Storm Report

Compulsions:
One of the shows I like to watch on the Teevees is called Monk. It’s about a suspended police detective who suffers from compulsions. It’s very funny. He tries to navigate where nothing is up to his standards and yet he solves the most complex crimes.

His compulsions are really the show. The other day he was trying to deal with a blogger who thought the whole Universe revolved around him. He published his blog whenever he felt like it and his main rules were – accuracy: optional – plagiarism; not above it – and frequency; whenever… Very odd guy.

Monk and his compulsions had a major problem dealing with the casual attitude of this blogger, especially the accuracy issue. Monk seemed to think everyone should endeavor to produce the most accurate report possible, or Monk would point out the errors.

Just a minute; I think I hear the door bell.

Winter Storms - Brrrrrrr:

We had some rough weather starting last week and it’s still going on. The whole country is suffering from this. Caribou Barbie is behind it, I think. The weather map shows the jet stream cruising down the west coast from Alaska and then east over the rest of the country. It’s very unusual.

The weather predictors had a hard time the last couple of days because they couldn’t show exactly where the snow would fall, how much, where the wind would blow, and how cold it would get. Our mountains once again made a hash of it.

There were high winds coming down the west slopes of the Cascades over the foothills. In Newcastle it was almost still. On the east slopes of the Olympics they had a great deal of snow. Newcastle got another 8” or so, depending on whether you were trying to play golf or not.

And it’s been very cold in this area for over a week. That means frozen roads. Since big snow events are rare (the last big one was in 1990) we don’t have fleets of snow removal equipment. Thus it takes a long time to deal with it.

But the rest of America is taking worse weather. Very cold here is around 20 but farther east it’s more like minus 20. I understand Nebraska had thunder snow which is weird. Ice storms farther east pretty much close things down.

This year I think a lot of folks will be doing Christmas in January. Best just keep warm and wait it out.

Oh, if your power is out I hope you have heat. You can read this by candlelight. Anyway, be careful and stay warm as best you can.

Al

Alaska Way Viaduct:

Here’s a subject we’ve seen before – the viaduct is about to collapse, probably before Tuesday so we have to apply emergency measures. We don’t want Seattle to become another city in which hundreds of commuters are squished like bugs as an old elevated roadway falls down. Unless, ummm, no, I don’t think there are any scenarios where that would be OK.

Options for Replacement:
Almost exclusively everyone agrees that the viaduct has to be torn down. It’s been studied to death and it can’t be retrofitted. Besides a lot of people don’t like the looks of it so they support any plan that removes it, whether it’s a good plan or not.

So they came up with eight options in which the old structure is removed. Besides, Christine (who recently won re-election as our gov) is going to knock it down in 2012 so it’s kind of important that all options take this into account.

Basically there are three types of option with a few variations that flesh it out to eight. First is the replacement: take it down and build an earthquake proof elevated road. Second is a tunnel: this has a few versions, such as bore, cut and lid, and different ways to cut and cover. Third is surface streets: widen Western Avenue and Alaska Way to three lanes one way each so lots of traffic can get through the area. That one has a couple versions too.

The apparent issue is the wide range of costs. But that’s only an issue if they ask me to pay for it. If they ask, oh, say Oklahoma City to pay for it, then I say go for it.

The two finalists are the surface plan with a few elevated parts at the ends, just for nostalgia and a side by side elevated replacement.

One reason the surface option made the cut is the vastly understated cost. It only includes the price for removing the old structure and paving Alaska Way (as I understand the news story, anyway). The impact and subsequent cost of adding lanes to I-5 is huge. Blocking off waterfront businesses with a six lane traffic light infested boulevard would kill many of them. Right now there are ways to park and visit the waterfront shops, aquarium, and Ivar’s fairly easily. The other part of the cost is how in the world do you widen and upgrade Western Avenue for the other direction traffic? I think the surface option has enormous economic impacts that are completely ignored as part of the price.

The elevated replacement option was also selected for its price tag. Again, I’m not sure the real cost is being considered. As I mentioned one reason so many people are in favor of demolition is that they don’t want an elevated roadway along the waterfront. And even I have to admit it’s kind of ugly. I kind of like the upper deck drive and the view from there. But the real show-stopper on this option is that it reduces the road to two lanes each way. That’s because they want to make it side by side instead of a double deck like the existing viaduct. The existing road is three lanes each way with exit lanes.

OK, I’m tipping my hand with my opinions. I favor the tunnel bore. That’s because we have two major issues and one huge consideration. The issues are that we need to move a lot of traffic through the area without traffic lights or adding to the I-5 congestion AND we need to keep the waterfront as part of the city. So I can’t see a surface boulevard or a simple elevated solving these issues.

The huge consideration is the future: In 20 years it will be an enormous improvement in traffic management to get the thousands of cars through the city while leaving the waterfront surface open and uncongested. Included in this huge consideration is transit.

Waterfront Transit:
The Greater Newcastle Metropolitan Area is stumbling toward a working transit system. There are kinks and issues, but in general it’s possible to get around. As we build more transit and add more busses we’ll reach a usable system. One component of that system is a way to get into the city and out again from near where we live. Sounds kind of simple minded, but right now it’s a challenge.

If I get on a bus in Bellevue (Newcastle has a bus but it’s a local and takes forever to get anywhere) at a Park & Ride I can get into Seattle and transfer to another bus that goes where I might want to be. It’s just hard to figure out which bus, where to transfer, how much it costs, and what the heck is that person in row six eating???

As we add light rail and more Sound Transit busses with their own lanes we’ll get to a point where we can “catch a ride” without spending a couple of hours on the web trying to decipher the schedules. They have all kinds of asterisks and things that say “only operates second Tuesday of the week” and so on. Or “driver may be rooky so be prepared to help navigate.”

The points is once you eliminate the old elevated roadway and get all the through traffic into a tunnel then the surface is available for transit options. They already have a “trolley” that’s a historic icon and they could easily add light rail and frequent bus routes without the heavy traffic. If it’s a bumper to bumper boulevard busses are hard to maneuver. You’d have cross walks (with short “walk” lights) and all the other congestion on big streets. The only customers on the waterfront would be people who can dash across six lanes in 12 seconds or less. And they don’t have as much money as us older folks.

I want a tunnel! Christine, listen up!

And that's my opinion.

Al

California

Traveling to California is an adventure. There are lots of things to see. Let’s review a few – mainly what I saw last week:

California Redwoods:
There are two kinds of very large trees and three kinds of very old trees in California. The large ones are redwoods and sequoia. The very old ones are these two plus the bristlecone pine. They can be 2000 years old or more. Think back to a time before these trees were confined to parks. They could roam free among the mountains and canyons.

Redwoods are coastal trees. Walking around on the forest floor can get really dark when the morning fog is rolling in. Many redwoods are over 300 feet tall. That’s a lot of tree.
Sequoia and bristlecone pines are high mountain trees – we saw those on other trips. This was a coastal trip.

California Roads:
In California they don’t have a lot of extra money for road sign paint so “canyon” is spelled “cyn.” They have numerous other cost saving techniques, such as neglecting pavement and guard rails on much of the coastal highway. It’s easier just to put up a sign once in a while that says, “Ruf Rd in Cyn.” Or “Crvs Ahed.”

We found a traffic report news station near Frisco and they spent a lot of time talking about light rail projects. San Jose has its own light rail. Sounds about the same as the Greater Newcastle area with signs, news, and propositions about light rail.

California Seagulls:
The bird books tell us there’s no such thing as a “seagull,” it’s supposed to be called a “gull.” Then you can apply the first name to tell what type of “gull” it is. Thus you have herring gull, mew gull, laughing gull, and California gull. That’s right, they have their own gull. It’s a general availability bird but California claims it.

California Motels:
They have plenty of places to stay in Cal. It’s a little daunting. They have funky signs and a few are just plain old crappy. Then, of course, the usual places are there. That’s what we stayed in, the usual places. They provide free high speed internet access (if you’re used to dial up, that is). I found it’s pretty slow because so many others were sharing the pipe.

The places we stayed had breakfast. You can get eggs, tofu, waffles, and nanners – and some actual food, too. Shari’s has better breakfast, but the motel food comes with the room, so might as well.

California Parks:
I have to admit one of the nice things about their parks is that they have restrooms. You can’t say that about all states, particularly Oregon. At my age it’s good to be able to check the GPS for a nearby park and expect to find porcelain (or a facsimile). Nebraska solves that issue by providing lonely roadsides. Clever.

California is also a “public beach” state in that people can’t “own” a beach and keep you off. This is good because they have such a long coast. Every town has a beach/park where you can go walk in the sand and watch surfers.

California Surfers:
We happened to be there for higher than normal surf and lots of people were out riding around on surf boards. I can’t figure out why. It has several things I don’t like – water, cold water, big waves, wind, surfers, and sharks. Oh, and jellyfish.

California Elephant Seals:
Elephant seals are big and they have a rookery near San Simeon on Big Sur. Prime beach property. They lie on the beach and use their flippers to toss sand on their backs. Other than that they seem to sleep. But they’re really big. We also saw sea lions in a couple of places and they’re not as big as elephant seals. But noisy.

California Condors:
Big Sur is home to a group of condors that nature dudes are trying to reestablish. These are very large birds and really interesting looking. We saw four. The head is bright orange and they have a lot of white under their wings. I didn’t have a good way to get photos because they were way above us. One was in the company of a turkey vulture and it looked small in comparison.

California:
Gasoline prices are down and it’s fun to get out on the open road. The weather was good and most of the food was good. The trip was good.

Al

Thorp Grist Mill

Thorp is a small town near I-90 on what we call the East Side. It’s the east side of Washington where Dino got most of the votes. Lots of Seattle folks drive I-90 to watch football games in Pullman, to pick apples in Yakima, and to taste wine in the Yakima Valley.

There’s also John Wayne Trail State Park trail. You can walk, ride a bike or horse, or have a picnic on the trail. Some folks like to think you can get over the mountains on the trail.

Long ago when I was just a kid, in the 1800s, people used to buy bags of flour. Honestly, I don’t know why anyone would want to buy flour. You can buy hundreds of things already made out of flour at Safeway.

People around Thorp in those days got agitated and decided to build a grist mill. Grist is what they call grain that’s ground into flour. It also refers to the quantity of grain that’s ground into flour in one batch. Just in case you thought I didn’t know what a grist was.

After the mill was built folks around Thorp would carry wheat to the mill and say something like, “Hey, Miller, grist this!” Fights broke out until everyone realized the farmer was just asking the miller to make a batch of flour. Grist is one of those interesting words. It seems to be an action word that annoys people, but it’s really just a noun, not a verb. So you can readily see why people wanted to fight over it.

The grist mill at Thorp used a water turbine mounted horizontally in the irrigation ditch. The turbine was connected to the main shaft by a large leather strap with a 90 degree twist. The main shaft had numerous wheels that were connected by many other leather belts that turned the grinding machinery. Cows lost their skin over this mill.

All the water stays in the irrigation system. Many other mills use a vertical wheel that turns as water runs over the top and drops into the creek. These usually have a higher water source. There was also had a saw mill that got its power from the irrigation ditch turbine. That part is gone.

In the early 1900s the water turbines were used to generate electricity. Not many folks in Thorp had computers so it served OK. If they needed more power it could be brought in by train, I think. Anyway, the Milwaukee Road had a depot in Thorp.

Another interesting feature at the Thorp mill is the old ice pond. Northern Pacific trains would stop there to toss ice into refrigerator cars. The pond was 23 acres and provided ice for the local community as well. That is when it was frozen. When the weather got above freezing one has to assume the ice was hidden in cold dark places. Another mystery for further research – where did they hide the ice in summer?

The John Wayne Trail passes close to the mill and people can stop at the Ice Pond Park for a rest. I-90 travelers may also stop in for a visit.

To me, the main attraction of the mill is the mechanical complexity. The grain travels up into the top and down for the various grinding processes using a spider web of wood races. It takes several grinding stages in order to get the finest flour.

The mill also made livestock feed which was a courser grind. I don’t know if you could call it grist. Feed of this type is used to fatten out cattle just before they’re made into quarter pounders with cheese. The bonus is they got more cow skin for the drive belts. Economic theory in action.

Sometime in the future we may once again see passenger rail service along the I-90 route. Right now Amtrak runs the Seattle – Chicago train further north via Stevens Pass. That pass was named for an early Washington State pioneer in building passes. However, right now we don’t have passenger trains near Thorp.

Which brings us to my plan: BNSF currently runs freight trains through Thorp on the old Northern Pacific right of way. Passes right by the old ice pond. I think it’s about time we get back to passenger rail service across the state. BNSF would probably be OK with this.

Their line follows the Yakima River down through Yakima and then through the wine tasting country to the Tri-Cities. Do we have to call it “Trines” now? We need to check with the folks in Northern Indiana. Oh, I know; if Trine gives us the money to get a passenger train going then yes, we’ll change the name.

Wouldn’t it be great to relax in a train over the Cascades, have lunch at the Thorp Grist Mill, taste a gallon or two of wine in the Yakima valley, spend the night at the Trines, take in a football game in Pullman, and head back to the rainy side without ever having to drive on I-90? If you have a bag of wheat you could drop it off on the way over and pick up flour on the way home.

Al

If you click on a photo it gets bigger. Amazing, isn't it, but they don't all do it.?.

Election Results 2008

Well the Sound Transit proposition won. We’ll get more miles on the light rail system. They’re planning a ring around the Puget Sound bathtub.

Bellevue has an area of low level development and high level asphalt east of the main downtown area. There was a Safeway distribution center, Coke warehouse, and a lumber yard among hundreds of other expansive type places.

Metro Transit has a big bus parking lot in the area. Burlington Northern provided rail freight on its now closed on the eastside. In fact the rail line kind of defined the boundary of this area.
Bellevue’s no longer proud of the low density business. For years those businesses paid tax money into the city because they had such large chunks of ground. Now the downtown high rise development pays most of the commercial tax and these places east of the tracks are being left behind.

A lot of the big space businesses are pulling out and heading for places where the property tax rates are lower. This leaves some big empty warehouse and parking areas. Bellevue wants to control what goes in there. Or at least set a lot of conditions.

One of their ideas is to use that area as a kind of landing zone for the eastside light rail. Sound Transit is hoping to run the rails over the lake and into downtown Bellevue. They think a lot of people will ride. A small part of the Link will potentially use the BNSF line. And then past there we’re looking at some maintenance facilities.

Which has me wondering – Is Bellevue going to have as much fun as Seattle?
Seattle has the South Lake Union Trolley. It goes up and down for little reason. I pass by that way about once a month and I see bright trolleys but nobody riding except the driver. Bellevue could have one of those.

Seattle also has a tunnel as part of the light rail line from downtown to Sea-Tac. Bellevue has hills. It seems logical to find some way to have a tunnel in the eastside system. That’s how it could reach Newcastle!

I-90 is part of Ike’s Interstate system. In the 1930s they began hauling rocks and dirt from Maple Valley (it use to be Maple Hill) and dumping it into Lake Washington. The goal was to construct a mid-lake land bridge between Bellevue and Seattle. Well they finally gave up and installed a four lane floating bridge in 1940. The fill was named Mercer Island and in order to save face they made it a city and let people build houses on it. We’d never get away with trying to fill in a lake these days – too many whiners.

Anyway, Sound Transit wants to run the East Link Light Rail on I-90. So I’m wondering who they have to ask. The feds probably think they still own the highway, but you know how they are.

Washdot wants to use the other floating bridge for the light rail line. That’s the one everyone thinks is about to sink. Thus it needs to be replaced immediately or at least before 2050. One of the big arguments is whether to make the new pontoons bigger than they need to be. Here’s why: people in Seattle want to keep it to four lanes. But Washdot is pretty sure that if they need to make it six lanes someday they’ll have to replace those pontoons with bigger ones. So why not make them bigger now? In addition they may want to add light rail. So now the pontoons are really big. But they’re under water so what’s the big deal? Cost. Building pontoons much bigger than the approved roadway would annoy toll payers and Timmy the nut.

Timmy would start an initiative campaign that in essence would require pontoons made out of old plastic bags. And at some point the Supreme Court in Olympia would declare it null and void, but the process would add years and millions of $$$ to the cost. And maybe the old bridge would sink during all this.

See, the problem with Timmy is his ideas sound OK at first but if you think them through it’s just not workable. For example some of the wagon trains on the Oregon Trail got diverted by a billboard advertising Mount Rushmore but when they arrived it was just a regular mountain. In those days nobody had carved presidents into mountains. Then winter came.

So the question for Washdot is this: “When will Winter come and stop your plans for light rail on SR 520?"

I also have a question for California: "Are you crazy? Don't you know your Supreme Court will have to set aside the Prop 8 result?" Two reasons: 1. in our 2008 enlightened time we all should realize you can't discriminate about whom a person chooses to marry. 2. It's almost completely certain the victims of this stupid initiative are not the ones that voted for it - so you can't have one group deciding what's right for another group. So Cal tax payers will have to pay for the courts to hear this nonsense and overturn it. They deserve it.

Al