Gates and MS Don't See Eye-To-Eye On CO2 288
Sam Machkovech writes "Bill Gates's speech at last week's TED Conference centered on 'moving to zero-carbon energy, and our need to reduce CO2 emissions 80% by 2050.' His choice of subject was an abrupt turn from The Gates Foundation's typical humanitarian topics, but he insisted that energy innovation is crucial to his Foundation's goals. A move by Microsoft today proves that Gates's old company has less interest in that carbon-neutral goal — Microsoft has begun campaigning against a bridge redesign that would result in more bus and transit options for commuters between Seattle and the company's homebase of Redmond, WA."
Re:Bill Gates vs Microsoft (Score:5, Informative)
Re:wait, what...? (Score:2, Informative)
I'm not made out of carbon, I'm made out of jesus's love power!
You don't exist. Go away.
only 2 general lanes? (Score:3, Informative)
Tha alternative plan MS is arguing against has only two (one each way) lanes for general car use - no wonder they don't want it. Light rail and long range buses are only good if lots of people want to use them. HOV lanes are only good if people can be convinced to carpool. Apparently MS management feels the employees want to drive their own cars to work by themselves. If that's the case, making them idle in the traffic snarls created by the one general lane each way bridge will not only make everyone late to work but also really exacerbate the smog problem.
Did the submitter RTFA? (Score:5, Informative)
First line in the article.
Microsoft took out a full-page color ad in the Seattle Times today opposing any further “delay” on replacing the SR-520 bridge
Have you ever travelled on 520? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:troll... (Score:5, Informative)
They're opposing any further delay for replacing an old, existing bridge. There is already an approved design for the new bridge, but some want to change the design to accommodate more HOV and public-transit lanes. From TFA:
Apparently, the existing bridge could fall into the water at the next earthquake and it's a main route for Microsoft employees to/from the campus.
Re:troll... (Score:5, Informative)
The irony is they took out the advertisement to oppose delays on replacing the existing bridge, and in turn doing so they are "against" another proposal that would add more mass transit.
From TFA, the statement made by MS in their full page ad:
While there are still some final design issues that need to be resolved with the City of Seattle, we should not let last-minute objections undermine the hard-won agreements already in place for the rest of the project. Doing so would cause yet more delay, increase the cost to taxpayers, and put this vital transportation and economic corridor at risk. The current bridge is 47 years old, and state engineers warn that it could sink in a major storm or earthquake.
So basically they want it finished now, not sitting in government limbo like so many other infrastructure improvements do.
I'd also like to point out the obvious: Bill Gates is not Microsoft.
Re:Did the submitter RTFA? (Score:5, Informative)
Microsoft isn't opposing the bridge design. They're opposing further delay on starting the bridge project. They're for the bridge redesign, not against it.
Microsoft is opposing a re-redesign of the bridge.
Mostly because they want it built sooner rather than later.
Feature creep is how most any type of project can destroy its schedule and end up over budget.
Re:Bill Gates vs Microsoft (Score:5, Informative)
It's just an attempt to spin the story against Microsoft, for no apparent reason
Did you miss "posted by kdawson"?
Re:Have you ever travelled on 520? (Score:4, Informative)
I've come to the conclusion we are really better off with buses and a few more lanes.
Re:only 2 general lanes? (Score:5, Informative)
Tha alternative plan MS is arguing against has only two (one each way) lanes for general car use - no wonder they don't want it. Light rail and long range buses are only good if lots of people want to use them. HOV lanes are only good if people can be convinced to carpool. Apparently MS management feels the employees want to drive their own cars to work by themselves. If that's the case, making them idle in the traffic snarls created by the one general lane each way bridge will not only make everyone late to work but also really exacerbate the smog problem.
Not quite. Most of the MS employees in Seattle ride the Microsoft Connector bus in to work. The existing one carpool lane is more then sufficient to accomodate the MS busses. I live right by the 520 bridge and I'm with MS on this one. More carpool lanes and/or light rail will just increase the time and cost of the project and add little to no benefit. We need a new bridge now.
Very loose correlation. (Score:3, Informative)
Basically Bill Gates gives a talk about the environment and says we need to burn hippies for energy (or something with nuclear power, I haven't watched the video yet) and people cheer.
Microsoft, which Bill Gates has next to nothing to do with anymore, says to the city, stop fucking around and build the bridge you have been planing since forever before the old one falls down, but because some hippies want to make last minute design changes like powering the lights with bicycles (or maybe adding more HOV lanes or something) which would mean redoing a lot of work and added years of delays, somehow makes Microsoft anti environment.
What is it with this 'He no longer works there'? (Score:3, Informative)
He is still the largest single shareholder (8%) and a non-executive Chairman of the Board. He's still quite involved with MS.
Re:Have you ever travelled on 520? (Score:2, Informative)
These redesigns have been decades in making, while the bridge is hanging by the thread on every major windstorm.
Indeed. The SR-520 bridge is a floating bridge and is nearly 50 years old. It carries far more traffic than it was designed to carry, and in any case, is nearing the end of it's design life.
To put things in perspective, the Hood Canal Bridge (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hood_Canal_Bridge) is of similar age, design, construction, and span. The Hood Canal bridge suffered a catastrophic failure during a windstorm in 1979. It was rebuilt and reopened in 1982.
Re:troll... (Score:5, Informative)
Let's be 100% clear about this. I take that bridge to work every day.
It is one of the worst, most overly congested bridges I've ever seen. It's congested all day every day except sunday and between about 9pm -> 6am, generally speaking, and right now, it seems like getting a new bridge in sooner would do more to alleviate carbon production than waiting for extra PT could ever hope to achieve in any kind of useful timeframe.
Simply put, when taking the bridge, I spend up to an hour, for what should be a 15-20 minute trip. That's around 30 minutes of extra idle time in my car, which could easily be saved. We also already have functioning public and private bus systems across the bridge, and that's not going to go away.
Additionally, this is a company that went out and bought a bunch of coaches to setup their own private transit system so that even more employees could leave their cars at home in places where there was no effective PT to campus. I hardly think this is an example of Microsoft not caring about the environment or carbon emissions. We've also been working hard to consolidate and reduce the amount of computer lab space we're using, reducing energy costs, setting more machines to sleep at night ,etc.
This article is a complete hatchet job designed to just paint Microsoft in the worst possible light. I'm not surprised that kdawson posted it in the slightest.
Re:only 2 general lanes? (Score:2, Informative)
Actually, many people have enough to do in their lives that they don't have time to deal with someone else's commute schedule. Personally, my life is full enough between exercise, my day job, my side business, and other projects that I couldn't typically pick someone else up for work. You know, I try to live life.
But, I ride a motorcycle that gets great gas mileage (40+ easy, 50 if I'm careful) in far less space than any car. It also doesn't strain the roads as much and takes far less to build. Why don't you get a motorcycle so we can half the lane size and double the capacity of the freeways w/o increasing the pollution? Stop wasting more resources than me, douchebag.
See? It works both ways. Until you are completely carbon neutral in all aspects, living in a minimal-volume shelter with common living spaces (you don't NEED your own fridge, stove, or table), and traveling in an all electric vehicle that takes no more room or energy to transport you than absolutely required, you are wasting resources for comfort or convenience; stop playing holier than thou.
The complete situation (Score:5, Informative)
The summary is unbelievably slanted; whoever tagged this story "troll" was correct. Here is the complete situation; judge for yourself.
Lake Washington is a tall, skinny lake that's rather deep in the middle. It takes a while to drive around it; if you bicycle around the circumference of the lake, it's about 50 miles total.
On the west side of the lake, you have a tall, skinny city: Seattle. The biggest city in the state, lots of people live there.
On the east side of the lake, you have a tall, skinny populated area. But it isn't just one city; it's Bothell, Woodinville, Kirkland, Bellevue, Redmond, Renton, and a few small ones. Collectively these are known as "the Eastside".
Because Lake Washington is so deep, an ordinary bridge is impractical. That is why the three longest floating bridges in the world are on Lake Washington: the Evergreen Point Floating Bridge (I tend to slip and call it the "floating point bridge") is the one with highway 520, and it is the longest single floating bridge in the world. (The other two are used for I-90 a couple of miles to the south of 520.) By the way, I suspect that one of the reasons we have the longest floating bridges is the fact that the Chittenden Locks in Seattle allow for some control over the water level of Lake Washington; if we have torrential rain, engineers can just open the locks and let the waters drain out of the lake system and lower the water level again to the safe zone for the floating bridges.
When the 520 bridge was first built, all the action was in Seattle. Not that many people lived on the Eastside, and not that many Seattle people needed to go to the Eastside. But Microsoft and a bunch of other technical companies are on the Eastside, so now many people actually commute from Seattle to the Eastside over the 520 bridge.
There are rich neighborhoods right on the water, on both sides of the lake. The fabled small city of Medina, where Bill Gates has his famous house, is right by the 520 bridge. The rich folks have been successfully blocking all attempts to upgrade the 520 bridge; as I understand it, their attitude is that they already don't like the car noise, so why would they want more traffic to be able to flow over the bridge? The area has been talking about replacing the 520 bridge for something like 14 years now, and for most of that time the project has been blocked.
But the 520 bridge really needs to be replaced. If you measure the life of the bridge in terms of how many cars have driven over it, the bridge is way, way past its planned lifetime already. A serious wind storm could sink it. A serious earthquake could sink it. And the consequences for traffic would be epic (not in a good way).
Right now, all it takes is a Husky football game at the University of Washington, putting extra traffic on the already overloaded bridge, and the whole area is just about paralyzed. Normally the I-90 bridge is fine, but when the 520 gets bad enough and traffic diverts to the other bridge, both bridges can be parking lots. It will already be bad when the 520 bridge is closed for construction of the new bridge; I seriously hope that they can mostly build the new bridge somewhere and float it into place with minimal down time. If the bridge fails in a wind storm, we will be many months, possibly years without any bridge and the traffic will be dire. In short, any further delay in building the bridge is Not A Good Idea.
Now, the existing bridge is two traffic lanes each way. There is no carpool lane. There is no shoulder. Any time a vehicle stalls, a tow truck gets over there ASAP and pulls it off the bridge, but it still does horrible things to the already horrible traffic. As other posters have noted, the 520 carpool lane disappears right before the bridge, and the westbound neck-down where three lanes go to two lanes is the single most congested piece of road in the whole state.
So, we have a bridge plan finally that is ready to move ahead. It ha