It'll be a HOT day in hell...

At the urging of our glorious General Assembly, VDOT has contracted to turn the I-495 beltway around D.C. into HOT (High Occupancy - Toll) lanes. The idea is that car pools travel for free (like HOV lanes), but cars containing only 1 or 2 people can travel in them by paying a toll, thus saving a little time.

How much of a toll? How much time? From the Washington Post -

Using an average rush-hour toll of $1.54 a mile, as projected in the studies, a 6.3- mile morning commute between Route 29 and Braddock Road in Fairfax County would cost $9.70 and save 90 seconds over the Beltway's "free lanes." That translates to $6.47 for each minute saved -- an hourly rate of $388, which would make some K Street lawyers jealous.

Yikes! Ten bucks each way? Well, I can't afford it, but I guess there are those that can. But to save 90 seconds? Come on, you've got to have messed up the numbers.

Project officials say HOT lanes traffic will move at a minimum of 55 mph. That is why there is no cap on toll rates -- to discourage drivers who might clog up the lanes and slow speeds.

That predictability could eliminate what transportation planners call "buffer time," the extra time travelers build into their commute to cover traffic mishaps. Eliminating buffer time could mean an extra hour with family, a second cup of coffee with the morning paper, an extra hour of sleep. There also is the security of knowing that traffic will not cause one to miss that job interview or breakfast with the boss.

"Buffer time". Hmmm, call me self centered, but if I left for work an hour early, and traffic was light, and I got there, well, an hour early, I might be tempted to possibly leave an hour early. Net loss to my family - zero.

This is more like a way to screw yourself even worse. Imagine that instead of a bona fide K Street lawyer, you are a guy that uses the lanes, but feels the pinch.

The way they keep traffic flowing at a minimum of 55mph is by raising the toll. As the speed drops they raise the toll in real time. OK, you can afford $1 per mile. You OK with $1.50? How about $2? $4? Remember, it's now 20 minutes until the day care closes, and they charge you an extra $15 for every 15 minutes you're late. What do you do?

By the way, about that minimum 55mph?

Daley says the toll lanes will maintain an average speed of 55 mph, but the internal reports estimate average rush-hour speeds of 43 mph to 44 mph.

Personally, I wouldn't be surprised if it was that slow. See, the Beltway doesn't have HOV lanes now. ("Huh?" is what I said when I moved into the area.) Car pools are mixed in with everyone else, but a lot of people do pool. How many? We'll find out. But remember, car pools use the HOT lanes for free. The toll payers are just using the spare capacity. Also,

Off-peak tolls could be as little as 14 cents a mile.

Yeah, you stick with that story. I've driven the Beltway late at night, or on good-weather weekends. It's 4 to 6 lanes of 75mph from the Potomac to nearly Springfield. No one is going to pay even 14 cents unless you make that 75mph the legal speed limit.

The LHC

More Gobal Warming

While claims fly that the north pole could be iceless this year, there are different reports from nearer the other pole, in New Zealand.

Mt Ruapehu is claiming the biggest snow base ever recorded for a New Zealand skifield with over 4.5m of snow on the ground.

Ruapehu Alpine Lifts, operator of Mt Ruapehu ski area, was celebrating what it called a major milestone today.

The snow measuring stake at Turoa previously only stood at 380cm so had to be extended to measure today's 455cm snow base.

The Whakapapa side of the mountain also had 350cm of snow, the biggest since 1995.

For the metrically challenged, a 455cm snow base translates as 179 inches (about 15 feet).

So, anyway, how is that whole ice-free, basking on the beach, polar bear-drowning thing working out? Uh, not.

...data sources show Arctic ice having made a nice recovery this summer. NASA Marshall Space Flight Center data shows 2008 ice nearly identical to 2002, 2005 and 2006. Maps of Arctic ice extent are readily available from several sources, including the University of Illinois, which keeps a daily archive for the last 30 years. A comparison of these maps (derived from NSIDC data) below shows that Arctic ice extent was 30 per cent greater on August 11, 2008 than it was on the August 12, 2007. (2008 is a leap year, so the dates are offset by one.)

Our Governor is an F'ing Fool

Obama - Change You Can Believe In

Ah, another endorsement

Barack Obama is not a left candidate. This fact has seemingly surprised a number of progressive people who are bemoaning Obama’s “shift to the center.” (Right-wingers are happy to join them, suggesting Obama is a “flip-flopper.”) It’s sad that some who seek progressive change are missing the forest for the trees. But they will not dampen the wide and deep enthusiasm for blocking a third Bush term represented by John McCain, or for bringing Obama by a landslide into the White House with a large Democratic congressional majority.

A broad multiclass, multiracial movement is converging around Obama’s “Hope, change and unity” campaign because they see in it the thrilling opportunity to end 30 years of ultra-right rule and move our nation forward with a broadly progressive agenda.

You might want to click through on that link and see who's endorsing him.

Too Good To Be True

I'm not even going to bother researching this, because I don't care if it's true or not. It just mirrors my preconceptions about modern art, and that's all that counts.

A giant inflatable dog turd by American artist Paul McCarthy blew away from an exhibition in the garden of a Swiss museum, bringing down a power line and breaking a greenhouse window before it landed again, the museum said Monday.
The art work, titled "Complex S(expletive..)", is the size of a house. The wind carried it 200 metres (yards) from the Paul Klee Centre in Berne before it fell back to Earth in the grounds of a children's home, said museum director Juri Steiner.

The inflatable turd broke the window at the children's home when it blew away on the night of July 31, Steiner said. The art work has a safety system which normally makes it deflate when there is a storm, but this did not work when it blew away.

Those Who Can't Do Math, Take The Train

The local paper has a story about all of the people switching to riding Amtrak.

Imagine lines of passengers waiting for departure, baggage sprawled about, sold-out tickets and chaos in the parking lot.

This is the scene at the Newport News Amtrak Station throughout the week at any given departure time.
With high gas prices and tough economic times upon us, it's no wonder why many people are deciding to park their vehicles and board a train.

Karina Romero, an Amtrak spokeswoman, said that as of June, the company reported an 11 percent increase in ridership across the country.

This picture shows the Newport News station. Chaos in the parking lot? How is that possible? It only has 50 spaces.

"My husband and I were just noticing that it is a lot more crowded than we expected," she said. "I think more people are riding the train because it is less than flying and because gas has gotten so high. Gas is terrible."

Obviously we have a situation where these people can't do simple math. Or, they drive real gas hogs. Or both.

Let's do the math, shall we? I just priced the cost of a round-trip from Newport News to NYC on Amtrak for a three day trip. The cost of the fare is $220 for two.

Now my thrifty little Civic gets 40 mpg with just me in it. Let's assume it gets only 35 mpg once I add in the spouse and baggage (Sorry, honey.) So, for $220 I could buy 55 gallons of $4 gasoline, and travel 1925 miles.

Problem is, the distance to NYC is only about 400 miles, so the price of gas for a round-trip would only be about $92. Granted, they won't be paying the cost of parking once they get there ($65/day at the Holiday Inn in SoHo, for example), or tolls on the NJ Turnpike, but still, gas prices are no excuse folks.

It is better as you travel further. The roundtrip for two to Denver would be about $1000, and it takes 48 hours one-way to make the trip. Gas for my car would run about $440 for that distance, plus an undoubted need for an oil change when I was done.

Still, jeez, I've driven that same run in about 36 hours. Can you imagine being on trains continuously for 2+ days? No chance to wash decently or anything.

Au contraire! Those classic private cabins are still available on the train. They do bump up the cost though, to about $2950 for 2 people.

By the way, the same trip via Orbitz is about $1038 for two people, packed in like sardines, but for only 9 or 10 hours, not 48. First class tickets are available from about $2050 for two.

I'll Give Him One Thing...

...and he'll give her another.

One positive point to John Edwards admission of having an affair. At least he appears to know which end of the girl it goes in.

Did They Think This Through?

Olympic Trivia: The 2008 Olympics in Beijing were designed by Albert Speer.

Just by coincidence, or maybe not, Albert's father, also an Albert Speer, designed the 1936 Olympics for Adolph Hitler. The elder Speer server as Hitler's Minister of Armaments, and later spent 20 years in Spandau prison after his conviction at the Nuremburg war crimes trials.

It's almost enough to make me wished I had watched the opening ceremonies.

Almost.

Recall Update

They're doing pretty well with the petitions I wrote about earlier.

An estimated 2,000 to 3,000 signatures have been gathered by a grass-roots group of volunteers seeking to remove from office four members of the Gloucester County Board of Supervisors.

In the third full day of collecting signatures across Gloucester, residents were lining up at tables from Gloucester Point to Gloucester Court House to sign petitions seeking to oust supervisors Teresa Altemus, Bobby Crewe, Michelle Ressler and Gregory Woodard.

To put that in perspective, Gloucester County has a population of under 39,000 of whom about 30,000 are of voting age. In the election that brought these critters to power, there were only about 1,700 votes cast in my precinct (Crewe won by 218 votes). In the one Supervisor race that was at-large there were under 9200 votes cast (Ressler won by 1,642 votes).

My understanding is that in order for a recall to be authorized, they have to get signatures equaling 10% of the votes cast in the last election. So, 170 or so for Crewe, and 920 for Ressler. Sounds like they'll have that to spare. Which is good, as the judges will throw out the signatures on any technicality.

But, looks like we'll be voting again soon.

Recall

After the great time we've had with our supervisors here, the recall process has begun.

Just after noon Friday, Garr Johnson walked into Burke's of Gloucester on Main Street with copies of 250 petitions that seek to remove four members of the county Board of Supervisors from office.

Within an hour, the petitions hit shops and sidewalks in Gloucester, and residents were already lining up to sign them.

Winnie and I signed this morning. They were set up at a card table in the parking lot of the post office, and they were keeping a line about 5 deep in the few minutes I was there. Shouldn't take too long.