Massive congratulations are owed to the folks at @tvrr.bsky.social for their work on International Boulevard. It is *unquestionable* that their advocacy has saved multiple lives, something not many people can say. Quick 🧵on their blog post. www.oakrapidresponse.org/posts/intern...

Chicago is getting a Verkehrsverbünde???

The Bay Area used to know this

Speed Matters. Some thoughts about transit and speed, life, space and time. open.substack.com/pub/marcochi...

I don’t think it is progressive to force urban homeowners like me who live in fire-safe areas to pay higher home insurance premiums to subsidize people who choose to live in McMansions in places with very high fire risk.

California Progressives love policies that are literally regressive.

The Bay Area needs to redo regional measure funding allocation to stop burning billions on highway interchanges and focus that money on regional express buses be they transbay or other important corridors rail underserves or does not serve

This is completely unacceptable! AC Transit’s hydrogen fleet has 43%-64% availability depending on model, leading to canceled bus runs and stops in the middle of service. They must address this to retain/grow riders. Transit reliability is even more important to riders than speed or frequency.

Small scale and local control over transit is the status quo in much of the state, especially Southern California, and has led to: - OCTA's neglect closing the Surfliner for over a year - the SBCTA hydrogen train - Incremental improvements like the Serra siding stalled & SCORE behind schedule

Would love to see the ridership modeling for LOSSAN Optimization Study - 1 TPH and 2.5 hour travel time (from 1/2 TPH and 3 hour travel time). I suspect Surfliner would be NEC levels of profitable. www.amtrak.com/content/dam/...

“Drunk and drugged driving is now so common in car-centric California that drivers routinely rack up four, five, six DUIs. One woman in Fresno just got her 16th.”

This happened in my city last week. Since it seems like the entire world is obsessing over the potential dangers of teens riding ebikes lately, I feel like a reminder is in order: drivers are far and away the greatest threat to your kid and everyone else on the road, and always will be.

One more dedicated left-turn and right-turn lane will fix it, bro, I promise. All we need is just a couple more lanes and longer cycles to increase throughput.

Join us @icgee.bsky.social @publicenterprise.bsky.social and @seamlessbayareaca.bsky.social for a webinar about how transit funding holds back ambitious investments like electric rail that we need for climate action & affordable transportation. January 8th, 1-2 PST. actionnetwork.org/events/trans...

Lets hope it gets the axe before anything gets painted in this daft color smear. With BR perfection just sitting right there to use, this jingoistic rubbish is Brexit impotence at track speed. Two tones of blue unnecessary. Angled repeating downward lines too symbolic of UK trajectory. 0.7/10

It seems Not Great that the bureaucracies in charge of California’s streets at ~every level of government are lawless rogue agencies that are not subject to any real public oversight.

Waiting for a @interurbanera.bsky.social rating of this new paint scheme Despite using nearly the same colors as Amtrak phase 6/7 it looks significantly worse with awkward lines which bring some Acela late 90s early 2000s vibes to me

Until California leaders get serious about subjecting Caltrans to state law, it's hard to conclude California is serious about affordability, or air pollution, or climate change. Caltrans is a rogue state agency with a $30 billion annual budget, and is accountable to apparently no one.

California Air Resources Board: "To achieve climate goals, we need less driving" Transportation Researchers: "To reduce driving, we need fewer lane miles" Caltrans: "We need billions of dollars to keep widening highways." California Legislature: "You got it." usa.streetsblog.org/2025/12/02/o...

I wrote a thing. Build trams, but build them well. Understanding what tramways are, what they do best and how to employ them. open.substack.com/pub/marcochi...

We have hundreds of California four-lane roads to upgrade to meet our mode shift goals. 1) Why does a local agency like ACTC have to lead design for these projects, when that'll mean it's always their first time? 2) Why are we making them design concrete mixes and traffic circles from scratch?

Of course it’s about the gondola not about metros continued expansion of highways like it’s 1950. The state just needs to set hard limits on VMT and tough luck if your project is going to increase VMT go spend that money on transit

CAFE didn’t kill station wagons that’s entirely on marketing departments realizing they can charge significantly more for an SUV that costs just a little more to make than a wagon based on a sedan where pricing will be nearly identical

Sizing an airport and roads for mega events when you can't even complete a 1/2 mile bike lane before LA28 is just folly. www.golden-state.org/climate-arso...

“Environmental review is not planning” is one of those statements that is so obviously true but nearly every thing about transportation institutions and environmental review in California/US pushes against it.

Investments in public transit have failed to provide the right incentives for infrastructure projects to get completed in an affordable and timely manner. Join this webinar to learn how reforms to the shape, type, and speed of investment can transform project delivery and service outcomes.

the fact that amtrak cascades hit another ridership record in FY25 despite shutting down for two weeks and spending half the year running smaller trains with higher prices bc of the horizon recall is another sign that the demand for rail in the pnw is genuinely insatiable

ARCHES is frozen for now given the federal funding issues around hydrogen. Hopefully this pushes transit agencies back to BEB now that they don't have a theoretical major source of green hydrogen. archesh2.org/california-p...

I think entirely too much about how California’s climate plan explicitly says that converting to EVs is not nearly enough to meet our greenhouse gas reduction targets so we need to reduce VMT 25% by 2030, and then we do basically nothing to try to achieve that goal

“The new timetable assumes each bus will spend nearly 45% of its runtime idling at BART (or about 6.2 hours of a 14 hour shift). It is hard to escape the conclusion that the timetable is being designed around the limitations of the aging [BEB] capacity.” www.seamlessbayarea.org/blog/2025/11...

"The speed of utility relocation is entirely subject to the utility owner's control." cdn.sjjpa.com/wp-content/u...

With electrification, level boarding, and more frequent service, Capitol Corridor could transform transportation in the Sacramento Valley and beyond. But we need to reform project delivery to make this happen in our lifetime, with stronger governance and more state capacity.

The cost of the Roseville 3rd track has nearly doubled since 2024, and will now provide only 6 round trips at first. Largely downstream of Capitol Corridor's lack of state capacity and extortion by powerful 3rd parties like Union Pacific. We need to fix this ASAP. calelectricrail.org/project-deli...

Props to Metro for doing the right thing this time and choosing to increase Metrolink service and add a new station rather than duplicating it with light rail. Electrification and 15 minute service on the AVL would further support ESFV light rail and improve local transit in the San Fernando area.

Just went through the agenda/attachments of this month's metro planning committee and it looks like, unsurprisingly, scenario 2a (metrolink island plat infill at pacoima) is going to be the chosen alt for ESFV north

slide 1 item 2 gives some interesting details They are talking about using a mix of PSD and object detection and may not use PSD at every station, be interesting to see how that handles snow BART should be bringing back the goal to add PSD at core stations

FTA's guidance on utility coordination ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ www.transit.dot.gov/sites/fta.do...

California's main policy goal for the next decade should be to strip as much governing authority away from Los Angeles as possible.

By learning from other countries and adopting international best practices, California High Speed Rail was able to cut its costs by $14 billion and cut 70% of tunnels. This is a big lesson for transit projects both in NY & around the US: start by learning from other countries. tinyurl.com/mvsmfxa2

"We must adequately study the environmental impact of a bike lane on an oil refinery, and that will take us 6 years" California is cursed, man bsky.app/profile/prin...

"The environmental review process is still in the early stages, and may be done by 2027." For a bike path. That voters approved in 2016. This is malicious bureaucratic delay and agency capture by carbrains. This *never happens for highway or road-widening projects.* www.sfgate.com/la/article/l...

Rep. Seth Moulton (D-MA) has introduced a bill in the U.S. House which would "prohibit the restriction of commercial flights before the restriction of private flights during a lapse in appropriations." www.congress.gov/bill/119th-c...

I was asked to take a look at Santa Cruz Branch Line budget and find some talking points for advocates to get the cost lower. Right off the bat 684M for professional services on a 22 mile line is insane.

It's impressive how contemporary projects' budgeting practices in Canada are made of very thin actual analytical estimates based on quantities and unit prices on top of which there is an entire enormous castle of random percentages of percentages of percentages which are suspiciously multiples of 5.

It's like saying that you are planning for a budget were things will necessarily go very wrong because you, project owner, are 100% sure that you will be unable to deploy any organizational or design measure to avoid costs to escalate out of control.

CSUEB ended their dedicated shuttle routes this fall which ran roughly every 15 mins between Hayward and campus along with hourly between campus and Castro valley. There was no increase in service to 60 and there’s been issues with crowding resulting in extra services being ran off timetable

Californians:

Absolutely insane. California should be planning to run extra Amtrak service this holiday season. Ideally also a supplemental LA-Oakland coach service for the coast starlight

Utah's UTA is state-managed, funded by 5-year investment frameworks, and uses service-led planning. It's no wonder FrontRunner has plans for electrification while Metrolink and LOSSAN are still avoiding the issue, despite serving more people. rideuta.legistar.com/LegislationD...

LOSSAN TAC meeting tomorrow Report on LOSSAN lead capital Projects SLO layover is nearing construction allowing upto 4RT (or some service from Nor Cal) Leedale Siding in Ventura County is progressing with a goal to start construction in early 2027