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HSR To Mexico?
The San Diego Union-Tribune reports this morning that San Diego officials want the HSR project to extend its route to the US/Mexico border instead of terminating as currently planned at the Santa Fe depot downtown:
Cindy Gompper-Graves, chief executive officer of the South County Economic Development Council, thinks running the rail to the border would have a positive ripple effect on the region and beyond.
"It's imperative to us that the train continue to South County and not just stop in San Diego," Gompper-Graves said. "We see it as an engine for economic growth."
Backers of a South Bay station, perhaps in the San Ysidro or Otay Mesa areas, say it would ease traffic and trade along one of the nation's busiest border crossings.
"Economically, it makes a lot of sense," said Jim Janney, mayor of Imperial Beach.
Gompper-Graves favors connecting the system to a possible cross-border airport terminal and perhaps running it parallel to state routes 905 and 125.
Quentin Kopp is quoted in the article as being open to the concept, but doesn't want to add too many new stations - the current cap is 24. Obviously a border extension would require new planning efforts and identification of financial resources, and since the San Diego extension itself is still in drawing board stage, not scheduled to open until after 2020, there is time to work out the details.
At first glance this seems like an idea worth studying. The San Diego Trolley does currently serve South County and the border crossing - which is the busiest land crossing in the entire world - but can't bring the capacity that HSR trains could. The extension could boost HSR ridership not just on this segment but on the whole route. Several bus companies make a nice profit providing service from California cities to Tijuana, thousands of potential HSR riders. Cross-border commuters could also be a significant revenue base for the system.
That being said, does this segment have to be served by HSR? Or could it be served by a version of what Rafael has been calling "rapid rail" which might provide faster trains at a reduced cost?
And what would the route look like? One suggestion quoted above was to run the tracks parallel to the 905 and 125 out to the Otay Mesa crossing, which could help relieve San Ysidro and potentially help serve a cross-border airport to relieve Lindbergh Field.
There's a lot to consider here, especially as the San Diego route still has some overall uncertainties - especially since Caltrans has taken up a lot of the ROW along the I-15 corridor that the CHSRA was hoping to use for high speed trains.
Still, the concept is worth a further look, and probably worth an actual study. We shouldn't build a Tijuana extension just because we can, but if the routing is feasible, if the riders will be there, if we can find financing, and if it's made clear that only HSR can best serve this corridor, then we can revisit the concept in a few years' time.
Finally, it's great to see regions of the state looking at HSR and thinking about how it might help them grow and prosper.
Posted by Robert Cruickshank at 6:58 AM
Labels: border, CHSRA, HSR, Otay Mesa, passenger rail, San Diego, San Ysidro, Tijuana, transportation
no! we don't need another way for illegals to get in USA!
fix illegals first
HSR second
Thanks, bossyman. I was figuring idiots were going to scream about this being a vector for illegal immigration. Don't forget about drug trafficking as well!
If the illegals are riding the HSR they are already in the country. Secondly most illegals would not ride the HSR, since it is not cheap. Sure a few will, but there are much, much more legal crossings than illegal and we shouldn't punish all th
BBinnsandiego said...
Before spending more for dedicated HSR tracks to the border why not extend the current Amtrak service first. The tracks are already in place. With the Trolley service and Amtrak I doubt HSR would be needed as both connect directly at the proposed SD station.
It makes perfect sense to me. We really should be looking at the way the French built the TGV network: have a main high-speed line that is fed by a lower-speed network. The lower-speed portions give you the full network effect have having lots of destinations, while the shorter trunk line gives you the long-distance speed.
In this case the main high-speed line would go to downtown SD. From downtown SD to the border there already are tracks running along I-5. Simply electrify those tracks, improve the crossings a bit (no need for full grade separation), and call it a day. If there ends up being real demand for more traffic on that stretch then upgrade it latter to full grade separated 4-wide tracks, but in the meantime you get the benefits of an expanded network for a minimal investment.
luis d. said...
I second what Andrew said. This would be a good idea.
Mexico is (Last time I heard) planning their own high speed rail one that extends from Mexico City to Guadalajara, and one leg to the Mexican border to Mexicali wich borders Calexico on the USA side and is very close to Tijuana, about an hour's drive east of Tijuana. If we could get them connected in the future that would be awesome.
Driving around Mexico's highways is difficult enough right now with the Drug wars going on but if you didn't have to and rode HSR then it would be a lot safer for the traveler.
Brandon in California said...
Yes, linking illegals to HSR is ridiculous. As a San Diegan I see that there are a lot of people living in Mexico that commute into the US for their jobs, legally. Or, to visit family here, legally. Or, for vacation, legally.
There is also plenty of commerce between Tijuana and San Diego... they have over 1.5 million on their side of the border when there are 3 million in San Diego County.
I'll add much more later... I find this very interesting... but limited time right now.
Whatever system is used, HSR or electrified rail, with the border control issues it seems reasonable that the Federal Government should pay for all of the cost of connecting SD to Tijuana without taking anything away from federal support or the CHSR system. Similarly, Nevada and Las Vegas should contribute to the LA to LV line (and forget about maglev, make it HSR)
Loren said...
The distance to the border crossing from the Santa Fe Depot along the San Diego Trolley line is about 16 mi.
That is roughly comparable to the separation of the stations planned for the LA-OC and the SF-SJ areas, so a Tijuana station is reasonable as an extra station.
That reminds me of some of the discussion in the Facebook groups on California and Pacific Northwest HSR plans. Some of them talk about making the CA HSR system go to places like Phoenix/Tucson, Las Vegas, Reno, and the Pacific Northwest.
Phoenix/Tucson - one can get there by following I-10 (323 mi) or the UP line (405 mi) from Riverside; the latter runs near Yuma. Construction: easy. Politics: needs support from Arizona.
Las Vegas - there's already a plan for it: the Victorville-LV DesertXPress, which will follow I-15 and the UP line (198 mi). Construction: easy. Politics: needs support from Nevada.
Reno - one can get there by following I-80 or the UP line over the mountainous Donner Pass (132 mi). Construction: difficult. Politics: needs support from Nevada.
Redding - one can get there by following I-5 or the UP line (160 mi) from Sacramento. Construction: easy. Politics: Redding is rather small.
Eugene (southern end of proposed PNW HSR) - one can get there by following I-5 or the UP line (318 mi) from Redding through the California-Oregon mountains. Construction: difficult. Politics: needs support from Oregon and possibly also Washington.
Further eastward from these places is even worse.
I don't know if it makes sense to run trains down to the border, I think they should terminate in Tijuana at a special terminal accessible only via US/Mexico immigration booths. It should be no different than going through immigration at any international airport - legally.
For various reasons, the spur from LA to San Diego is classified as HSR even though the maximum speed will be on the order of 125mph. IMHO, that's really rapid rail, which is fine. The difference is that rapid rail corridors would be available for rapid freight if and when FRA figures out how to allow mixed traffic.
Note that rapid freight is European-style light/medium freight, i.e. relatively short consist, single container per flatbed car etc. to compete against trucking within the state of California (possibly Las Vegas as well).
High speed cargo is allowed on both true HSR and rapid rail. It is based on bullet trains without interior.
Any spur off the California system to Las Vegas would have to be funded as a separate effort led by the state of Nevada. One alternative would be a true HSR spur off Mojave via Barstow to Las Vegas. This would allow Nevada to avoid the cost of constructing a new relief airport near Jean, since Palmdale would be just 1:10h away.
The other would be rapid rail (diesel) from Victorville to Las Vegas (Desert XPress). In that context, California should consider constructing rapid rail from San Diego via I-5, the upper level of Anaheim ARTIC, hwy57, Ontario airport and San Bernardino to Victorville. A short loop just east of ARTIC would allow trains to descend from the upper to the lower level, enabling direct service from San Diego to LA.
The HSR leg via Riverside UC would be scrapped in favor of rapid rail from LA to LV via Ontario airport and San Bernardino. In addition, a new Metrolink line from Anaheim to LA serving Disneyland (underground), Cypress, Artesia, Paramount and Huntington Park would be possible. A spur south from Paramount could run to an underground loop serving the terminals of Long Beach airport.
Sorry, I misspoke a little. Instead of running the tracks across the border into downtown Tijuana, it might make more sense to hook east at the border and follow it to the terminals of Tijuana airport. A special building housing US/Mexico customs and immigration would straddle the border, such that Tijuana would effectively become the relief airport for Lindbergh field.
Brown municipal airport is also nearby, but its runway is only 5/4 miles long, not enough to support large civilian aircraft. There are also three military airports in San Diego county (Miramar, Coronado, Imperial Beach) plus two further north (El Toro in Irvine and March in Moreno Valley)
See RR to US/Mexico border map for details on how to leverage Tijuana airport to relieve Lindbergh Field. Co-operation by Mexico would obviously be a prerequisite.
Note the loop to Chula Vista harbor, this is where rapid rail differs from true HSR.
The Tijuana airport scenario is only possible if the rapid rail link to San Diego runs through the Santa Fe Depot. For details on the option involving I-5 and hwy 57, plus much more besides, please see the RR in SoCal map.
Would it be possible for a rapid rail solution to run from Anaheim? If so, it would be possible to have a rapid rail service from Anaheim through San Diego to the border and/or Tiajuana Arpt. when the HSR stage 1 reaches Anaheim.
Once the San Diego HSR line is in place, the rapid rail would trail the HSR heading south (of course w/more stations) and lead the HSR into Anaheim with the HSR continuing north.
San Diego to San Yisidro is already electrified for the San Diego Trolley. Further, the documents show trains running in the 150-200 mph range from Riverside to Escondido, so to consider that a "Rapid Rail" corridor is a bit insulting to San Diego.
@ BruceMcF -
rapid rail of the kind I think woul make sense cannot happen until FRA defines a regulatory path to permitting mixed traffic on a given set of tracks.
To my mind, it is perfectly possible for a rapid rail corridor to become an HSR corridor at a certain interface point. The only thing you'd have to make sure is that there's somewhere for light/medium freight trains to go instead. Rapid rail passenger trains would be permitted on true HSR tracks if they are
(a) crash compatible with bullet train rolling stock and,
(b) capable of accelerations and cruise speeds that match those expected of bullet trains in that section.
For example, if a given rapid rail trainset has a top speed of 150mph and the local speed limit is 140mph, that's fine. If it's 200mph, that trainset must not use the HSR tracks. The basic idea is that true bullet trains must not be slowed down by other traffic.
@ Michael -
sorry, my bad. I thought it was 125mph or less along the entire spur. I wouldn't put freight on tracks where passenger trains are suppose to run faster than that.
Note that the trackbed and overhead catenary installed for light rail may not be suitable for bullet trains.
Of course, even at 125mph, the straight shot up the I-5 median to Anaheim would get passengers to LA than the detour via Riverside UC proposed by CHSRA. Afaik, the main point of that was to run trains directly past Ontario airport.
This would be achieved equally well by San Diego - San Bernardino via the medians of I-5 and hwy 57, plus LA US to Pomona. This option would also create the option of an extension to Victorville and from there to Las Vegas someday.
For reference, here's an official PDF doc showing speed range by HSR network segment.
Rafael,
There was a plan circa 2004 to upgrade the Amtrak line along the coast to allow for "high speed diesel" train services along it from San Diego to LA, in addition to the inland corridor (apparently there would have been too much opposition due to overhead catenary wires ruining views and some notably long and expensive tunneling required (Del Mar, San Celemente). However, this was dropped as it was incompatible with the rest of the system and redundant.
Most people traveling from San Diego to LA would use I-5, however, and it does serve a population corridor better than the inland empire route does. Running the train up the I-5 median would be extremely difficult due to limited ROW most of the way, meaning a very significant portion of it would be on aerial structures. Upgrading the LOSSAN corridor is definitely a necessity (double track the whole length, straighten curves, etc), and in truth would probably better serve San Diego than the Inland Corridor HSR route will. However, for the cost savings and huge community resistance that will be found in Orange County along the rail corridor, it probably does make sense to go from the Inland Empire, even if this does add ~20 minutes to San Diego-LA travel times. 1 hour 18 minutes is still less than half the time of Amtrak right now, and about an hour shorter than driving.
Robert Cruickshank said...
Rafael, as I understand it, the idea being kicked around by South County officials, including Cindy Gompper-Graves, is to use Tijuana Airport in precisely the way you suggest - as a reliever for Lindbergh Field. The seeming collapse of the Miramar concept would make this all the more sensible a solution.
Michael, 1 hour 18 minutes is also significantly better than driving considering the traffic that one frequently encounters along the route.
I think they should terminate in Tijuana at a special terminal accessible only via US/Mexico immigration booths. It should be no different than going through immigration at any international airport - legally.
They could do that... the current rail border crossings in North America, between the US and Canada, involve the train stopping at the border for two hours while immigration and customs officials go over every passenger. That compares with a one-hour immigration line at JFK, which is extraordinarily long by international airport standards.
I'm sorry but I have to disagree with the prospect of extending HSR to Mexico. Maybe it might have some economical benefits, but when we're trying to close a border with a country already flooding us with illegals, the last thing we need is an additional connection to Mexico(regardless of what the odds are of illegals using it effectively). In fact, when I was in the Thalys train going from Paris to Amsterdam, immigration caught some dozen or so illegals on that train alone. So its not like they won't be willing to use it as a means to cross the border.
Having the rail line crossing borders will also create more of a legal hazard than what the line is probably worth. Keep in mind that Mexico has a whole other set of laws and regulations in regards to railroads and building a system that has to comply to both the US government and the Mexican government will be no easy task.
Rafael's idea of having the station terminate on the US side of the immigration point is probably the most practical idea but it wouldn't be advisable (nor would it be popular) to attempt to establish such a transportation link with Mexico.
@ nikko
I recall the US and Mexico have been sharing rail traffic for more than 100 years. I think they can coordinate a modern HSR system.
Think of HSR like an airliner. We fly aircraft international to Mexico every day.
we're trying to close a border with a country already flooding us with illegals
What do you mean "we," native-born boy? As far as I can tell, nobody, not even hardcore racists like Joe Arpaio and Tom Tancredo, wants the border with Mexico closed. Even they just want the border sealed against illegal immigration. That's stupid, but not nearly so stupid as closing the border outright, which only happens in times of war.
I'm going to ask that we try to keep comments on-topic. Concerns about undocumented immigrants using HSR to enter the US are way overblown at best - we don't close down highway links or bridges over the Rio Grande. There seems little reason to drag that issue into this conversation.
As I understand it, the Amtrak Cascades has innovated a way around the border issue. Travelers leaving Pacific Central Station in Vancouver BC for the USA get their customs preclearance for entry into the USA done at the station, obviating the need for a long stop at the border.
Unfortunately there doesn't seem to have been a reciprocal arrangement worked out with the Canadian authorities. In fact, the Canada Border Services Agency has been blocking the construction of the fully funded double-track and siding at the Blaine crossing, which is necessary to start running a second daily Cascades train to Vancouver from Seattle.
Obviously the way around this with California HSR is to not build across the border - to have a station very near a Port of Entry, or in a cross-border airport terminal.
@James --
That's only freight rail traffic. And even that in itself is extremely limited. Even in the past 100 years up until about a decade ago, Mexico-US freight rail traffic was effectively negligible. Since NAFTA, an American short line RR (whose name escapes me at the moment) and Kansas City Southern have increased freight traffic to the level of mediocre. That's not to say that it doesn't exist, its just not a railroad powerhouse source of traffic.
Yes, they do fly airplanes to Mexico every day, but even that is a source of illegal immigration. But that doesn't justify adding another connection at our expense.
@Alon Levy: 'We" means the "United States".
Believe or not, illegal immigration is a problem. I am not proposing shutting down the border altogether (don't be ridiculous) but we need to altogether shut the tap on illegal immigration before we should be pursuing ambitious passenger rail connections with them. Maybe once our government can get their hands around the problem can we consider an HSR extension to Mexico plausible.
@Robert --
I can recall two memorable border crossings on a train -- the first being the Thalys trip to Amsterdam I mentioned earlier and the second being an Amtrak Cascades train to Vancouver.
In the first, an illegal was running down the Paris platform attempting to board the train with the police chasing after him (he tried to get on the train but I 'accidentally on purpose' blocked him). Later, before we crossed the border from France, immigration officials boarded and went through the train checking for passports. They caught about a dozen people and took them off at Rotterdam. While I applaud the efforts of the immigration to keep these guys in check, it still shows that illegal immigration on HSR trains is a legitimate issue.
On the Cascades trip, we pulled into Pacific Central Station where the AMTK train occupied a single platform which was gated off from the rest of the station by a 20-foot high chain link fence. They checked our passports before we were allowed past the gate. *If* they were to extend passenger rail to Mexico, I would hope that would be how the conduct the immigration procedures. The catch is that you can only have one station in the opposite country for the system to theoretically work.
The idea of ending the train at the US side of the border is not so bad. But its still a cause for concern for illegals to be using it as a means of fleeing.
@Alon, we're discussing transportation immigration policy, don't pull the race card in here.
I live in Chula Vista and I was surprised to read this in the paper this morning.
When I attended the HSR meeting in San Diego a few months ago Jerry Rindone, Chula Vista councilman about to be termed out, was the most supportive San Diego area politician.
Anyway, I would love this. BUT realistically I seriously doubt this idea will even be considered even for a study.
Getting HSR through downtown is going to be the hardest part of all the HSR route. From Santa Fe there are three tracks headed south, two for the trolley and only one for freight. The freight tracks go past the military bases and shipyards to the car import docks, then the tracks end. The Trolley lines run parallel to the I-5 for the majority of the way.
The Chula Vista part of the Bay is Nature preserve, then marina and warehouses, then a power plant. All of which would be very difficult to get approval for a HSR train route. The Chula Vista bayfront has been in the news as the largers area of undeveloped West Coast land, a larger convention center and hotel was proposed but plans went down in a steaming ball of infighting among local developers and city council. A Charger stadium is proposed where the power plant is currently, but nothing has progressed even an inch in 3 years of talks.
Selling a cross border pedestrian access for Mexican air passengers to US train passengers is a tough sell politically, in terms of security (immigration..), and complicates the state project with international aspects. How many transportation transfer centers have an international border to cross?
The CA HSR system as it is now is going to be termination a meer 16 miles from the border anyway. I personnally believe that the Lindberg option is the best way, with downtown Santa Fe being the second best option.
Maybe a line to the border could work with the airport connection and the Otay area could be used as a depot with all the maintainance facilities there. But I believe, being a South Bay local, that the effort to make that happen will be far greater than the end benefit of a Tijuana Airport/HSR station.
San Diego Downtown + Chula Vista Bayfront + US/Mexico Border = worst 16 miles for HSR to fight for imaginable. But then again I'm all for it!!
What do you mean an illegal in europe? You mean Illegal in that they didnt have a ticket? It not like someone illegally in Europe would run to train station to escape capture. Thats like a fugitive running to an airport so he wont get caught. You obviously missed something, and assume alot.
'We" means the "United States".
No, it means "Native born Americans who aren't Hispanic or Asian." The problem is that the average nativist can't make the distinction between that group and the United States as a whole.
Francis, Thanks for the on-the-ground perspective. Obviously it's a very different form of mass transit, but how heavily used is the San Diego Trolley line out to San Ysidro?
The obstacles in the South Bay do seem to be considerable. Have there been any other rail proposals in the region - commuter rail, new trolley lines - or is HSR breaking new conceptual ground?
Lots of xenophobes here ... troubling. What I suggested was a new border crossing inside a building with controlled access points. Only air passengers would be able to use it at all. Everyone else would have to keep using the one at the freeway.
From the passenger's perspective, the setup would be exactly the same as at any international terminal at any airport in the US or Mexico, for that matter. The only noticeable difference would be that announcements would be bilingual. So what.
The trains would remain on US soil in the scenario I proposed. On the Canadian border, things could be handled differently. For example, if there were interest in running HSR/rapid rail passenger trains from New York to Toronto or Montreal or, from Portland/Seattle to Vancouver BC, passengers would handle security, customs and immigration at the station of departure, board the train and their car would then be sealed until it had crossed the border.
Sealing rail cars isn't a new idea, the Germans did it between the wars for trains passing through the Gdansk corridor en route to the exclave of East Prussia. In principle, a similar arrange would be possible today for Russians traveling to and from Kaliningrad or, for non-Russians traveling to or from Finland via St. Petersburg. I don't think these sealed corridors exist in Europe today, though.
Regarding running tracks down I-5: I based my suggestion on satellite imagery on Google Maps. It's possible that I got the wrong impression of an available median (I consider sacrificing carpool lanes for train tracks a reasonable policy).
If need be, the I-5 section could be limited to San Juan Capistrano to San Onofre. The existing single track along the beach there is literally mere feet from the water's edge, which is unacceptable for electric traction anyhow. Plus, there's no room for a second track.
The hwy 57 median had been reserved for maglev to Las Vegas for some time, but it does look as if part of that has also been used for traffic lanes by now. I saw some carpool markings, though. The 91 interchange appears especially problematic, Caltrans has built a special connector for the carpool lanes there.
I think that if it's to be done at all, it needs to be done the way Rafael suggested: an international terminal in central Tijuana with both US and Mexico customs and immigration facilities on-site and passport-controlled boarding areas, just like an international airport. Taking HSR only to have to walk across the border anyway makes no sense.
Where exactly in Tijuana the station should be I'm not sure. I've only been there once when I was very young and am not familiar with the area.
As far as Mexico's own HSR plans are concerned, as far as I know they only include a line from DF to Guadalajara which is a far cry from the US border, and are in limbo at this point anyway. Though cool-sounding, I wouldn't hold out any hope for trans-North American HSR on that scale.
Rapid rail of the kind I think would make sense cannot happen until FRA defines a regulatory path to permitting mixed traffic on a given set of tracks.
This gets to the question of what makes sense, which gets to the question of what freight mode share capture from trucks to rail is targetted, which gets so far afield of San Diego to Tijuana that I'll just drop it.
I shouldn't have to ask, since I've walked across them, but the trolley tracks are light rail only tracks, right?
It would seem that unless that specific Trolley could be upgraded to a Tram/Train, extending the existing corridor north would be a difficult proposition ... so never mind.
And then there is the political controversy from those who imagine that the number of undocumented migrants is primarily determined by the ease of crossing the border. Politics being politics, the surface plausibility of the sentiment is more important than its underlying foolishness.
@ Andrew -
my idea would be to run the tracks along the US side of the border for a couple of miles and not cross it at all. Only passengers would do so. See satellite view.
I don't think anyone is thinking about connecting to any putative HSR network in Mexico. This is about relieving Lindbergh Field.
the freight component of rapid rail would in this case related to trains distributing imported cars that are landed at the Chula Vista port. I'm not suggesting that the rail line be used for air cargo arriving in Tijuana.
The route I suggested uses the existing freight ROW down to Castle Park. That's where trolley service would have to be terminated to make its ROW available for rapid rail. The last 4 miles of light rail tracks and catenaries to the border would have to be ripped up.
The trolley service has lots of stops, whereas rapid rail would stop only at Otay Mesa and then on the US side of the border, immediately opposite the Tijuana airport terminals.
And btw, this border crossing would not be accessible to all and sundry, only departing and arriving air passengers. I honestly don't see what the fuss is about, this is an airport, i.e. a building that anyhow has strict access controls to certain areas. It's not as if you're opening the floodgates to migrant peasants, that bridge across the road would be an enclosed walkway, integral to the airport structure.
As for some right wing nutjobs getting the wrong idea, well, they always do anyhow, don't they?
If they dismantled 4 miles of light rail they should be able to reuse the components to install about 4 miles somewhere else to extend another line.
Just for reference, San Yisidro (the border) station is the busiest station in the San Diego Trolley System, and the line from downtown to the border carries half of the total riders, some 50,000 daily. It really is a workhorse segment of the San Diego transit system, and anything that does not work to improve service on the actual trolley while implementing a high speed rail line along side is not in the best interest of San Diego
Wow! I said I was going to write more on this in an earlier post b/c I find this quite interesting. The fact is, I've been too busy... and am probably too busy to make this single diversion. If this subject is still rolling along in a couple days... maybe I'll speak more to it. I'll try and be brief with what I have to say now.
One, I think Kopp's comments about introducing additional stations defeating the purpose of the system being quick is not applicable to an extension. The trip time to San Diego from points to the north is unchanged.
That was probably obvious.
Two, interesting is serious consideration of the airport being the "San Diego" station rather than the previously preferred location downtown at Santa Fe Depot.
I can understand possible reasoning... much has occurred immediately adjacent to Santa Fe Depot since the CHSRA picked it as the preferred station location!
The 2x4 block size, with SFD occupinging 2 blocks by itself, has had 2 towers completed on it, 2 more under construction, 1 more approved, and another currently undergoing design review. There seems to be very limited horizontal space to create a 4 platform station for trains that could be 1,200 feet long, particularly at the north end when the approaching tracks need to branch into platform sidings, and still provide 'some' platform space.
Btw, the older CHSRA docs indicate that 4 platforms would be needed at this terminal.
Right now I have trouble envisioning it unless those platforms are stacked vertically; 2 above and 2 below. Or combination of 3 and 1.
I also have trouble envisioning neighboring properties being agreeable to a airial structure less than 50 feet out their windows; 2 of the towers are higher-end residential... with 3 more going to be.
Having an underground station appears more practical here, despite the probable high cost.
I can also understand the reasoning why the airport is considered because of local efforts to 'fix' San Diego's airport problem; its insufficient in size to handle larger planes, more planes, and Harbor Blvd traffic being considered congested. Locally, there are efforts to plan/consider terminals and a transit terminal on the northeast side of the runways... basically between Pacific Highway and I-5... Palm to Washington (or thereabouts). Direct connections to I-5 are also considered. And, because the Trolley is there, with HSR on the horizon... hey, let's look at the airport being a terminal and then we don't have to deal with the constrained space at Santa Fe Depot.
But, philosphically, I do not support an airport station. Airports are not destinations. And, although tourist HSR travelers may be indifferent, it appears the commute market is not served. Rhetorically, how many riders will choose NOT to use the system b/c they will be required to transfer at the airport to the Trolley to go the final mile to their work site in downtown San Diego? Too many in my opinion. Additionally, the airport site has nominal transit connectivity whereas a plethora of services are already downtown.
And how large is the average daily tourist market anyway? I believe it is lower than the average daily commuter pool.
Btw, downtown San Diego has 80,000 employees with a community plan anticipating 80,000 more; all of which is suppose to fit in a planning are the size of 2 square miles.
Now about Mexico...
On the face of it I am not opposed to an HSR extension to the border. But, what utility would it have? Also, how the heck does it get there?
About the utility... The South Bay group wants connectivity for economic development and are trying to argue additional merit by hitching the idea onto connectivity at the border airport.
Now... the planned system wide HSR network is intended to meet the needs of statewide travel. A border connection 'could' reduce cross border auto traffic that impacts areas to the north of San Diego. Maybe a bit? But, how much utility would that connection really have to the state, AND to the San Diego region?
I'd argue that with the San Diego region that it would be nominal. And, that is because a train starting at the border would next stop in downtown San Diego, then UTC, then Escondido. At least for northbound travelers, like from TJ, they don't go nearly that far. A large portion only go as far as Chula Vista. The rest then to various locations. That is the Trolley experience.
So, I do not see a lot of local travelers using the HSR system to get to or from the border, particularly if you're from the south side.
Then, factor in the frequency of service that would be provided. Or, not be provided. It wouldn't be at any level sufficient enough to accommodate easy use and thereby be attractive.
An airport location would be worse. One, airports are not destinations. Airport employees are the only ones destined to airports... and then travelers, which really are not that many. Airport employees will be by and large already on that side of the border and will not use the HSR system to get to work. Travelers... well, the numbers do not seem sufficient enough to justify an extension.
And then, how would you physically have the alignment get there anyway?
For those not in the know, the current Trolley already links the border; from San Ysidro to Downtown. It takes a little time, about 35-40, to get to Santa Fe Depot, but it operates very frequently and is among the most heavily used in the country. Over 60,000 people ride the Blue Line every day; mostly on the segment between the border and downtown. The San Ysidro station alone is the most heavily used station in the entire Trolley system; over 20,000 riders there a day. Standing room only on the trains is the norm through much of the day. Therefore, any plan to use the ROW that the Trolley uses is DOA if it negatively affects Trolley service. By the way, the transit systems owns the corridor.
But, I think additional rail service to the border, and maybe that airport has merit. but, not as HSR.
I think an ideal system, or at least one closer to being ideal, would be something like a BART or WMATA style system with at least 15-minute service and an alignment somehow along I805 corridor in the north-south direction, with stations spaced every 2-3 miles apart or so... and then entering downtown via a SR94 alignment and serving Broadway and ending near Santa Fe Depot. The southern terminus ideally should be at San Ysidro, to help with capacity problems on the Blue Line.
That is all I got for now... much more than intended for this time and hour.
ian said...
if this was europe they'd just have border guards to check documents that ride between the two stations straddling the border and (as i witnessed), it's very hard to escape border guards on either end of a train, coming towards the center, when all you can do it run up and down the aisle...
unless you're james bond, that is.
Spokker said...
Finally, my passions for high speed trains and smuggling drugs in my rectum are together at last.
"One, I think Kopp's comments about introducing additional stations defeating the purpose of the system being quick is not applicable to an extension. The trip time to San Diego from points to the north is unchanged."
This is what I thought.
Kopp just doesn't want to pay, and he probably doesn't think San Ysidro or San Diego or anyone else will either.
@Rafael:
Yes, but before you suggested servicing Tijuana Airport you suggested directly serving Tijuana, which I think is a really good idea.
As far as relieving San Diego Int'l Airport, it's biggest routes are to and from Los Angeles and Oakland, no? So merely bringing HSR to San Diego from points north should provide it a good deal of relief.
Oh well, this is all really far off anyway.
@ spoker
lmao, Your a funny dude! thanks for a good laugh!
Brandon in San Diego: I think an ideal system, or at least one closer to being ideal, would be something like a BART or WMATA style system with at least 15-minute service and an alignment somehow along I805 corridor in the north-south direction, with stations spaced every 2-3 miles apart or so... and then entering downtown via a SR94 alignment and serving Broadway and ending near Santa Fe Depot. The southern terminus ideally should be at San Ysidro, to help with capacity problems on the Blue Line.
This is a much better fit with a Rapid Rail service ... a local alignment at the extreme end of the route, and periodically dropping in the Rapid Rail as an Express to San Diego and then continuing on.
@ Brandon: But, philosphically, I do not support an airport station. Airports are not destinations.
For transfers, they are origins for inbound passengers and destinations for outbound passengers, but San Diego is not a main hub airport ... the HSR in San Diego would be more replacing use of San Diego airport than using San Diego airport for combined trips.
That is, I'd think you want your hub airport terminal(s) closer to the middle of the route system, and you'd want them to be hub airports.
I fail to see how a Tijuana airport would be very useful for American domestic flyers. International ones, yes, because they will have to pass through customs anyway, but why should domestic ones have to go through customs?
And even there, one would have to negotiate some sort of special passing-through status for the Tijuana airport, since it is in Mexican territory.
Why would a passenger from the US catching a flight bound for the US have to pass through customs? The idea mooted was for the platform to connect into the airport in the transfer terminal side ... only the people originating or terminating at Tijuana would have to pass through customs. Just like flying from Sydney to San Francisco via Taipei, there's no need to pass through customs in Taiwan unless you want to leave the terminal during the layover.
Well, I think the whole idea of an extension to the TJ airport... however interesting it is... is moot.
The original idea was forwarded by a South Bay economic group... which has been historically interested in... I believe... advancing business opportunities for the border area (American side). And, they have always had a disconnect with how to fund improvements of whatever idea they come up with... deferring to the region or state.
With this idea... there appears to be insufficient utility to the state or the San Diego region as an HSR model.
If the idea were forwarded in a different model and having more utility to the region without duplicating the function of the Trolley or negatively affecting Trolley service... then maybe that would be an idea to forward.
But, whatever that is, it probably is not HSR and being that this is an HSR blog... well, there's not much to speak too and it's all shits and giggles.
I don't see why you couldn't have stops at BOTH Tijuana AND the Otay Mesa Airport, both on the US side of the border.
This way you get the commuters who cross over from TJ daily AND you solve the airport problem for San Diego by pushing the problem across the border.
There could be a bridge across the border in both locations, with customs agents staffed at both sites.
Thx for all the clarifications on this. Apparently, the objective of the folks who proposed this is to increase capacity from the existing border crossing at San Ysidro to Chula Vista and San Diego, in addition to gaining access to transcontinental/intercontinental flights out of Tijuana.
Note that any flight from Tijuana airport to a US destination would be considered an international flight, i.e. US citizens would have to go through immigration just like anyone else. That's because the arrangement will only make sense to Mexico if its own residents can share such flights with US residents.
I've adapted my map accordingly. Note that the rapid rail alignment now uses the I-5 median for the last few miles to the border.
Btw, a feasibility study on a cross-border terminal has apparently already been produced. Rapid rail passenger service would greatly increase utility.
"Note that any flight from Tijuana airport to a US destination would be considered an international flight,
That is true ...
i.e. US citizens would have to go through immigration just like anyone else."
... this only follows if the train station accesses the airport on the counter side rather than the gate side.
The complication if the train accesses the airport on the gate side is that people would have to be cleared for their final destination on boarding the train, which is not something that the CAHSR system should have to bother with. That is something for a dedicated airport rail line, like the one I used in Malaysia, where you can check into your flight and check your luggage when boarding the train.
Rather than providing access to a spill-over airport, what the CAHSR system ought to be doing for San Diego is eliminating demand for airport capacity, by eliminating as many of the smaller, short-hop flights as possible.
Yep, border activity is much talked about in San Diego. There are several layers to it.
Tijuana has 1.5 million people and San Diego County over 3 million. Not only is there a lot of synergy between the two regions, San Diego is the port of entry for many goods coming into the country, and vice versa.
San Ysidro is the most used port of entry on the planet. Vehicular and pedestrian traffic NEVER ends. There is ALWAYS a line.
Because of this demand, and the recognition that the border is a choke point and retards economic growth, there are efforts to expand existing facilities and pursue additional border crossings. Vehicular and Freight is much teh focus.
As mentioned before too... much of the pedestrian and personal vehicle crossings... largely are contained within 5-10 miles of the border. Maybe 15 miles. Beyond that, personal/private traffic from the border crossings are marginal, especially beyond downtown San Diego.
By the way, and I forward this rhetorically I think... what interest wold Mexico or Tijuana have in permitting flyers land in Mexico and immediately exist the airport terminal, let alone airport, without first providing the opportunity for travellers to spend their money in Mexico? What is in it for Mexico/Tijuana... other than a few more jobs at the airport?
I was referring to flights departing from Tijuana and landing at the international terminal in e.g. New York. There's no reason for Mexico to permit an arrangement that would effectively reserve some number of gates at Tijuana airport for passengers hailing from the US.
The runway at Lindbergh Field is too short to accommodate large aircraft like the 747s and A380s. There is no room to extend it. Once the HSR spur to San Diego is built, Ontario will be available as a relief airport that can handle large aircraft. I just suspect that most San Diegans would prefer something less tentative and also closer to home, especially if the economy in the Southland can be boosted in the process.
@ Brandon -
Tijuana benefits because by itself it is not an attractive destination for intercontinental flights to Asia and Europe.
Making those flights easily accessible to US residents as well would allow them to attract more of those flights, giving Baja California a chance to attract more inward investment.
Thats a good point, Mexico doesnt stand to benefit very much besides increased flight revenue and a few jobs like you said.
The Lindberg option is the most appealing for me.
- First it would be about a mile from downtown so that makes close enough to not discourage people that are would use the HSR for commuting purposes as opposed to the Santa Fe Depot. Maybe HSR passengers get 1 hour of free trolley ride.
- Second a Lindberg HSR station could be built like a Grand Central Station for San Diego. SD has no central transit hub which many cities use because of economies of scale reasons, increasing ridership through efficiency and availability. Airport, HSR, Amtrack, Trolley, Interstate 5, and buses could all be centrally located by downtown which would be awesome.
- Third airports are destinations for more than just employees. Anyone just picking someone up from the airport makes the airport a destination; thousands of people daily. But the biggest benefit to SD from an aiport station would be the number of people taking trains to other californian cities and not taking flights. Lindberg is at about 90% capacity, and about 1/3 of flights I believe are within California. Many intra-California flights would be cancelled to make room for longer national flights and international flights, which make more money for the city and airport. Also people could fly to SD and take the train to cities on the HSR line if they wanted.
If they want to go to mexico they can use the trolley. Which is one of the busiest transit lines in the country (downtown to san ysidro).
The attacks against me are troubling. I am not a xenophobic. I am simply supporting policy that discourages illegal immigration. Granted, HSR in its own right doesn't change all that but its paradoxical to try to do this while trying to cut off illegal immigration.
And for the record, I'm Asian.
@Francis and Robert --
The guy running down the platform did have a ticket. Not sure what exactly he did that got the police on his tail but they did. Maybe he wasn't an illegal.
The other dozen guys I mentioned were illegals. Their passports were checked on the train and they were promptly arrested before our first stop in the Netherlands.
Nikko-
Illegal from where? Paris is many miles from any EU "border". Like hundreds or thousands. There is no gate or check to pass through to get on the Thalys, and I assume it's the same for other trains traversing the three countries between Paris and Amsterdam. (Eurostar excluded)
Where do you think these people were illegal from? Do you realize that the train would also pass through Belgium before the Netherlands? There are NO BORDER PATROLS on trains in the EU.
From traveling a lot in Europe, all by train, your story doesn't hold water if I am to believe that illegal immigration is the cause of the ruckus you saw. I'm not arguing that you saw something, I have no way to contest that, but I do know that border inspection issues haven't been an issue for years.
timote said...
I think TJ/Mexico would still be interested in the concept, even if the majority of the US passengers are bound for US destinations (and that process would have to be streamlined to make it worthwhile to the US passengers, IMHO, otherwise it is probably good for mostly international flights where you're already dealing with customs. Or, the airport experience would have to be SO much better than SD in order to offset the customs hassle when you land). The reason I think they would still be interested is cause airports are businesses - they charge fees, they attract employment, they sell stuff, etc. You might not think about it cause the cost is buried in your airplane ticket, but there is plenty of money going to the airport and into the local economy for every butt in a seat. We would basically be outsourcing our airport - Mexico can build it on their dime and get paid back for it over time.
That being said, I think adding/improving a new airport without such space constraints is a better answer, but I would not be surprised if we did something like this as our public investment horizons are so limited.
@ Rafael ... "There's no reason for Mexico to permit an arrangement that would effectively reserve some number of gates at Tijuana airport for passengers hailing from the US."
Let's not get tangled up between (H) how given options would work and (W) which option is preferable.
(H) My remark was in reference to a normal international transfer terminal. Any international airport that hopes to attract business as an connector between international flights has to have one.
(H) Among ground transport systems, a rail line is uniquely suited to act as "one more flight" and have access/egress from platforms directly to the international transfer terminal.
(H) But that would be a dedicated rail line, as they have in Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia, so the connection with the HSR in that scenario.
(W) IF Mexico saw an economic benefit in hosting the spillover airport for San Diego, (H) they would want to sort out something to simplify the unusual situation of having international transfers between a flight originating in a foreign country and a flight destined to the same foreign country.
(W) So while I did not suggest it, I disagree ... if Mexico wanted the economic benefits of having San Diego's spillover airport in Tijuana, they certainly might wish to have a US-specific transfer terminal.
(H) And if that arrangement was in place, that reverses what I said ... in that scenario, it certainly would be possible to have a CAHSR platform that has its access/egress into that strange "domestic US on foreign soil" transfer terminal.
(W) Whether Mexico should ... I don't care. My spreference is to avoid needing a spillover airport by getting people out of energy-wasting and capacity-wasting short hop flights and into more energy efficient transport that can be more easily powered by domestically harvested renewable electricity.
Adios 2008, Welcome 2009
Why We Need A Greener Stimulus
Thunder Alley
Saturday Open Thread
Thursday Open Thread
Tuesday Open Thread
Arnold Schwarzenegger + Jim Gibbons = Maglev to Ve...
The New Hoovers Are Still Trying to Kill HSR
High Speed Cargo
The Trouble with LA Union Station (UPDATED)
Ray LaHood - HSR Denier?
The Central Valley Test Track, Part 2
They're STILL Trying to Kill HSR
Global HSR News
Obama And Congress To Screw Up The Stimulus?
FRA Says Pacheco Pass is OK
Bay Guardian: Build the Downtown Extension
Two Quick Ones
Will Obama Repeat Clinton's Failure?
HSR across the Bay Bridge?
Detailing the Kerry HSR Bill
Will It Be A Sustainable Stimulus?
CHSRA Board Meeting December 2008
Who Supported Prop 1A?
Electric Stimuli
Going In Depth on the Peninsula
Densha de Go!
Biden Calls for Rail Investment
"All Of A Sudden We're Popular"

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


Throwback Thursday: Jon Nelson once again gives a stellar performance!
Jon Nelson played the main role, juror #8, as the opposing juror in the play Twelve Angry Men. A 19-year-old man has just stood trial for the fatal stabbing of his father. It looks like an open-and-shut case until one of the jurors, Jon Nelson, casts considerable doubt and begins opening the others' eyes to the facts. Personal issues soon rise, as each juror reveals his own character as the various testimonies are re-examined, the murder is re-enacted and a new murder threat is born before their eyes! Tempers get short, arguments grow heated, and the jurors become 12 angry men.


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                expect(element).toBeDefined();
            });
    }));

});

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


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Awning Covers For Decks was posted on June 30, 2018 at 7:56 am. This article is uploaded in the Home category. Awning Covers For Decks is tagged with Awning Covers For Decks, Awning, Covers, For, Decks..
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At the Personal Investment Management & Financial Advice Association (PIMFA) we cover the Financial Advice and Wealth Management arena in the UK. This community of financial expertise in the UK is forever changing and the research we produce and the data we collate will represent this, we want to inform and educate you as to the current trends and to the more traditional facets of advising on and managing assets. This section will give a brief overview, and the members section will give greater detail, on how this world is changing and how you can adapt or focus your best efforts in a timely and efficient manner to take advantage of opportunities that arise.
The Financial Adviser Market: In Numbers Report (Published in 2018) shows the size and nature of the advice sector. The report provides a comprehensive overview of the financial adviser market and the trends within it.
Looking back what happened in the year 2017?
2017 Fees and Commissions both moved significantly, by 28% in total, demonstrating it is still lucrative to be in the wealth management arena.
As we are now at Q2 2018 many wealth management firms were placing much of their focus on Brexit concerns and dealing with clients who may be compromised by this. There is still a lot of regulation to contend with. As such it will be encouraging news for them, that it is not all doom and gloom for the sector. Asset levels continue to rise, once again re-writing the record books as total assets under management and administration reached £975 billion, ever closer to the illustrious £1 trillion mark.
Even though there was a small decrease in trade volumes, revenues (largely fee-based) picked up in the final quarter, now at £1,816 million for the industry as a whole.
For the Execution Only Stockbrokers, the good news continued to come as the firms performed exceptionally well and are now at £196 billion assets under management, with a 4.3% quarter on quarter improvement.
On the whole though there are many positive results to take for the industry as we now at Q2 2018. With everything the industry has had to deal with, few would have predicted record achievements and yet that is what it has been delivered, especially in asset values, and soon the industry will breach the £1 trillion pound landmark, which is cause for celebration.
The prior years were subdued looking at the last 7yrs and so this involves some tracking back to prior higher levels of Retained Earnings and a very good improvement this year too.
 Investment Assets and Revenue are for the total market, based on extrapolated quarterly survey participant data. Participants account for over 60% of total market assets and 65% of total market revenue. Client trades represent participating firms only. Retail market bargains are for UK Retail Stockbrokers.


If you want to create the perfect Costa Rica trip, you might take into account taking out discounted packages from among the well-liked resorts and inns. Pat Bunyard, for example, said TripAdvisor isn't the go-to for motels. Full disclosure: The author of this article was previously a paid reviewer and photographer for Oyster, which is owned by TripAdvisor. Jutaan ulasan, foto, dan peta wisatawan dari TripAdvisor. Iberostar Accommodations and Resorts, which is predicated in Spain and likewise has inns within the United States and Europe, mentioned it takes all allegations by company significantly.
The ACLU of Missouri mentioned SB 43 was really bad, and while not openly endorsing the travel advisory, hailed Chapel for his management. The truth is, we've the awards that prove vacationers of Journey Advisor love Selvatica. We are horrified that this victim skilled this assault on her trip in Mexico, and other vacationers ought to pay attention to this incident," TripAdvisor mentioned in an announcement on its website on Wednesday.
TripAdvisor wields vital influence within the travel business, and its critiques for accommodations and eating places typically rank close to the highest in on-line search listings. Journey Advisor is providing you with the chance to win a $10,000 prize that you should use to create your dream vacation in the Highway Journeys Sweepstakes. The app uses your location to ship you personalised lodge, restaurant, attraction and vacation rental recommendations as well as bear in mind the locations you visited via our Travel Timeline feature.
I certify that this evaluate is based alone expertise and is my genuine opinion of this hotel, and that I've no personal or business relationship with this establishment, and haven't been provided any incentive or fee originating from the institution to jot down this review. After assurances from hotel staff they might help out and speak to the authorities however did not take any follow-up action, the women took their advisories and warnings to TripAdvisor, which deleted their critiques.
The NAACP has by no means earlier than issued a state journey advisory – not even to Mississippi, the place the NAACP's new interim nationwide president Derrick Johnson was former president of the Mississippi State Conference. fifty three fifty four ASA commented that "it was involved that customers might be fooled by fraudulent posts for the reason that entries could possibly be made without any type of verification," however recognised that TripAdvisor used "superior and extremely effective fraud systems" in an try to determine and remove faux content material.


This is part five of the Hierarchy of the Successfully Self-Employed series.
Becoming a guru is not about something you attain.
It's about something you realize.
Two simple realizations separate the guru from everyone else — and once those realizations occur, it forever changes the way they look at the world.
The first realization is that there are two types of currency — money and time. Of the two, only money can be replenished.
The second realization is that knowledge is not power — it's a commodity. How knowledge is presented, shared, understood, and applied is what gives it power.
Time, and the freedom to do with it what you choose, is the real measure of success.
As an expert, what people pay you for is your unique way of utilizing your knowledge and skills. Doing that on a time-for-money basis, even at the expert level, will only get you so far.
Guru's have made this realization, and focus the bulk of their time on the Holy Grail of self employment — passive income.
Applying what you know in a way that can be created once, and repeatedly sold, is what sets a guru apart from an expert. Finding a way to package and present what you know is how you generate passive income.
The original meaning of the word "guru" is "teacher." Unfortunately it's been co-opted many times by folks with big hats and no cattle.
Knowledge is useless unless it's shared. Teaching someone else what you know, and doing it in a way that allows them to apply it, is what makes knowledge an asset.
How do you do that? Through books, seminars and workshops (both online and in person), audio, and video. Any way that allows you to the present your knowledge to an audience in a way that is engaging and compelling.
Just throwing it out there may work in the short term, but unless you are able to make the knowledge stick, you won't have return business. Presenting what you know is not just about dumping information. It's about making it real, persuasive, and useful.
Oh, and here's the part some people seem to miss — you have to charge for it.
Giving it away as part of an overall strategy is fine (for marketing, generating leads, etc.), but it's only passive income if there's actual income.
We started this series with a look at Maslow's Hierarchy, and the relationship to the Hierarchy of the Successfully Self-Employed.
One of the criticisms of Maslow's theory is that it's not a step-by-step approach. There are those that many would consider to be self-actualized, who don't take care of the basic needs of the lower levels — artists, writers, scientists, philosophers.
The same is true of the Success Hierarchy. I know people who have jumped from a regular job right to expert, without doing any freelancing or contracting. I also know some who skipped the expert level and went right to guru.
Take a look at some of the gurus around who you never heard of 6 months ago. That leap seemed to just happen, and for many it did.
Because the Hierarchy of Success is not a ladder — it's perception and choice. You have to know who you are, what you're doing, and what you want.
Once you make the realization, and the conscious choice to act on it, there's no stopping you.


The city of Sheffield in South Yorkshire is an old steel town, which has over the last 20 years transformed into one of the key digital cities in the North of England. With the influx of new students staying in the area after studying technical subjects, there has been an influx of digital based startups making their way into the market place, and with it they have brought accessible services to a once old fashioned place. Local businesses, multi-location businesses, factories, and others are now in the 21st century, with websites that also perform well on Google search.
Marketing your website via Facebook SEO is also a great way to get noticed by customers. Social media usage is up amongst many older demographics now, which means the people who have money to spend are on the platform and you can target them. Even after the recent Cambridge Analytica scandal, you can still do demographic targeting on Facebook to drive sales and phone calls to your company.
The key to making a Sheffield based website rank in Google, is to get the basics right first. This means using good on page SEO to get all of the name, address, and contact details on the site, adding the correct keywords into the title, url and meta description, and internally linking to create the perfect website architecture. The next step is creating citations, which consist of the address and contact details of the business, including the website link. These provide authority to the website, while also verifying to Google that this is a real business that is located here.
A thanks to the Local SEO Group for contributing this article. They offer a range of SEO services in Sheffield, which can be great for smaller local businesses who don't have massive budgets to get a real boost to their websites rankings.


Can Adverse Effects of Private Management-Investor Meetings Be Mitigated by Board Independence?
Private meetings between management and investors (site visits) occur worldwide and are generally held at corporate headquarters with invited investors and sell-side analysts. Ng and Troianovski (WSJ, 2015) report that U.S. investors spend $1.4 billion a year for face time with executives. In-house meetings differ from other management-investor interactions such as investor conferences and analyst or investor days in that they are generally not publicized in advance and their content may never become public unless hosting firms are required to publish the meeting details by regulation. While private meetings between investors and corporate management are common in the U.S., these meetings are a black box to public investors, as there are generally no requirements to disclose anything about their timing or content. The Shenzhen Stock Exchange (SZSE) in China is the only stock market that requires disclosure of the existence, participants, and content of these private meetings. The SZSE provides a unique setting to look inside the black box to examine the attributes and consequences of private in-house meetings.
We recently conducted two studies of the consequences of private meetings between managers and investors. Using firms listed on the SZSE, we compiled a large hand-collected dataset of over 17,000 private meeting summary reports from mid 2012 through the end of 2014.
In our first paper published in the Review of Accounting Studies, we find that (1) the stock market reacts strongly around private meeting dates (despite those dates being undisclosed publicly) suggesting that these meetings are informative to investors, (2) corporate insiders of SZSE-listed firms conducted over one-half of their stock sales (totaling $8.7 billion) around these private meetings, (3) those insiders who attended private meetings made more than 90 percent of their purchases around these meetings, (4) at least some of these insider trades appear to be opportunistic in that some insiders are able to time their transactions by selling (purchasing) relatively more shares before bad (good) news disclosures, while postponing selling (purchasing) when there is good (bad) news to be disclosed in the meeting, and (5) insiders earn substantial gains by trading around private meetings, and these gains are larger for insiders who participated in the private meetings.
Can board independence enhance the benefits of private meetings?
In our second study, we argue that private meetings have benefits and costs, and that a more independent board structure may boost the benefits of hosting private meetings while lowering their potential costs. Using the same hand-collected sample of over 17,000 private meetings of SZSE-listed firms, we find an association between board independence and (1) private meeting frequency, which suggests better communication with key outside investors, (2) timeliness of disclosures to the public, and (3) relatively subdued market reactions to these private meetings, suggesting that a more independent board may discourage managers from sharing price-sensitive information with private meeting participants.
Can board independence mitigate the potential adverse effects of private meetings?
While we also detect a strong positive association between the number of private in-house meetings and the extent of insider trading activities, we find that board independence is associated with (1) reduced insider trading around private in-house meetings, and (2) reduced insider trading profitability around private in-house meetings and in general among SZSE-listed firms. Further, by manually matching meeting participants' names in the meeting summary notes with the directory of independent board directors in the CSMAR (China Stock Market & Accounting Research) database, we also find that insider trading is incrementally lower when outside directors attend private meetings.
Overall, results of our second study suggest that a relatively independent board can influence the nature and extent of disclosures during private site visits and perhaps limit potential adverse effects associated with these meetings. Greater board independence may be a partial substitute for additional disclosure regulation. Implementing this simple board governance device likely costs less than instituting new formal regulatory disclosure requirements, which can impose unforeseen side effects.
Private meetings between management and select investors occur worldwide behind a veil of secrecy. Given that human behavior is likely universal, our results have potential implications beyond China. Our first paper raises questions about potential unforeseen consequences of private meetings in the U.S. and other Western economies. Our second paper suggests that more independent boards yield benefits due to improved communication through private meetings while reducing associated negative consequences such as insider trading around these meetings.
Some have recommended that the U.S. and other Western economies adopt disclosure rules similar to those required by the SZSE. The goals of such requirements include: exposing potential negative consequences of these previously private meetings, leveling the playing field between private meeting participants and general investors, and curtailing documented opportunistic insider trading around these private meetings. Our results suggest that, while greater board independence mitigates some negative consequences of private meetings, simple disclosure requirements would shine a bright light directly on the practice of private meetings – and perhaps change behavior.
This post comes to us from professors Robert M. Bowen at the University of San Diego and the University of Washington, Shantanu Dutta at the University of Ottawa, Songlian Tang at East China University of Science and Technology, and Pengcheng Zhu at the University of San Diego. It is based on their recent papers, "Inside the 'black box' of private in-house meetings," available here and here, and "Does board independence mitigate potential adverse effects of private in-house meetings?" available here.


All that is solid… is the third exhibition in the TarraWarra International series, designed to showcase leading contemporary art practice in a global context. The Australian and international artists in this exhibition depict precarious histories, and their art offers imaginative responses. Many of them use the format of the archival fragment as a starting point for their work – a photograph or video from days gone by. Others depict the current social changes, turbulent conflicts, and altered political landscapes with a new imaginative filter.
The artists in this year's TarraWarra International are Didem Erk (Turkey); Cao Fei (China); Tom Nicholson (Australia); Patrick Pound (Australia); and Cyrus Tang (Australia).


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VIDEO: Pink Floyd stream rare 1967 studio footage
Pink Floyd are streaming rare video of a 1967 recording session for their classic instrumental, "Interstellar Overdrive."
The footage also includes drummer Nick Mason working on his "Nick's Boogie", with both tracks originally recorded for Peter Lorrimer Whitehead's film and companion soundtrack, "Tonite Lets All Make Love In London."
"Interstellar" went on to be featured on the UK band's 1967 debut album, "The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn."
Recorded with Pink Floyd's original lineup of Mason, Syd Barrett, Roger Waters and Richard Wright, the set reached No. 6 on the UK charts and No. 131 on the US Billboard 200 upon its original release while going on to be hailed as one of the greatest psychedelic albums of all time.
Barrett's influence on the band's early material helped define their sound as they performed on the underground UK scene; a year later, the rocker was removed from the group during sessions for 1968's "A Saucerful Of Secrets" after the effects of his drug-influenced behaviour proved him too unreliable for live performances at the time.
Prior to Syd's exit, guitarist and Barrett friend David Gilmour was added to the lineup, which made Pink Floyd a five-piece band for a short period in early 1968.
Pink Floyd stream rare 1967 video
Pink Floyd drummer Nick Mason announces UK tour
Pink Floyd stream video for The Final Cut
Search Pink Floyd at hennemusic
Labels: David Gilmour, Pink Floyd, Roger Waters, Syd Barrett


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X-Rite Announces AxF, Appearance Exchange Format, Supported by NVIDIA Iray
GRAND RAPIDS, Mich., July 26, 2017 – X-Rite Incorporated, a global leader in color science and technology, and its subsidiary Pantone LLC, announced today that NVIDIA Iray natively supports the Appearance Exchange Format (AxF™). Developed by X-Rite, AxF is a vendor-neutral format that enables the communication of all aspects of a physical material's appearance – color, texture, gloss, refraction, transparency, translucency, special effects (sparkles) and reflection properties – in a single, editable file to improve design virtualization. AxF gives designers and visual effects artists using NVIDIA Iray, access to physically accurate materials that simulate appearances to accelerate the overall design process and deliver the most compelling, photorealistic 3D visuals possible. X-Rite and NVIDIA will showcase the AxF integration in Iray at SIGGRAPH 2017, July 30 – August 3 in Los Angeles.
AxF is the foundational component of the X-Rite Total Appearance Capture (TAC™) ecosystem, a solution that brings a new level of accuracy and efficiency to the capture, communication and presentation of physical materials in the virtual world. Traditionally, the capture and rendering of complex materials such as special effects paints, meshes and synthetic fabrics have been a time-consuming and manual process. TAC addresses this challenge with a new level of precision in material scanning coupled with an ability to share the resulting data, via AxF, across an expanding set of rendering tools such as Iray.
Moreover, Allegorithmic Substance Designer allows connecting AxF and NVIDIA Material Definition Language (MDL) definitions in a unified workflow, allowing any engine supporting MDL to incorporate scanned data definition from TAC ecosystem, or any MDL material to be mixed or ingested by AxF compliant workflow.
"The TAC ecosystem is the most accurate, fastest and easiest way to take real materials and migrate them into the digital world," says Dr. Tobias Rausch, Portfolio Manager Total Appearance Capture at X-Rite. "NVIDIA's support of the AxF format means that Iray users can significantly streamline the overall creation process by starting with physically accurate files."
NVIDIA MDL defines the materials properties for Iray cross-vendor rendering engines, enabling the quick exchange of materials between multiple software and rendering technologies. MDL supports popular material models such as those in AxF without additional changes in a renderers core shading code. Thus, Iray's integration of AxF through the MDL technology combines measured materials with the fully programmable support for procedurally generated textures and functions with full GPU acceleration of MDL.
"AxF is the perfect companion to MDL for truly lifelike virtual experiences and imagery," says Bob Pette, vice president of Professional Visualization at NVIDIA. "It slashes the time required to get photograph fidelity material into all render engines supporting MDL and fully aligns with the demanding photorealistic rendering quality required by our users."
AxF is unique in its ability to compress raw scanned data from terabytes to megabytes, providing third-party software applications like Iray with efficient access to a full set of material appearance characteristics without compromising performance.
SIGGRAPH Presentation
Dr. Tobias Rausch, Portfolio Manager Total Appearance Capture at X-Rite, and Sébastien Deguy, CEO of Allegorithmic, will present at SIGGRAPH on Sunday, July 30 in Room 404AB at 2 pm. They will discuss how combining AxF, TAC7 scan data, MDL and Substance tools are changing the game for a full "scan-to-material" seamless workflow.
SIGGRAPH 2017 attendees can see a demonstration of X-Rite's award-winning Total Appearance Capture (TAC) ecosystem and the AxF integration with Iray at the X-Rite booth 1104. Attendees will see how AxF files can be used within Iray and applied to their renderings and animations.
The TAC ecosystem is comprised of the TAC7 scanner, PANTORA™ Material Hub desktop application, and Virtual Light Booth (VLB). Physical material samples are scanned using the TAC7 scanner, which captures appearance properties digitally to create AxF files that store appearance data. The files are stored, managed, viewed and edited in the PANTORA desktop application. The AxF files can be shared with Product Lifecycle Management (PLM), Computer-Aided Design (CAD), and state-of-the art rendering applications including Allegorithmic Substance Designer, AMD Radeon™ ProRender, Autodesk VRED™ Professional 2017, Lumiscaphe Patchwork 3D, Luxion KeyShot® Next Limit Maxwell, and NVIDIA Iray®.
The TAC Virtual Light Booth is the industry's first immersive 3D visualization environment for evaluating material appearance. It allows users to accurately and efficiently visualize and compare 3D digital material renderings side-by-side with physical samples. The VLB combines X-Rite's SpectraLight QC professional light booth technology with a high-brightness, color-calibrated, LCD display; color management technology; and motion tracking sensors. This allows the VLB viewing environment to control parameters that influence the perception of appearance from illumination to contextual to observational factors. With the VLB, design teams can easily verify these conditions to see changes in material performance. This helps ensure consistency between digital prototypes and final physical products and empowers designers to make more informed material selection decisions reducing approval cycles and accelerating time to market.
Founded in 1958, X-Rite Incorporated is a global leader in the science and technology of color and appearance. With its wholly owned subsidiary Pantone, X-Rite employs more than 800 people in 11 countries. The company's corporate headquarters are located in Grand Rapids, Mich., with regional headquarters in Europe and Asia and service centers across Europe, the Middle East, Asia, and the Americas. X-Rite Pantone offers a full range of solutions used by manufacturers, retailers, printers, photographers and graphic design houses to achieve precise management and communication of color and appearance throughout their processes. X-Rite Pantone products and services are recognized standards in the printing, packaging, photography, graphic design, video, automotive, paints, plastics, textiles and medical industries. For further information, please visit www.xrite.com. For the latest news, information and conversations, connect with X-Rite on LinkedIn, Vimeo, Twitter, and Facebook.


I wanted to share a couple photos from Marcee's birthday present - a Panasonic LX-600 LaserDisc player and stack of movies. Included in the mix were the two Tim Burton Batman movies (yay), and the two Joel Schumacher Batman movies (boo).
I'm still trying to find the optimal video settings on our 24" Sony KV-24FS100, a solid standard-def CRT from 2002. Sony completely fubar'd the color and bright/contrast settings on their sets, which makes calibration a real pain. We had the set dialed nicely for broadcast and DVD/Blu-Ray, and now we'll have to calibrate again for LaserDisc. Right now, my main concerns are the lighting (too harsh at times) and the color (too washed out and brownish). Without a Video Essentials disc, I pretty much have to use the Schwartz to get the video settings right.
When Marcee and I watched Batman '89, the picture looked terrific by the end of side two. The fiery destruction of the Axis Chemical factory was especially glorious and colorful, with not a pixel or digital artifact in sight. And the climactic battle in the belltower felt magical; it somehow felt analog, like film. I can't quite explain why or how, but I did perceive a difference in the way Jack Nicholson's Joker danced around. Skipping around Elizabeth ('98) also yielded excellent results, and Looney Tunes: Curtain Calls was a revelation for animation. Ace Ventura 2 and Robin Hood: Men in Tights looked very washed out and flat, however. So the LD experiments continue.
Update (8-27): Changed photos to reflect more balanced TV calibration. I also snapped the photos in motion, instead of using the CAV freeze-frame option. This enables a cleaner picture and better represents the LD as it looks on my Sony CRT television.


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Ontario Women, Youth and Low-Income Entrepreneurs Pave the Way Forward
Ryerson University, the BII+E and the Centre for Innovation Studies partner to release new entrepreneurship report comparing province nationally and internationally
TORONTO, September 19, 2017 – Entrepreneurship rates in Ontario are rapidly increasing, according to new joint research released today from Ryerson University, the Brookfield Institute for Innovation + Entrepreneurship (BII+E), and the Calgary-based Centre for Innovation Studies (TheCIS). The 2015 Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) Ontario Report is the most current and comprehensive understanding of the state of entrepreneurship in Ontario, as it takes into account entrepreneurs' attitudes, motives and aspirations.
It reveals significant growth in Ontario's entrepreneurship participation, growing from 11.7 per cent in 2013 to 14.4 per cent in 2015. When compared to similar economies, such as Canada as a whole, the U.S., Australia and Germany, Ontario fared better, while the latter three experienced declines in entrepreneurship participation.
The research also uncovers that Ontario entrepreneurs experience relative equity in the access to entrepreneurship, with the highest level of female participation (13.8 percent) rates among its peers. Furthermore, the province has a much more equal distribution of entrepreneurs across age and income groups, with a significantly higher youth entrepreneurship rate than the U.S.
"These findings are very encouraging for the state of entrepreneurship in Ontario," said Charles Davis, report coauthor and Ryerson University professor in the Faculty of Communication and Design. "When compared with similar economies, Ontario really shines as a strong and growing innovation ecosystem. We have created both culture and policy that supports entrepreneurship, and they're helping to drive our province's economic performance."
Report Key Findings
Ontario's entrepreneurship participation rate grew from 11.7 percent in 2013 to 14.4 percent in 2015, resulting in the highest growth amongst similar economies.
Ontario has a female entrepreneurship participation rate of 13.8 percent—the highest among its peers.
Ontario has a much more equal distribution of entrepreneurship participation across age groups and income levels, whereas in reference countries, participation is highly correlated with income levels.
Job growth expectations are exceptionally high in Ontario, with 10.7 percent of provincial entrepreneurs reporting that they are currently hiring or expect to hire in the next 10 years.
Ontario entrepreneurs are heavily concentrated in the wholesale, retail and accommodations sector, comprising a total of 26 percent of provincial entrepreneurs.
While the 2015 GEM Ontario Report provides much promising data regarding Ontario's culture of entrepreneurship and open business environment, it also highlights several areas for improvement. Only 41.8 per cent of women report they have the knowledge and skills required to start a business, compared to 60.9 per cent of men. It also reveals that while 51.2 per cent of Ontarians surveyed believe that they have the knowledge and skills to start a business, 46.7 per cent report that the fear of failure prevents them from actually establishing a company. A downloadable infographic is also available as part of the report.
Interested in learning more about entrepreneurship in Ontario? Read the full 2015 GEM Ontario Report and check out the key findings in our infographic.
"The most notable example of a demographic group that outperforms all other peer economies are female entrepreneurs, at 13.8 per cent of all women in Ontario," said Sean Mullin, Executive Director of the Brookfield Institute for Innovation + Entrepreneurship. "Compared to Ontario's male participation rate of 15.0 per cent, women are catching up thanks to education and access, but we still have work to do to achieve gender parity."
Established in 1999, the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) is the largest study of entrepreneurship in the world, covering 60 countries this past year alone. GEM's unique approach examines entrepreneurship from the perspective of the individual, rather than the company. Individual focused survey data allows GEM to report on intrapreneurship, or initiatives undertaken to launch new directions within a firm. GEM surveys are centrally coordinated and administered to more than 2,000 adults in each country, with GEM data experts working closely with GEM National Teams to guarantee the quality of the data. Data collection and analysis in Canada is led by TheCIS and the GEM Canada Team.
The Brookfield Institute for Innovation + Entrepreneurship (BII+E) is a new, independent and nonpartisan institute, housed within Ryerson University, that is dedicated to making Canada the best country in the world to be an innovator or an entrepreneur. BII+E supports this mission in three ways: insightful research and analysis; testing, piloting and prototyping projects; which informs BII+E's leadership and advocacy on behalf of innovation and entrepreneurship across the country. For more information, visit brookfieldinstitute.ca. Ryerson University is Canada's leader in innovative, career-oriented education and a university clearly on the move. With a mission to serve societal need, and a long-standing commitment to engaging its community, Ryerson offers more than 100 undergraduate and graduate programs. Distinctly urban, culturally diverse, and inclusive, the university is home to more than 41,500 students, including 2,400 master's and PhD students, 3,200 faculty and staff, and nearly 170,000 alumni worldwide. Research at Ryerson is on a trajectory of success and growth: externally funded research has doubled in the past five years. For more information, visit ryerson.ca.
For media enquiries, please contact Jessica Thomson, Marketing + Communications Specialist at the Brookfield Institute for Innovation + Entrepreneurship.


The sun was warmer today, mid-70s, gorgeous for autumn. Passing the school pond, I paused to enjoy the many birds that gather there as the cooler days approach. Ibis strutted the lawns, snapping up bugs. Herons…white, blue and green, lined the banks, and stalked through the shallows and reeds. Loons swooped and dove.
What I stayed to watch were willowy, snaking necks and heads cruising through the water, body unseen until a small fish flashed in the late afternoon sun as it was flung upward and snatched in the long, spear-like beak.
And after a successful fishing 'dip', the bearers of the snake-like necks for which they are named came ashore to perch, spread their wings, and dry off.
Anhinga. Their name coming from the Brazilian Tupi language and meaning snake bird or devil bird.
Welcome to the pond you devilish beauties.
…the end of a wonderful week. Nearing the end of a lovely month, and soon another year will be gone. For now…another night. Another sunset.
Here in the Lowcountry, sunset is special. Enjoy.
No, decidedly NOT suitable for YA. Which works for me.
But today, and tonight…actually for the majority of this entire week…my fantasies have been more decidedly domestic, a lot less fun, but terribly relevant just now. I am missing our old house, the neighborhood, my gardens and the landscaping I loved. I have discovered I cannot function when my nights never embrace the darkness; there is always some hideous street light or spot light denying the night and obstructing my view of the moon and stars. I miss nightly strolls in the dark, just gathering my thoughts, organizing this wild clutter of rampant imagination, and centering my soul.
Where, then, can we go, me and my small troop of offspring? The countryside may be well suited to this introverted earth mother, but my boys are more like David was…happier with sidewalks or biking/hiking trails, and civilization (at least parks) within reach.
Finding a compromise should be interesting. I'll keep you posted.
Meanwhile, other more entertaining versions of fantasy (yes, the 'other' kind) are running rampant through my pages with the current focus remaining on dragons and eco-themed ships on both air and water.
Think they are any match for a flight of dragons?
This is way more fun than trying to imagine what kind of place we should call home next.


A chart made of lines that make up a grid pattern used to assess central vision and therefore how well the macula functions.
Local anaesthesia is an injection of a drug around the eye that numbs the eye and enables surgery to be performed without discomfort whilst the patient is awake. General anaesthesia is when the patient is given drugs that make them fall asleep for the operation.
A condition where the front surface of the cornea (clear window at the front of the eye) is more curved in one direct that the other (like a rugby ball). It is corrected by glasses but can sometimes be corrected at the time of cataract surgery.
A measurement of the curvature of the front of the eye and the length of the eye that allows calculation of the strength of lens required at the time of cataract surgery.
The most common disease of the eyelids and is a sterile low grade inflammation of the lid margins (where the lashes are situated).
A cloudy lens inside the eye which usually occurs as you get older and requires a surgical procedure to correct.
The clear window at the front of the eye and is the main structure that allows light rays to focus on the retina.
This condition occurs when the blood sugar is too high and can result in problems with circulation of the retina with the passage of time.
An accurate way of assessing the circulation in the retina. Iodine dye is injected into a vein in the arm and then photographs are taken of the back of the eye to see how the dye circulates as it passes through the retina.
The very centre of the macula. This area gives us the best quality vision and colour vision. This is the retina that is used when you look directly act something.
When the pressure in the eye is too high for the eye and can damage the optic nerve that transmits the messages from the eye to the brain.
The lenses at the front of the eye are not strong enough to focus light on the retina. Glasses have to be worn for distance and an even stronger lens is needed for near.
The small plastic lens that is inserted into the eye at the time of cataract surgery to replace the focus that is lost when the cataract is removed.
A clear fluid called aqueous circulates inside the eye and maintains the eye at a pressure above atmospheric pressure called the intraocular pressure.
The lens inside the eye is the variable fine focus of the eye (compared to the fixed coarse focus of the cornea) and until late middle age can change its shape to enable us to focus into the distance (at the horizon) and near (for reading). After this age reading glasses are needed for near visual tasks.
The central area of the retina used when we look directly at something. At its very centre is the fovea.
A lens inserted into the eye at the time of cataract surgery that has multiple focus with some light being focused for near, intermediate distance and the far distance.
The eye is too big for the lenses in the eye and they focus the light in front of the retina. The vision is blurred in the distance but closer objects may be in focus. Glasses are needed for the distance.
Optical Coherence Tomography is a laser scanner that can take detailed images of the various laser of the retina.
The nerve that collects all the electrical information from the retina and sends it to the brain to give us sight.
This is the modern method of removing a cataract. The phacoemulsifier is a thin tube that vibrates a small amount but at great speed. This breaks the cataract into many small pieces that get sucked up the tube and out of the eye.
This is a "combined" operation when the lens of the eye is removed at the same time as performing a vitrectomy. This avoids the patient having to return for further surgery for cataract months or years after the vitrectomy.
A thin clear membrane left behind at the time of cataract surgery to support the new lens that is placed inside the eye.
A type of iodine solution that the most effective thing to quickly destroy bacteria and is used to clean the skin around the eye before surgery.
Photographic film at the back of the eye. Cells called rods and cones in the retina convert light into electricity which is then sent to the brain by the optic nerve to give us sight.
A type of lens inserted at the time of cataract surgery to correct astigmatism.
The clear jelly that occupies the main eye cavity.
Removal of the vitreous from the eye. This may be required for surgery to allow access to the retina which lines the back wall of the eye.