Petition for SunRail Weekend and Night Service Strong out of the Gate

In the span of a day, more than 750 people signed an online petition to add SunRail service on weekends and later at night.  You can sign the petition at: http://www.change.org/petitions/ananth-persad-florida-secretary-of-transportation-run-sunrail-on-the-weekends-and-later-at-night  (UPDATE -- 7/21/14 -- More than 1,700 have signed the Petition and Mayor Jacobs has begun dialogue on expanding service.)

I added a comment that SunRail is bringing hundreds to Winter Park and that weekend and late night trains would bring even more.  Here are photos of crowds heading to and leaving from Park Avenue businesses on a recent Friday:

The Orlando Sentinel reported that Rep. John Mica (R-FL) is attempting to secure $25 million worth of self-propelled trains, on loan to Tri-Rail in South Florida, in order to expand SunRail service. 

Vehicle Miles Traveled Still Down

You can find an interesting set of charts analyzing vehicle miles traveled based on United States Government data, through April 2014, at:

http://advisorperspectives.com/dshort/updates/DOT-Miles-Driven.php

Overall miles driven remain at 2004 levels.  (I can't recall any traffic study correctly projecting this declining and stagnating reality during the years I sat on the Orange County Planning and Zoning Board). Vehicle miles traveled based on population growth, shown in the chart above, are the same as they were almost 20 years ago.  

Here's the relationship to gasoline prices:

Winter Park's Aggressive Tree Chopping

My street, Carollee Lane, has lost two impressive canopy trees lining the street in the last year--not to storms or disease, but to the City's aggressive campaign to remove trees ostensibly near the end of their natural lives.

I'm not convinced the trees were dying or posed an inordinate risk to property.  (UPDATE: 7/21/14--The City was convinced).  Limbs weakened from age or rot can and should be removed before removing an entire tree. 

Any number of contractors, out to make several thousand dollars, will tell you a tree "should be removed."  The question is whether the City's arborist made that determination and whether it was a sound one. 

The most recent tree removed had an apparently healthy trunk--not one hollowed out by age or riddled with disease.  The foliage was still lush. (UPDATE: 7/21/14--As to the tree below, the property owner said a recent storm downed half of the tree.  He supported the tree's removal and said the City will plant new live oaks.  As to the other tree, I'm informed there was visible rot hollowing the trunk, although the property owner isn't happy about the tree's removal.  Yet another neighbor informed me that branches and trees downed in storms have damaged parked cars, nearly hit walkers, and, during the 2004 hurricanes, uprooted water pipes.)   

The stump disrupting Carollee Lane's tree canopy.   

This scene has repeated, more recently, on North Park Avenue near Pennsylvania Avenue and on Webster next to the golf course.  

More communication with citizens as to which trees require removal and why is in order.  

Carollee Lane -- before removal of the tree on the right.  What a loss.  

Childhood Obesity Costing Tens of Billions

An article at Medpage.com cites two studies with sobering news about the prevalence and cost associated with childhood obesity:

"Nationally representative data do not show any significant changes in obesity prevalence in the most recently available years ... unfortunately, there is an upward trend of more severe forms of obesity, and further investigations into the causes of and solutions to this problem are needed," Skinner and co-author Joseph Skelton, MD, of Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, N.C., said. 

The analysis was one of two studies examining pediatric obesity published this week. A second study in the May Pediatrics suggested that, over the course of a lifetime, higher medical costs associated with childhood obesity average about $19,000 per person, and extra costs average about $12,900 per person when normal-weight children become overweight or obese during adulthood. 

"To put these findings in perspective, multiplying the lifetime medical cost estimate of $19,000 times the number of obese 10-year-olds today generates a total direct medical cost of obesity of roughly $14 billion for this age alone," wrote Eric Andrew Finkelstein, PhD, from the Duke Global Health Institute at Duke University, and colleagues.

Extrapolating the $14 billion cost of higher medical costs associated with obese 10-year-olds over their lifetimes to other age groups results in an even more staggering figure.