One thing working on this series helped me realize is how long it can take regulatory failures to manifest in people's lives. In these cases, we're talking decades later. www.bloomberg.com/graphics/202...

One thing I wrote about here is how technology has made buses *way* more convenient while techno-futurists were obsessed with flying taxis and self-driving cars.

I wrote about how surprised I still am a candidate for NYC mayor won in large part by talking incessantly about buses, and also about how making them fast as promised will be an immense challenge. www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

The government shutdown got me thinking: How many flights in the US are actually replaceable by train? It depends on how insane you are, but the basic answer is: Not Many! 70% of flights shorter than 500 miles have no train option at all. Out of those that do, 65% would likely be faster by car.

Congratulations to all the abundance bros who joined the fight behind "permitting reform" on your victory today www.nytimes.com/2025/11/17/c...

New from me: Global Entry revocations are surging in the last ~2 years, well outpacing enrollment, according to data from a FOIA. People often don't know why their membership was revoked. www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

There's a persistent reflex to assume that projects like this are liberally coded, only popular in progressive enclaves. But the actual evidence goes the other way. Liberals aren't the only ones who like to cross the street safely. Conservatives also ride bikes and like to do so without dying.

There are hundreds of thousands of homeowners in the US who probably don't realize there's a ticking time bomb on their American Dream in the form of a zombie second mortgage. And the agency tasked with policing this—wait for it—has been gutted by the Trump admin. www.bloomberg.com/graphics/202...

NYC people: @suryamattu.com, @mariepastora.bsky.social and I will be talking about our NJ Transit/NYC commuter rail story on Nov 5. Hope to see some of you there! www.meetup.com/transit-tech...

I am continually impressed by Alissa's coverage of LA transportation and also how insane LA's transportation spending is.

"Don't bother looking for me. I'll be next to my pool with a margarita."

Coffee futures hit a new record high. www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

Tell 2018 me that in 2025 Andrew Cuomo will be running for mayor and proposing the city take over key parts of the MTA and I might have had an actual stroke www.nytimes.com/2025/10/21/n...

Key stat from @amandamull.bsky.social article "The richest 10% of US households—those making roughly $250,000 or more—now account for almost half the country’s consumer purchases, according to Moody’s Analytics" www.bloomberg.com/news/feature...

"Mansion Boy" is also good because Andrew Cuomo owned a $1.8 million, 4,000 sq ft house with its own pond until his divorce. (Reportedly it would have sold for much more but was not maintained well and was "in dire need of considerable work.") nypost.com/2021/03/03/a...

Fun fact: All of the MTA's rolling stock bought in the last several decades is capable of this too!

For Bessent’s $20 billion bet on Argentina to pay off, a lot of things have to go right. The problem is that in Argentina -- a nation with a track record of squandering other people’s money and defaulting on its own debts -- those things have tended to go wrong. www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

Since I've moved to Manhattan it has really sunk in just how useless the non-SBS buses are if you want to get anywhere faster than walking. The north-south routes stop every block or two! The bus literally travels 10-15 bus lengths at a time, up and down Manhattan. It's so stupid.

Some Personal News:

True New Yorker quizzes are fun and all but there is only one question in the actual True New Yorker test: Do You Take The Subway?

@agordon.me is so right about this buttondown.com/Booktime/arc...

A fun game is to ask people what they think "independent" journalism means and/or to rank various sources on a scale of independence. Answers vary wildly! www.nytimes.com/2025/10/06/b...

I once did a bunch of archival research on the origins and history of junk mail. This talking point—that not everyone has the same definition of "junk"—was used by the junk mail industry for *decades* to fight anti-junk mail policies. (It's also not true. ) www.nytimes.com/2025/10/02/t...

Back when I did this kind of thing, the pitch for why more NYC newsrooms should have dedicated MTA reporters—not even "transportation" generally, just MTA—was that the MTA's annual budget was larger than that of 10 states.

The amazing thing about the hundreds of billions of dollars being spent on AI development is it doesn't even include all the externalized costs like higher electricity prices for hundreds of millions of people.

One thing to know about the "Eric Adams Is The Future of the Democratic Party" takes from 2021 is not only were they obviously wrong at the time, not only are they embarrassing to the authors now, but they are objectively among the most wrong takes in the history of political punditry.

Watched The Odd Couple movie with Lemmon and Matthau (so good) but the biggest laugh of the night came halfway through was finding out Matthau's character, with an 8 room apartment on the top floor of a West End Drive doorman building, was a sports columnist writing about the Mets.

Great story. Many similar lessons for buying trains, too.

If you're on a Mac the best way to OCR a page of a PDF or image is take a screenshot of it then open it in preview. You can then highlight and copy/paste. This also works surprisingly well with images/PDFs of spreadsheets.

Huh. Hmm. Well. I...ah. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/18/u...

I have spent more time than I care to admit bashing columnists whom I don't hold in high regard. Gina was never one of them. It's a shame that there appears to no longer be room for knowledgeable local columnists who actually love the place they write about. We need more writing rooted in love.

'Primus becomes the first member of the STB, or its predecessor, the Interstate Commerce Commission, to be dismissed. The ICC was created in 1887.' www.trains.com/pro/regulato...

There’s a widespread myth that Americans hate traffic cameras. It’s simply not true. On the contrary, researchers have consistently found that Americans broadly support using automatic enforcement to curb crashes. And for good reason: It works. Me, in Bloomberg 🧵

Cars are getting more expensive. People take out longer loans to afford them. Longer loans means more total interest cost, adding thousands of dollars to the already expensive car. And when they go to trade it in, they find they still owe more than the car is worth. www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

It was only a year and a half ago that Hochul sent the National Guard to the subway because crime.

Update confirms McGuinness is in the coming indictments

I'm reading an oral history of the great depression and two things stand out: 1. Nearly every interviewee is amazed in retrospect there wasn't a violent revolution 2. The class solidarity, through small gestures of goodwill and aid, did so much to reinforce humanity's decency and ward off loneliness

If you see Hell Gate’s $20 Dinner Official Selection sticker in the window, then you know it’s for real. 👍 Keep your eyes peeled. 🧐

ICYMI: NYC has three commuter railroads. Two of them run (more or less) fine. One does not. Read our data investigation into NJ Transit, using live location data from more than 190,000 trains. www.bloomberg.com/graphics/202...

An analysis of real-time train data shows its passengers face major service disruptions at six times the rate of riders on other NYC commuter railways.

NJ Transit is much worse than all other commuter rails in the NYC area. @agordon.me and @suryamattu.com collected and analyzed many weeks of transit feeds to quantify how bad (and it includes angry emojis). www.bloomberg.com/graphics/202...

brb updating my bio

What happens when government disinvests from public transit? Commutes get longer & more frustrating. A NJ Transit case study from me, @suryamattu.com and @mariepastora.bsky.social : www.bloomberg.com/graphics/202...

NJ Transit's official data makes it difficult to tell just how bad it is. So @suryamattu.com and I spent three months collecting the raw location data for more than 190,000 trains on NJT, Metro-North, and LIRR. Then @mariepastora.bsky.social made the graphics to show you. The answer: Very bad.

So... some personal news: After 7+ years with the wonderful people at WIRED, next month I am going to be starting a new chapter at ProPublica. www.propublica.org/atpropublica...

There's a reason the affordable housing selection process in NYC is officially called a "lottery" which seems to be lost on some people who are pretending to have some idea what living here is like.

Found an excuse to look at old kits at work. Happy Premier League Is Back day to all who celebrate! www.bloomberg.com/graphics/202...