Apparently the Bay Bridge was a parking lot, and Muni and BART were standing room only to the point where agents were turning people away from the platform.
Update: grabbed some sweet pics from Flickr.
November 4, 2010
Giants Fans Overwhelm BART, Muni, Bay Bridge, Caltrains, Air, Space
I read that Giants fans overwhelmed all forms of transportation in getting to the parade today, but sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words.
This is the line to get BART tickets at the Dublin Pleasanton station at around 9am on November 3rd. Those of you who know the station know that this line stretches at least 100 yards away from the ticketing area. I mean, the station isn't even in the frame! It's another 30-40 yards off to the left! Blows. My. Mind. I've never even seen a line more than 10 people deep, and this looks like 30 times that amount.
November 3, 2010
Contra Costa's Measure O Fails
Measure O, a proposal to increase vehicle registration fees by $10 to fund transportation improvements in Contra Costa County, has failed by a margin of 53 - 43%.
Now, no one likes to volunteer to pay more money. But Measure O's failure is disappointing because it represented a chance for greater fiscal conservatism: in the spirit of toll lanes, gas taxes, and the benefits-received principle of taxation, it asked the primary users of our roads to contribute more, and more directly, to maintenance and operating costs.
Most of the opposition to the measure repeated two arguments: the national Republican meme of "it's time for government to live within its means" and the (certainly true) accusation that the measure would fund bus, bike, and pedestrian improvements alongside the road improvements.
And yet, both arguments fail to convince. Let's start with the first one.
Todd Litman, blogging at Planetizen, (via Streetsblog), provides some context, using data from national sources:
And with regard to using a vehicle tax to fund multi-modal transportation, Measure O's detractors had this to say in their official voter information document:
How this became part of the anti-O argument is hard to figure. Road advocates are too often locked into a mentality that sees more roads as the only route to congestion relief. Yet increasing road capacity only provides a greater incentive to drive--a phenomena known as induced demand that has been well documented by prominent sources. More roads encourage more driving.
On the contrary, improving bus, bike, and pedestrian infrastructure is likely to reduce traffic by providing people with other ways of traveling. The issue at hand is incentives, and allocating them to boost and reduce demand as needed in order to ensure an evenly used and fluid transportation network. One local success in this area is Bay Bridge congestion pricing, where tolls are raised during rush hour to encourage discretionary travelers to drive during less trafficked times of day. The incentive has largely worked: the time to reach the toll plaza has halved, and despite a drop in carpoolers, BART ridership has increased. (For a list of Transportation Demand Management strategies, check out the TDM Encyclopedia at the Victoria Policy Institute.)
Opponents of Measure O who are looking for better and less congested roads just missed a chance at having just that. While it may seem counterintuitive, asking drivers to pay for services received, and using portions of that revenue to boost the growth of buses and bike lanes will actually benefit drivers, and everybody in the network.
Now, no one likes to volunteer to pay more money. But Measure O's failure is disappointing because it represented a chance for greater fiscal conservatism: in the spirit of toll lanes, gas taxes, and the benefits-received principle of taxation, it asked the primary users of our roads to contribute more, and more directly, to maintenance and operating costs.
Most of the opposition to the measure repeated two arguments: the national Republican meme of "it's time for government to live within its means" and the (certainly true) accusation that the measure would fund bus, bike, and pedestrian improvements alongside the road improvements.
And yet, both arguments fail to convince. Let's start with the first one.
Todd Litman, blogging at Planetizen, (via Streetsblog), provides some context, using data from national sources:
According to the U.S. Consumer Expenditure Survey, in 2008 U.S. motorists spent on average approximately $2,700 per vehicle on ownership expenses (purchase, registration, insurance, etc.) and $1,400 on fuel and oil, about $4,100 in total. That year, governments spent $181 billion to build and maintain roadways (more if you include traffic services such as policing and emergency response), or about $730 annually per registered motor vehicle. Less than half of these roadway expenses are paid by motor vehicle user fees, the rest are borne through general taxes. ... A typical urban parking space costs $5,000 to $25,000 to construct, resulting in $500 to $1,500 in annualized construction and operating costs.The conclusion here is that, on average, motorist-funded monies like the gas tax and vehicle registration fees only cover a portion of the actual costs of expanding, operating, and maintaining the infrastructure necessary for automobile use in the United States. In this light, Measure O would appear to be an excellent way to fulfill exactly what its detractors are saying: live within your means.
And with regard to using a vehicle tax to fund multi-modal transportation, Measure O's detractors had this to say in their official voter information document:
The 21% [of Contra Costa Transportation Authority's spending plan] allocated to "Transit for Congestion Relief" also funds "rapid bus facilities" and "express and feeder bus service."
Another 8% of Measure O's spending exclusively funds "Pedestrian and Bicycle Safety and Access."
How this became part of the anti-O argument is hard to figure. Road advocates are too often locked into a mentality that sees more roads as the only route to congestion relief. Yet increasing road capacity only provides a greater incentive to drive--a phenomena known as induced demand that has been well documented by prominent sources. More roads encourage more driving.
On the contrary, improving bus, bike, and pedestrian infrastructure is likely to reduce traffic by providing people with other ways of traveling. The issue at hand is incentives, and allocating them to boost and reduce demand as needed in order to ensure an evenly used and fluid transportation network. One local success in this area is Bay Bridge congestion pricing, where tolls are raised during rush hour to encourage discretionary travelers to drive during less trafficked times of day. The incentive has largely worked: the time to reach the toll plaza has halved, and despite a drop in carpoolers, BART ridership has increased. (For a list of Transportation Demand Management strategies, check out the TDM Encyclopedia at the Victoria Policy Institute.)
Opponents of Measure O who are looking for better and less congested roads just missed a chance at having just that. While it may seem counterintuitive, asking drivers to pay for services received, and using portions of that revenue to boost the growth of buses and bike lanes will actually benefit drivers, and everybody in the network.
October 31, 2010
Further Reasons to Mess With Texas
For those keeping track of symbolic cultural clashes, the current World Series between the Giants and the Rangers just keeps getting juicier. First there was Proposition 23, the Texas oil-fueled attack on CA's greenhouse gas reduction bill*, then there were Josh Hamilton and other Texans waxing incredulous about omnipresent weed scents. Now comes the news that Arlington is the largest U.S. city without transit.
*Partial text of Gov. Schwarzenegger's epic take-down of Prop 23 in the comments.
Not that SF is the very bestest, transit-wise, but at least fans have options for getting to the ballpark. Either way, the Giants now carry the hopes of the environmentalists, the stoners, and the transit advocates, each looking for vicarious victory over the forces of evil.
Though traditional auto-dependent land use is certainly an obstacle for transit in Arlington, funding is also a substantial problem: Texas sales taxes are capped at 8.25%, of which the state receives 6.25% and cities receive the remaining 2% to use locally. Because the Rangers and the Cowboys have recently completed ambitious new stadiums, all of Arlington's sales tax gets funneled toward paying off debt. Which lead SFWeekly to the following insight:
Zing!
*Partial text of Gov. Schwarzenegger's epic take-down of Prop 23 in the comments.
Not that SF is the very bestest, transit-wise, but at least fans have options for getting to the ballpark. Either way, the Giants now carry the hopes of the environmentalists, the stoners, and the transit advocates, each looking for vicarious victory over the forces of evil.
Though traditional auto-dependent land use is certainly an obstacle for transit in Arlington, funding is also a substantial problem: Texas sales taxes are capped at 8.25%, of which the state receives 6.25% and cities receive the remaining 2% to use locally. Because the Rangers and the Cowboys have recently completed ambitious new stadiums, all of Arlington's sales tax gets funneled toward paying off debt. Which lead SFWeekly to the following insight:
San Francisco has earned its reputation as a place that throws money around. But in this case, the truth is counter-intuitive. Here you ride a publicly financed bus or train to a privately financed stadium. In Arlington, you ride in a privately financed car to a publicly financed stadium.
Zing!
October 29, 2010
CA Redevelopment Law: Can a Powerful Tool be Repurposed?
Caveat Emptor: this is a wonkier post, so read at own peril.
Earlier this month, I had the privilege of attending the Berkeley Dept of City and Regional Planning (DCRP) open house, where I sat in on a class titled "Sustainable Redevelopment." Professor Cecilia Estolano, the recent former Executive Director of the Los Angeles Community Redevelopment Agency (CRA/LA), taught the class.
The class outlined the system of redevelopment in California. Briefly, and hopefully without too many mischaracterizations, let me set the three main redevelopment tools in CA law: 1) Community Redevelopment Agencies, which have authority to buy and assemble land, 2) Tax increment financing, which provides the strong profit motive for the CRAs, and 3) eminent domain, which among other things, also keeps costs down for redevelopers.
CRAs
California state law provides for the existence of locally derived Community Redevelopment Agencies. They are not centrally administered, and though there is a central body, the federalist structure retains significant independence for each CRA. According to Estolano, a lot of cities that are too small for a city council and a CRA will fuse the two bodies, such that a copy of the meeting minutes might read "Move to close City Council meeting. Motion appoved. Motion to Open CRA meeting. Motion approved" or something similar. The decentralization can also create a situation where smaller CRAs lack legal, real estate, and economic expertise sufficient to combat pressure from external developers. But onward:
CRAs were originally tasked with reducing blight. The definition of blight, however, was/is problematic: to be blighted, an area had to show physical and economic blight. Criteria included overcrowding, unsafe, unhealthy, or poorly maintained building stock, low property values, even irregular lots with under multiple ownership. (Picture Boston's North End, which thankfully weathered a redevelopment storm of its own, or any other district with "European" narrow/angular street patterns and residential/retail mixed use.) Redevelopment Agencies had to establish a relationship wherein blight caused a lack of utilization, that without public-private redevelopment, would lead to further stagnation.
Such a liberal definition of blight gave Redevelopment Agencies (in my notes as RDAs, not sure if these are technically identical to, or different from CRAs) the authority to declare a project site "blighted." Sidenote: not sure what the accountability structure is here, ie, who or what evaluates RDA blight designations. In practice, the law gave redevelopers the ability to take control of low-income areas for the purposes of redevelopment.
Tax Increment Financing (TIF)
With the land assembled, CRAs needed funds to fuel the projects intended to better utilize the blighted zones. Enter TIF, which allows the CRA to accumulate funding by leveraging future increases in property values in the project sight as collateral. The first step is to assess existing property values in the project area--these revenues, pursuant to state law, are divvied up among local bodies like the schools, libraries, etc. But above this baseline, all growth in tax revenue accrues to the CRA. Needless to say, this arrangement creates incentives for projects that will boost property values the fastest: skyscrapers, big box stores, and luxury this's and thats's. Any regard for previous residents of the project site is notably absent, as is any eye for social justice, social services, or even any doubt that boosted property values are one and the same as economic development. A subsequent law required that increases in tax revenue be subject to the same redistribution formulas as the baseline tax revenue, but the incentives are the same regardless of whether local institutions do or do not get to share the windfall.
Because the CRA is a public agency, it can get sweet rates on the bonds it purchases. And it can only use the money inside the project zone, giving rise to disparities of community investment. And CRAs are chartered for 45 years, which allows them to reap the TIF driven money tree for a substantial amount of time.
Eminent Domain
Enough has been said about this already without me needing to add much. The ability to requisition property from private owners for a larger project, be it a highway or a stadium. Eminent domainers have been historically required to pay only fair market value for the property, which, because it is frequently in a designated blighted area, is frequently inconveniently low for the property owner.
Overall, a powerful framework for redevelopment. Needless to say, incentives are aligned in favor of the monied few, and against the non-monied multitude, but the essential question to be asking is what provisions can be added or subtracted from this framework to create redevelopment projects that value context, value social and environmental justice, and value reduced carbon footprints?
Earlier this month, I had the privilege of attending the Berkeley Dept of City and Regional Planning (DCRP) open house, where I sat in on a class titled "Sustainable Redevelopment." Professor Cecilia Estolano, the recent former Executive Director of the Los Angeles Community Redevelopment Agency (CRA/LA), taught the class.
The class outlined the system of redevelopment in California. Briefly, and hopefully without too many mischaracterizations, let me set the three main redevelopment tools in CA law: 1) Community Redevelopment Agencies, which have authority to buy and assemble land, 2) Tax increment financing, which provides the strong profit motive for the CRAs, and 3) eminent domain, which among other things, also keeps costs down for redevelopers.
CRAs
California state law provides for the existence of locally derived Community Redevelopment Agencies. They are not centrally administered, and though there is a central body, the federalist structure retains significant independence for each CRA. According to Estolano, a lot of cities that are too small for a city council and a CRA will fuse the two bodies, such that a copy of the meeting minutes might read "Move to close City Council meeting. Motion appoved. Motion to Open CRA meeting. Motion approved" or something similar. The decentralization can also create a situation where smaller CRAs lack legal, real estate, and economic expertise sufficient to combat pressure from external developers. But onward:
CRAs were originally tasked with reducing blight. The definition of blight, however, was/is problematic: to be blighted, an area had to show physical and economic blight. Criteria included overcrowding, unsafe, unhealthy, or poorly maintained building stock, low property values, even irregular lots with under multiple ownership. (Picture Boston's North End, which thankfully weathered a redevelopment storm of its own, or any other district with "European" narrow/angular street patterns and residential/retail mixed use.) Redevelopment Agencies had to establish a relationship wherein blight caused a lack of utilization, that without public-private redevelopment, would lead to further stagnation.
Such a liberal definition of blight gave Redevelopment Agencies (in my notes as RDAs, not sure if these are technically identical to, or different from CRAs) the authority to declare a project site "blighted." Sidenote: not sure what the accountability structure is here, ie, who or what evaluates RDA blight designations. In practice, the law gave redevelopers the ability to take control of low-income areas for the purposes of redevelopment.
Tax Increment Financing (TIF)
With the land assembled, CRAs needed funds to fuel the projects intended to better utilize the blighted zones. Enter TIF, which allows the CRA to accumulate funding by leveraging future increases in property values in the project sight as collateral. The first step is to assess existing property values in the project area--these revenues, pursuant to state law, are divvied up among local bodies like the schools, libraries, etc. But above this baseline, all growth in tax revenue accrues to the CRA. Needless to say, this arrangement creates incentives for projects that will boost property values the fastest: skyscrapers, big box stores, and luxury this's and thats's. Any regard for previous residents of the project site is notably absent, as is any eye for social justice, social services, or even any doubt that boosted property values are one and the same as economic development. A subsequent law required that increases in tax revenue be subject to the same redistribution formulas as the baseline tax revenue, but the incentives are the same regardless of whether local institutions do or do not get to share the windfall.
Because the CRA is a public agency, it can get sweet rates on the bonds it purchases. And it can only use the money inside the project zone, giving rise to disparities of community investment. And CRAs are chartered for 45 years, which allows them to reap the TIF driven money tree for a substantial amount of time.
Eminent Domain
Enough has been said about this already without me needing to add much. The ability to requisition property from private owners for a larger project, be it a highway or a stadium. Eminent domainers have been historically required to pay only fair market value for the property, which, because it is frequently in a designated blighted area, is frequently inconveniently low for the property owner.
Overall, a powerful framework for redevelopment. Needless to say, incentives are aligned in favor of the monied few, and against the non-monied multitude, but the essential question to be asking is what provisions can be added or subtracted from this framework to create redevelopment projects that value context, value social and environmental justice, and value reduced carbon footprints?
A Unified Theory of Urban Living
An article in a recent issue of Nature (hat tip to KH) makes the case for quantifying, or at least systematizing, our understandings of how cities and urban spaces operate. Citing past mistakes in urban planning, the authors argue that "the need is urgent for an integrated, quantitative, predictive, science-based understanding of the dynamics, growth and organization of cities. To combat the multiple threats facing humanity, a ‘grand unified theory of sustainability’ with cities and urbanization at its core must be developed."
An ambitious undertaking to say the least, but they point out a few interesting findings as evidence that such an effort might be possible. To wit:
So far, pretty common sense. A friend once remarked to me that New York's density subsidizes US Postal Service deliveries to rural towns with populations in the 100s--dropping mail to addresses with dozens of residents is certainly more cost efficient than dropping mail to single resident addresses several miles apart.
What gave me pause was the mathematical regularity the researchers found:
Now, the friend who alerted me to this article assures me that a statistical relationships this iron clad are a rare sight in the world of real world data. Because I know little about groovy tactics like taking the log of each axis, I'll let his judgment and the commanding visual speak for itself (the line looks like a backslash, for goodness sake).
The article eventually reasons that the most useful application of this data will be to evaluate policy successes and failures--slightly more modest than a "Unified Theory", but a chance, nonetheless, at a concrete metric in a field where data can be diffuse, difficult to capture, or subject to all sorts of faulty assumptions (see the discussion about the problems with density here).
So ideally, a city manager in x city would be able to look at a model predicting incidences of crime, patents, or Vehicle Miles Traveled, or whatever, and be able to see if his/her city is under or overperforming its expected tally. And then use this as evidence to help guide new policy initiatives.
An ambitious undertaking to say the least, but they point out a few interesting findings as evidence that such an effort might be possible. To wit:
Three main characteristics vary systematically with population. One, the space required per capita shrinks, thanks to denser settlement and a more intense use of infrastructure. Two, the pace of all socioeconomic activity accelerates, leading to higher productivity. And three, economic and social activities diversify and become more interdependent, resulting in new forms of economic specialization and cultural expression.
We have recently shown that these general trends can be expressed as simple mathematical ‘laws’. For example, doubling the population of any city requires only about an 85% increase in infrastructure, whether that be total road surface, length of electrical cables, water pipes or number of petrol stations. This systematic 15% savings happens because, in general, creating and operating the same infrastructure at higher densities is more efficient, more economically viable, and often leads to higher-quality services and solutions that are impossible in smaller places.
So far, pretty common sense. A friend once remarked to me that New York's density subsidizes US Postal Service deliveries to rural towns with populations in the 100s--dropping mail to addresses with dozens of residents is certainly more cost efficient than dropping mail to single resident addresses several miles apart.
What gave me pause was the mathematical regularity the researchers found:
The bigger the city, the more the average citizen owns, produces and consumes, whether goods, resources or ideas. On average, as city size increases, per capita socioeconomic quantities such as wages, GDP, number of patents produced and number of educational and research institutions all increase by approximately 15% more than the expected linear growth. There is, however, a dark side: negative metrics including crime, traffic conges- tion and incidence of certain diseases all increase following the same 15% rule. The good, the bad and the ugly come as an integrated, predictable, package.
The article eventually reasons that the most useful application of this data will be to evaluate policy successes and failures--slightly more modest than a "Unified Theory", but a chance, nonetheless, at a concrete metric in a field where data can be diffuse, difficult to capture, or subject to all sorts of faulty assumptions (see the discussion about the problems with density here).
So ideally, a city manager in x city would be able to look at a model predicting incidences of crime, patents, or Vehicle Miles Traveled, or whatever, and be able to see if his/her city is under or overperforming its expected tally. And then use this as evidence to help guide new policy initiatives.
Transportation Projects, Mapped
Someone over at Transportation for America, a really sweet site that you all should check out, had the mega-user friendly idea of mapping all recent TIGER I and TIGER II grant recipients on a google map, complete with detailed descriptions about what each will accomplish.
I blogged earlier about East Bay bike trail improvements, but spend some qt with this map, there are lots of innovative happenings. Some traditional highways and roadways stuff,* yes, some safety upgrades/maintenance, and important but un-glamorous freight projects. But also sexier things like $47 million for light rail in Atlanta, Bus Rapid Transit in Orlando, and Complete Streets in Dubuque, Iowa, etc, etc.
So I guess "sexier" is a relative term.
*Charleston SC gets $10 million "to include a storm water runoff system that would quickly shunt water into the nearby river, helping to alleviate flooding in downtown Charleston in the area of the US-17 and I- 26 intersection during moderate to heavy rains." Looks like USDOT is still thinking transportation first, context second. I think this called for a more creative solution than "shunting" water from streets (mm, heavy metals, oil, brake pad and tire particles!) into the nearest body of water.
I blogged earlier about East Bay bike trail improvements, but spend some qt with this map, there are lots of innovative happenings. Some traditional highways and roadways stuff,* yes, some safety upgrades/maintenance, and important but un-glamorous freight projects. But also sexier things like $47 million for light rail in Atlanta, Bus Rapid Transit in Orlando, and Complete Streets in Dubuque, Iowa, etc, etc.
So I guess "sexier" is a relative term.
*Charleston SC gets $10 million "to include a storm water runoff system that would quickly shunt water into the nearby river, helping to alleviate flooding in downtown Charleston in the area of the US-17 and I- 26 intersection during moderate to heavy rains." Looks like USDOT is still thinking transportation first, context second. I think this called for a more creative solution than "shunting" water from streets (mm, heavy metals, oil, brake pad and tire particles!) into the nearest body of water.
October 26, 2010
San Ramon Schools Turn Parking into Solar Power
Local high schools will soon see their parking lots shaded by solar arrays, thanks to a $23 million dollar contract the SRVUSD recently signed with SunPower, a San Jose-based company. Though the agreement was singed over the summer, the final design meetings are happening this week.
The district has posted (pdf) projections of future energy savings and general fund benefits: under the conservative estimates, it expects to save $27 million in energy costs over the first seventeen years. Estimates also peg the debt incurred (via low interest Qualified School Construction Bonds*) to be payed off in 17 years, bringing the low-ball, 25 year boost to the district's general fund to $11 million. The optimistic projection tallies that number at $30 million, based on higher assumed increases in PG&E rates and a lighter debt load.
*QSCBs are part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, which authorizes these special low-interest bonds for schools seeking to improve infrastructure. Fascinating to see how that stimulus is trickling down.
Investing in infrastructure that cuts fixed costs seems like a no-brainer, but especially for any landowner not expecting to relocate. Colleges, universities, and high schools spring immediately to mind. I wonder if anyone has a model for installing solar arrays in commercial parking lots, like those at regional shopping malls. What I don't know is what incentives the developer/owner would need to make such a retrofit attractive--if each individual tenant pays its own utility bill, then the incentive is small, spread thinly across all stakeholder, and probably stymied by the unusually deliberate coordination and mobilization the task would require. This is conjecture, because I do not know how such arrangements would work ... if a central body pays collective utilities, the incentive to go solar would appear to be much stronger.
Diablo Valley Community College already has photovoltaic arrays on all surface parking lots at its Concord campus. Chevron Energy Solutions, a unit of local business and energy juggernaut Chevron Corporation, partnered with DVC, Los Medanos Community College, and Contra Costa Community College to complete installation in 2008.
The Chevron press release detailed additional services provided:
The Athenian School, a private college-prep partial boarding school in Danville has also installed a solar array (in the shape of an A, natch) with a slightly different approach. It partnered with Tioga Energy in what appears to be some sort of subcontractor-esque agreement--the solar power purchase agreement (PPA) signed states that Tioga Energy owns, operates, and maintains the system. Tioga sells the solar electricity generated to the school at fixed rates over a 20-year period.
Since PG&E rates will surely increase, and since the arrangement does not require Athenian to invest in a massive capital outlay, using middlemen might make modifications more manageable (alliteration, ftw). I'm assuming that Athenian's monthly savings would be less than if they owned the array, given that Tioga needs to turn a profit somehow, but Athenian is already getting about 50% of its electricity from the investment.
A little further research reveals that Tioga has signed PPAs with the Lafayette School District, five New Jersey school districts, and SoCal's Irvine Unified School District.
The district has posted (pdf) projections of future energy savings and general fund benefits: under the conservative estimates, it expects to save $27 million in energy costs over the first seventeen years. Estimates also peg the debt incurred (via low interest Qualified School Construction Bonds*) to be payed off in 17 years, bringing the low-ball, 25 year boost to the district's general fund to $11 million. The optimistic projection tallies that number at $30 million, based on higher assumed increases in PG&E rates and a lighter debt load.
*QSCBs are part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, which authorizes these special low-interest bonds for schools seeking to improve infrastructure. Fascinating to see how that stimulus is trickling down.
Investing in infrastructure that cuts fixed costs seems like a no-brainer, but especially for any landowner not expecting to relocate. Colleges, universities, and high schools spring immediately to mind. I wonder if anyone has a model for installing solar arrays in commercial parking lots, like those at regional shopping malls. What I don't know is what incentives the developer/owner would need to make such a retrofit attractive--if each individual tenant pays its own utility bill, then the incentive is small, spread thinly across all stakeholder, and probably stymied by the unusually deliberate coordination and mobilization the task would require. This is conjecture, because I do not know how such arrangements would work ... if a central body pays collective utilities, the incentive to go solar would appear to be much stronger.
Diablo Valley Community College already has photovoltaic arrays on all surface parking lots at its Concord campus. Chevron Energy Solutions, a unit of local business and energy juggernaut Chevron Corporation, partnered with DVC, Los Medanos Community College, and Contra Costa Community College to complete installation in 2008.
 |
| Parking lot arrays near the DVC football field |
The Chevron press release detailed additional services provided:
- a 3.2-megawatt solar power generation system comprising photovoltaic panels mounted on 34 parking canopies in six parking lots at Contra Costa College, Diablo Valley College and Los Medanos College;
- high-efficiency lighting and energy management systems installed at CCCCD's three colleges and District Office, as well as high-efficiency heating, ventilation and air-conditioning equipment at CCCCD's District Office; and
- high-voltage electrical system replacements installed at Diablo Valley College and Los Medanos College.
The Athenian School, a private college-prep partial boarding school in Danville has also installed a solar array (in the shape of an A, natch) with a slightly different approach. It partnered with Tioga Energy in what appears to be some sort of subcontractor-esque agreement--the solar power purchase agreement (PPA) signed states that Tioga Energy owns, operates, and maintains the system. Tioga sells the solar electricity generated to the school at fixed rates over a 20-year period.
Since PG&E rates will surely increase, and since the arrangement does not require Athenian to invest in a massive capital outlay, using middlemen might make modifications more manageable (alliteration, ftw). I'm assuming that Athenian's monthly savings would be less than if they owned the array, given that Tioga needs to turn a profit somehow, but Athenian is already getting about 50% of its electricity from the investment.
A little further research reveals that Tioga has signed PPAs with the Lafayette School District, five New Jersey school districts, and SoCal's Irvine Unified School District.
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