You know you’re in a university-dominated neighborhood when your phone connects to Eduroam just walking down the street.

small moment of joy today is how beautiful the annual DC Metro cherry blossom cards are this year

I know I'm late to the dunkfest, but it always baffles me when major news organizations publish stuff from obviously dubious sources like this. It's like when you read a story about how "the average rent for a one-bedroom apartment in NYC is now $8,000, according to RentBuddy" or whatever.

MTA announces its biggest subway train replacement order, up to a third of its 6,500 car fleet. New cars coming to a No. 1, 3 or 6 train near you www.nytimes.com/2026/03/19/n...

The Transit Analytics Lab @utoronto.ca led by my graduate supervisor Professor Amer Shalaby is hosting the first ever Transit Data Challenge for undergraduate and graduate students across Canada. There is lots of under-utilized transit data out there that could improve transit.please check it out!

People on here do love throwing stones from their glass houses. It’s great fun, toss a few pieces of schist from your butterfly-emblazoned crystal palace before bed.

A huge part of rail design is asking "when do we deviate from a straight line?" Never deviating leads to low ridership, and deviating a lot also leads to low ridership. The good reason to deviate is to gain more ridership.

There's probably a story to be told here about American railroads not really caring a whole lot for suburban operations which create the very high train volumes you might try to design a station around specifically.

Anyone have any good sources on the crafting of the Passenger Rail Investment and Improvement Act of 2008 (a.k.a. PRIIA, a.k.a. the law that governs much of intercity pax rail planning) and/or on federal politics around Amtrak more generally in the 2000s?

My feeds are full of umarelling of the operations for the replacement of a 1930s rail freight belt underpass to accommodate the tram line in Bologna. 👀👀👀 Interesting that they aren't removing the catenary. Also Interesting the suspended bridge for cables in the first pic.

I feel that the phrase “welcome in” has suddenly become common. Where did this come from? Is it supposed to be folksier than just “welcome”?

Really looking forward to this! The idea that different modes have different properties and different roles to play in a city sounds like common sense but is too often ignored, so a book taking that as a starting point will be a welcome intervention. And the illustrations look great.

Across 20 subway stations, we're piloting three new fare gate designs! These modern fare gates will help ensure our customers are safe, speed up entry/exit time, and improve accessibility. You can provide feedback by scanning QR codes located at the fare gates.

⚾️ Baseball is back! Batter up for a Nostalgia Ride to Opening Day! Ride vintage trains to the Yankees and Mets home opener games. Hop aboard for just the cost of your subway fare. Learn more at nytransitmuseum.org/nostalgia-rides.

Designed in 1969 by Pat Dypold, the woman responsible for many of 7-Up’s “Uncola" ads, this poster was one of a series illustrating select cities in Chicago's western suburbs served by the Burlington Northern Line. Posters were sold to the commuting public for $1 each. NUTL Poster Collection.

This 1938 children’s menu from the New Haven Railroad is somehow even more charming on the inside than on the cover. Young passengers could order by picture — choosing between PB&J, fluffy mashed potatoes, and more alongside circus animal silhouettes. NUTL Menu Collection, Thomas F. Seaman donation.

Oh look, Apple made a netbook.

Currently reading the 1959 Congressional hearing where Bill Vickrey — a future Nobel Prize winner — made the first public case for congestion pricing. Vickrey: "One of the advantages of this type of charge is that you discourage the peak use at the same time that you encourage the nonpeak use."

The constraints on how much individuals can change things for the better are real. They are much less real when it comes to changes for the worse.

Routinely, I am asked, "Why is DC *like that*?" And I know exactly what they mean, and you know exactly what they mean, because DC really is *like that.* And I am such a humanitarian, I will answer this question for you, if you subscribe to my newsletter.

The other thing about this discourse is that each site's worst critics are basically right about them. Not drawing moral equivalence here TBC, but it's hard to argue against either case. Good thing none of it really matters, but not so good for those of us who for whatever reason enjoy this format.

​Greetings from the Northwestern University Transportation Library, where Rachel just showed me the original!

"Metro belongs to you, the citizen, the taxpayer. It was your decision to build it. It is your investment that sustains it. And you have every reason to be proud of it." From the promotional "Owner's Manual" released by WMATA when Metro opened in 1976:

“What part of ‘Stop’ did you not understand last time, you odious mollusk?”

When a Web site's cookie banner unironically says "We and our 1566 partners...", that's when you know we've lost the Web.

do I know anyone on here who worked as an emergency snow shoveler this week, or during January's storm? know anyone who did? would love to hear from you: [email protected] or DM (or reply)

“You finished those DC metro stations?” “Sure thing boss, beautiful, moodily lit and oddly unsettling, just like you asked.” “What?”

Unstated in this piece is that Mr Clean is retiring in lieu of facing a disciplinary hearing for firing his service weapon during a fight at a high school basketball game that he was refereeing

Spare me your "Fine Wine and Good Spirits" rebranding Give me this straightforward look (Johnstown, PA 1977)

A food hall with…performances? I am skeptical.

If you’re sad you never got to see Kowloon Walled City, Shipan felt like a close substitute

We unleashed Darth Vader — the LIRR’s most powerful snow fighter in the galaxy (okay, the system) — to blast through 25+ inches of snow drifts on the East End.

The blizzard may be slowing down, but we haven’t taken a snow day. Our crews have been out since yesterday clearing platforms, deploying de-icers, and ensuring that our trains and buses can travel safely during the storm. We’re grateful to our frontline employees for keeping the city moving.

People who live in other places are often surprised by my nonchalant attitude toward winter storms. But NYC power lines are underground, I live in an apartment building and don't own a car so there's nothing for me to shovel, and the subway and buses usually still run if I do need to go somewhere.

WINTER STORMS DO NOT HAVE NAMES.

All the Twitter vs. Bluesky vs. whatever else discourse always seems to ignore the reality that text-based microblogging is a dying format. Twitter is always going to have the largest share of that pie because of insuperable first-mover advantage, but it's a shrinking pie.

visiting the Spicy Boat

Today is UNESCO #InternationalMotherLanguageDay. We are sharing this 1962 #NYCsubway multilingual courtesy campaign poster. The poster is an early example of language-inclusive signage in transit, and marks the beginning of public service announcements geared toward New York's diverse communities.

New from the MTA Policy Team: The Policy Brief, clear explainers of the policies shaping New York’s transportation system and how those decisions are made. The first edition breaks down the difference between the operating and capital budgets. mta.info/policybrief

Our @jessjoseph.bsky.social goes deep on POPS (privately owned public spaces), which could be beautiful oases for winter cabin fever — if they actually followed the rules nygroove.nyc/privately-ow...

Trying to answer the question "when did exactly giving trams their own right-of-way in the urban context become common practice?" I ended up in the rabbit hole of Stübben's Städtebau manual, and it's really a great insight into "urban planning before modern planning."

This is somewhat instructive of how people saw transportation in 1946: Streetcars were old and noisy, buses were new and quiet, and were going to be supplemented by helicopters anyway. It wasn't just a huge conspiracy.

Every melting snow pile like a receding glacier leaving a tiny moraine as a goodbye

This would work really well in regions of the US (like the Northeast) that historically have had a lot of shingled buildings.

coming soon! most tedious dataset my group has made...but hopefully the most useful

THROUGH TO THE CONTINENT BY FERRY TRAIN (1978)

just looked up and realized I’m the only person on my train car. you know what that means: limo train baby. riding da limo train

The Board is here to serve you. If you have a matter in need of judgement or investigation, refer it to us. Email board at whimsygov.org

Plan of the "temporary" Main Navy Building built on what is now Constitution Gardens. The way you had to build when you needed major square footage before A/C.

The Whimsy Governance Board has issued its first finding whimsygov.org/dockets/26-0... #WhimsyGov