Caltrans exec who protested a freeway expansion gets demoted | Hacker News Reader

Caltrans exec who protested a freeway expansion gets demoted

latimes.com

99 pointsoftenwrong57 comments

The sad thing here is even if she did the right thing the outcome of her protest is California gets less dollars from the federal infrastructure bill due to her trying to slow the building down, because the infrastructure bill dollars get used up by states that can implement public works projects faster. Her protest doesn’t lead to less climate change, because we all breathe the same air. Her protest only leads to California having worse off roads compared to neighboring states which will utilize the funds until they are gone.

I disagree. It’s like the arguments that buying a new ICE car doesn’t add carbon to the atmosphere because if you didn’t that someone else would. A false narrative.

Yes CA would have gotten less freeway dollars but more freeways just cause more traffic due to Jevons paradox.

We don’t need freeway expansion. We need more mass transit.

The Infrastructure bill designates a specific amount of funds from the federal government for public works endeavors, with a particular portion allocated for road projects. $110 billion has been earmarked for roads. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infrastructure_Investment_and_...

When the government earmarks funds for a purpose, they are typically spent for that intent. The road projects funded by this bill will be realized, although potentially less in California if faced with continued opposition.

Repave or expand local roads don’t widen freeways.

https://web.archive.org/web/20231014193229/https://www.latim...

Is a deputy director really an exec? My understanding is that typically VP and up is considered an exec. And a director would be responsible for decisionmaking in a large scale; while a deputy director would focus on execution of the vision of the director.

> Is a deputy director really an exec?

Yes, in California state departments generally, the "Director" is the CEO, the "Chief Deputy Director" is the COO, and the other principal executives (including generally most that have CxO style working titles, in the departments which use them, though there are some exceptions) will be Deputy Directors.

Caltrans specifically: https://dot.ca.gov/about-caltrans/departmental-organizationa...

Note that the CFO, CIO, and Chief Engineer are (among the) Deputy Directors.

> My understanding is that typically VP and up is considered an exec.

California state departments don't have officers titled "President" or "Vice President" (also, in lots of private entities, VPs and even Senior VPs are not executives, but Executive VPs are, so the "VP and up" rule doesn't necessarily work even where VPs exist.)

Thanks for the explanation, this context helps a lot!

I think titles are somewhat different for this type of agency than for companies in the private sector.

If you look at the page that has the executive bios at https://dot.ca.gov/about-caltrans/executive-biographies there isn't anyone with the title "VP" but "deputy director" seems to roughly be the equivalent of a VP title at a private sector company.

Executives are usually people of high rank in an organization who make decisions, manage operations, and overseeprojects - often for long-term strategic planning and execution - and have managerial and leadership tasks.

Yes, I think a deputy director does that, when the director is considered the top executive of the agency.

This appears to be an anti-whistleblower action.

Usually means P&L responsibility for a business unit.

VP doesn't necessarily mean anything. Goldman Sachs has 12,000 vice presidents, give or take. Not one of them will ever get a call at 3AM because DJ Solomon took some MDMA laced with Fentanyl and they need to be sworn in as CEO.

Long ago at a job far away, there were account executives who schmoozed with clients. One day the CEO snapped his fingers and made them all vice presidents. Why? So they would look more important when they schmoozed with actual executives. Then again, maybe they were schmoozing with people who also had inflated titles.

> VP doesn't necessarily mean anything. Goldman Sachs has 12,000 vice presidents, give or take.

Everyone knows VP at a bank is a junior title. Managing director (MD) is the real boss.

Similar to tech, everyone knows senior SWE (L5/E5) is a junior/entry-level role. Whereas senior staff SWEs (L7/E7) are the real hot shots.

L5 is junior now? Whelp. I know they're nobodies in the grand scheme of big tech but I wouldn't exactly call them juniors, at least not in terms of skill. Maybe power within the company. But I guess that's what you meant.

The Director is the top job at Caltrans. "Deputy Director of Whatever" is equivalent to "Chief Whatever Officer" at companies.

Is this a case of Pournelle's Iron Law at play?

StreetsBlog has a better article: https://cal.streetsblog.org/2023/09/19/caltrans-shakeup-is-a...

It sounds like she was caught in the crossfire between Friedman and CalTrans. If it's like her fight against CA HSR, Friedman might just want the funds to go to Metrolink improvements in Burbank than any alternatives for Davis and Sacramento: https://cal.streetsblog.org/2022/05/05/letter-to-speaker-ren...

So California can build things after all: roads.

Imagine if it’d been someone opposing a rail line or an affordable housing development who got demoted. That’d be progress.

> So California can build things after all: roads.

Yeah, for obvious reasons. The Caltrans budget this year is $21 billion and the High-Speed Rail Authority only gets $1 billion. That is why the railroad won't be done until 2175.

>She said she told him she was thinking of filing a whistleblower complaint with the state auditor. A complaint could trigger an investigation.

Mistake number one. You either file a complaint or you don't. You do NOT warn them.

I almost dropped my phone when I saw that but. I mean, you have to fire her on principal if anything at that point. It reminds me of when some tech or media company (I forget) fired a bunch of mainly younger employees because they were upset HR wasn’t there for them when addressing their complaints with the company. Like, who are these people?

Whistle blowing is anonymous for a reason.

There is absolutely no future for privately own cars in the United States and the world. It's over, accept it, and cars are gone.

Pretty sure the same kind of fun buttery will apply to cars, if it's not already here.

Even if you're right I'll be dead before I see them even 20% gone.

> Her attorney called her demotion an attempt to “chill whistleblowing content.”

Why does the article focus on her gender so much? The quote about speaking up in meetings with men seems misplaced if the allegation is that she was demoted for threatening to be a whistleblower, and not for gender-based discrimination. If she'd been speaking up at meetings for years and only got demoted after threatening to trigger an investigation, it feels odd to introduce this angle to a narrative where it doesn't fit. Not saying it isn't true, but that I cannot see how that thread connects to the larger story.

Are you getting upset that an article used a female pronoun to describe a female that identifies as a woman?

Nice. What voters actually want are executives that pay lip service to climate goals and all this mumbo-jumbo bullshit about public transport, but in reality, no one wants to ride the fucking bus. We want roads, more roads, bigger roads, better roads. Sounds like she didn't get the message.

"There’s a culture of wanting to build more, and get it done quickly, despite the policy direction that sort of forces us to take a deeper look at the public benefits of those projects,” she said in an interview."

Sounds like Caltrans is one the few agencies that is actually still able to get fucking shit done, as opposed to endlessly wringing their hands about social justice and burning taxpayer dollars to do it, while making no appreciable progress on social justice whatsoever and funneling money to their scumsucking friends in nonprofits who know the right words to say to get in on the scam too.

I want trains and public transportation. Have lived 18 years in cities that had good public transportation. The kind where 95% of the population uses it often, many daily. Had friends who owned cars and they still mostly used public transportation. The cars were something for weekend trips but those friends were the exception.

Unfortunately to get to that level in California means adding 60-80 lines with 20 to 40 stops each, having a train every 5 minutes, having express trains that skip stations, having the trains go fast, having busses every 10 minutes, keeping all of it clean and safe.

We'll never get that and so people will keep asking for more freeways but the train can be so much nicer.

Also, a common excuse is population density but....

Switzerland has tons of trains, is a 3x the size of the bay area with the same population

Switzerland ~8 million people

Bay Area ~8 million people

Switzerland size: 41000 sqkm

Bay Area size: 18000 sqkm

Switzerland train tracks: 5200 km

Bay Area train tracks: ??? (I think It's under 500 km so 1/10)

Traveling on a train can be great! You get more space than a plane, you can work, relax, eat, etc... Vs a car where you mostly have to spend all your time concentrating on driving.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=muPcHs-E4qc

I don’t want to exclusively ride trains and buses. I can never enjoy it and don’t feel comfortable. I love driving around in the privacy of my car. On the other hand I don’t want to say fuck the climate like the GP above. I think there’s a way to make both things work. More trains and more roads. The roads will get cleaner the more electric vehicles we have.

Do you think you'd feel comfortable cycling, given proper infrastructure [1]?

[1]: https://youtu.be/bMJaMy-0ChA?t=248

Cycling is fine but it’s no car. Plus I live in a relatively rural area so I doubt I could get a lot done by cycling. I love the road+car paradigm and find nothing wrong with it to be honest. I don’t want to give it up for a lesser way of traveling, I want a top down fix for car pollution instead.

Makes sense, although your preferences wouldn't be sustainable if extended to the whole population. The only way to fix car pollution is for most trips to be made via more sustainable alternatives.

Theoretically if everyone is using electric vehicles and all the electricity is generated renewably (not that far fetched), why not?

Because cars are inefficient. So much so, that I'm pretty sure if you tasked an engineer to come up with the least efficient way of transporting people, they'd come up with something resembling a car.

Electric cars are a good step, but they only alleviate a few downsides of cars.

The more trains you add, the less cars there will be on the road, leaving space in the therefore smaller roads for all those that need them or want to enjoy them.

Yes, 100% this. And it’s the same for bike lanes (and the people who do not want to ride bikes). Build tons of protected bike lanes, and many more people will use them. This will make more room on the roads for people are unable (or who choose not) to bike.

Personal transportation is fundamentally unsustainable. You can’t have it both ways.

switzerland is a landlocked country with no port and no access, and barely 1 refinery. It depends on others for imports of oil, none which are direct neighbors. Switzerland has also very rugged terrain and weather , for which early car models were not exactly built for.

Contrast this with california, with the most important US port, almost 2 dozen refineries, and immediate access to oil producers. Pleasant mild weather in most parts of the territory, and flatland.

My point - Switzerland built its transport network to play to its strengths. So did CA.

You could say that the Netherlands is more suited to trains because it is flat and easy to build tracks on. Or because it is dense.

Or maybe the Netherlands is poorly suited to trains because it is dense and difficult to get suitable land. And because it has ports and is close to north sea oil, so why not use cars?

Switzerland and the Netherlands have trains because they made a decision to develop that strength, not because of their (polar opposite) geographies.

hmm - it's not like trains were (or are) built for rugged terrain either. If anything that point would be in favor of Switzerland...

No one wants to ride the bus because the entire public transport budget is slashed to go to more roads, bigger roads, all of which is doing nothing to help traffic and making climate change worse?

In LA, it's nothing to do with funding - it's the fact that public transportation is perceived as filthy and unsafe[1] according to the LA Metro's own data. The majority of ridership is comprised of people earning <25k/yr and likely are forced to use it because they can't afford a vehicle, and most of these folks stop using public transportation the moment they have another option.

[1] https://thesource.metro.net/2022/10/27/results-of-our-2022-c...

Fascinating, so safety and cleaniness have nothing to do with the budget? Do you volunteer to clean trains and buses for free?

Metro's take on this problem is to add more police to the equation, but that's a sisyphean task. As long as there is no way to ban people from the system for bad behavior, having a few random cops walking around isn't going to change things. There's also a problem of people who behave badly but not in a bannable way, e.g. behaving creepily toward women but not fully crossing a line.

My wife tried using the bus system for her first six months working in downtown LA, but ultimately gave up because she was getting harassed regularly. I stopped using the metro after a rider on my train walked up and down the train threatening to stab everyone and nothing was done about it.

You would need a uniformed officer on every single bus and train in the city to begin to chip away at this problem. I suppose it's a budget issue in a way, but it's more of a culture issue.

I’ve seen people peeing on the track multiple times on the blue line and human feces on the red line. Why would I want to keep using that service?

>so safety and cleaniness have nothing to do with the budget?

No, they do not.

The safety and cleanliness of public infrastructure ultimately stem from the culture of the people living there.

You’re both saying the exact same thing. LA residents do not care about public transit service because they do not use it. People making under 25k a year do not have the power to compel the city to change anything.

No. The big issue is that the trains aren’t considered safe. The homeless hang out and cause a lot of issues. I’ve been accosted by them on the green line. Which is too bad as with connections you can go all the way from my area all the way to Universal Studios.

Yes when public transit is underfunded so much that only the homeless want to take it, you’re likely to be surrounded by lots of homeless on public transit.

It’s a vicious cycle and the only ones who profit are the car companies.

Frankly, the reality is bus system in California is mostly for poor people, including sketchy types that middle class people don't want to be around. Transit budget won't really change that.

My bus from east bay to SF is always full of businesspeople.

Not really true at all in SF.

Point taken, SoCal seems to be particularly like this and source is from the LA Times. Exception is commuter trains.

There is no contradiction in both not using buses and also wishing they were better. Not even close really, the most obvious explanation for the phenomenon is that they don't use the bus because its not.

“Getting things done” is good under only very specific and hard to obtain conditions. Ask anyone who has ever hired a hard-working fool.

many people already ride the bus and many more would do so if the right conditions were met.

I think wants are meaningless without opportunity costs that are attached to them. There are a lot of people that will say they want cars or that they want trains and good public transportation. As the details emerge there are few people that are actually willing to pay for these costs. Some will say we need the transportation to service everyone (costs money), be fast (costs money), be safe (costs money). Wishes are worth nothing until you attach them to what it actually costs to implement.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com