Very neat paper www.brookings.edu/wp-content/u...

To put this loan amount in perspective: California is spending $500 million to widen a 10-mile stretch of Highway 37 in the northern Bay Area (through a wetland, no less). But $750 million to save the *entire* Bay Area’s transit systems is apparently infeasible.

Gov Newsom still hasn't signed the $750m loan to Bay Area transit agencies that would get us to the Nov 2026 funding votes. He has eight days to act. Please take a moment to call his office at (916) 445-2841 and use the attached script, copied from a @transbaycoalition.bsky.social.

Across Philadelphia and its suburbs, commuters are bracing for a dramatic reduction in public transportation after state lawmakers were unable to agree on how to fund the struggling system. SEPTA officials have called it a “death spiral.”

might get crucified for this but I think they all suck. if you’re going to brand these as “super different/fleet of the future,” then don’t make them look like the same trains that are from the 70s. be bold! do something totally new and interesting!

Contrast this to another west coast agency that is trying to light as much money on fire as possible while building a rapid transit extension

Troubling findings in this new UCLA report: Americans are taking far fewer trips than they did before the pandemic. When they do travel, they've shifted toward driving and away from transit. Those trends are particularly pronounced among youths 15-29. escholarship.org/uc/item/3gd0...

Some good news is that ridership on the Bay Area's Caltrain continues to skyrocket in the wake of the route's electrification—passenger counts are up 79% compared to this time last June

5. People in my industry (transit) have an extremely hard time relating to average riders and desperately need either full-time advisors or to test messaging and products *far* more and *constantly*. It's more important to talk to people unfamiliar with the system than people who know it well.

How does an agency like the TTC have the online presence of an insecure 10 year old boy who can’t make a 3 point shot in front of somebody they like

Lots to unpack on Gov. Newsom’s May Revise and its impact on transit. Here’s what we know. The MR’s Cap-and-Invest Plan effectively resets the Cap-and-Trade Expenditure Plan established in 2014 as well as years of budget actions to direct multi-year funding to various programs. 1/X

Tom, context matters. In April we had 26 overruns from over 213,000+ 🔴🚇station stops which is a 99.99% reliability rate & overruns are not considered a safety issue by federal database or other peer agencies as it simply does not pose a safety risk. ATO is safer operations.

How does anybody involved with the SJJPA think this is acceptable to passengers. This is embarrassing for any train service. They market this nonsense as a SF to LA option, with worse amenities than a youth sports post-loss team snack spread?

mood

Most rail services in the US still use polluting diesel locomotives. Recently, our commuter rail system in San Francisco, @caltrain.com, was electrified. Good news: we found DRAMATIC air quality improvements once the electric trains replaced the diesels. pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/...

cutting bus lines off of market street for the past several years and then allowing Waymo to get exclusive access is certainly a choice…

The market getting centel’d today was not what I thought was going to happen, but then again, when is anything predicable nowadays

Santa Clara County officials killed the 9-county regional measure which was supposed to be on the 2026 ballot, and now they have opted out of the latest ballot measure to save BART and co. -- all while receiving a BART extension into Downtown San Jose costing a gorillion dollars

I don’t think I’ve seen a more tone deaf communications campaign. Negotiating team asks ATU to hold off so their board can re-asses their position tomorrow, then comms goes on the assault promoting a narrative which is demonstrably false. Literally amateur hour down south, Freudian slips inclusive

oh joy now we have Canadian civil war discourse

San Francisco Transit Operator Day is this Tuesday. Ride Muni! Tell your friends, tell your neighbors, tell your neighbors friends. And read this article in Mission Local: missionlocal.org/2025/03/this...

Couple of awesome #MBTAjobs folks should consider applying for: 1) Senior Manager of Fare Policy & Analytics, on an excellent team adjacent to mine www.governmentjobs.com/careers/mbta... 2) GIS manager supporting engineering and asset management www.governmentjobs.com/careers/mbta...

I'm reading Ezra's column that adapts his Abundance book, and he's using California high-speed rail as the example of liberal America's inability to build. And I ctrl-F "consultants," and find nothing. www.nytimes.com/2025/03/09/o...

How is metro north paying ~$20M per locomotive for some untested vaporware product that hasn’t been tested and isn’t even projected to exist in a serviceable condition until after Penn Station Access (which these are supposedly being bought to serve) is supposed to open. Truly what are they cooking.

new S(ubstack)-Bahn post: It feels comically small stakes to write about the state and the prospects of American public transit in the breakneck throes of a second Trump administration -- but I put together 11 thoughts I have been gestating for a long time www.substack-bahn.net/p/end-of-the...

Always is fun to come back here and still be amazed at the sheer number of people this system moves

So are we the 11th province now

MTA suggesting that you'd need to go through NEPA to shut down congestion pricing is lol, dare I say it, L M A O storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

The TTC is an embarrassment at this point. Every train runs slower than jabba the hutt moves, they have derailments and then lie harder than the north korean propaganda agencies about the causes (until the truth inevitably comes out) and can’t even fire the chief executive properly. Shameful.

evergreen

30 years ago, Breda meets world. The first car arrived a month earlier, but various complications (such as its size, it hit multiple poles and walls when they first ran it around the yard) caused the public presentation to be delayed. 30 years later, less than 60 cars remain.

Imagine being Chris Paul No rings, and your legacy is 1) rejected trade and 2) this

The fix is in already 💀

It's time to modify CA ICT and turn it primarily into an ops grant program that scores proposals on mode shift impact. The current structure is pushing agencies toward risky tech with high operational overhead at the exact time there is no room for ops overhead.

Alstom disasterclass with a new high speed train?? Impossible! Totally haven’t heard that before. Who could imagine such a crazy situation??? www.lesechos.fr/industrie-se...

today is just international trade malpractice day

I thought I got Centel’d dude

this is crazy, how do you have a 432% increase in guideway costs for *at grade* construction. genuinely who did these estimates because that isn’t at all normal to see increases that insane over just seven months… unless the budget was previously a sham

It's crazy the extent we go to prevent an extremely rare occurrence like a catastrophic fire in a metro station, and then we just shrug for a much more common occurrence, someone falling in the tracks, saying installing platform barriers even in brand new systems is too complicated or costly.

Universities are one of the biggest generators of transit trips, up there with downtowns and hospital complexes. The busiest light rail and subway systems in the US all serve universities, and 1/2 of the top universities in the US have a rail connection. But campuses are also uniquely hard to serve.

Inshallah she kills him too

Off by a few days, but happy 30th Bredaversary to all foamers who celebrate

Not one of the things that will get highlighted prominently, but this plan also gets rid of the debt for the big dig that insanely was assigned to the MBTA in 2015. Wasn’t something people were necessarily expecting with this announcement, but it’s extremely good news that she’s pushing for it.

Wmata telling me to gtfo because I didn’t ride any metro buses wasn’t what I was expecting out of metro wrapped

every day that onion article about Al Quaeda having a plan to “sit back and just watch the US explode” gets a little more true and in a very very bad way

If you’re a transit agency, you shouldn’t be quiet quitting a social media platform. That’s childish and dumb, and leaving your riders in the dark is un-acceptable.

2024 transit wrapped: -Muni, BART, ACT, SMART, CCTA, Caltrain -MBTA -WMATA, DCC -MTA, PATH (with weekend headways💀💀💀), NJT, LIRR -MVG (Munich) -VAG (Nuremberg) -STA (Salzburg) -Südtirolmobil -Calgary Transit -TFL