All aboard for the second and last rail plan meeting in Valdosta tonight.
Maybe you see something missing in
the current passenger rail corridor
proposal pictured on the right.
Maybe you’d like to suggest some changes or additions.
Stuart Taylor wrote for the VDT today, Rail plan meeting scheduled,
Continue readingGeorgia Department of Transportation will host a 2014 Georgia state rail plan public meeting from 5-7 p.m. Thursday, April 17, in the Valdosta City Hall Annex, 300 N. Lee St.
Last week I went to the Rainwater Conference Center to attend the
Valdosta-Lowndes County Conference Center & Tourism Authority Board
Meeting.
I had discovered the time and date of this meeting by asking at the information booth at the Conference Center one day when I was there for another event.
I arrived slightly before the 8:00 appointed time and was greated
warmly by
Councilman Tim Carroll
and
Conference Center Director Tim Riddle.
Being the Conference Center, they served a hot breakfast
(other morning boards have fruits and sweets but this was something
that you might get up for).
As 8:00 came there was apparently not a quorum, so calls went out to missing members to see if one more could be attacted. At 8:15 it was clear that there would be no additional members coming so no formal meeting was held, no votes were taken but an informal review of the agenda was performed:
Continue reading
Stopped by the main desk of the Conference Center Wednesday.
I asked for a list of the current members of the board
and was provided a photocopy of a February 2012 list.
See also
LCC 2012-11-13.
-gretchen
Continue readingBoard of Directors
February 1, 2012
Commissioner Joyce Evans
Lowndes County Board of Commissioners
Term Expires: December 31, 2014
Councilman Tim Carroll
Valdosta City Council
Term Expires: December 31, 2015
Andy Anderson
Lowndes County Board of Commissioner Appointment
Term Expires: December 31, 2014
Rick Williams – Vice Chairman
Valdosta City Council Lodging & RV Appointment
Term Expires: December 31, 2012
Tired of Southern Company CEO Fanning’s
maybe “next decade” for solar power?
Tired of Georgia Power’s Bowers
trying to push solar off for fifty years?
Let’s hear from somebody who takes on big tasks and gets them done:
Elon Musk, who’s already built a rocket that is resupplying the International
Space Station, and who is also building all-electric cars.
Carl Hoffman wrote for Smithsonian magazine December 2012, Elon Musk, the Rocket Man With a Sweet Ride
When he’s not launching rockets, Musk is disrupting the notoriously obdurate automobile industry (see National Treasure, p. 42). While industry giants like Chevrolet and Nissan and Toyota were dithering with electric-gasoline hybrids, this upstart kid said he would design and manufacture an all-electric car that would travel hundreds of miles on a single charge. The Tesla Roadster hit the streets in 2008 with a range of 200 miles, and the far more
functional Model S, starting at $57,000, was introduced in June. It’s the world’s first all-electric car that does everything my old gasoline version does, only better. The high-end model travels 300 miles on a single charge, leaps from zero to 60 in 5.5 seconds, slows from 60 to a dead stop in 105 feet, can seat up to five, has room for mulch bags and golf clubs, handles like a race car and its battery comes with an eight-year, 100,000-mile warranty. If you charged it via solar panels, it would run off the sun. One hundred a week are being produced in a former Toyota factory in Fremont, California, and nearly 13,000 people have put deposits on them….
And since that story: Continue reading
After
Kendra Ulrich of Friends of the Earth asked
about some licensee documents related to last week’s
NRC hearing in faraway Maryland on restarting California’s
San Onofre nuclear reactor,
NRC’s
David Beaulieu expanded on NRC’s refusal to divulge the documents.
Here’s the video:
Video by Myla Reson at NRC, Maryland, 18 December 2012.
You can hear him say it’s “never been a practice” to let the public
see licensee documents. But if they’re being used in making a license
decision, why doesn’t that make them public documents accessible by the
public? Oh, right “it’s very complex” but “it’s a yes or no question”
and “I will assess”, he says. It’s good to be king!
I wonder if the public had some assurance of transparency maybe the NRC wouldn’t get so many FOIA requests?
Remember, this is the same NRC that gave 100-mile-from-here same-design-as-Fukushima Plant Hatch a 20 year license extension, and the same NRC that gave Plant Vogtle a clean bill of health at a public meeting two days before Unit 1 shut down, and the same NRC that could stop the new nukes there even if the GA PSC won’t.
What if we deployed solar power instead, on budget and on time?
-jsq
Did you know the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission
doesn’t publish nuclear licensee documents?
Hear them say it on this video of Tuesday’s NRC “public meeting” in Maryland
about restarting the San Onofre reactor in California.
This is the same NRC
that gave Plant Vogtle a clean bill of health
at a public meeting two days before Unit 1 shut down,
and the same NRC that could stop the new nukes there
even if the GA PSC won’t.
This same NRC recertified Plant Hatch on the Altamaha in Georgia,
extending the original 40 year design lifespan
of Unit 1 from 2014 to 2034
and
of Unit 2 from 2018 to 2038.
But don’t worry; if you’re farther than 10 miles from
Hatch,
you’re outside the evacuation zone, so you must be safe, right?
Just study the licensing documents to see; oh, wait!
Kendra Ulrich of Friends of the Earth asked the NRC some simple questions that stumped the Commissioners and staff. She wondered when the public could expect to see a a 50-59 analysis California Edison had done about restarting San Onofre. Dave Beaulieu, NRC Generic Communications Branch, said it was a “licensee document, licensee documents are not made public.” He did say NRC would release its own inspection results. She asked again, and Rick Daniel, NRC meeting facilitator suggested she submit written questions. Beauleiu summarized:
“At the end of the day, licensee documents are not made public; that’s the answer.”
So what would be the point of her submitting questions when she was just told they won’t make the answers public?
Ulrich continued by asking why NRC was considering going ahead on the basis of experimental data that has never been used before and that has not been made public. Remember this is about a nuclear reactor that was shut down because it was leaking. That question sure caused some passing of the buck and pretending not to understand the question by everybody in the room who should have been able to answer the question.
Here’s the video:
Video by Myla Reson, 18 December 2012, Maryland.
Continue reading
It’s not all
fracking shutdowns in Buffalo;
now for some good news:
food and drink as tourism.
We could do that!
Don Postles wrote for WIVB yesterday, Brewery district” now open for tours,
Downtown Buffalo is looking to attract more visitors, and a new concept called the Buffalo Brewing District could be the answer.
Continue reading
I asked why the Old US 41 North widening project changed from $8 million on the unconstrained list to $12 million on the constrained list, an increase of $4 million or 50% when the description did not change?
The answer indicates GDOT and local governments want to drive development north in the county, leaving pedestrians and bicyclists stranded yet having to pay.
Corey Hull responded:
Halfway through we received new cost estimates….
GDOT did the cost estimates, in cooperation with the local government that was responsible for that.
A state employee told me after the meeting that GDOT raised some estimates because it thought the local government, in this case the Lowndes County Commission and staff, didn’t put in enough to cover the project. I don’t know whether GDOT was figuring by Atlanta costs or not…. At least the cost didn’t go up further in the final project list; I just checked and it’s still $12 million.
Corey elaborated that some projects increased and some decreased. I asked him which ones did which. He said he’d have to go back and compare. Later he helped me produce a list of comparisons of costs of Lowndes County projects, which shows that one went down by 30% and three went up by 50% or more. One, RC11-000099 St. Augustine at Norman Intersection Improvements, went up by 131.5%.
That $12 million for widening less than 3 miles of one road is more than one item that was in the unconstrained list 
but cut from the constrained list: $7.5 million for a bus system, with three bus lines that would connect Wiregrass Tech, Five Points, Downtown, Moody, East Side, South Side, West Side, and the Mall. A bus system recommended by the Industrial Authority’s Community Assessment to aid in employee attendance, industry recruitment, and workforce.
You could probably even start up a substantial commuter rail system using existing freight line tracks for less than $12 million. Even though GDOT apparently only believes in roads and bridges, busses and trains are actually more cost-effective, especially for lower-income people. The same lower-income people who will be disproportionately taxed by T-SPLOST as a percentage of their income.
Instead, the description for the Old US 41 North project admits the county is driving Continue reading
George Boston Rhynes sent this video of the Valdosta City Council’s
ethics hearing about Mayor Fretti’s travel expenses.
George remarks:
Searching for the truth in a web of questions….The first citizen voice heard is Roy Taylor, whose investigation instigated this hearing, and whom the VDT since informs us (in their paper edition) has donated to almost every Valdosta City Council member.
Here’s the video. -jsq
The rest of George’s videos of this hearing are posted here.
-jsq
The Metropolitian Planning Organization (MPO)
invited people to a Public Open House last week
about prioritization of the 2035 Transportation Plan, so we went to the
RDC offices on W. Savannah Ave. and had a look.
You can see many of
the same materials online.
The MPO has a comment form you can fill out and mail to them.
There is also contact information on their web pages.
They are actively soliciting input.
One thing I noticed was that along Cat Creek Road they are proposing several intersection upgrades (at Hambrick Road, New Bethel Road, and Radar Site Road) which look like they would funnel still more traffic through Hambrick Road to Moody AFB. Hambrick Road and Cat Creek Road are not highways. State highways 122 and 129 (Bemiss Road) make a nice fast route from Hahira to Moody. A few improvements at Walker’s Crossing (where 122 and 129 intersect) would seem much more appropriate. The MPO could request for the state to do that.
Widening of Old US41N is on the list again as a county project, this time as far as Union Road.
Several new roads are proposed throughout the city and county as well as widening of many roads with additional travel or turn lanes.
You can look over the list of projects and you’ll probably find ones to comment on.