Cocoposts

This is the Way Cities Die

American Airlines to pull out of Oakland International, headline San Francisco Chronicle. 

05-05) 21:07 PDT Oakland -- American Airlines, citing the high cost of fuel, will pull out of Oakland International Airport in September after six decades operating there, airport officials said Monday.

The airline has been running three daily non-stop flights out of the airport to Dallas-Ft. Worth and has been operating at Oakland since 1947.

Reading and republishing the comments of those with whom you agree saves the trouble of writing and leaves more time for lurking.  Commenter Pulpwood places this news in a much much larger context. 

This is the way that cities die. Incompetent corrupt politicians pandering to howling mobs of special interests with nothing to contribute but votes to reelect the politicians. Gary, Indiana. Cleveland, Ohio. Buffalo, New York. Oakland, California. 80 years ago flourishing downtowns, working electric transit systems, civic pride, beautiful carefully built ornate buildings, gardens, trees. Each generation never knows what preceded it. No one is aware of the decline. Like the environment collapsing. One by one, social customs fade, a species disappears. Another neighborhood goes, what propels it forward is a mere reworking of the past. It's not the place, it's the new people and the people that manipulate them and that profit from them that makes a city die.

Pulpwood sounds like a cynical city planner in need of a double Buckaroo Bonsai. 

And some rail service. 

Snuffing Asarco

From the El Paso Times staff editorial:

There appears to be new hope that Asarco will not reopen its copper smelter in El Paso, no thanks to our own state agency, but thanks to the federal government. Indications are the Environmental Protection Agency will soon greatly tighten health standards for allowable airborne lead -- cutting back 93 percent. (...)

We've long said that Asarco is an outdated early 20th-century smoke-belching beast that should not be allowed to operate amid populated areas. Medical data show, according to an Associated Press report Thursday, that lead can be inhaled or ingested after it settles out of the air. It's rapidly absorbed into the bloodstream. It adversely affects many human organs.

We received no help from our own state in keeping El Pasoans healthy. We applaud the actions of the EPA, and hope new lead emission standards will allow for permanent closure of Asarco in El Paso.

Dependent and Obsessed with Real Estate

Dr. Housing Bubble estimates almost $3 trillion in real estate equity is gone and notes Bloomberg on the State of California's $20 billion deficit.   The Dr. says:

Now tell me, what other industries are going to start hiring to boost the so-called phantom housing bottom especially here in California?  Never mind the astounding fact that according to the California Association of Realtors the median price statewide is now off by a stunning 30 percent. It only logically follows that real estate declining will hurt a state that is utterly dependent and obsessed with all things real estate.

Razing Fix

Building demolition is sad.  It is often not about the building.  The destruction of a structure can be an attempt to fix larger problems by scapegoating place.  The place is destroyed but the problems never go far.   

The City attacking a building with a strike force team seems sad and a little scary.  It implies we've learned very little from the past of condemning entire blocks of physical history in the name of eliminating poverty.  Neither can you solve crime and eliminate drugs by killing old motels.

But yeah, American Inn was an eyesore and so it is especially refreshing to see demolition for the purpose of building something new and better.  Oh, but wait.  That was December 2006.  Then is not now.   Now, "owners of the property agreed to pay for the $120,000 demolition. They will sell it as vacant land, perhaps leading to redevelopment".  Perhaps. 

Also demolished - Old Purgy's at Purgatory.  It went the way of the dozer last week.  You can watch them pull it down on the Durango Herald site.

A new vista will greet skiers at Purgatory next winter after the demolition Thursday of Purgy's, which had stood since the ski area's opening in December 1965. 

  Back then, the quirky shingle-covered building was skiers' one-stop shop, housing ski   rentals, ticket sales, restrooms - just two of them - and the only restaurant and bar.

  Though weathered and architecturally dated, the building was heartily eulogized at an   end-of-the-season bash earlier this month. The death blow came Thursday morning, when a crew used a track hoe to claw   away the building's facade, then pulled out the support beams with a heavy truck and cables.

No Tolls I-70

The Colorado Legislature dumped the idea of congestion pricing, in the form of a $5 toll, for I-70.  Truckers, skiers and ski resorts hated the idea  - the trucking industry, especially.  So the recommendation is now for a rail system.   GLWT.

The Denver-Glenwood Springs I-70 section is on the truck route between Chicago and Los Angeles and  the main artery to Aspen, Vail and old mining towns turned to casinos.  It is also the "steepest longest-steep"  freeway anywhere ever.   

From the Denver Post:

(T)he plan to put tolls on I-70 collapsed into a heap of chuckles.  Senate Minority Leader Andy McElhany, a Colorado Springs Republican who sponsored the plan to charge $5 tolls near the Eisenhower Tunnel, laid over his bill until May 26 — Memorial Day. That effectively killed it because the legislature will be adjourned by then.

"When you're sitting in the traffic jams that day," McElhany said to his colleagues with a mischievous smile, "just think about the $5 you could have paid to be out of it."

From an earlier piece of optimism from Toll Roads News:

Tolls were used in the mid-1950s to build the Denver-Boulder Turnpike, now de-tolled US-36. The traffic crisis on the Denver-Glenwood Springs segment of I-70 is caused principally by high-income vacationers and recreationists, so the equity argument for financing improvements with tolls seems strong.

Image from the I-70 Coalition.

Rocket Race Tax

Sierra County's spaceport tax passed.  Promoters evoked the magic word, jobs, a lot and there are cool videos of rocket racing and that vagina-shaped terminal.   What's not to love?  Here's Haussamen's coverage.

Promoters didn't talk about the existing facilities and budgets for space research, the huge capital required for space travel, Peak Oil and precepts of a gloomy economy.  This is just the thing for New Mexico - if this is 1960.  Sustainable economic development?   

The touted business plan describes the "commercialization space pyramid" and transports the reader  back to NMSU freshman economics.   

From the study conclusion:

"(The) economic development return on the investment likely will be positive, although subject to risk, under some scenarios, spectacularly so."

There it is in a nutshell (or space capsule for the faithful).  The bar will make more than the runway.  I'll have another Buckaroo Bonzai. 

Small and Smaller Houses

Update: NewMexiKen says April 19 - 27 is National Park Week. 

At Wilson's Creek National Battlefield, near Springfield Missouri.  On  an excellent sisterly suggestion, I took a side trip to the civil war museum and National Park battlefield site - not a far drive from the airport and of more interest to me than the Bass Pro where everyone else was.   The weather was perfect but recent ice storms and flooding  have been severe and much the trail system is closed.  I visited the Ray House, which served as a hospital during the fighting, and its beautiful stone barrel vault spring house.  Then I walked over Wilson's Creek to a small log cabin where a hawk sat perched.   

Healthy Bees Swarm

From Arizona Central comes good and bad news about bees.

The good news is Arizona bees are healthy.  The bad news is they get mad.

Because Arizona's feral bee population is Africanized the chances are good that swarming bees are of that aggressive variety. "If they find a nest site in the wall of your house or carport overhang, they will be defensive. That nest needs to be removed professionally"

Attacking bees have injured on average three people in Tucson each of the past three years, and have killed three people in rural areas of southeastern Arizona.

But while swarming bees may inconvenience or even endanger humans, it is good for the species, (US Ag bee researcher) BDeGrandi-Hoffman said.  Arizona, as opposed to other parts of the country, has not been affected by a disorder killing off huge numbers of bees. "Only very healthy colonies swarm, and the fact we see swarming bodes well for the health of the colonies."

Experts say run like hell. 

Fair Weather and Housing

Watering, walking the dogs and watching the woodpecker in the walnut tree are bigger priorities than sprawl economics.  My Duke City Fix post today is a fair weather indicator, if only in that regard.   

Dogs on door at Gibson and Broadway SE Albuquerque. 4/17/08

 

Spaceport Bar

Heath Haussaman notes how draft agreements for future "spaceport" tenants are being waved around to stir up excitement in advance of a tax vote in Sierra County.

The Rocket Racing League’s announcement, made today, is one of several in recent days designed to fill the news with positive headlines in advance of next week’s vote in Sierra  County.  State officials did the same just before the Doña Ana County tax vote last year.

From the Rocket Racing League's website:

The NASCAR-style racing league features rocket-powered aircraft that will be flown by top pilots through a 'three-dimensional track way' at venues throughout the world. With millions of fans who enjoy racing and air shows, and an even wider audience enthralled with humanity's next step into space, rocket racing is destined to become the future of racing!

There will be a swank spaceport bar with drinks named after space heros.  But it may be crowded with  those millions of fans and even wider audiences.  It seems pretty darn hard to reconcile rocket racing with peak oil.  But we can talk about it over a Buckaroo Bonzai - Wild Turkey over 1/2 oz. plum wine.