Category: Everything Else

On Trains and Tunnels

I am by no means any kind of an expert on trains, tunnels, church architecture, or construction, but something about this just strikes me as a really, really bad idea (emphasis added):

It has survived the death of its architect, a dearth of funding and the destruction of its prototypes during the Spanish civil war. Now the Cathedral of the Sagrada Familia, Antoni Gaudí’s surreal, unfinished opus, faces a new threat: plans to bore a high-speed train tunnel within meters of its foundations.

“What would possess someone to build a tunnel like this next to the heaviest building in Barcelona, the most visited monument in Spain?” said Jordi Bonet, who leads a team of 20 architects working to complete the 125-year-old basilica.

In a workshop below the building, he paused next to a plaster model of the unbuilt facade and whipped out a yellow tape measure to show how the tunnel would pass just 1.5 meters, or 5 feet, from the cathedral’s foundations.

This is the church in question, by the way:

[Sagrada Familia]

Like I said, I am no expert, but you’d think that protecting a site like that would be considered important. I’m all for a high-speed rail link from Barcelona to Madrid, but couldn’t they have found a better route?

Perception and Consumption

Ezra’s got an interesting post up today. It’s about class inequality, but with a different twist — instead of looking at how the gap is widening between rich and poor, he looks at how despite the income gap, the tastes and habits of the rich are becoming more mainstream.

One odd cross-indicator of rising income inequality has been the determined democratization of culture in this country. Containers of garlic hummus and free range eggs that would have been judged luxury items a few decades ago now dot the shelves at Safeway, mega-bookstores of the kind only available in wealth urban centers now populate every shopping mall, espresso drinks that could only have been procured at fine Italian and French restaurants are now offered on every street corner

[snip]

There’s no doubt that wealth inequality has increased in this country, and that primary expenses ranging from housing to fuel to health have rapidly increased in cost. But there’s simultaneously been, I’d argue, a drop in consumptive inequality, and a significant convergence in the experiences of the rich and, if not the poor, the middle.

It’s a valid insight and one worth thinking about. Sadly, I’m off to work, so I don’t have the time right now.

As If That Wasn’t Enough

As if the high gas prices weren’t bad enough, there’s more for Bay Area residents to worry about: the spectre of water shortages to come:

Frank Gehrke and Dave Hart of the state Department of Water Resources didn’t even bother to take their measuring devices out of their vehicle before they hiked out into a barren field near Highway 50 at Phillips Station, a roadside stop established in 1859 at the 6,800-foot level.

Patches of white lingered on the hills around them, and the Sierra peaks were snowcapped in the distance. But all the surveyors spotted on the ground at Phillips Station were lodgepole pine cones and a few scattered dog droppings.

The meadow was under 67.4 inches of snow on the same date last year, double the historic average.

“This is definitely a dry year, no doubt about that,” Hart said.

[snip]

[Nearly all] reservoirs in the system will be filled to start the dry season, PUC spokesman Tony Winnicker said, because of the excess water in previous years. But there won’t be enough runoff to refill the reservoirs as the year progresses. That sets up a potential water shortage in 2008, unless next winter turns out to be wetter than average and recharges the system.

Officials will assess usage and storage trends in July. Contingency plans for mandatory cutbacks already are being drafted just in case. The system serves customers in San Francisco, San Mateo, Alameda and Santa Clara counties.