In this episode of Lagnia-pod, we tackle ongoing infrastructure projects, like the long-awaited Mobile Bridge and Bayway construction and the McGregor Avenue roadwork revamp. We consider project delays and budget constraints as the officials work closer to getting rubber on the road.
Chapters:
00:03:04 WAVE Bus Insights
00:09:14 March Madness Updates
00:18:28 Infrastructure Projects Overview
00:27:57 Closing Thoughts
Transcript on next page
Transcript
[0:04] Welcome to this week's episode of Lagnapod. I'm your host, Rob Holbert. Everybody else who's here, let them know. Ashley Trice. Scott Johnson. Brady Petrie. Kyle Hamrick. Tommy Hicks. Everyone gathered around the rectangular round table for this week, and we're going to talk about a few things, but the most important thing going on right now in everyone's lives is the nappies. Yes. The nomination period is. It's almost over, just mere days away. The door is closing. Yes, it ends on Sunday at midnight. If you were waiting for your mom to nominate you, don't wait. Yes. I mean, many people just take for granted that they are going to make it to the finals, but that is not the case. So make sure you're voting for yourself. Nominations, you can vote for anyone. It is open voting. So you can, as long as it makes sense, you know, don't go vote for the best tire shop in the best plumber category. That's not going to work. I still love to tell this story. My favorite all-time complainer was a guy that called up and he was furious that he had not won some sort of musical award. He was certain that he was the most voted for person.
[1:14] And I managed to go back and look, which is a pain in the butt and it's hard to do, but I managed to go back and look. And he had had exactly one vote. Yes. Probably from himself. Your mom didn't even vote for you, dude. Anyway, that was just, it was fun. But yeah, so, I mean, you got to get folks out there. They don't even have to spell your name right because our highfalutin computers can figure that out. AI is just another way. It's helping with voting and reader's choice awards. But it's not allowing AI to vote for you. It is not allowing AI, but it is correcting misspellings. It sends us a message and says, does this person mean this? And then you say yes. And then it automatically will send that misspelling to. So we will also just as we move into the finalist phase of this in the next few weeks, we will also go back and issue reissue the warning we did last year. Don't pay somebody to try to vote for. There are foreign actors. They're usually from some where like in Ukraine and some countries that are going to be heavily tariffed right now. But yes, there's some. But anyway, they will contact you on Facebook if you're a finalist and say, well, I helped all these people win last year. Yes. Our filter.
[2:32] Just ask a few people who learn the hard way. The filter takes all of those out. It finds them. So do not waste your money on them. It is capable of finding these people. So don't pay for people to vote. We don't want you to lose your money. This is supposed to be fun. Yeah, it is. So that warning aside, we're getting there. It's exciting. We've had tons of votes, of course. Yes, we've had hundreds of thousands of votes. So it's going to be usual craziness. And we'll see you all on the other side here pretty soon. But get them in. Last days are coming.
[3:04] Brady, this week, you had a story, or late last week, rather, you had a very interesting story about the wave, the bus, the buses, as I like to joke, that are hauling air across town all the time.
[3:19] You have some very interesting info about what we're paying for that, right? Yeah. I think it came as kind of a shocker to folks. Yeah. I mean, it's just, you know, wave has been in the news here recently. I mean, as workers, you know, they're threatening to strike over, you know, unsatisfactory conditions. Not enough air in the buses. Not enough air in the buses. Not enough people riding the buses to keep them company. Exactly. Yes. But, you know, just kind of got us thinking, you know, well, how many people actually take this bus? You know, and what are we paying for it as taxpayers? And Citi paid for fiscal year 2025 $10 million. That's for operating expenses, pension funds. Yes. Most of it's operating expenses for the wave. And I just asked for the ridership numbers, and it's a little over 557,000 people that took the bus. 557,000 rides. Rides, right, correct. Yes, thank you. That is not 557,000 people. Right, it's trips. There are 557,000 trips. Correct, yes. One-way trips. Right. And the city, for whatever reason, said that they could not provide us with the revenue from fares that the bus. It's that Dale Leash, man. He can't get his job done. You know, he's joined the dark side and has just really caused some problems.
[4:31] They need to put a boot in his butt. Anyway, you know what? I'll let you take care of that one. I'm just saying they do, not me. Oh, they do. Oh, you. Okay. I got you. But, you know, so that just left us to do the math on our own. Right. But assuming that, you know, you pay the regular $1.25 fare, it comes out to around $700,000 that what the city brought in in terms of revenue.
[4:53] Now, assuming everybody took the round trip fare, which is $3, which I don't know why anybody would. That was also a really interesting one. But the round trip fare is more than the combination of two one-way fares. Right. So I can imagine not a lot of people are taking it. So you can pay an extra 50 cents to get a round trip when you could just buy two one-ways. Makes no sense. But I didn't make any sense. Assuming everybody takes the three dollar fare, it still comes out to about one point six million. Right. Which is still significantly. I think I think all all things given we we determined it probably somewhere between the eight hundred and fifty to nine hundred thousand range of actual. Right. Money made from riders is right where we came down. Right. You know, in in the city sort of said, yeah, that's that your numbers seem right. But they didn't. We couldn't really get a firm number on the right. that. All I was told was that they couldn't tell me my math was wrong, but they also couldn't tell me it was right. So that was about all I got out of them. Anyway. We're doing our best over here, folks. That's what we're trying to do.
[5:54] But I mean, it basically just boils down to the fact that the city's not getting the most bang for its buck. Regardless of anything, the city's spending $10 million a year on WAVE. The WAVE is bringing in no more than probably, you know, a million something at most. And so, um, that, that's, that's an interesting circumstance, but it really also the, I think the number, when you break down the ridership, when you break down the number of rides over 365 days and, you know, probably most of those trips were.
[6:26] A lot of trips you would assume are somebody going to work, coming back, or whatever. There's probably going to be two-way. You're not looking at a tremendous amount of people riding the wave, I think. Right. I think even if you broke it down by 365, it was something like 1,300 or 1,500 a day. 1,500, yeah. 1,500 a day.
[6:43] And if those were all two-way rides, then— That even seems high to me. Well, I mean, yeah. Well, those are rides per day. And then if you broke it down and said, okay, one person, most people rode two trips, you know, half that. Right. And then you're getting down into the hundreds of people a day. Which even still sounds hot. It still sounds hot. Right. I was in between two buses the other day, and there was nary a person on either one of them on either side, other than the driver. The driver was there. The driver was there. There were two people in there. There were at least two people on there. I think you need to go ride around on one of these and see what's the driver about how many people. You probably get a good nap in there. I'm down for it. But I will say personally, though, I mean, I drive down Airport Boulevard every morning when you would assume that people would be out ready to take the bus. I mean, I pass by a lot of bus stops. I very rarely see people out there taking the bus. I mean, maybe one or two, you know. I know the Mogo has really, like people who are using it for work, has really stepped up to help there. They have. And that's one, I mean, the cities, I think they're going to have a transportation committee meeting next week. And they're looking, I mean, like you said, Rob, this has kind of caught city officials by surprise. You know, I don't really see how, you know, when you look at the wave numbers. It's one of those things probably people just didn't think about a lot more. I mean, especially given all this.
[8:11] Stuff that's going on this friction lately you would think maybe that somebody would said hey what are we spending on but i i get it you know it's just been going on and on and maybe it's just like you know we don't have any other alternative at this point yeah so i mean it begs the question is the city better off just you know expanding mogo working with the chamber to expand mogo or a city official told me off the record the city probably just be better off just paying for everybody to take an uber right because because there's a way it works someone a small car yeah It works out to the city paying basically $16 per ride. Right. I mean, so that is a pretty hefty amount. Like you said, you probably could hire an Uber for most people to do that and come out ahead or at least not worse. Right. Exactly. Obviously, this is something where, I mean, cities need public transportation. There needs to be something done.
[9:02] It's obviously probably going to be an issue for the next mayor. One that will be, you know, we'll certainly be asking about this as we go forward with the mayoral race.
[9:12] And so it's a really interesting story. And I think the, you know, just to kind of put a lid on this, you know, the interesting thing to me is, you know, I spoke with Councilman Joel Daves, who's been very vocal about this in the past. And he said, you know, 10 years ago, he and a couple of other former city councilmen went up to Montgomery and Huntsville and Birmingham to see how they did things. And even 10 years ago, it was apparent that Mobile was lacking behind in terms of public transit, in terms of what they were paying and the ridership and everything. So this isn't a new issue at all. Well, I also just want to point out, this is the kind of thing your local newspaper does to help save money. This is your doge at work right here. We're looking at these things. We're looking at how we do these things. So just when you're thinking about your local newspaper, this is the kind of stuff we do. The other stuff we do is talk to Tommy Hicks, which we're going to do right after this break. We'll be back.
[10:12] Music.
[10:30] It's just $6.50 a month for Mobile's daily news, Lanyap Daily. Get signed up now at lanyapmobile.com and help keep Mobile funky.
[10:42] Music.
[11:05] And we are back. We are right in the middle of the March madness still. We are. And are you, how's your madness going? My madness is completely dead. Not completely dead. Your brackets be busted? I've racked a few busts, yes. I had Tennessee playing the title game, so that kind of hurt me. That may have hurt, yeah. Yeah, that may have hurt. But I've got the other three teams in Duke, Auburn, and Florida. I've got Florida winning the national championship. So you've still got a shot there, but. Yeah. I don't think you do because I do. I'm not going to win. No, I'm not going to win our thing. I just, I can still pick the national champion. Okay. I was like, I don't think you do. No, I'm not going to win. I don't have no shot here in our, you know, hypothetically bracket filling. You know, I picked Florida to win the whole thing. And that's a solid choice. But after actually watching it, I think I would change it to Duke. Duke appears to have the most highly paid students out there. Yes. And that's what I want. And next year, I'm picking all the seats. All the number ones? Yeah. I guess we're number one. Yeah, well, that's— This hasn't happened in a while, though. Right. It has not. Well, now, but with the money. With the money. With the money. The money. The money. With some money.
[12:22] As folks maybe who are listening to our podcast here to listen to Lagnapod may be curious how Kyle's team is doing since he went sort of like underdog central. And given there, there are nothing but number ones in the final four. Um, how'd it go?
[12:41] It didn't go quite as I planned, but when you put your money down, you got to be prepared to risk it. That's right. That's right. So this is just part of the game. That roll of Canadian quarters. That roll of Canadian quarters, which could be worth something if they become the next state. Yeah. So I do have some. Could be legal tender soon. Yeah. Maybe. I do have some numbers if you'd like them. Let's hear some numbers. Oh God, not the numbers. Just the top two, you know, Rob is sitting in first place. He's gotten 92.7% of his picks correct. Look, I'm not going to claim in any way, shape, or form that I know what I'm doing. I use chat GPT to help me do this. But, I mean, 92%, that's very solid. I'm at 89.3, and Tommy's right behind me at 8.4. All the way down at the bottom of our office bracket challenge is Kyle Hamrick, who sits at 7.7%. 7% picks. That's got to be some sort of record. I think he just set a record. You should win some sort of thing for that. Oh, 1,000%. Worst picker ever? That may be the worst bracket in the history of brackets. Well, he lost two of his Final Four teams the first day. Yeah.
[13:51] I mean, that's a problem. Well, that would tend to make it unlikely you're going to win. Yes. It's madness. Yeah, that is madness. It's madness. But, I mean, if he'd come through, you would have been looking good. It would be the talk of the country if it had come through. But he's still the talk of the country, just not the way he had hoped he would be. Well, we need to put that on the internet and let folks look at it. We should. A thousand percent. Up there on that World Wide Web and let people gawk at it. Let's do that. Let's show the whole bracket. This boy from Corner, Alabama came up with some crazy stuff, man. It should be. It should be a cautionary tale.
[14:31] Okay. Now we're pushing it too far. Yeah, now we're pushing it a little too far. No, it's getting, it's gone too far. Um.
[14:37] Anyway, Tommy, so where are we? This week, we've got Saturday is the two games, the semis. The final fours are playing each other. We've got Auburn and— Auburn against Florida. Auburn against Florida. So you're going to have an SEC team in the national championship game, just to know which one. And then Houston against Duke. Houston looked really good. I mean, they all did. I mean, look what Auburn did with Broome Hurt part of the game, and you didn't think he was going to come back. His health is going to be a really big key to how well they do against Florida. At least Florida's got this 7'9 guy who doesn't use the ladder to cut the nets at the end of the tournament. Yeah, right. He just stands up and goes, okay, here we go. He gets on his tippy toes. Anybody need any help? He doesn't even get on his tippy toes. He does it flat-footed probably. I had their plans for folks to go watch the Auburn-Florida game at the Floribama. That sounds fun. Yeah? Okay. Because you're right in the middle. You're right there. That brawl should be interesting. Yeah, that should be nice. Maybe we could take a bus down together. I just hope that the games are a little more exciting. The games this weekend were blowouts for the most part. A little bit. They got a little dull. I need more excitement. I think you're going to get that. If I'm starting to pay attention to basketball right here at the end, I need a little more excitement. Well, you know, I've said this before. this is my favorite week of the year because in the old, older days, thank you. Um.
[16:03] Tell us again, Grandpa. Baseball was just starting this week, right? Right, that's right. So you get the Final Four, the championship weekend. You get the semifinals and the finals. You get to start a baseball. And then you lead right into the Masters. That's right. That's right. Really good. It's the NBA playoffs are starting. You know, everything's going on. This year, you got Torpedo Bats. That's helping, you know. That makes things exciting. You got to have the Torpedo Bats. The Torpedo Bats are involved. I'm curious. What does Brady think about the Torpedo Bats? He loves them. Torpedo bats are great, but not helping the Braves any. That's all I'll say. Are they using them? They are now. They are. Everybody got them now. Everybody got them now. Did Major League Baseball just come out and say that they are suspending use.
[16:45] Of the torpedo bats? I didn't know that. That's news to me. After the Yankees hit 15 home runs in the week or something like that. Yeah. Yeah. Did you see that on April Fool's Day? What now? Was that an April Fool's Day? Was that right next to the thing where Saban was coming back to coach? Yeah. Saban's coming back. Yeah, that was yesterday. Or that you can rent the... I think he's going to Viger. Yeah, things were a little less firm on the internet yesterday than usually. Yes. Yes, there were a lot of things on the internet that were not true yesterday. It could have been. Not like today. I wanted to. Anyway, well, we've got... Yeah, there's a lot going on, and Monday night will be the actual... That'll be the championship game. The championship game. All right. Who do you have in the championship game? I have Florida, yes. Against? I have them playing Duke. I have Duke beating Florida. I think our bracket's going to come down to that. That should come down to that. It's going to come down to the title game. Unless both of us crap out. I guess somebody could sneak in if anybody had. Yeah, I mean Tommy's in third. Anybody have Houston? Nobody had Houston. I think somebody. Somebody did. Dale did, didn't he? Nobody had Auburn. Didn't Dale have Houston?
[17:54] Dale does have Houston. Yeah. So, I mean, if Houston somehow pulls it up. Yeah, he's got a chance then. We'll see. All right. Well. Yeah. Agree. Well, I haven't got his entry fee anyway, so, yeah. Well, this has been an exciting thing for people to listen to, I'm sure. I'm sure they love this stuff. Anyway, well, I know there's not a lot that's going on right now, so we're going to just call it quits, and we're going to come back and talk a little more about other things, political and otherwise, going on around town. We'll be right back.
[18:25] Just $6.50 a month for Mobile's Daily News, Lanyap Daily. Get signed up now at lanyardmobile.com And help keep mobile fun And we are back, So the cover story this week Brady, you have the pleasure of writing another gigantic story on the cover And Kyle, Sorry, both of you did That's right That's right, both of you Sorry about it I didn't mean to leave you out All right, Brady, so how's the Bayway going? We were talking about these two projects that seem to be taking forever to either get going or finish. And that's the Bayway project and the project at McGregor as well. So, go boys. What's going on with it? I'll start with the McGregor project.
[19:20] It is going to be finished at some point. Eventually. We know that, which is more than we can say for the bridge and Bayway. But that one will also be started at some point. Well, yes. I mean, we're assuming here that the world doesn't end today, or anytime in the next 20 years. Yeah. But I mean, the McGregor Avenue, I mean, people on Facebook, if you mention road work of any kind going on, one of the first comments you'll see. They lose their minds. They lose their minds about McGregor Avenue. I wish, the most shocking thing that you wrote in there about it to me was that this thing's only six months behind schedule. Yes. That part seems kind of amazing, but you explained why. Yeah. And the original, the tentative date was, you know, a two-year schedule. Right. They broke ground in early May of 2023. And so we're coming up on two years next month. And they're now saying that it's going to be completed on December 31st. Right. Which, you know, if you, depending on which side of the issue. Just in time for the moon pie to drop into it. Exactly. So you can travel back and forth to and from the Moon Pie drop. But one of the biggest issues that they encountered, a lot of people I don't think know about, was there's a bridge that crosses over a creek right there. And it was- A Slava Creek. A Slava Creek, right.
[20:37] And it was at the point of- basically being structurally unfit. I mean, it was, they were going to have to do something about that bridge regardless. And that is a huge part of this whole project. And they were going to shut down that section regardless. And that added more time to it. And another big thing is they had to get down basically all the way to the bedrock and, you know, the whole stretch of it here. And there are about seven or eight utilities, I think that are right there in that stretch of road, whether it's, um, you know, electrical water, whatever, blah, blah, blah. Exactly. And so they had to go down and replace all that. It's a huge undertaking. And I mean, you know, city engineer said that, you know, Hey, I get it, you know, that, you know, people are upset, but this is something that, you know, if you didn't do something about it and work on this project, it was going to cause some serious issues. Bridge collapses. Then there, then you really got, then you got people really upset. Exactly.
[21:34] All right. Speaking of bridges, Where are we, Kyle? We are currently on track, they say, for a groundbreaking at the end of this year. Still, even after the issue? Even after the breakup with Mobile Bayway Builders. Yes. And after the fact that the $550 million that we got from the U.S. Department of Transportation is not yet formally committed to the project, that after all of that. But we don't, but Shamari figures, Congressman does not believe that that is going to get chopped from all the cuts going on right now, right? So they think that money will be there. They think that money will be there. That's part of their application for a 49% TIFIA loan to cover 49% of the project costs. They say that even with all this still being kind of up in the air, we're still on track to break ground at the end of this year. So my math is funny on this. It's like we have less than a billion dollars. The project is $3.5 billion. And that's not even the final figure. And we're going to try to get a loan for 49%.
[22:49] Right. That doesn't make a hundred. Yeah. Doesn't quite get us there. Where's the rest coming from? Elon Musk? Well, it's going to be told, too. That's still in the equation, too, is we're going to have to pay tolls to use this thing. Right, but that's the payback on it. But that's not paying up front. So we still don't know. At this point, nobody really knows where all the funding's coming from. That's what I asked figures too, was, you know, are there some other grant opportunities out here for this at the federal level? And he's like, with all that's going on with Doge and the Trump cuts, they're not sure what's even still out there that Aldot could take advantage of to get some more money for the project. Yeah.
[23:33] Okay. Well, let's see where it goes. It's, I mean, obviously everybody's waiting for this to happen. 20 years in the making. That would have been a great April Fool's yesterday to, you know, say that the bridge has opened or that it's starting now. You know, they started today. Dirt flying in the air now. There was a lot of stuff on.
[23:55] If Al that posted it, that would be. That would be a good one. People would be so upset. That would be a good one, though. You know, that would be a good way to. Turn the comments off on. To irritate, irritate the public more. Um, yeah, there, so, you know, yesterday being April fool's day, there was a lot of, a lot of stuff on the web and. I was kind of amazed at some of the things people believed, you know, there just seemed like, I mean, we saw, I think probably everybody saw the ones were like Nick Saban is coming back to coach, you know, what were some of the, what were some of the dumb ones y'all saw yesterday? One of them that actually almost got me and it's Atlanta Braves related, but it was that they fired their pitching coach and they're hiring the Tennessee head coach as Tennessee's the number one team in the country. And I was, I sat there for a second before I read the fake article and I was like, this might actually be true. Well, that was really deep, though. You'd have to really have some knowledge to even really know what they're talking about. Right. I think another fun one was just seeing all the colleges and sports teams teasing new fields and new logos. I think there was one school that said that they were coloring their football field maroon or something. I think it was Louisiana Monroe. That was pretty fun to see. People fired up. Gulf Shores High School put out a thing saying that they're going to build a monorail to connect the athletic complex to the high school. And, of course, that caused by the classic Simpsons gang. Right, yeah. Monorail. Monorail.
[25:22] Next stop, monorail. So that could be happening. A lid came off my pudding can. Anyway, I'm sorry. Go ahead.
[25:30] I almost fell for this one. I'm a big fan of the Kerrygold butter. It's very delicious. Kerrygold butter. Yes. They put out that they are introducing a body butter. And I was like, oh, yes. That'll be good. And I went, oh, yeah. Yeah. Today, the other one that was good was, oh, go ahead, Scott. What do you have? Oh, okay. This actually happened to me. I didn't get pranked. But I was in Publix picking up some donuts to prank my kids and open it up. Open up the donut box and it's veggies. And it's just vegetables. Yeah. And so I'm like, yeah. I was like, so I asked for paper bags because I want to hide the donuts or whatever. They kind of looked at me sideways and I was like, it's April fool's joke. And then the bag, the bag man, is it bag boy, bag man? I don't know. The guy that was bagging my groceries. Bag man's the guy that keeps the money. He's like, man. Yeah. Bag boy, put your groceries in. Bag man has your money.
[26:20] That's different, different people entirely. What Publix are you going to? I was like, there's a bag man in Publix. Anyway, he, he, the guy bagging my groceries said, um, I forgot it was April fool's day. I was going to be, I was going to prank my girlfriend and tell her I was breaking up with her. And I was like, that's terrible. Yeah. That's not a good one. That was awful. I was just like, it was so dumb. That's a, that's a bad move on the bag man's part. Um, the, uh, other one that was weird was, I guess people are saying that the, um, the, the battleship was going to become an Airbnb, right? Yeah. That was a good one. Our graphic designer actually fell for that. Yeah. She was like, oh, I've always wanted to stay on that. Yeah. I want to stay on that. The graphic designer fell. Yeah. Yeah, it'd be so hot to stay in there. It'd be miserable. We had, when I was the editor of the. It's air conditioned. And I know this because when my. It is air conditioned. My Girl Scout troop went down there to sleep on it when I was in fourth grade. But we did not get to because it caught on, the air conditioning system caught on fire. Trouble. When I was in college and I was the editor of the Spring Hill College newspaper, the Spring Hillian, And we had one that was supposed to come out on April 1st. So we did the spring hooligan, which was just made up stuff, mostly libelous. That was a lot of fun. That was a lot of fun.
[27:43] We always think about, wouldn't that be fun to do here? But then you kind of run into this whole thing of putting it out there and everybody then believes it. Then you have to spend a lot of time reeling it back in.
[27:54] Anyway, well, we are full into April. Spring is here. And thank god i'm ready for it so uh that'll be it for this week folks thanks for listening to lagnapod we will be back next thursday bye the lagnapod is a something extra publishing production executive producers are rob bulberg and ashley truss music is by sun pulse sounds and electro.
[28:18] Music.
(1) comment
It would be interesting to see the number of bus riders in the big expensive buses when smaller less expensive buses would be more cost effective.
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