The Burlingame Voice

Plug-in the Numbers on Plug-in Cars

I like finding bits of real insight that spring from real data and some analysis that puts it all in context.  Some other tidbits from the last year are here.  The Gavinor is bound and determined to disallow gas-powered car sales in California in 12 years.  Executive order directs state to require that, by 2035, all new cars and passenger trucks sold in California be zero-emission vehicles.  Twelve years may or may not be a long time for battery technology evolution.  It's physics, chemistry, metallurgy and economics after all.  In the meantime, this letter to the Wall Street Journal should open some eyes in the Gavinor's office

In “The Electric-Vehicle Unicorn Crash” (op-ed, May 20), Allysia Finley mentions that 434,879 EVs were sold in the U.S. last year. This represents a mere 2.88% of the 15.1 million vehicles sold here in 2021.

Global lithium-mine production reached a record high of 100,000 metric tons last year, 65% of which is used in EV-battery construction. (The other 44% is used in lubricants, cellphones, etc). The Electrek news site estimates that the Tesla Model S uses 63 kilograms (138 pounds) of lithium per EV, which means that if Tesla used every available pound of world-wide lithium for Model S battery construction, it could produce only 1,040,000 Model S EVs a year. Granted, the Model S is a top-end product that requires more lithium than smaller EVs, but the point is simple: Neoliberals who want to replace the internal combustion engine-powered car with EVs are living in a fantasy world.

To make matters worse, the U.S. currently has only one large-scale, active lithium mine, in Nevada, with two more proposed mines nearby. But the same kind of environmentally woke folks who demand a move to an all-EV fleet are holding up the opening of those two mines in court.  Unfortunately, the happy talk that defines the modern Democratic Party also prevails in the EV industry.

Russ Andrews

Aspen, Colo.

1.04M cars is about 7% of 15.1M cars.  That's 93% away from 100% for those following at home.  And that uses world-wide production just for cars, never mind Tesla Powerwalls for homes or the giant batteries that may someday bring some stability to our summertime electric grids.  Newsom better hope for some electrifying innovation soon.  Mining stocks are looking better every day. 

More Signage: Pedestrians Beware....

Today's question of the day is multiple choice.  What is the greatest danger to pedestrians walking up California Dr.?

a)  Drivers speeding to beat the long light at Broadway?

b)  Drivers distracted by another new sign that they can't figure out?

c)  Walking head first into a traffic sign because their slalom skills are deficient?

d)  Pedestrians distracted by wondering how the City can afford so many signs?

Covid: Tracking gets blurry, so does prevention

Our last Covid tracking post was six months ago as we approached the holidays and it tracked the holiday surge through last week here.  Life may not have been simpler then, but it seemed clearer.  You did all the things they told you to do, hoped for the best and could essentially see how it was going in the County to gauge your own personal risk.  Those were the old days.  Now tracking is blurrier.  Home testing is private testing.  Symptoms can be so light that you think it's allergies--ask me how I know.  Past infections raise immunity for some period of time, but how long?  My neighbor got it, got through it and Kaiser told him to get a booster right away.  That seems over-protective while waiting a few months extends protection, but it's blurry.  The County dashboard that I use for the Saturday updates occasionally splashes a screen saying the numbers from the state are missing without explaining why we need the state to report our own County data.  Nonetheless, let's press on with tracking what we know and acknowledging what we don't know.

Here are the numbers for last week and they look terrible:

Total Cases: 134,492 - Up 6,902 in the County for the week -- up 385% over last week's increase.

Burlingame Cases: 4,249 - Up by 186 over last week, so 63% higher than last week which was almost double the prior week. 367 cases in the last 30 days.

Hospitalizations in the County: 40, up by 11 and double two weeks ago.

The Spring surge (is that the 5th or 6th, I forget) is definitely here.  The County has a few new tidbits to advise here, but it sort of the same story.

Checking in on the Old Post Office

It's been about six weeks since we checked in on the Old Post Office project here.  As expected, the digging is going full bore.  I was reminded of how we followed the Safeway progress-- remember that here?  I don't recall if Safeway ever did install a web cam to watch the progress, but I like the idea for the Sares Regis project.  In the meantime, here's the dig.  Note the old building is wrapped in green and moved to the left with the Garden City Construction signage.

Tracking progress as the dig gets bigger

Rudy Benton, RIP

During the locked down, distracted days of the pandemic, the passing of Rudy Benton slipped by--not unnoticed, but not celebrated either.  That time has come and his daughter, Kathryn, notes this on Facebook

For those of you who knew Rudy Benton aka Mr. Benton, aka Mr. B, my dad, we are having a Celebration of Life for him on June 5th in San Pedro Valley Park, Pacifica.  He taught physical education McKinley, Lincoln, Washington, Roosevelt, Hoover, Franklin and many more schools as well. And of course he had his local Burlingame TV show "Moving with Rudy Benton".

The full SF Chronicle obituary is here and notes

"Mr B" has moved on to the big multi-purpose room in heaven from which he will continue to inspire all, no matter their abilities, to keep moving, to never smoke or do drugs, and always put everything back neater than you found it!  (Ed: and the admonition to "go to college")

For 46 years Rudy taught his own unique version of Physical Education. First, for ten years in Brisbane, CA, and then for 36 years in Burlingame where the emphasis would be on non-competitive sports and no activity where a student would have to wait their turn.  Rudy would spend many an evening planning activities for his classes. He was particularly famous for designing obstacle courses themed around movies, geography, holidays, Olympics etc.

RIP Rudy -  March 22,1937 - July 30,2021

High-Cost Rail - Part 157 Courage to Kill the Beast?

We covered the reluctance of the California Assembly to hand over a few more billions of taxpayer monies to High-Cost Rail back in September here.  The failures of this project are becoming epic and the money pit is like something out of Indiana Jones.  The Daily Journal reprinted a Calmatters.org piece by the former LA Times journalist that details most of the failings.  This being Part 157 in our category, one could probably find a couple they missed, but here are some lowlights from the piece:

The feud has festered for 16 months, since Gov. Gavin Newsom asked the Legislature for a $4.2 billion appropriation in early 2021. The request has triggered a standoff with Assembly Democrats, who have steadfastly refused to hand over the last remaining funds from a 2008 bond measure for high-speed rail.

“The project is not proceeding according to a robust plan, which results in waste and other inefficiencies,” said Bent Flyvbjerg, a business expert in mega projects at the University of Oxford’s Saïd Business School and IT University of Copenhagen.  “Given the political divisions, the cost growth, the schedule delays and the lack of a sound future revenue source, this project is going to the graveyard of famous boondoggles.”

The latest estimate, made earlier this year, set the cost at $105 billion. The new price tag is based on some estimates made in 2019, not accounting for the spurt of inflation in construction materials and labor, according to the Legislative Analyst’s Office, the non-partisan adviser to the Legislature. The risk is that the real cost is still not known.  (Ed:  I'll give you a conservative estimate for end-to-end completion--$300 billion)

Of the urban legislators, former rail authority chairman Dan Richard said, “They will never be satisfied. I made agreements to give $470 million for Los Angeles Union Station and $700 million for electrification of Caltrain. We didn’t even get invited to speak at the dedication.”  (Ed:  sad face)

The Assembly plan would also delay installation of a high voltage electrical system, until the Central Valley tracks connect somewhere. In the interim, it wants the rail authority to consider a new generation of battery-operated trains, which manufacturers say could reach 170 mph and higher in coming years. Kelly disputes that the battery trains could travel fast enough to comply with legal requirements. 

A more basic question is whether the state can ever afford to make the costly connections to the coasts, involving lengthy mountain tunnels near seismic faults. Bakersfield to Los Angeles is priced at $50 billion and San Francisco to the Central Valley tie-in at Chowchilla $22 billion, according to upper end estimates in the 2022 draft business plan.  “The idea that you would spend all your money on a train that doesn’t connect to anything and just hope that you’re going to get more money, I find a really frightening business proposition,” said Friedman.

Another complication is that construction in the Central Valley is bogging down, once again failing to meet a revised schedule. There are 119 miles currently under contract for roadbed and structures, which originally was supposed to be completed by 2017. 

“There is visually nothing happening in the Central Valley,” said Jeff Denham, the former chairman of the House rail subcommittee, a Republican almond farmer who voted for the project when he was in the Legislature but later became a strident critic. “Equipment has been moved out.”

A central problem involves utility relocations, which are far behind schedule and delaying the start of bridges and viaducts. The rail authority’s most recent progress reports validate the executives’ concerns.  In its April progress report, the rail authority said that 57% of 1,850 utility relocation projects remain uncompleted by three teams of contractors some 10 years after construction began.  (Ed:  If they had just run it through the I-5 median this never would have happened).

Slow land purchases have loomed over the project for a decade. The state lacks 222 parcels out of 2,291 that it needs, the report said.  The three current contracts cover only 119 miles of the 171 miles of the route that Newsom wants to build. (Ed:  ibid I-5)  New contracts and land acquisition would be needed for 52 additional miles. Tracks, a complex signaling system and a high voltage electrical system would come after bridges, track bed and viaducts are largely completed.  (Ed:  OK, $400 billion)

There was a poll out recently that said 56% of Californians still support the project.  I interpret that as 56% of Californians are just plain clueless.  This is headed for the "graveyard of famous boondoggles" and Newsom's name will be on the headstone.

 

B'game Big Bang Arrest

I had to go look up what an M-1000 firecracker looks and sounds like.  It's on YouTube here assuming the link works.  One has to wonder how long someone thinks they could make fireworks in a hotel room without someone noticing something.  A year of probation seems like a pretty light sentence for possibly blowing up a building with illegal fireworks and PVC pipe bombs--three weeks after the Fourth of July.  What was the plan for these?

State Auditor: Housing "requirement" numbers way off

I talked about how the Regional Housing Needs Allocation numbers (RHNA) will mess up cities in the County two and a half months ago.  Little did I know at the time that the whole process of coming up with these numbers is shoddy at best and perhaps fraudulent at worst.  A state auditor, Michael S. Tilden, has said as much as reported here

The Auditor found problems in the HCD methodology that may have inflated RHNA requirements by hundreds of thousands of housing units. The Auditor concludes that “The Department of Housing and Community Development must improve its processes to ensure that communities can adequately plan for housing.”

In his letter to the Governor and legislative leaders, the Auditor also states, “Overall, our audit determined that HCD does not ensure that its needs assessments are accurate and adequately supported. …This insufficient oversight and lack of support for its considerations risks eroding public confidence that HCD is informing local governments of the appropriate amount of housing they will need.”

Unfortunately, the audit reviewed the RHNA plans from only eight counties, which together contain less than eight percent of California’s population. Due to pending lawsuits the audit did not consider the RHNA plans of the two largest planning organizations, the Southern California Association of Governments (SCAG) and the Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG). These two regions contain almost two-thirds (65.5 percent) of the state’s population. This omission makes it difficult to grasp the scale of the problems created by HCD’s errors.

ABAG is the one we care about here.  They are the ones jamming big numbers down cities' throats and now we learn that the whole process may overestimate housing needs by 200,000 units.  Who knows, maybe it's even more.  But that hasn't stopped our Attorney General from getting into the act as reported by Tom Elias at the Daily Post on April 28th

Cities, especially B'game, should immediately question their allocations from ABAG.  They should also get a read out on the full Tilden report from city staff before anymore giant projects get the green light.  Getting a read out on the "pending lawsuits" noted above and the wisdom of joining one is action item #3.  And as I said here, it's time for a new attorney general with better priorities and an ability to stay in his or her lane.

Sheriff Election Funding

I try not to get all wrapped up in how much money any candidate has in any race--at least until the end when the tally is in and the expenditure per vote garnered can be calculated.  The only other interesting thing for me is where the donations originate.  The Daily Post injected this little tidbit into its County sheriff campaign funding article on Monday.

That is some "help" and you have to love the group's plural name Citizens for Christina Corpus.   This earns a big Voice "what's up with that?"

It's time for a new Attorney General

I was wrong again.  I thought when the last Attorney General, Becerra, got bumped up to HHS Secretary things would improve.  Similarly, I thought the same when the one before that got bumped up.  But I was wrong.  The Newsom-appointed Rob Bonta is as bad or worse than the last two AGs.  Just this week he decided to sue the US Postal Service for the crime of planning to buy, get this, 165,000 gas-powered vehicles.  I guess he is unaware that even with all of the credits, EVs are an expensive 4% of the market and a high-profile EV truck manufacturer (Rivian) just slipped its delivery schedule so much that its stock is down 70%.  Ford cut the value of its stake in Rivian by $5.4B.  Let's not forget the lithium and cobalt for batteries are expected to be in short (i.e. expensive) supply and mostly come from unfriendly parts of the world.  Is any EV company even planning a design that would work for the USPS?  Wanna bet the new GVs would be way better for the environment than the old ones on the road today?  Does Bonta even care? 

Also this week Bonta decided to investigate Exxon Mobil for misleading the public about the recyclability of plastic.  Wait, I thought the government was the source of the CRV fees that have apparently misled us all.  As soon as China stopped taking our used plastic, the whole model just broke down.  This isn't news as we saw last year here.  And the oil companies are responding by building recycling plants in the U.S.   Don't we want this?  Does Bonta have a clue about what it takes to rebuild the plastic recycling supply chain?  I doubt it.

And it's not like the things an AG is supposed to be doing in the state are going so well.  Harris left the office without putting a dent in the number of known criminals who still have guns but are not being searched out.  Becerra, same thing.  Did I miss the press release that Bonta is on the case and succeeding?  I doubt it.  Is he doing anything to prevent more known criminals from serving short sentences and shooting up Sacramento?  I missed that press conference, too.   It's time for a new Attorney General.  The primary election is on June 7.