Muni Fiber and Politics

Mon Jul 21 22:47:38 UTC 2014

On Mon, Jul 21, 2014 at 6:13 PM, Jay Ashworth <jra at baylink.com> wrote:
>> From: "William Herrin" <bill at herrin.us>
>
>> On Mon, Jul 21, 2014 at 5:30 PM, Jay Ashworth <jra at baylink.com> wrote:
>
>> >> Ironically, I've had the opposite experience. The nearby Dulles Toll
>> >> Road, Greenway and Beltway HOT lanes are all in much better condition
>> >> than all but a few of the rest of the local roads. My buddies out
>> >> at http://hoveroad.com/ don't keep the roads in as good shape, but
>> >> they are in excellent repair for an organization that maintains 157
>> >> miles of roads on a $1M annual budget. Vastly better than what I've seen
>> >> a municipality achieve for the same price.
>> >
>> > Stop it, Bill.
>> >
>> > Owen didn't say "privately owned *toll road*"; "very wealthy gated
>> > communities" are even still rarely large enough to need their own
>> > turnpikes.
>> >
>> > If you keep setting up straw men, we'll be happy to knock them down
>> > for you, but you'll end up looking a little foolish.
>>
>> (A) The referenced example, the HOVE RMC, is 157 miles of privately
>> owned road which is neither a toll road nor a gated community.
>
> That was one example of 4, the last.  The other appear to be toll roads,
> though I don't live in the neighborhood.

Indeed. One is a purely private toll road, one is a public-private
partnership toll road and one is owned and operated by a
quasi-governmental agency. Why consider just one class of private
roads when you can examine examples of four?

VDOT actually does a halfway decent job of maintaining local public
roads but they spend a vast fortune on it and they're decades (with an
s) behind expanding those roads to meet the demand. Compared to
Verizon/Netflix they're about the same: works OK a good part of the
day but comes to a screeching halt during the quarter of the day that
are prime hours. Compare that to Maryland which enjoys reducing lanes
for construction work on already congested roads for months at a time
and DC itself which spends a cast fortune on roads which are usually
in worse condition *after* the maintenance. Soon the roads there will
have more metal plate surface area than asphalt. DC roads are like a
network with permanent 10% packet loss and your only alternative is
geo satellite.

But HOVE is a nice example. As a land owner and therefore shareholder
in the RMC, I pay my fees every year. I vote directly on those fees
too, so if I'm not happy I have some real control.

As a shareholder of Verizon I have no control. I truly earnestly wish
my stock would go to zero. Rather, I wish for Verizon to encounter
trouble that would cause my stock to drop to zero. But as long as that
isn't happening I may as well collect the dividend. If the government
ran it, I couldn't even do that.

What were we talking about? I forget.

Regards,
Bill Herrin

-- 
William Herrin ................ herrin at dirtside.com  bill at herrin.us
Owner, Dirtside Systems ......... Web: <http://www.dirtside.com/>
Can I solve your unusual networking challenges?