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You Win Some, You Lose Frisco

You Win Some, You Lose Frisco

As Barack Obama supporters tended to their Election Day hangovers throughout California, the results were finalized for several other ballot measures watched by the architecture, development, and planning fields (including AN California editor Sam Lubell).

On the statewide ballot, Proposition 1A passed, meaning a high-speed train linking Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Sacramento is in Californians’ not-so-immediate future. The $9.95 billion in bonds will fund the project, transforming each city’s train station into massive, high-tech transit centers, and affecting development of smaller cities along the route.

In Los Angeles County, Measure R squeaked by with 67.4 percent voter approval when a two-thirds majority was needed to pass. The half-cent sales tax increase will fund improvements and expansions for light rail and subway lines, HOV lanes, freeways, and traffic reduction. (Good news for at least one AN contributor.)

In Santa Monica, the hotly-contested Proposition T, which would have limited development in the city to under 75,000 square feet annually, did not reach its two-thirds majority, a relief to many architects and developers who had fought hard against the measure.

Down south in San Diego, Measure S passed overwhelmingly, with 68.16 percent approval. This measure will give $2.1 billion to help rebuild an aging public school system.

In San Francisco, Proposition B, which would have required the city to take $30 million out of the budget for the next 15 years to fund affordable housing, failed by a single percentage point.

And Measure R, whose outcome would not directly impact architects, was still a major topic of conversation for anyone working in infrastructure: This ballot initiative that would have renamed a Bay Area sewage plant in honor of President George W. Bush was soundly defeated.
 

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