother negotiating issues that fundamental with Republican Senate and Republican president when there's a 50, 50-ish or plus chance that starting in January, they could hope that Democrats get the trifecta and write a bill. They really want, instead of locking a compromise priorities in for five or six years next year is what it's all gonna be about. You know, the extensive infrastructure to be one of many priorities. In addition to coronavirus, it's all going to get wrapped up in the fact that starting August 1st of next year, the debt sexual debt limit will reset. And they'll start taking emergency measures.Jeff Davis:We've already added four point 6 trillion, I think since the last reset August 1st, just a year ago. So this will be by far the largest debt limit increase in the history of the country. And so September, October, next year, treasury, won't be able to move money around and traditionally many of your major turning points in federal fiscal policy in the last 30 years, Graham Rudman the 1999, three budget deals, budget control act HARP, Fannie Freddie bailout, last year budget deals. They all revolve around debt debt, ceiling crisis of trying to find ways to get the votes, to raise the debt limit and all the fiscal policy for that year wound up getting wrapped up in it. So I expect that to be the centerpiece of next year, around September, October, 2021, that will set the stage for fiscal policy for the next five to 10 years.Joe Bates:Got it. Yeah. Well, let's, let's all keep our fingers crossed that we have a vaccine by then. So at least we can take that out of the equation. Thank you all to the panelists for joining us and Daphne, why don't you go ahead and close this out.Daphne Bryant:Great. Thank you. Thank you all for joining us today. Thank you to our panelists and our donors for making this session possible. We have a short evaluation that we'll send you this afternoon. So please share your experience with us. Thank you all. Have a great afternoon and please stay safe. Thank you.

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Caltrain Could Be Derailed

Fifth & Mission

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 16, 2020 18:56

Under the strange governance system that rules the Peninsula train system, two San Francisco supervisors were able to kill a sales tax measure to save it. Caltrain has lost 95% of its riders during the COVID-19 pandemic and says it may have to shut down without the cash infusion. | Get unlimited Chronicle access: sfchronicle.com/pod Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Bay Area Transit Systems Slash Service as Revenue Plummets

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 31, 2020 13:09

Facing a steep drop in fare revenue during to the coronavirus pandemic, San Francisco MUNI on Monday suspended all light rail and subway trains, replacing them with buses. Meanwhile, Caltrain cut its weekday train service by half, and the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority halted light rail service and modified bus routes to prioritize lines that stop at hospitals, grocery stores and food pantries. AC transit also announced deep cuts that will go into effect on Tuesday. We'll talk about the impact of the pandemic on Bay Area transit systems, operators and riders.

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Episode 7: Transit-Oriented Development

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Play Episode Listen Later Mar 19, 2020 55:19

SamTrans' Director of Real Estate and Property Development, Brian Fitzpatrick, offers insight into the District's land use over the years along with Caltrain's new transit-oriented development policy (or as we loving call it, "Tod") and what it means for the agency's future.

The All Local: Friday 2-21-20 Evening

KCBS ALL LOCAL

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 21, 2020 3:59

The president of the Oakland police officers union is worried about future leadership of the department. A change is coming to Caltrain service this weekend. The CDC says aggressive travel restrictions are helping protect the United States from the COVID- 19 virus. Local stories. From the KCBS Radio Newsroom, this is "The All Local" for the afternoon of Friday, February 21, 2020.

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Your Transit Love Stories

california valentines day love stories bart transit caltrain

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 14, 2020 28:00

Every day, millions of people across the country commute to work by public transit. In California, we have more than 100 public transit and bus districts across the state helping us get around -- and helping us have chance encounters with a potential new mate. This Valentine's Day, we'll hear how couples found love while riding on the bus, BART, CalTrain and more. And we still want to hear from you: Listen for the cue to call us at 866-733-678 during the live show or email us at forum@kqed.org with your transit love story.

The All Local: Tuesday 2-4-20 Evening

KCBS ALL LOCAL

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 5, 2020 7:10

The latest on the early results from the Iowa Caucus, flights in and out of China have been reduced in wake of the Coronavirus, a bill aims to integrate Bay Area transit, Berkeley could move forward with more changes to Telegraph avenue, and Caltrain will have six weekend service closures later this month. Local people. Local stories. From the KCBS Radio Newsroom, this is "The All Local" for the evening of Tuesday, February 4, 2020.

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Salinas Rail Project

Salinas: Past, Present, Future

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 5, 2020 16:38

Christina Watson is the Principal Transportation Planner for TAMC (Transportation Agency of Monterey County). Today, we talked about the history of the railroad in Salinas and the future of rail in Salinas.Currently, Package 1 is in construction at Lincoln Ave and Market Street, Salinas. The cost was about $11.2 Million. Package 2 is a layover facility which will cost about $23 Million. This rail project will ultimately connect Salinas to Gilroy and subsequently to the Bay Area via Caltrain. This has been in planning for over 20 years and is projected to be completed in 2022. Check out the TAMC website for more information: https://www.tamcmonterey.org/programs/rail/monterey-county-rail-extension/monterey-county-rail-extension-phase-1-kick-start-project/

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Episode 5: Caltrain Maintenance 101 (Part 2)

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Play Episode Listen Later Jan 15, 2020 63:30

We continue our conversation about Caltrain's maintenance operations and future improvements coming with electrification from a high level perspective with Chief Operating Officer, Michelle Bouchard.

Episode 4: Caltrain Maintenance 101 (Part 1)

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Play Episode Listen Later Dec 18, 2019 52:01

Get the scoop on Caltrain’s day-to-day maintenance operations. With electrified service on the horizon and the ever-present challenges of an aging fleet, this month's episode offers insight into the behind-the-scenes work that keeps our trains moving, the state of the railroad and the exciting future ahead with new electric trains.

Episode 3: Route FCX and the Future of Express Bus

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Play Episode Listen Later Nov 13, 2019 56:43

SamTrans Director of Planning, Christy Wegener, talks about the agency's recently launched Express Bus Route FCX operating between Foster City and San Francisco. We dive into the US-101 Express Bus Feasibility Study, what we're learning about the new route and travel patterns, as well as the future of express bus service in San Mateo County.

Caltrain History & Construction Update

San Mateo Focus

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 5, 2019 4:53

Judy gives a primer on CalTrain’s rich history and provides an update on the construction going on in San Mateo.

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Experience 023. Sometimes the situation just goes bad. Making the most of the experience. The Seat 1A Podcast.

The Seat 1A Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 4, 2019 50:11

In this experience Vinny and Geoff share more of their experiences when, try as they may, the situation just went badly. First of all, we want to send a shoutout to fellow podcasters Plane Talking UK. We're lining up co-hosting in an upcoming episode of theirs. Stay tuned for more info. By popular demand, we're sharing more of our travel experiences – good, bad and ugly – and how we worked at resolving them or made the best of the situation. Shoutout to Sam Chui for his review of the Air India (AI) Dreamliner business class experience. Vinny shared a rant about the security experience at MAA in Experience 021 from his RTW trip in the summer of 2019. The rant is back in this experience with full force for his experiences with Air India (AI) – both for in-flight experiences from SIN-MAA-CMB, and one of the top three worst ever lounge experiences he ever had at MAA. You might need a cold lassi after listening to the rant. Geoff shares his multiple ground travel experiences trying to get from Penang to Kuala Lumpur in July 2019. First the train Google says he should take didn't exist, and then there was a ticket circus with the bus ride that he took instead. Vinny pulls out a story from his vault of crazy experiences – this time in St. Petersburg, Russia in 2003 hitchhiking to make a train connection to get to Helsinki. But what happens when he missed the connection? (Hint – he got to Helsinki and experienced a Tupolev Tu-134). Geoff shares his overnight ground transport experience at SIN from his summer 2019 RTW trip. Where was the shuttle that was supposed to leave every 15 minutes? Sometimes waiting ends up being worth it – thanks to a great family from Perth who shared sightseeing advice. Vinny shares a recent experience from autumn 2019 at SFO. How to get to the Caltrain station to take him into the city, with minimal signage and lack of directions from Google transit. Not only that, where and how did he have to pay for the ticket? Geoff shares a terrific airside tour experience he had in October 2019 at YYZ. Thanks to Russ, Mark and Haaz for their great work and wealth of information. News Items: Independent (UK) article "Airline passenger stuffs laptop down her jumpsuit and pretends to be pregnant to avoid excess baggage charge" Associated Press article "TSA finds gun-shaped toilet paper roller in bag at airport" If you have a story of when your situation just went bad, a question or other experience that you would like to share, please email us at stories(at)seat1a.org or find us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Patreon. Show notes are available online at http://podcast.seat1a.org/

Episode 2: How Measure W Drives Better Transportation

Talking Headways: A Streetsblog Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 16, 2019 33:04

SamTrans Board Director Peter Ratto talks about the impact of Measure W, a voter-approved San Mateo County 1/2 cent transportation sales tax that passed in November, 2018 and went into effect July 1, 2019.

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The All Local: Friday 10-04-19 Morning

KCBS ALL LOCAL

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 4, 2019 4:03

Caltrain expansion, Santa Clara County worker strike continues, reaction pouring in to San Francisco DA's resignation. From the KCBS Radio Newsroom, this is "The All Local" for the morning of Friday, October 4, 2019.

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Episode 253: Integrated Trips for People Not Vehicles

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 26, 2019 70:53

This week we’re joined by Arielle Fleisher Transportation Policy Director at SPUR, Adina Levin, Executive Director of Friends of Caltrain, and Ian Griffiths Co-Founder and Director of Seamless Bay Area to talk about transit fare integration and policy. We chat about what fare policy is and isn’t, best practices of fare integration from around the world, the difficulty of regional advocacy when there are sooo many meetings to go to, and what's next for the Bay Area. For more information about The Overhead Wire, visit http://theoverheadwire.com or follow us on twitter @theoverheadwire

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Episode 1: Improving Safety on Caltrain Tracks

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Play Episode Play 31 sec Highlight Listen Later Sep 17, 2019 56:50

We kick off this series with a focus on rail safety and infrastructure. Rob Scarpino, Caltrain's Deputy Director of Rail Infrastructure, talks about the agency's efforts to improve its crossings to keep people safe. Nancy Sheehan of California's Operation Lifesaver closes the hour with a conversation around rail safety awareness. Join us for some Wheel Talk!

What Do Startups Need When Leasing an Office Space

Commercial Real Estate Investing From A-Z

Play Episode Listen Later May 23, 2019 12:00

In this episode, we interview Reuben Torenberg, a commercial real estate broker who specializes in helping startups, technology companies, and venture capital firms find office space in the San Francisco Bay Area and beyond. You can read this episode here: https://montecarlorei.com/what-do-startups-look-for-when-leasing-an-office/ What do startups look for when leasing an office? Every startup is in rapid growth mode. At the very beginning you don't know exactly what your projections are 12 months out, even six months out. So you are looking for a space to do a few things: 1. Attract talent. 2. Manage growth. You don't want to get an office that's too big and be hemorrhaging money. 3. Staying flexible. It's very hard both in San Francisco and throughout the world to find space that will let you stay flexible as you continue to grow larger, as landlords are looking for three to five year terms. You have to be creative in how you're able to position your client to stay short term. One of the things you can do is actually get into subleasing. A lot of companies that are growing too quickly or shrinking faster and they'd hope need to offload space for 12 months, 18 months, which tend to be very, very attractive situations for our clients. Who would be responsible for subleasing that space? The tenant or the landlord? The tenant is responsible. They become a sub landlord in that instance, and they put the space in the sublease market, usually at a premium here in San Francisco because it is so attractive to startups. And then once they managed that whole leasing process, they need to get the landlord's consent where they present the sublease to the landlord and the landlord has 30 days to say, yes we would like this new tenant, or no. Another huge thing for startups is being near public transit. Attracting talent in San Francisco has become extremely difficult. They're now looking to the East Bay. There's also a lot of talent down in the South Bay with Stanford, with Berkeley in the East Bay. Being near Caltrain and being near Bart is a huge plus, and rents are much higher near those areas. So startups try and find something in between. Subleasing is one option. What are some other things that they look for when leasing an office? It all ties into the big main question: will this place help us attract talent? Once you get past that, it goes into a lot of the comfort stuff, so a big one is how many meeting rooms are in this space. A lot of times startups like to be in wide open environment to maximize the amount of people you can fit in, and to endorse collaboration, to have everyone talking, hanging out, help the culture. But everyone at some point needs to enclose themselves in a room to have a private conversation. The question is, are there enough meeting rooms for us to fit? This is frequently a pain point. We have a metric actually for it, and it will vary between companies, but we say that startups should have at least one meeting room for every 7 - 10 employees. So if you have 50 employees, you should get at least five meeting rooms. Another one is size. Can we fit all of our employees for the duration of the term? If this is a three year lease, but we're going to be blowing out of it in a year, do we need to take on more space? Are there enough restrooms? Reuben Torenberg: reuben.torenberg@cbre.com Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/reuben-torenberg-b985b646/ Twitter: rtorenberg021 Instagram: rtorenberg021 --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/best-commercial-retail-real-estate-investing-advice-ever/support

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Indul a Közvetlen Kocsi – 2019. évi 1. adás

Közvetlen Kocsi

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 29, 2019 60:39

Közvetlen Kocsi www.kozvetlenkocsi.hu A RegionalBahn hangos kiadása 2019. évi 1. adás Főbb témák: Újra közlekednek személyszállító vonatok Ipolyság és Zólyom között. Amerikai anzix: Caltrain villamosítás, nyugati parti múzeumvasút, mozdonyfelújítás és interurbán-villamos. Hazai aktuális: MÁV-START vezércsere és az IC+-projekt esélylatolgatása. Svájci képeslapok: vágányzár az RhB-nál és bennfentes infók a Rétiai Vasútról. Közreműködők: Adorján Péter, Berky Dénes, Halász Péter, Magyarics Zoltán, Óvári Péter, Szundi Szabolcs Station Voice: Nyesőné Vass Gabriella és Pongrácz Dániel Zenék: Klaus Doldinger & Passport — Loco-motive ORM — Sanitka Erwin Lehn & Südfunk Tanzorchester — Sentimental Journey Kerekes Band — Csángó boogie Selina & Hanspeter — Welcome Home (SBB: Unser Beitrag zu «unterwegs zuhause»)

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TSG Multimedia Podcast November 2018

The TSG Multimedia Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 3, 2018 47:14

#trains #Patreon #TSGPodcast #models #railroads This month’s podcast includes: • TSG Multimedia’s New branded T-shirts • October in review • The Golden Spike National Historic Site • The Ogden Railroad Museum • Weber Canyon Railfanning • A Chat With Dan Lieberman from Caltrain • Layouts on the short list for layout tour programs • The TSG Live Webcast • Ardenwood Historic Farm • DCC Lunch • Upcoming events in the calendar • Upcoming programs • Model Railroading 101 • The New “Premiere” feature on Youtube • Changes in this month’s program schedule • And a LOT more! Please support TSG Multimedia on Patreon! www.patreon.com/tsgmultimedia Thanks for being awesome! Please share: If you enjoy this content, please hit the "like" button and share it with your friends on social media! You can join TSG Multimedia on these other social media channels: FaceBook: https://www.facebook.com/tsgmultimedi... Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/TSGMultimedia ©2018 TSG Multimedia. All Rights Reserved.

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Fixing Homelessness and Improving Transit

INFILL

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 19, 2018 36:33

California wants homelessness and transportation to get better, but isn't always willing to pay for it. That's why in San Francisco, we have our work cut out for us to pass local Prop C, which would tax businesses making over $50 million to provide a permanent funding source for supportive housing, mental health services and shelters. At the beginning of the program, Nick Kimura (Eviction Defense Collaborative/Yes on C) tells us about some of the unfunded programs Prop C could start back up, like the Moving On program, and Sam adds his take as an affordable housing developer. At 16:34, we talk to Adina Levin (Friends of Caltrain and a South Bay YIMBY) about No on 6, the fight to protect transportation funding against the Republicans' gas tax repeal measure. We go into what's at stake: important road repairs, Caltrain to downtown SF, longer BART trains, new AC Transit and Muni vehicles, bike/pedestrian improvements, and a regional means-based fare pilot. All these projects lose funding if Prop 6 passes, so find out what you can do! Lastly, at 27:27, YIMBY volunteer Scott Feeney introduces the nascent YIMBY Mobility, a caucus (or "club," we're not sure which) that recently mobilized for Janice Li/No on 6 on the west side and has a District 2 mobilization coming up. YIMBY endorsements for November 6th Share the YIMBY endorsements with your friends using VoterCircle! Prop C: Our City, Our Home No on Prop 6 statewide campaign In San Mateo County, Adina recommends Measure W Saturday's YIMBY Mobility action for Nick and Janice

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The Yarniacs Episode 177: Knitting on Caltrain!

The Yarniacs: A Knitting Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 12, 2018 72:17

knitting caltrain yarniacs

191: Choo Choo the Train is Coming

Salinas Underground

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 5, 2018 39:52

In this episode a scheduling conflict made us call in the services of our old friend and proprietor of XL Public House James for co-hosting duties along with Oz. They talk about the upcoming arrival of Caltrain service to Salinas. Also, now that Salinas has some sort of nightlife to speak of how does it compare to other cities in the area?

train oz salinas choo choo caltrain

Solving The Last Mile with LimeBike's Andrew Savage

Raising Your Antenna

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 30, 2018 26:27

We are excited to have Andrew Savage of LimeBike with us in the studio, fresh off of their investment by Alphabet and partnership with Uber. LimeBike is at the forefront of addressing the “last mile” issue: 60 percent of trips people take in vehicles are under one mile and 40 percent of these trips are under 2 miles, yet our cities have been built around making those trips by personal automobile. We know those trips aren’t efficient, aren’t good for the environment and create tons of congestion. Tune in for Andrew’s view on the “last mile” and more in the mobility space. The relationship between mobility technology companies and public transit agencies: "We have a very large program in Dallas, we’ve been working with DART, the Dallas Area Rapid Transit, in the Bay Area we’ve been working with BART and Caltrain, we think there’s an incredible synergy between the work that we’re doing, which is the sort of microtransit, and the work of mass transit. And bringing those two things together, we really think we can solve the urban problem of the first and last mile." What’s driving the popularity of electric scooters: "Electric scooters are really interesting, we have a charging program where in many markets, up to 80% of our scooters are being charged in a crowd-sourced way from people within the community, so we will pay people to pick up the scooters at the end of the night, we’ll have an app for that side of the business, and we’ll pay them to be what we call “juicers”, and they go home, plug in 1, 2, 5 or 10 scooters and then redeploy them with our guidance and guidelines the next day, so we, for a major part of our operation, will be able to use folks within the community and actually that’s additional resources in the community’s pockets as well." Safety and rideshares: "Safety is a top priority for us. We have a lot of information on our product in our app and website on how to operate scooters and bikes safely, wearing helmets, choosing the right place to ride. I think an important conversation that we have with city leaders is, how can we give you data so that we can show you where protected lanes would be most beneficial, and how can we show you where people are turning left and turning right in the community where you actually could add infrastructure improvements to make riding and scooting safer." Andrew’s journey to Lime as an entrepreneur in the cleantech space: "I did do a stint on Capitol Hill where I was working on energy and cleantech issues as well as in communications, two years during the Bush administration and two years during the Obama administration, so very fascinating times. I spent the beginning time of my career working both in politics and in government and then shifted over to the cleantech space working as a Chief Strategy Officer for a solar company and I came into this current position a little bit by chance. I was actually looking for positions in solar and stumbled across Toby and Brad, who prior to starting Lime were thinking about what kind of team do we need to put together to make this a success. We jumped in together, I moved out to the Bay Area from Vermont, and here we are." LimeBike and Uber’s strategic partnership: "The Uber partnership is particularly exciting because what it will allow us to do is access and be available to far more people, more ubiquitously in cities across the US and increase internationally. As we expand internationally across Europe and other parts of the world, it’s more exciting because people can now go on the uber app and decide whether they should take a car or a scooter, what we’ve found is that if you’re downtown in the city and you open up Google Maps and look at the drive time of a mile and a half trip, you’re actually going to find that being on a bike or scooter is much faster than a car. So we are really excited for this partnership because we think people will realize how valuable it is, how much lower cost it is and how efficient it is and the environment implications as well." Andrew’s vision for smart regulatory action within the transportation industry: "We view the idea of saying “you can put X number of scooters or bikes in the community as sort of an absolute number”, as really a backwards approach. You never see that regarding cars. So let’s cap the number of cars in a community before we cap the number of bikes. We are nowhere near the need, or nowhere near the saturation of what we would need in the community to solve the problems, so either no cap or a dynamic cap, and what that means is if we have bikes and scooters being widely used, being used multiple times a day by people in the community, let’s not cap it until it gets to the point where there are enough." "We actually do like minimum numbers of fleet size, because without a minimum number you really can’t operate an effective and efficient system. You won’t have the operations staff on the ground to be able to run a good program, so we do think a minimum makes more sense than a type of cap. One other thing we work with cities on is performance standards around operations and our response time, those are all things we can do, we actually work proactively with a number of 311 system within cities, so that we could tap right into their systems and be as responsive as possible, so it’s not that hard to think about what are responsible regulations, and we think cities are going to get there." The role of transportation in increasing economic equality: "The equity component of what we are doing is a critical part of our mission and is one we’ve been able to really demonstrate work, so a perfect example is we’ve been in Seattle for a year, we’ve had a million rides in Seattle last year, we’ve replaced a dock-based program up there, and that dock based program was available like most programs only to downtown, the financial district, the wealthy neighborhoods or tourism locations. That’s not where most people live, that’s not where low income people live."

Caltrain will now get you to SFO!

WIRED Business – Spoken Edition

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 22, 2018 1:08

Caltrain will now get you to SFO!

sfo caltrain

How Maps Became the New Search Box

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 13, 2018 5:46

Open the Uber app in downtown San Francisco, and you'll discover you can do a lot more than hail a ride. You rent a bike, thanks to Uber's recent acquisition of Jump Bikes. You can rent a car, courtesy of a partnership Uber has struck with the startup Getaround. In a test version of the app, which I saw when I reported on Uber last January, a train schedule popped up if you hailed a ride to Caltrain.

san francisco open uber maps getaround search box new search caltrain

WiFi is coming to two major Bay Area public transit agencies!