Earthquake menlo

It’s a Friday night and I’m reading latest amends on SB 3438, which would create a Northern Illinois Transportation Authority to coordinate fares, schedules, service for Chicago-area transit. It has some of the most ambitious transit project delivery reforms in the country afaict.

What if mobility tech were designed to serve the public good, rather than private profit or the convenience of the privileged? Join me and some of my favorite thinkers on 9/16

Thanks to so many transit riders who spoke up meeting after meeting and rallied to organize support, in all 5 counties and especially in the opt-in counties San Mateo and Santa Clara, that decided to join.

And SB63 passed the Senate at 1:30am! Now on to the governor's desk! It took a lot of organizing and mobilizing and compromises to get to a bill that will save and improve Bay Area transit - now on to the governor, and to people power to help gather signatures and pass the measure!

The bills to renew the Cap & Trade program just passed, including: * $200 million in continuous funding for transit service. * $400 m in continuous funding for transit & rail capital * $800 m for affordable housing near transit * $125 m for transit passes * ongoing funding for high speed rail

This is shaping up to be one of the most productive legislative sessions for climate in years: ☑️ upzoning near major transit (#SB79) ☑️extending cap and trade through 2045 (#AB1207) ☑️major electricity affordability reforms (#SB254) ☑️expanding California’s grid operations across the west (#AB825)

Just read based Roads Must Roll on these references, arrogance and rivalries among technocratic administrators, flaws of workplace psychological testing 1950s military culture and anti-labor politics...

If Newsom goes back on his promise here it may end up being one of the defining moments of his time as governor. Just an unmitigated disaster. www.sfchronicle.com/politics/art...

But his memes

Then, set aside time to come to an emergency rally at Civic Center plaza on Monday 9/8 in the morning, 9am: actionnetwork.org/events/emerg...

For every time I get impressed with Governor Newsom’s leadership (CEQA reform, pushing Prop 50, etc) There’s an equal number of instances where I am immensely frustrated with him… Inadequate transit funding, silence on SB79, his dumb podcast with right wing personalities 😩😩😩😩😩

Art of the Day - Ring the Bay 🚋🚈🚃 Happy Transit Month to all who celebrate! Come to the Let's Glow BART Anime Festival on Saturday, Sept 6, 4:30-8pm at Warm Springs Station www.bart.gov/news/article...

Transit Month starts today in the Bay Area and Southern California! 🚃🚈🚌🛳️🚋 Bay Area events at luma.com/transitmonth..., SoCal events at www.socaltransitmonth.org The ride contest starts today, and this week is the online Transit Month fashion photo contest luma.com/rh5jfwxt

My Dress To Impress on Transit entry for #TransitMonth2025! Taking the fairy @rideact bus to the Children's Fairyland 75th Birthday parade & party

Iron Council by China Mieville stands out en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Co...

How about “Her,” in which Los Angeles is blanketed by an extensive and functional metro system

I’m so excited to be joining this stellar Transit Month panel in SF with some of my favorite humans. Join us Tuesday, September 16 at SPUR

Can't stop thinking about how SMART can't run on a 2 TPH schedule -- instead runs service every 32m -- because of a station designed to serve a large suburban office park for an employer who moved away 4 years ago. Now the offices are empty.

Perhaps this is obvious but perhaps not: both my research work and my public-facing writing would be impossible without the astounding resources of university libraries. My household also makes ample use of our local public library. Libraries are amazing.

such an all-star panel! Would be fun to look at video games with rideable transit (e.g. Cyberpunk, Read Dead 2) and compare to games that use fast travel. Also games where you build transit: Minecraft servers like minecartrapidtransit.net, Mini Metro vs growth of real cities and transit systems

Gonna re-read the Bujold stories maybe now; iirc the bubble cars in Komarr show the janky systems on the disinvested planet; and in Cryoburn the surveillance in the transit system causes trouble for the fugitive children

What are your favorite examples of transit in sci-fi/fantasy and what do they say about people, places and politics in the alternate world and this one? Prepping for this upcoming Transit Month panel on public transit visions in speculative fiction - sign up here: luma.com/0olo6szj?utm...

BART Launches Open Payments - sf.streetsblog.org/2025/08/19/b...

I just helped a Chinese speaking visitor pay for Caltrain with cash. Sometime soon, credit/debit card.

Heading to airport. It will be so much better when people can get too and from airport with a normal credit/debit card without needing special payment or cash. BART later this month, rest of bay area transit later this year

FIVE! Santa Clara County VTA board just voted unanimously to opt into the regional transportation ballot measure! Now all 5 counties in the core regional system are in! So much organizing, advocacy, education, negotiation to get this point.

Subtweeting the transportation secretary & I’m here for it

Electrification + all-day frequency + return to office + freeway jams = Caltrain ridership ↗️

I’m doing a thing! I don’t think the problem with Democrats is our policies, or that some of us are trans. It’s that too many Democrats are desperate to be liked by people they look down on. I don’t look down on baristas: I was one. I hope to be of service again.

SB 445 has passed through the Assembly Utilities committee 10-4. Bill authors will continue to negotiate with opponents on amendments.

SB 445 has passed the Assembly Local Government committee. Asm. Wilson and Carillo spoke at length about their support for California High Speed Rail and the need to prioritize making it work better. Now headed to the Utilities Committee this afternoon, where further amendments are expected.

The Valley Link rail project near Livermore, once planned to be 100% hydrogen, is now considering battery trains instead to cut costs - much like their German counterparts did years ago.

In my time in the Senate I've never seen a Senator treated this way. @padilla.senate.gov is carrying out his constitutional responsibility to conduct oversight and defend the people he represents. Absolutely shocking and disgusting way to handle a sitting member of Congress.

Total thug behavior by federal agents toward a U.S. Senator who was simply questioning a cabinet secretary. Thank you Senator Padilla for your courage in standing up for Californians & against fascism.

NEW: Here's a striking new amicus brief in support of California from 8 "former US Army and Navy secretaries and retired four-star admirals and generals" (inc. Michael Hayden, Thad Allen, Sean O'Keefe). storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

California's Senator Alex Padilla is dragged out of a Kristi Noem press conference by security, then forced on the ground and cuffed. Stills from video:

Shameful. @padilla.senate.gov is a calm, constructive, and collaborative public servant. This is what authoritarianism looks like…

At Menlo Park City Council, considering proposals for affordable housing on downtown parking lots, with supportive residents sharing posters of people in need of affordable housing...

A @bart.gov outage for a few hours is terrible -- a permanent 85% cut to service would be a catastrophe and unless @governor.ca.gov & our state reps step up and funds transit this year, we're looking at major service cuts to BART, Muni, AC Transit, Caltrain + more actionnetwork.org/letters/fund...

Seoul's transit in the 90s was in crisis, but fare integration, bus priority & network management reforms in 2004 transformed the network in less than 2 yrs, leading to the world-class system the region has today. My latest @seamlessbayareaca.bsky.social blog: www.seamlessbayarea.org/blog/2025/5/...

This will go down in history behind Lysenkoism in the annals of tyrannical destruction of science

we'll have to see the details to confirm, but from what we've seen so far, the republican proposal would be the single largest transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich in a single bill in US history

Not too many people voted in November to shake down other countries to benefit the private business of the president's wealthy allies.

The FAA halted the work of an outside panel of experts scrutinizing its management of air traffic control, a previously unreported move made after a fatal airliner crash near Washington raised questions about the agency’s abilities to keep the skies safe.

the studies that are going down the drain because the White House has some plan that requires you and your loved ones dying from diseases that might otherwise be cured.

RESULT: Ohioans have easily approved a statewide referendum that provides for $2.5 billion in bonds for transportation and infrastructure, and such projects.

Trump's proposed 2026 budget would dramatically cut federal funding for traumatic brain injury research. The proposal would eliminate all of the $8.25 million at the CDC marked for brain injury research and public education about the dangers of concussions. www.espn.com/espn/story/_...

NIAID's Integrated Research Facility is one of the few federal facilities charged with studying Ebola. Tuesday afternoon, all of its work was put on indefinite pause by Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s department.

Which Democratic hopeful will be the first to endorse timetable service planning and programmatic funding for level boarding and commuter rail electrification?