Tag: Transportation

Let the Looting Begin

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At the core of the failure of the California High speed rail project is costly and largely incompetent consultants:

When California shifted its bullet train plan into high gear in 2008, it had just 10 employees to manage and oversee design of the largest public construction project in state history.

Consultants assured the state there was little reason to hire hundreds or thousands of in-house engineers and rail experts, because the consultants could handle the heavy work themselves and save California money. It would take them only 12 years to bore under mountains, bridge rivers and build 520 miles of rail bed — all at a cost of just $33 billion.

State officials followed that advice, and for the next several years, development of the nation’s first high-speed rail line was overseen by a minuscule government staff.

Now, more than a decade later, that decision has proved to be a foundational error in the project’s execution — a miscalculation that has resulted in the California High-Speed Rail Authority being overly reliant on a network of high-cost consultants who have consistently underestimated the difficulty of the task.

………

But significant portions of this work have been flawed or mismanaged, according to records reviewed by The Times and interviews with dozens of people involved in the project. Despite repeated warnings since 2010 about weaknesses in its staffing, the rail authority believed it could reduce overall costs by relying on consultants and avoiding a large permanent workforce. But that strategy has failed to keep project costs from soaring. Ten years after voters approved it, the project is $44 billion over budget and 13 years behind schedule.

A reckoning may be coming very soon, however.

Gov. Gavin Newsom recently told The Times that he would be taking aim at the consultants when the rail authority sends a major project update to the Legislature on May 1, including a detailed plan on building a partial operating system from Bakersfield to Merced for $16 billion to $18 billion.

“I’m getting rid of a lot of consultants,” Newsom said. “How did we get away with this?”

But actually reducing the role of consultants will be problematic because they have become cemented into place.

………

The rail authority’s consultants are hardly household names, but they are politically powerful and made major contributions to support the 2008 political campaign for the bullet train bond. They have staffed their ranks with former high-level bureaucrats, and their former executives have occupied key government posts.

………

To be sure, consultants are a routine part of many state construction projects. In California, however, high-speed rail is in a league of its own when it comes to reliance on outside staffing.

………

“If you depend on consultants to know what you are doing, then you are in real trouble,” said Bent Flyvbjerg, an Oxford University professor who has studied high-speed rail projects around the world. “A good balance is where the owner is not outsourcing all the knowledge. A bad balance guarantees a bad outcome.”

Brian Kelly, chief executive of the rail authority, acknowledges that “the balance needs to be remedied.”

Gee, you think?

It turns out that corruption is why we cannot make things in the United States anymore.

Hands Out for Another Government Subsidy

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This tweet is wrong on a number of levels:

At a mobility event today I met an auto industry rep who told me “to enable AV’s we need a period of increased urban law enforcement so pedestrians know what they can’t do. Then they’ll change behavior.”
I was so stunned I could barely respond “I think that’s a horrific idea.”

— David Zipper (@DavidZipper) March 28, 2019

The first, and most disturbing, thing is that self driving car people are proposing criminalizing walking to make up for their inability to deliver the promised product, a self driving car that can actually drive itself.

But there is a more important point: When demanding that pedestrians be criminalized, they are actually seeking a subsidy.

It’s too difficult (read expensive) to develop a self-driving car that can deal with the real world, so they want tax dollars to enforce a world that is more convenient (cheaper) for them.

H/t Eschaton.

From the Department of “About F%$#ing Time”

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They aren’t calling it that, of course, they are calling it a “Tax on non-resident owners,” but basically, it’s money laundering: (The London property market even more so)

Pressure to find revenue to finance a $40 billion fix for New York’s subways, buses and regional commuter rail has sparked renewed city and state interest in a tax on wealthy non-residents who own luxury city apartments.

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo’s budget director, Robert Mujica, jump-started the idea Wednesday in a statement that totaled up potential revenue sources for regional transit funding: $15 billion from congestion pricing, $5 billion from Internet sales, and $2 billion from yet-to-be-legalized cannabis. The so-called “pied-à-terre tax” on non-resident owners could raise as much as $9 billion, Mujica said.

………

Mayor Bill de Blasio has preferred a millionaires’ income tax on city residents. Since that proposal hasn’t received support in the legislature, the mayor said Thursday he could back the luxury-apartment tax.

………

The proposal has been opposed by the Real Estate Board of New York, the trade group for an industry that accounts for more than 30 percent of the city’s tax revenue. The board has said it would harm the city’s economy by suppressing investment, cutting jobs and lowering demand for high-priced apartment towers.

 Mandy Rice-Davies applies to the statement by the Real Estate Board of New York, “Well, they would say that, wouldn’t they?”

If there is a sure fire way to destroy your community, it is pandering to realtors, developers, and bankers.

Bernie Sanders Walking the Walk

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Bernie Sanders is all over the strike at Wabtec in Erie, PA.

GE sold the plant to Wabtec a few days ago, and Wabtec has attempted to invalidate the union agreement: (Full disclosure, I worked there from 1994-1996)

When 1,700 members of United Electrical, Radio & Machine Workers of America Locals 506 and 618 struck at the sprawling Wabtec locomotive plant in Erie, Pennsylvania, Tuesday morning, they got an immediate show of solidarity from one of the most prominent political figures in the United States.

“Americans are sick and tired of corporate America and their wealthy CEOs ripping off working families,” announced Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, in a tweet dispatched shortly after the picket line was established. “I’m proud to stand with the locomotive manufacturing workers of @ueunion Local 506 and 618 in their fight against GE/Wabtec to maintain decent wages and working conditions.”

That’s the right response from a contender for the Democratic nomination for the presidency. Democrats have to stand in outspoken solidarity with workers, especially when their unions are struggling to preserve manufacturing jobs and maintain fair wages in historic urban and industrial centers such as Erie.

………

The strike in Erie pits a union with deep roots in Western Pennsylvania and American manufacturing against a powerful multinational corporation—Webtec (Westinghouse Air Brake Technologies Corporation)—that, after taking charge this week of a former GE Transportation manufacturing facility, has refused to maintain existing protections for workers. “We are extremely disappointed that the company could not see its way to agree to continue the terms and conditions that we have worked under for decades. Their refusal leaves us with no choice but to go out on strike to protect our members’ and our children’s future,” says UE Local 506 president Scott Slawson.

According to UE: “Wabtec’s terms and conditions, which they imposed when they took over the plant on Monday, include the introduction of mandatory overtime and arbitrary schedules, wage reductions of up to 38 percent for recalled and newly-hired workers, and the right to use temporary workers for up to 20 percent of the work in the plant.”

………

Sanders has been in the thick of this fight. Last week, he wrote Wabtec CEO Raymond Betler a letter that called out the new boss for trying to squeeze concessions out of workers. “Let’s be clear,” noted Sanders. “Wabtec is not a poor company. It is not going broke. Through the first three quarters of last year, Wabtec made a $256 million profit and had enough money to give you a $3.5 million compensation package.”

“Corporate executives must not use the merger between GE and Wabtec to hurt workers,” wrote the senator, who argued that “the Wabtec/GE merger should not be used to take away the hard-fought gains UE has achieved over the past several decades.”

Sanders promised to “provide my full support and solidarity to the workers at this plant to ensure that they achieve a fair and equitable collective bargaining agreement.” And he has done just that, using his considerable social-media presence and public appearances (including a CNN Town Hall event Monday night) to focus attention on what he has described as a struggle that has meaning for “working Americans everywhere.”

From the rest of the voluminous Democratic Presidential field?  **Crickets**

To a large degree, my experience at GE Transportation Systems (GETS) (now Wabtec) is responsible for my political move left in my middle age.

It was a contentious labor environment, and management, primarily the big bosses at the Connecticut headquarters loathed the union, and the workers.

I wholeheartedly support the strikers.

Jail Time, Please.

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If Elon Musk was a a CEO from anywhere else by Silicon Valley, he would already have been banned for life from managing publicly traded companies.

As it is, the fines have meant nothing for him, and so the SEC has filed a contempt of court complaint against him for his recent tweets.

If he spends a couple of weeks behind bars, not only will it deter him, but it will also deter the rest of the self-important fraudsters who infest the tech industry in the US:

The Securities and Exchange Commission asked a federal judge on Monday to hold Tesla Inc. Chief Executive Elon Musk in contempt of court over tweets he made last week discussing the auto maker’s 2019 projected production volumes.

In a court filing, the SEC said Mr. Musk violated a condition of his settlement with the regulator last year, when he was accused of tweeting misleading information about taking Tesla private. Mr. Musk’s deal with the SEC required that Tesla officials preapprove any statements from Mr. Musk that could affect the company’s stock price.

………

In a series of Twitter messages on Feb. 19 that began as a celebration over Tesla vehicles prepared for shipment to Europe, Mr. Musk noted how the auto maker had achieved strong growth in recent years. “Tesla made 0 cars in 2011, but will make around 500k in 2019,” he wrote in a tweet after regular trading hours.

The suggestion that Tesla would make 500,000 vehicles this year stood in contrast to guidance given by the company on Jan. 30. In his quarterly shareholder letter, Mr. Musk told investors that Tesla would reach an annualized build rate of 500,000 Model 3s sometime between the fourth quarter of this year and the second quarter of next year. Mr. Musk said in Tesla’s shareholder letter that the company planned to deliver as many as 400,000 in all of 2019.

Hours after his initial tweets, Mr. Musk clarified in another message, writing, “Meant to say annualized production rate at end of 2019 probably around 500k, ie 10k cars/week. Deliveries for year still estimated to be about 400k.”

The SEC said that Mr. Musk “did not seek or receive preapproval prior to publishing this tweet, which was inaccurate and disseminated to over 24 million people.”

In its response to the SEC, Tesla stated the content of Mr. Musk’s tweet had previously been preapproved for a Jan. 30 release by the company’s general counsel and designated securities counsel.

“Although the 7:15 PM EST tweet was not individually preapproved, Mr. Musk believed that the substance had already been appropriately vetted, preapproved, and publicly disseminated,” wrote Bradley Bondi, outside counsel working for Tesla, in a letter dated Feb. 22 and included in the material filed with the court by the SEC and released Monday. “Moreover, the tweet was made outside of NASDAQ trading hours.”

Bovine scatology.

This is a Bull Durham moment.

Elon Musk just called the umpires a c%$# sucker, and the umps have to toss him out.

Short of dropping his pants and mooning the SEC, I cannot see a clearer example of contempt of court.

They do sh%$ like this because they can, and they need to be disabused of this notion.

Officer, Would You Like a Cup of Shut the F%$# up to Go along with Your Doughnut?

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Waze is a navigation app, and it’s better than Google Maps, in part because its users can report road conditions and the like.

One of the road hazards that users can report are speed traps, and cops HATE that, because that’s how they make their money.

Well, now the NYPD has issued a cease and desist letter to Waze, who promptly told them to go Cheney themselves:

The popular traffic app Waze gathers user-submitted feedback to alert drivers to possible inconveniences they might experience on the road—inconveniences like getting stuck at DWI traffic point. Now, the NYPD reportedly has a message for Waze and its parent company Google: Snitches get stitches.

CBS New York obtained a cease and desist letter that it claims was sent by the NYPD to Google in the law enforcement agency insists the Waze app is creating a dangerous situation by alerting users of nearby checkpoints. According to the report, the letter states:

Individuals who post the locations of DWI checkpoints may be engaging in criminal conduct since such actions could be intentional attempts to prevent and/or impair the administration of the DWI laws and other relevant criminal and traffic laws.

The posting of such information for public consumption is irresponsible since it only serves to aid impaired and intoxicated drivers to evade checkpoints and encourage reckless driving. Revealing the location of checkpoints puts those drivers, their passengers, and the general public at risk.

Curiously, a link to the full letter on the CBS website is now broken. An NYPD spokesperson told Gizmodo in an email, “I can confirm the NYPD sent the letter.” When asked for comment, a Google representative told us, “Safety is a top priority when developing navigation features at Google. We believe that informing drivers about upcoming speed traps allows them to be more careful and make safer decisions when they’re on the road.”

There are a number of things that are wrong with what the police have done.

First, Waze does not report sobriety check-points, ir reports speed traps, traffic cams, and  the presence of police cars.

Second, this is a seriously chicken sh%$ move, but seriously chicken sh%$ moves are all a part of law enforcement mentality, which is why one occasionally hear porcine metaphors when referring to the local constabulary.

Profiting from Being a Public Nuisance

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I am referring, of course, to the so-called “Sharing Economy”, in this case the scooter companies, who are making lives of the disabled a living hell, but what the hell, there’s money to be made:

Alex Montoya, who wears prosthetics on both arms and his right leg, used to enjoy walking in his East Village neighborhood where he lives. No longer. Now he fears for his safety because every day he is dodging scooters travelling at high speeds down the sidewalk. Several times scooters strewn across his path also have caused him to nearly trip.

In recent months, dock-less scooters have become more common throughout San Diego’s neighborhoods. They are ubiquitous. This proliferation has occurred in an unregulated and haphazard fashion. For many scooters may be a nuisance. For others they may be a convenience. However, for blind people and people with mobility impairments, the presence and use of these scooters deny them access to public walkways and pose a serious risk to their safety.

Yesterday, the law firm of Neil, Dymott, Frank, McCabe & Hudson, and Disability Rights California filed a class action lawsuit https://www.disabilityrightsca.org/cases/montoya-et-al-v-bird-rides-inc-et-al on behalf of people with disabilities in the U.S. District Court under the Americans with Disabilities Act and state anti-discrimination laws. The suit challenges the failure of San Diego and private scooter companies to maintain accessibility of the city’s public sidewalks, curb ramps and cross walkways for people with disabilities. Plaintiffs are seeking an Order prohibiting the scooter companies from operating on public walkways and denying access to San Diego’s disabled residents.

“People with disabilities should not have to stay in their houses because they are afraid to venture out the door due to scooters blocking their pathway everywhere they go,” said Ann Menasche from Disability Rights California, one of the attorneys for the Plaintiffs. “They have a right to use the city sidewalks just like everyone else who lives or visits here.”

“The Scooter companies have treated our free public walkways as their own private rental offices, show rooms and storage facilities. The city has done nothing to stop them,” said Bob Frank, of Neil, Dymott Attorneys. “People with disabilities need to have access to city sidewalks and their needs must come first.”

Aaron Greeson, one of the Plaintiffs, who is blind, and visits the City several times a week, explained, “I never leave the Blind Center anymore. I’ve already fallen once because of the scooters. I don’t want it to happen again.”

These folks make money by stealing the public commons from the rest of us.

This isn’t disruption, it’s privatizing the profits and socializing the costs.

Someone Is Losing Their Job

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It appears that the shutdown of Gatwick airport may have been caused by police drones, and not some nefarious terrorist or prankster:

Some of the drone sightings which kept Gatwick Airport on lockdown for 36 hours may have been reports of Sussex Police’s own aircraft, the force’s highest-ranking officer admitted yesterday.

Police received 115 reports of sightings in the area surrounding the airfield, including 92 confirmed by Sussex Police’s Chief Constable Giles York as coming from “credible people”.

But the force launched its own drone to search for what officers believed at the time to be malicious aircraft deliberately being flown above the runway in the early hours of December 19 to intentionally force Gatwick to shut down.

Well, the behavior to this point DOES seem to reek of authorities covering up their own incompetence.

Gatwick was shut down for 3 days at the height of the holiday travel season, and if this turns out to be a police screw up, there will be hell to pay.

Tardis, Meet Turdis

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The residents of Biggin Hill, which is perhaps the the most English place name in the UK, are upset because the local transit agency has installed a massive outside rest room for its bus drivers:

Residents on a quiet residential road have complained after transport planners installed an 11-ft lavatory block for bus drivers outside their homes.

On Tuesday Transport for London (TfL) installed the lavatory block – dubbed the “Turdis” by angry residents – on a street in Biggin Hill, on the border of South London and Kent, amid claims that homeowners on the road were not consulted.

Local councillor Julian Bennington said that furious residents smashed its windows within hours of its installation earlier this week and that its lock is already broken.

He said: “People are very angry – it’s literally outside their houses.

“It’s a monstrosity dumped here – the size of it and everything else – in the middle of what is a residential area.

“We knew nothing about it as local councillors and the council didn’t either. Residents have now been asking about why they weren’t consulted.”

I don’t want to make fun of this situation, but a, “Turdis in Biggin Hill,” is simply too much to ignore.

It Sucks to be Uber, Too.

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The New Work City Taxi and Limousine Commission (TLC) just imposed a minimum hourly wage on Uber and Lyft:

The city’s Taxi and Limousine Commission (TLC) said on Tuesday that it passed rules that will require “high volume” drivers of for-hire vehicles to receive a wage per trip that corresponds to $27.86 per hour, or $17.22 after expenses. The rules will go into effect in mid-January.

“New York City is the first city globally to recognize that the tens of thousands of men and women who are responsible for providing increasingly popular rides that begin with the touch of a screen deserve to make a livable wage and protection against companies from unilaterally reducing it,” TLC chair Meera Joshi said in a statement.

According to the commission, the rules will result in the equivalent of a $10,000 annual raise for 96% of New York City’s Uber, Lyft, Juno, and Via drivers. A report commissioned by the TLC found that median earnings for high-volume drivers of for-hire vehicles decreased by over 10% between 2016 and 2017.

………

The New York City Council in August voted in favor of establishing a minimum wage for ride-hailing drivers and preventing ride-hailing services from hiring new drivers for a year. The decision came after a report from transportation analyst Bruce Schaller that said ride-hailing services increased traffic congestion.

In July, the New York Unemployment Insurance Appeal Board issued a ruling that requires Uber to provide unemployment benefits for its drivers.

Increasingly, people are coming to realize that Uber, Lyft, and the rest of the, “Gig Economy,” are little more than con men who are personally profiting from negative externalities, much like polluters, the banksters, and spammers.

This Does Not Sound Like Progress

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Tennessee Ernie Ford says it all

Elon Musk’s latest “disruptive innovation” is to return to the days of the company town and the company store, where if you lose your job, they kick you out of your house:

Tesla’s Nevada-based Gigafactory could be undergoing a massive expansion which has the potential to include on-site accommodations for employees, reports the Las Vegas Review Journal. In a recent conversation with Nevada Governor Brian Sandoval at the state’s first annual technology summit, CEO Elon Musk discussed the automaker’s plans to hire more than 20,000 new workers for its manufacturing facility.

Currently, the manufacturing facility, coined Gigafactory 1, employs around 7,000 workers and produces the bulk of battery cells and packs found in Tesla vehicles. Despite producing an annual energy storage capacity output of 20 GWh, Tesla has acknowledged the need for batteries is virtually insatiable in order to meet the increasing demand for electric vehicles.

………

“The biggest constraint on growth here is housing and infrastructure.” said Musk according to the Review, “We’re looking at creating a housing compound on site at the Gigafactory, using kind of high-quality mobile homes.”

So, you live in a company town, and if you try to unionize, you get tossed out, and end up homeless, and your kid is kicked out of the company school, etc., just like in the 1890s.

Why does the Silicon Valley model of “Innovation” sound so much like the worst excess of the Gilded Age?

This is Beginning to Sound Like Whitey Bulger Writ Small

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Remember that horrific limousine accident in upstate New York?

Remember how the limo was falling apart, and the driver lacked proper licenses?

Well, we may now have an idea as to why this particular company was given a pass by regulators, its owner was a big time FBI informant.

In fact, this guy was commonly referred to as a “Superinformant“, and seemed to spend a lot of his time, as is the FBI’s wont, finding swarthy people who had very little intention of doing anything, and turning them into terrorism defendants.

The FBI does have a history of becoming excessively involved with the shady business dealings of its informants, the Boston office was almost a partner of James Joseph “Whitey” Bulger Jr.’s during his blood-soaked run through Beantown’s criminal underworld:

The aging limousine that crashed Saturday in Schoharie County, killing 20, was operated by a company with a record of failed inspections — and an owner who was a controversial FBI informant.

 The 2001 Ford Excursion was operated by Prestige Limousine, a small company that shares an address with a run-down motel in the Saratoga County town of Wilton, just north of tony Saratoga Springs.

 The company is owned by Shahed Hussain, whose backstory includes numerous stints as an undercover informant for the FBI.

 Authorites said Hussain, 62, is in his native Pakistan at present. Other company officials have pledged to cooperate with the investigation.

 Asked whether Hussain is under criminal investigation, State Police Major Robert Patnaude said anyone found to be criminally culpable will be “held accountable.”

 ……

 Albany-area lawyer Dana Salazar, who represented Shahed Hussain in a civil action against Saratoga County that revolved around the Saratoga Road motel property, verified on Monday that her client had indeed been the celebrated informant.

 Hussain emigrated from Pakistan in the early 1990’s, fleeing a murder charge that he later said was trumped up, according to news reports. He worked as a translator for the New York state Department of Motor Vehicles but was caught helping people cheat on DMV exams in return for money.

 He later was accused of making fraudulent statements in a personal bankruptcy case as well.

 Hussain pleaded guilty to a felony in relation to the DMV scam but avoided prison and deportation by becoming an informant, working in New York’s Muslim communities to find people that had radical tendencies.

 ……

 “And, perhaps perversely, it’s hard not to come away without some degree of admiration for Mr. Hussain, seen and heard only in the grainy videos shot in his car and living room,” reviewer Mike Hale. “He puts on a superior performance over a long period of time and lies with breathtaking ease and quickness. If there were Oscars for informants, he’d be on the red carpet every year.”

In the article, you have his hotel being shut down by authorities, multiple problems with his limo service, but he was always allowed to continue operating.

It’s not exactly the same as Winter Hill Gang boss Bulger and Stephen Joseph “The Rifleman” Flemmi using their status as informants to get FBI protection and take out rivals, but it certainly seems to rhyme.

Quote of the Day

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Cuomo beats Rahm for “worst Democratic politician in America” and I’m including any that happen to be in prison now.

—Atrios

Mr. Black is talking about the fact that “Rat Faced Andy” Cuomo is refusing to do a photo-op on the subway because he thinks that it is not a dynamic enough image for him.

In related news, Andrew’ Cuomo’s push to unveil the Mario Cuomo bridge before the primary election may destroy the new bridge:

A piece of the old Tappan Zee Bridge became destabilized Friday, creating “a potentially dangerous situation,” which caused state officials to call off plans to open the Westchester-bound span of its replacement, the Gov. Mario M. Cuomo Bridge.

Matthew Driscoll, the executive director of the New York State Thruway Authority, said engineers disassembling the Tappan Zee feared the destabilized piece of the old bridge could fall.

“Given its proximity to the new completed span, out of an abundance of caution, motorists will remain in the current traffic configuration until a thorough evaluation by Tappan Zee Constructors is complete,” Driscoll said Saturday morning.

It’s unclear when the new eastbound span will open.

“The second span is finished and ready to open to traffic as soon as the Thruway Authority is assured there is no risk to the new span,” he added.

The discovery prompted the Coast Guard to close the navigational channel under the bridge and the traffic shift already underway was canceled late Friday.

Seriously, this is the guy running on his successes as an executive?

His only skill is moral degeneracy.

Clearly, Self Driving Cars are Just Around the Corner

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Arizona is working very, very, hard to make itself the go to location, largely by subsidies and lax regulations.

It appears that these efforts are beginning to annoy the locals, who have come to hate the rolling roadblocks:

Alphabet’s Waymo unit is a worldwide leader in autonomous vehicle development for suburban environments. It has said it would launch a driverless robo-taxi service to suburban Phoenix residents this year. Yet its self-driving minivan prototypes have trouble crossing the T-intersection closest to the company’s Phoenix-area headquarters here.

Two weeks ago, Lisa Hargis, an administrative assistant who works at an office a stone’s throw from Waymo’s vehicle depot, said she nearly hit a Waymo Chrysler Pacifica minivan because it stopped abruptly while making a right turn at the intersection. “Go!” she shouted angrily, she said, after getting stuck in the intersection midway through her left turn. Cars that had been driving behind the Waymo van also stopped. “I was going to murder someone,” she said.

This is literally the most self-driving car corner in the world. It’s right next ti Waymo HQ, and it still does not work.*

The hesitation at the intersection is one of many flaws evident in Waymo’s technology, say five people with direct knowledge of the issues in Phoenix. More than a dozen local residents who frequently encounter one of the hundreds of Waymo test vehicles circulating in the area complained about sudden moves or stops. The company’s safety drivers—individuals who sit in the driver’s seat—regularly have to take control of the wheel to avoid a collision or potentially unsafe situation, the people said.

Suburban Phoenix, with its generally flat, straight roads and relatively light traffic, has been an ideal test location for Waymo and other developers of autonomous vehicles. Apple, which is working on its own self-driving car, recently set up a facility for testing prototype vehicles near Surprise, Ariz., west of Phoenix, according to a person briefed about the matter, a move that hasn’t previously been reported. (An Apple spokesman didn’t comment.) Uber was conducting tests in the area until it halted activity after a deadly collision in March.

But Waymo’s experience in the Phoenix surroundings is the latest evidence that it could be many years before fully autonomous vehicles replace human drivers, even in relatively easy driving environments, at any meaningful scale. While established automakers like Ford and GM, as well as startups like Aurora Innovation and Voyage, also are making incremental advances, the race to make such vehicles an everyday reality hasn’t progressed far beyond the starting line, say people in the field.

This is why self-driving car “experts” are suggesting things like basically banning pedestrians.

This stuff is not ready for prime time.

Clearly, Self Driving Cars are Just Around the Corner

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It appears that the latest break-through for self driving cars is a proposal to outlaw pedestrians:

You’re crossing the street wrong.

That is essentially the argument some self-driving car boosters have fallen back on in the months after the first pedestrian death attributed to an autonomous vehicle and amid growing concerns that artificial intelligence capable of real-world driving is further away than many predicted just a few years ago.

In a line reminiscent of Steve Jobs’s famous defense of the iPhone 4’s flawed antennae—“Don’t hold it like that”—these technologists say the problem isn’t that self-driving cars don’t work, it’s that people act unpredictably.

“What we tell people is, ‘Please be lawful and please be considerate,’” says Andrew Ng, a well-known machine learning researcher who runs a venture fund that invests in AI-enabled companies, including self-driving startup Drive.AI. In other words: no jaywalking.

Whether self-driving cars can correctly identify and avoid pedestrians crossing streets has become a burning issue since March after an Uber self-driving car killed a woman in Arizona who was walking a bicycle across the street at night outside a designated crosswalk. The incident is still under investigation, but a preliminary report from federal safety regulators said the car’s sensors had detected the woman but its decision-making software discounted the sensor data, concluding it was likely a false positive.

………

With these timelines slipping, driverless proponents like Ng say there’s one surefire shortcut to getting self-driving cars on the streets sooner: persuade pedestrians to behave less erratically. If they use crosswalks, where there are contextual clues—pavement markings and stop lights—the software is more likely to identify them.

But to others the very fact that Ng is suggesting such a thing is a sign that today’s technology simply can’t deliver self-driving cars as originally envisioned. “The AI we would really need hasn’t yet arrived,” says Gary Marcus, a New York University professor of psychology who researches both human and artificial intelligence. He says Ng is “just redefining the goalposts to make the job easier,” and that if the only way we can achieve safe self-driving cars is to completely segregate them from human drivers and pedestrians, we already had such technology: trains.

Rodney Brooks, a well-known robotics researcher and an emeritus professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, wrote in a blog post critical of Ng’s sentiments that “the great promise of self-driving cars has been that they will eliminate traffic deaths. Now [Ng] is saying that they will eliminate traffic deaths as long as all humans are trained to change their behavior? What just happened?”

We can now add hypocrisy to the other short comings of self driving car advocates.

You Know Those Saudi Investors Itching to Invest in Tesla?

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Well, neither do I.

More importantly, neither does the Tesla Board of directors:

An abrupt tweet last week by Elon Musk about the prospect of taking Tesla private was dashed off with little forethought, and had not been cleared ahead of time with the company’s board, two people familiar with the chain of events said Monday.

The account raised new questions about the cryptic Twitter post last week in which Mr. Musk, the mercurial co-founder and chief executive of the electric-car maker, said he had “funding secured” for a buyout of the $60 billion company.

The tweet was a highly unusual way of announcing a key strategy change at a public company. It prompted the Securities and Exchange Commission to contact Tesla to inquire about the accuracy of Mr. Musk’s tweets and the reason the disclosure had not been made in a regulatory filing, according to a person briefed on the inquiry, who was not authorized to speak publicly on behalf of the agency.

………

But three people familiar with the workings of the Saudi fund cast doubt on his account. They said the fund had taken none of the steps that such an ambitious transaction would entail, like preparing a term sheet or hiring a financial adviser to work on the deal.

And even if the fund were ready to move forward with such an agreement, it would invite review by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, the government body that reviews the national-security implications of such transactions.

I’m hoping that prosecution is on the table, because there are way too many people in Silicon Valley who are thinking that Elizabeth Holmes is some sort of black swan.
To quote a failed Presidential candidate, “They need to be brought to heel.”

This Sounds Like CYA to Me

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Elon Musk has been on a Jihad against short-sellers of Tesla forever.

The other day, he tweeted that Tesla would be going public at $420, about a 30% premium.

Now, with regulators wondering if this might be an illegal stock manipulation scheme, Musk is claiming that he has what is pretty much a done deal with the Saudi Arabian sovereign wealth fund.

The house of Saud may not be the sharpest tack in the drawer, but taking Tesla private at a 30% premium when their best case PE ratio in the next decade is something north of 100:1 is foolish even by the standards of inbred oil-wealth.

My guess is that there were some very preliminary talks, and Musk wants to use this as a cover for his attempt to hurt the short-sellers.

I hope that there is a full investigation:

Elon Musk, Tesla’s chief executive, said on Monday that he had held meetings with representatives of a Saudi sovereign wealth fund who expressed an eagerness to help him take the electric-car maker private.

Writing in a post on Tesla’s corporate blog, Mr. Musk offered his fullest explanation yet for what he said were the circumstances behind his Aug. 7 message on Twitter that he was “considering taking Tesla private at $420” and had “funding secured.” The post sent Wall Street scrambling for more information.

In the blog post, Mr. Musk said the Saudi fund had approached him several times about taking the company private as part of the country’s efforts to diversify its economy beyond oil.

Mr. Musk said that after several meetings that began in early 2017, he had left talks with the fund’s managing director on July 31 “with no question” that a deal could be closed and “that it was just a matter of getting the process moving.”

Yeah, sure, and if you believe that, I have a bridge in Riyadh you might be interested in buying. 

The DC Metro is F$#@ed up and Sh%$

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In an attempt to ……… Hell ……… I don’t know what they attempting, the DC Metro considered a train with private cars for neo-Nazis for them to go o the “Unite the Right” rally, because they are scared of sharing a train with black people.

To its credit, the union told management that they would not be staffing such a train under any circumstances, so this proposal is now off the table:

Metro is no longer considering running separate trains for protesters participating in the Aug. 12 “Unite the Right” white nationalists rally in the District, the transit agency’s board chairman said Saturday.

Metro Board Chairman Jack Evans had previously said that running a separate train was among options being weighed by officials.

“Metro will not be providing a special train or special car for anyone next Sunday,” Evans said.

Word about the possibility of the service for rallygoers spread quickly Friday and Saturday, drawing condemnation from those who decried “special treatment” for white nationalist groups, which are focused on the goal of achieving a whites-only state or the separation of whites from other groups. Others thought the possible move to constitute a form of segregation.

………

Plans for the special trains were publicized by Metro’s largest union, Amalgamated Transit Union Local 689, which released a statement expressing outrage at the idea that Metro would provide “private” rail cars to “Unite the Right” participants.

ATU Local 689 President Jackie Jeter said members of the union, the majority of whom are people of color, “draw the line” at providing special service for supporters of a group that espouses white nationalism.

“Local 689 is proud to provide transit to everyone for the many events we have in D.C. including the March [for] Life, the Women’s March and Black Lives Matter,” Jeter said. “We draw the line at giving special accommodation to hate groups and hate speech.”

If they were looking to suck up to Trump administration, or House and Senate Republicans, this was completely the wrong way to do this.

What the hell were they thinking?

The Return of Taxi Medallions

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New York City is looking at numerical limits on ride share vehicles because of the congestion that they caused.

If this sounds familiar, it is exactly the same justification that was used for the originally taxi medallion systems, that an unlimited number of hacks on the road would result in massive congestion issues:

New York City officials are moving to cap the number of vehicles driving for Uber and other ride-hailing services as part of an aggressive move to address mounting concerns that their explosive growth has led to worsening congestion and low driver wages.

The legislation being considered by the City Council would make New York the first major American city to set a limit on ride-hailing vehicles, which in a relatively short period of time have transformed the transportation networks in cities across the world. Mayor Bill de Blasio, while stopping short of fully endorsing the proposal, suggested that the time had come to rein in the industry.

The proposal supported by the City Council speaker, Corey Johnson, would halt the issuance of new for-hire vehicle licenses, except for vehicles that are wheelchair accessible, while the city conducts a yearlong study of the industry.

It is the second attempt by New York City — Uber’s largest United States market — to cap the company’s vehicles after a failed effort by Mr. de Blasio in 2015. Since then, the number of for-hire vehicles in the city has surged, rising to more than 100,000 vehicles, from about 63,000 in 2015, according to the city.

 Truth be told, they really don’t need another study, there already has been a study done:

The explosive growth of Uber and Lyft has created a new traffic problem for major U.S. cities and ride-sharing options such as UberPool and Lyft Line are exacerbating the issue by appealing directly to customers who would otherwise have taken transit, walked, biked or not used a ride-hailing service at all, according to a new study.

 The report by Bruce Schaller, author of the influential study “Unsustainable?” which found ride-hailing services were making traffic congestion in New York City worse, constructs a detailed profile of the typical ride-hail user and issues a stark warning to cities: Make efforts to counter the growth of ride-hailing services, or surrender city streets to fleets of private cars, creating a more hostile environment for pedestrians and cyclists and ultimately make urban cores less desirable places to live.

………

Schaller found that while options such as UberX add 2.8 new vehicle miles for each mile of personal driving they eliminate, the inclusion of options such as UberPool and Lyft Line adds to traffic at only a marginally lower rate: 2.6 new miles for every mile of personal driving reduced.

………

“Shared rides add to traffic because most users switch from non-auto modes,” the report says. “In addition, there is added mileage between trips as drivers wait for the next dispatch and then drive to a pickup location. Finally, even in a shared ride, some of the trip involves just one passenger (e.g., between the first and second pickup).”

Ride sharing runs into the Tragedy of the Commons:  Roads are a publicly held resource, and individual actors attempting to maximize their own personal benefit are damaging that resource.

Unfortunately, privatizing and/or abusing the commons seems to be America’s primary growth industry these days.