Re: What Will The Bay Area Look Like In 20 Years?
Stan The Man
"Snoopy" <john...@qwest.net> wrote in message
news:4a97b876$0$89387$815e...@news.qwest.net...
> What will Los Angeles and the Bay Area look like in 20 years?
The mouth of the bay will be sealed off and the bay drained, eventually to
be refilled with fresh water from the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers,
thus solving the states water problems forever. A series of locks will allow
ships to enter he bay without contaminating the fresh water.
The old prison on Alcatraz Island will be demolished and replaced with a
shopping mall, office towers, an amusement park and 25,000 condos. A subway
will link it to SF.
CaHSR will be built and extended to Vancouver, British Columbia with
additional stops in Eugene, Oregon, Portland, Oregon and Seattle,
Washington.
The states of California, Oregon, Washington and the former province of
British Colombia will join forces and create the West Coast Transit
Authority (WCTA), a combination of all transit agencies in the region. A 30
day pass good on HSR plus all local buses and trains will cost $300 with a
50% discount for seniors and disabled persons. A $5.00 per pack cigarette
tax will pay for the system.
The "Subway to the Sea" will open and work will begin on a regional subway
system to cover all of Los Angeles County, Orange County and the western
portion of Riverside County and San Bernardino County and the much of San
Diego County. In all, over 2,500 miles of subway will be built using the
method pioneered by Madrid Spain, for a fraction of the cost per mile spent
on the current subway system.
Disney Corp. will take ownership of the former El Toro Marine Base and turn
it into the world's largest theme park. Michael Eisner Jr. will be CEO.
Former Microsoft CEO Bill Gates will be elected President of United North
America with Madonna his VP. His first action will be to sign a treaty
merging the new country with the European Union, creating a country that
covers most of the northern hemisphere.
Windows will finally go open source.
Don Freeman
<...>
> Windows will finally go open source.
>
Funny thing is, that's the most unbelievable of your predictions.
--
-Don
www.cosmoslair.com
Patrick Scheible
> "Snoopy" <john...@qwest.net> wrote in message
> news:4a97b876$0$89387$815e...@news.qwest.net...
> > What will Los Angeles and the Bay Area look like in 20 years?
>
> The mouth of the bay will be sealed off and the bay drained, eventually to
> be refilled with fresh water from the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers,
> thus solving the states water problems forever. A series of locks will allow
> ships to enter he bay without contaminating the fresh water.
>
> The old prison on Alcatraz Island will be demolished and replaced with a
> shopping mall, office towers, an amusement park and 25,000 condos. A subway
> will link it to SF.
Oh, good BART will finally get its Marin Line built -- with a stop at
Alcatraz!
> CaHSR will be built and extended to Vancouver, British Columbia with
> additional stops in Eugene, Oregon, Portland, Oregon and Seattle,
> Washington.
What, no stops in the northern Central Valley and southern Oregon?
Redding? Ashland? Grant's Pass? Medford?
> The states of California, Oregon, Washington and the former province of
> British Colombia will join forces and create the West Coast Transit
> Authority (WCTA), a combination of all transit agencies in the region. A 30
> day pass good on HSR plus all local buses and trains will cost $300 with a
> 50% discount for seniors and disabled persons. A $5.00 per pack cigarette
> tax will pay for the system.
That could be a good deal for travellers. I hope there will also be
less expensive passes for just one region.
> The "Subway to the Sea" will open and work will begin on a regional subway
> system to cover all of Los Angeles County, Orange County and the western
> portion of Riverside County and San Bernardino County and the much of San
> Diego County. In all, over 2,500 miles of subway will be built using the
> method pioneered by Madrid Spain, for a fraction of the cost per mile spent
> on the current subway system.
>
> Disney Corp. will take ownership of the former El Toro Marine Base and turn
> it into the world's largest theme park. Michael Eisner Jr. will be CEO.
>
> Former Microsoft CEO Bill Gates will be elected President of United North
> America with Madonna his VP. His first action will be to sign a treaty
> merging the new country with the European Union, creating a country that
> covers most of the northern hemisphere.
>
> Windows will finally go open source.
Oh, now you're just being silly.
-- Patrick
Stan The Man
"Don Freeman" <free...@cosmoslair.com> wrote in message
news:4aae818b$0$1667$742e...@news.sonic.net...
Seriously, I think the biggest changes will be in technology. We'll have
smaller, faster computers and maybe a new way to communicate wirelessly.
Other than that, I don't see any major changes happening in the next 20
years.
Transit will probably be about the same as today. We might see a few new
rail lines and even more BRT lines, but otherwise, no big improvements.
California will still be far behind NYC.
C.Tudor
I'm still waiting for flying cars and automated food synthesizers that
can make a turkey sandwich when you punch in the right code. Or at
least silent running elevated monorails. There you go: "Monorail to the
Sea."
Patrick Scheible
Seattle is still running the monorail built for the 1962 World's
Fair. It's elevated, and not totally silent but quieter than busses
or freight trains.
-- Patrick
Stan The Man
"Patrick Scheible" <k...@zipcon.net> wrote in message
news:w9zskek...@zipcon.net...
It's a shame they didn't go with an expanded monorail system. It would have
been totally grade separated and considerably faster than the light rail
system they're building now. Also, it would have been far cheaper.
Patrick Scheible
It would not have been cheaper. The light rail is pretty much
standard across other cities. The monorail would have been a one-off,
with Seattle paying all the development costs. The light rail they're
expanding now can share maintenance facilities with the existing light
rail (which was under construction when the monorail was proposed). I
agree it would have been nice if all of the light rail was
grade-separated, but on the grade-separated parts the light rail is as
fast as the monorail would have been, possibly faster on future
cross-lake sections.
The monorail was really doomed by the financing scheme. The voters
authorized a tax rate per car, but with no expiration date for the
tax. In order to make the money work, the monorail's finance people
had the tax stretched out over the next 50 years, paying $9 billion in
interest for $2 billion in construction and land costs.
Also, in the process of trying to make the money work, the designers
put in a long single-track section that would have been a crippling
bottleneck in operation. And made the columns fat and cheap instead
of slender and elegant and expensive.
-- Patrick