Quiet Zones and At-Grade Crossings Along Railways

Quiet zones are designated areas along railway tracks where trains are not required to sound their horns at all times. These areas are typically established in residential or commercial areas where the noise from train horns is a significant disturbance. Quiet zones can be established through a variety of means, such as by installing gates or other safety devices at at-grade crossings, or by rerouting train traffic away from the affected area.

An at-grade crossing is a location where a railway line and a road or path cross at the same level. These crossings can be dangerous if proper safety measures are not in place. To reduce the risk of accidents, many at-grade crossings are equipped with warning devices such as flashing lights, gates, and/or crossing arms. Some at-grade crossings may also have warning signs or pavement markings to alert drivers and pedestrians of the potential hazard.

                                                                                                     — Guest author is AI at ChatGPT

The Growth Imperative

The growth imperative is the drive to constantly increase and expand, often with little regard for the potential negative consequences. This relentless pursuit of growth can have devastating effects on both the environment and society.

One of the most obvious ways in which the growth imperative causes destruction is through its impact on the natural world. As humans strive to meet the demand for more and more resources, we often do so at the expense of the environment. This can mean clearcutting forests, polluting waterways, and destroying habitats. As a result, countless plant and animal species are at risk of extinction, and the Earth’s delicate ecosystem is thrown out of balance.

The growth imperative also has harmful effects on human society. In our pursuit of economic growth, we often prioritize profit over people, leading to income inequality and the concentration of wealth in the hands of a few. This can create a society where only the wealthy have access to quality education, healthcare, and other essential services, while the majority struggle to make ends meet.

Additionally, the constant pressure to grow can lead to a culture of overconsumption, where people are encouraged to buy more and more, even if they don’t need it. This not only creates waste and pollution, but it can also contribute to a lack of fulfillment and happiness. Instead of focusing on the things that truly matter, such as relationships and personal growth, people are encouraged to measure their success by the size of their bank account and the number of possessions they have.

Overall, the growth imperative has destructive consequences for both the environment and society. Instead of blindly chasing after growth at any cost, we need to find a more sustainable and equitable way of living. This might mean prioritizing the well-being of both people and the planet, and finding ways to thrive without constantly consuming and destroying. By rethinking our approach to growth, we can create a better future for all.

                                                                              —Guest author Artificial Intelligence on ChatGPT

Hey locals, it’s Beacon! 

In 1963, Dave Stern and Bill Cleary published Surfing Guide to Southern California. At the time, Stern was an economics professor at UCLA. Cleary later became the editor of the highly regarded Surf Guide magazine. Those roles probably account for their book’s thoroughness and accuracy.

Surfing Guide to Southern California details six breaks in Leucadia. Among them is “The Beacon.” The text reads:

“THE BEACON—Much like Grandview Street, in that outside breaks become good at 5-8 feet. An easy break. Peak just south of parking lot behaves more like reef at times than other nearby breaks. Restaurants close by. No facilities. Located at foot of Fulvia Street [now Leucadia Boulevard].”

Why did Stern and Cleary call it “The Beacon”?

A 1939-1940 nautical chart (1) shows nine aeronautical lights from Dana Point to Point Loma. One light that flashed every 10 seconds was on the bluff at 33 degrees 4 minutes north latitude. That spot is now the overlook at the north end of the Beacon parking lot, behind the sign that erroneously names the place “Beacon’s.” If you stand at the fence and look west through the brush, you’ll see two concrete pillars jutting vertically out of the bluff edge. They’re in precisely the right spot to have been part of the footing for the aeronautical light tower.

A 1948 topographical map (2) shows and labels a “Beacon” on the bluff edge north of what was then Fulvia Street and south of what is still Jasper Street. It’s the exact location where the nautical chart shows an aeronautical light.

Following the attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, the San Diego County Board of Supervisors adopted a blackout ordinance that went into effect on Dec. 11. A headline in that day’s edition of the Encinitas Coast Dispatch read “You Must Black Out or Face Arrest Under New Ordinance.” The text warned that anyone who failed to comply with the blackout rules faced a $500 fine or six months’ imprisonment or both.

In its Feb. 26, 1942 edition, the same newspaper advised readers with the headline “Good Blackout Signal” and the text “Persons desiring to play safe against possible blackout can find assistance by looking for the ray from the beacon light in the north end of the district . . . . If the beacon is not lighted at night do not turn on your own light.”

Somewhere along the line—maybe when the sign was made—somebody in local and/or state government made a mistake and named Leucadia’s midway beach and surf break “Beacon’s” rather than the historically accurate “Beacon.” 

Because the sign erroneously says “Beacon’s,” people who have no way to know better think that name is right. City documents are riddled with the incorrect name. A nearby mobile home park that used to be called “Evergreen” changed owners and was renamed “Beacon’s Beach Village.” A contagious infection is still loose among us.

Some locals, probably realizing that “Beacon’s” implies that somebody named Beacon once owned the beach, have taken to writing “Beacons.” As the documents cited above show, there was one beacon, hence the singular name “Beacon.”

I first surfed Beacon in 1966. Back then, everybody called it “Beacon.” I think it’s high time we locals reclaimed the correct name.

1. San Diego to Santa Rosa, 1537 NAUT-5101A-1939/40.

2. Encinitas, USGS Topographical Map, 1948.

                                                                                                                                                  — Doug Fiske

VOSD Has a Habit of Getting Encinitas Housing Wrong

On March 30, 2022, VOSD North County Reporter Tigist Layne wrote, “Encinitas has consistently gone to great lengths to avoid making it possible to build more homes there, arguing it would change the city’s character, and once again, the state is taking notice.”

On April 27, Layne wrote, “Encinitas has reached a settlement with the developer of the Encinitas Boulevard Apartments, a housing project that the city rejected last year. Encinitas has a history of denying housing projects . . .”

That same day, I posted to Layne and asked her to provide proof of the city’s history of denying housing projects. She didn’t reply.

On May 16, I sent a public records request to the city. My question was, “Has the Encinitas City Council ever denied a housing project other than the Encinitas Blvd. Apartments project, the adjusted version of which it later approved to settle a lawsuit by the developer?”

Development Services Director Roy Sapa’u replied, “The answer would be no.”

Encinitas became an incorporated city in 1986. In the 36 years since, it has never denied a housing project.

VOSD’s extremely biased and often inaccurate reporting on Encinitas housing began with an article by Maya Srikrishnan on March 9, 2016. VOSD has been on a roll since.

On February 14, 2019, Lisa Halverstat, then a VOSD staff writer, now the senior investigative reporter, was one of a “panel of experts” who spoke at a Building Industry Association (BIA)-hosted breakfast meeting at the La Jolla Marriott hotel. The introduction was, “Today, the NIMBYs have a very loud voice and are halting projects around the county. Learn from a panel of experts to see what builders/developers are doing to get projects approved and how our industry must help.”

The speculation among Encinitas activists is that BIA funds VOSD. Consequently, VOSD violates journalism’s principle of objectivity to avoid jeopardizing the funding.

                                                                                                — Doug Fiske 

The Other Plague Infecting America

In November 2020, 74 million people voted for the Orange Menace. Today, Trump’s favorability rating hovers around 43 percent according to the Real Clear Politics average of eight national polls. That’s 110.4 million people when applied to the estimated US voting-age population in 2020. 

There has always been a wacko fringe. But now that extreme wing is huge.

How is it that so many millions of people support a self-interested, pathological liar? How is it that so many millions don’t recognize the treason Trump committed on January 6, 2021?

The reason runs deep, but there are little indicator flags everywhere. They’re the canaries in the coal mine.

A magazine editor was once asked the qualifications for his job. His reply was, “You have to know the difference between there, their and they’re.”

When many millions of Americans think that people lay down, not lie down, say “I could have went” instead of “I could have gone,” say “aks” rather than “ask,” and don’t know the difference between its and it’s or your and you’re, that indicates there’s something seriously lacking in primary and secondary education.

Not knowing simple, standard English is like not knowing basic arithmetic.

If American education has failed at teaching the fundamentals, it cannot have succeeded at teaching critical thinking. That’s shown in the support for Trump. More than 110 million people cannot distinguish fact from falsehood, reality from fantasy.

That disconnect has always infected a small percentage of the population. But now the infection has been amplified and hurried along by the internet and right-wing media. 

The infection has become a plague, and it’s threatening American democracy.                                

                                                                                                                                            — Doug Fiske                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      

Diversity for Its Own Sake Is Not a Virtue

Any man who afflicts the human race with ideas must be prepared to see them misunderstood.                            — H. L. Mencken

Years back, a New Yorker cartoon showed the exterior of a disco. A sign in the window said: 

Closed Until the Next Big Thing Comes Along

Topics of public conversation come and go too. Some stay in vogue longer than others.

Remember the furor over bullying a few years ago? Heard anything about it lately? Critical race theory also fizzled out quickly. #MeToo has staying power because people like Harvey Weinstein, Donald Trump and Andrew Cuomo keep it alive.

BLM waned because the George Floyd murder and other killings and abuses of black people faded in the public memory. LGBTQ’s prominence also dimmed. Same with the diversity imperative but, with qualifiers, it especially warrants keeping.

Racial, ethnic and gender diversity is a worthy pursuit, but diversity for its own sake yields no benefits. For benefits to accrue, the bottom line has to be merit. For success in business, government, sports, teaching, science, entertainment, the military, etc., the people involved must be qualified; they must be competent regardless of race, ethnicity or gender. Otherwise, everything declines.

Suppose you were tasked with recruiting an NBA team from scratch. If you looked at the other teams, you’d see a lot of tall black guys. Would you recruit short white and Asian guys for your team for the sake of diversity? If you did, your team would lose a lot of games. The principle applies generally.

Discrimination is an infection that damages the whole society. Education and training are the remedies. They create competence. Competence breeds success.                                                                                                                                                                                                      — Doug Fiske

Encinitas Mayor Blakespear Doesn’t Represent the Majority of Her Constituents

Encinitas Mayor Catherine Blakespear doesn’t believe in or practice representative democracy. She has a personal agenda that conforms with the ultra-progressive views of her party’s left wing. Presumably, she follows that agenda because she’s politically ambitious and wants to grease the wheels.

Blakespear behaves more like a dictator than an elected mayor in a democracy. She gets away with it in many people’s eyes because she has good PR. She has a smiley, outwardly pleasant demeanor. It masks what’s really a destructive agenda that doesn’t reflect the majority view.

Blakespear has an adversarial relationship with most Encinitas residents. She ignores input from residents who disagree with her. She disdains them, speaks to them in a condescending manner and even went so far as to include them as defendants in a city lawsuit.

The sequence that led to the Housing Element Update illustrates Blakespear’s disingenuous behavior. Prop A passed by a narrow margin in a special election on June 18, 2013. Asked for her position on Prop A, Blakespear’s responses varied: She didn’t vote, she couldn’t remember how she voted.

Every Encinitan who was paying attention knew that Measure T would fail the upzone vote required by Prop A. They knew the majority was against mega-development that would violate Prop A’s provisions. Blakespear and the council put Measure T on the ballot anyway. Of course, the voters defeated it.

Despite residents’ showing how the Regional Housing Needs Allocation (RHNA) affordable housing figures could be met without violating Prop A, Blakespear and the council devised the excessive Measure U and put it on the ballot. It had originally included city-owned site L7, which could have provided 100 percent affordable housing units. In an underhanded move that a more alert Blakespear could have derailed, the council struck site L7 by a 3-2 vote. Blakespear voted against it but later flipped and approved it.

Voters saw Measure U as worse than Measure T and defeated it. The lawsuit against voters with an interest in Prop A — every voter for or against — followed. The purpose was to gut Prop A, which no City Council member past or present has supported. It gets in the way of councils doing whatever they want regarding land use. It puts the power to govern development in the public’s hands rather than the council’s. Since councils have consistently permitted proposed developments and haven’t sought to control heights, they haven’t liked Prop A.

A judge declared that the city’s attempts at a Housing Element were at an impasse. He suspended Prop A for only one housing cycle and let it stand for other land-use proposals. The state Housing and Community Development Department (HCD) eventually approved the Housing Element, which was the defeated Measure U with two minor updates. That and new state laws meant to facilitate and accelerate development opened the door for projects like the 283-unit, 69-foot-tall monstrosity apartment house proposed for Olivenhain. Ironically, when the city raised environmental and traffic study requirements for that project, HCD threatened to withdraw its Housing Element approval.

With one exception noted below, Blakespear has never stood up to fight for residents. For example, she hasn’t challenged the RHNA figures that excessively burden our city while other cities have much smaller numbers, absolutely and proportionally. She has voted to deny every appeal brought before the council by residents opposed to developments that negatively affected their neighborhoods. That includes density bonus projects that cram too many units in too little space. Some blatantly violated reason. One produced more and worse floods than existed before the project. Another had no sidewalks, making it inconsistent with Blakespear’s cherished walkability. Another will surely worsen floods if the lawsuit brought against it fails.

When SANDAG’s Cardiff Coastal Rail Trail was in the offing, Blakespear supported the San Elijo Avenue alignment. The uproar by Cardiff residents was so loud that politician Blakespear saw it wasn’t viable for an elected official to oppose the voters. She switched her support to the Highway 101 alignment and testified well for it. SANDAG began to revise its plan, but then the Coastal Commission mandated the San Elijo alignment. Blakespear switched back and has been celebrating that location for the rail trail since.

Nobody wants bicyclists to crash with cars or trucks. But Blakespear’s actions to grossly inhibit drivers in favor of the tiny percentage of residents who ride bikes are out of balance. To have any effect on climate change, thousands upon thousands of Encinitans would have to switch from cars to bikes for transportation every day. That hasn’t happened and won’t, so imposing on and shaming drivers makes no sense. Incentivizing driving electric cars is more rational and more likely to slow climate change.

Blakespear doesn’t know much about the monumentally stupid Leucadia 101 Streetscape project. That explains the false claims she’s made about it. The project is reliably calculated to cost $55 million. That’s not counting whatever it will cost via eminent domain to buy private property from eight owners to make room for sidewalks and roundabouts. Like other city projects, the cost is bound to rise significantly.

Early on, Streetscape was projected to cost $19 million to be paid principally by SANDAG Transnet taxes. That funding vanished and the cost tripled. The city has applied for a $30 million loan and a $20 million grant. The city can’t issue lease revenue bonds to pay for the project because there’s no revenue that would make that route legitimate. The city can’t issue general obligation bonds because they require an affirmative public vote. The city knows such a vote would fail. Blakespear, her council colleagues and their predecessors have supported and funded the project so far despite the majority of residents’ opposition. If the council didn’t know that, they would do a survey and prove it wrong.

The claim that Blakespear won the 2018 election because 83 percent of the voters support her direction and positions is silly. She won because she didn’t have a serious opponent. In 2020, she does. Let’s see what happens before and in November.

— Doug Fiske