Bob Poole's Reason Surface Transportation newsletter remains a mix of interesting news and unintentional comedy.

PPI’s Russell Richie traces striking similarities between Mamdani’s movement and Henry George’s 1886 mayoral run, and asks whether land value tax could finally resolve NYC’s enduring housing paradox. progressandpovertyinstitute.org/mayor-elect-...

Momentum is gaining momentum. The railroad infrastructure framework developed by @ndhapple.bsky.social has gone bicoastal. A new report from @calelectricrail.org shows how level boarding and electrified trains would transform transportation in SoCal. benjaminschneider.substack.com/p/how-southe...

OakDOT with the patch job 👍

Always wild that UTA is one the most forward thinking transit agencies in the country

Massive moment for the utility relocation streamlining for transit projects community

It’s pretty interesting how pundits can proclaim that Zohran’s pro-housing policies are insincere or not true YIMBYism but Abigail Spanberger’s straight up opposition to state land use preemption of local governments for ADUs and small apartments upzoning and approvals just gets shrugged off.

Did a presentation for a state building officials conference today, and I mentioned some stuff about other countries. The first question was somebody asking me if we can really compare ourselves to other countries’ codes when they don’t take into account and life and safety. Almost a verbatim quote!

This is pure bullshit. You know democrats are not this party. Matt knows it. We all know it. He’s just lying about politics for clout and money. If we want the Democrats to win, we need to excise the Grima Wormtounges defining us as unable.

California as part of growing state capacity and standardization across the mainline rail network should produce a document like this. Standard stations is an easy win. Right now there’s no standardization between the operators www.networkrail.co.uk/wp-content/u...

The Bay Area and California need electeds and agency staffers to go on a DB or SBB junket like Illinois did imo.

Transit investment must be downstream of schedule, rolling stock, and infrastructure coordination to ensure maximum benefit from scarce funds.

The Fairyland jolly trolly and County Connection‘s 4 and 5 routes have one thing in common: outdated rolling stock that hampers their ability to run frequent service

This is a good reason to create a regional coordinating body for capital construction (and fare harmonization).

Metrolink: note the pantographs and catenary wires on that double-decker train.

More of this please

I hate Urbanists Halloween. What do you mean you’re a bakfiets Y-wing pilot?

Proposal from Mayor: allow 4 units by-right Counter-proposal from professional brownstoner and planners: only allow two units to protect "legacy homeowners" www.baltimorebrew.com/2025/10/31/a...

Exciting to see electeds in Illinois embrace 1) revenue for transit ops 2) governance reform 3) regional network management 4) service led planning 5) streamlining project delivery of new transit infrastructure wrt 3rd parties 6) cost benefit analyses and 7) framework agreements for capital projects

17m headway on a 45m bus run is a policy failure.

Sy Adler wrote one of my favorite transit planning papers in 1980. Great to see him interviewed on Bay Area transit history. (The exclamation point regarding low oil prices in the late 1940s.) escholarship.org/uc/item/3kv5...

New ep! We talk to Sy Adler about his 1980 manuscript about the birth of BART, and what we can learn about intergovernmental politics, real estate development, land value capture, and much, much more LISTEN >>>>>>>>>>>> seethecat.org/ep/2025-10-3...

The problem is that North America does very little absolute priority, which often requires heavy circulation and intersection redesign that is necessary to implement effective TSP. So, most of the literature is about optimization for specific traffic patterns and very tech-focused.

Guy who is polarized against Rahm Emanuel primarily because his housing policy to boost homeownership is more demand-side subsidies rather than fixing the building code, condo defect risk or financing.

Read TSP. Look inside. "Extended Green 10 seconds max or truncated red 5 seconds max" Seriously, this is better than nothing, but the rigidity of signal phases in suburban contexts plus limited headways (3 buses/hour) makes it very difficult to "monetize" the modest time savings for operations.

One of the most promising parts of Plan Bay Area 2050 imho. There's an opportunity here for service-led planning and for subregional and regional transit hub timetabling. mtc.legistar.com/LegislationD...

PG&E was supposed to relocate a utility pole out of a future bike path in early 2023. The bike lane was delivered in spring 2024 — with utility poles in the middle. In mid October 2025 PG&E moved service to a new pole (right). Yesterday in late October 2025 PG&E removed the defunct pole.

lots of interesting details here about the nuts and bolts of the french social housing system

New Lewis Center at UCLA report by Paavo Monkkonen on French social housing. Is the cost rental and financing model upstream of France’s ability to build large number of units without deep subsidies? escholarship.org/content/qt8d...

Legalize it

imo culture broadly would benefit from having a novel that is a bildungsroman about this kind of character

Huell Howser

Oakland’s 2023 rezonings were a massive expansion of zoned capacity — especially in high resource areas. Very few people are seemingly aware this happened. I suspect it’s because Oakland doesn’t have a real daily newspaper and shares a TV/media market with bigger and wealthier cities.

Rescue the Tilden steam train! Email [email protected] with the subject line "Public Comment- Tilden Steam Train". bayareatelegraph.com/2025/10/24/t...

Given today’s events at Coast Guard Island, here’s a map of the Oakland Estuary in the 1850s. Red Trains in the East Bay by Robert S. Ford

"If the long-fragmented metro area of Chicago and its suburbs can agree on adopting world-class policies to improve transit project delivery, then so can California." www.seamlessbayarea.org/blog/2025/10...

super excited to see another open loop system come online here in CA with OCTA, and w/ LA Metro + rest of Clipper coming late this year or early next, a huge milestone for the state www.masstransitmag.com/technology/f...

Great @cayimby.bsky.social panel on condo regulation reform and unlocking multifamily starter homes

Cheaper transfers, payment flexibility and grace period are 👍 But I’m excited for planners to get more visibility on transfers between agencies and specific bus/rail lines. We can use that data to build the case for more coordinated transfers thru bus/rail takts, transit priority and more headways

Finally! Clipper 2 is so important, as it will allow: 💵No-cost/reduced cost transfers between transit agencies 💳Ability to pay with credit cards or your phone ⏲️30 min grace period for BART excursion fares Note that if you want Clipper 2 immediately you’ll need to contact Clipper in December:

More message discipline needed on this point. Circulation has costs on transit users, not just construction costs.

Good op-ed on need for service-led planning for Seattle transit. publicola.com/2025/10/08/t...

Has anyone done a case study or analysis of SFMTA's Muni Forward and Transit Effectiveness Project in terms of service goals, operating costs, reliability etc?

Omnitrans sbX Purple Line/West Valley Connector opening Sept. 2026, delays from utility relocations & SoCal Edison (SCE) projects Staff Report to Omnitrans' Plans & Programs Committtee: omnitrans.primegov.com/viewer/previ... Presentation: omnitrans.primegov.com/viewer/previ...

Even worse, this was lawsuit-related delay caused by the usual suspects. Might be about time for the state to require posting bonds covering the GHG mitigation while the lawsuit proceeds.

3 years of escalation, time-related overhead et al is always bad but especially 2021-2024.

This is so single stair coded I just can’t.

Growing up my dad celebrated the Corps birthday on November 10 every year. It feels under discussed that this live fire exercise at Camp Pendleton was 3+ weeks prior to the Marine Corps actual birthday.

Back at Western Railway Museum for my son’s birthday party and we’re riding an old Key System unit with anti Single Tax ads from the 1938 Prop 20 campaign.

Not a fan of this guy