"Your city will always have exactly as much gridlock as it makes room for."

Before I turn too quickly to Wikipedia, I savor a moment of not knowing whether the British Interplanetary Society is a group of astronomers, psychics, or science fiction writers.

Morning rush-hour near London's Oval station. Trains pass underground every few minutes and there's a continuous flood of bicycles, but still there's one lane of gridlocked traffic. Your city will always have exactly as much gridlock as it makes room for.

"all communities have people who cannot, don’t want to, or shouldn’t be driving. They also have people who may find it financially liberating to own fewer cars. Transit is part of how we include those people in society and grant them the same freedoms that motorists enjoy."

An essential read for anyone who cares about cities and urban transit 👇

"The transit funding crises now unfolding in PA, OR and IL are happening because in these states, too much taxing power is in the state instead of in the cities. The same problem bedevils the politics of urban regions, whose suburbs will never support transit the way the inner city does."

Service information from the team at London's Oval underground station.

London's Northern Line is neither northern nor a line. A name may be ancient and venerated but still really unhelpful. You'd think that a nation that had the practicality and courage to redraw Buckinghamshire could do something better here.

Really good article about transit; especially the invisible costs of cars vs the visible costs of transit

Great read on the challenges—and opportunities—facing transit right now. Everywhere is different, but the issues are all familiar.

“Some cities are ready to lead, and ready to pay, but instead they must laboriously build support from the hinterland before they can offer a service that city residents will always value most. This requirement makes no sense except as part of a culture war.”

@humantransit.bsky.social provides a thoughtful analysis of the urban/suburban divide and the implications for transit funding. www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

This is an incredible column, to which I can only offer an addendum: There is value in using and improving the existing urban transit infrastructure to improve suburban service and generate exurban and next-city-over ridership. Commuter railroads are where these synergies are most evidence, IMO.

"The cost of passenger transport in the US is mostly the cost of labor, so even a bus that’s a quarter full is highly efficient compared to all those people being driven separately, even if your streets had room for all that traffic."

The greatness of any urban place rest partly on the possibility of going to other great urban places. Charles Ginner,"Piccadilly Circus", 1912, Tate Britain.

“Why does transit seem to be in an endless emergency? Why is it so easy to assume that transit’s financial situation is hopeless? Because we have constructed our transportation funding streams to make transit’s costs visible, while the costs of car dependence are mostly concealed.”

“Unlike most other wealthy countries, the US has chosen to keep transit going without ever letting it thrive”

Before I turn too quickly to Wikipedia, I savor a moment of not knowing whether the British Interplanetary Society is a group of astronomers, psychics, or science fiction writers.

I thought my Bloomberg article today was about transit in the US. But it turns out it was also about Spain.

I want to highlight every line in this excellent piece. Logic alone says fund public transit and we all win. @savesepta.com @savesepta.com @severedlimb.bsky.social “Unlike most other wealthy countries, the US has chosen to keep transit going without ever letting it thrive”

I have a major piece in Bloomberg Citylab today. Should the US let transit fail, as Pennsylvania is already doing? And if not, what are the arguments we need to let it succeed? www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

Remember, if you're an American traveling overseas and want to ship home some excess possessions, the local post office will take your package and only then will Donald Trump send you a bill.

A great reason to dislike capitalist passenger transport is the habit of charging more for a faster journey. A faster journey is nearly always cheaper for the provider to provide. It means the passenger is using less capacity. Why charge more for it? 1/🧵

I use Uber only outside the US and as little as possible. Finally used it for the first time in years in the UK and was scammed. The driver sees the passenger coming & intentionally drives away so that they get a cancellation fee without having to give a ride. Avoid Uber.

Great to see scholars digging into the high cost of purchasing public transit buses in the US. www.brookings.edu/articles/pay...

Sydney: A long-term rail transport plan has leaked. Prof. David Levinson is on it: transportist.org/2025/09/15/o...

In Oregon, one legislator’s illness is delaying a crucial bill. Oregon almost invented voting by mail. Maybe they should invent something similar for the legislature. There’s this thing called the Internet now. opb.org/article/2025...

This is a really great clip - the CEO of the transit system rides the bus! They focus on reliability and frequency! They keep hitting the "do what you can, well," and look what happened (also - ahem, Skagit Transit - seven day per week service on frequent routes)

Ridership in Akron, Ohio is up 25% after the 2023 network redesign that we worked on with them. Here’s a nice CBS news segment on the project. youtu.be/DNZnZJPvytU?...

Heartwarming thread on the first anniversary of Seattle's RapidRide G Line, the Madison St corridor.

Useful Chicago Sun Times piece about what it will mean to "end up like Philadelphia" if the legislature doesn't fix the transit funding crisis. And Portland is not far behind given how badly the legislative session in Oregon is going. chicago.suntimes.com/transportati...

Our honeymoon took us to the proud Canton of Bern in Switzerland. I noticed transport, of course, and wrote this harmless little travelogue. humantransit.org/2025/09/bern...

Met someone yesterday who said that reading @humantransit.bsky.social 's @islandpress.bsky.social book Human Transit as a teen in the suburbs helped put them on the path being a transit supporter and occasional advocate -- and they're looking forward to my book helping them build on that foundation

Wrote a little thing about Bern, Switzerland, and its Alps, with lots of photos. humantransit.org/2025/09/bern...

Historic SB79 has passed the Legislature in California, requiring cities to allow dense development around transit stations: a tiny % of urban California's land area. Cue the hysteria about "forcing" ppl into apartments. When will people learn the difference between "allowing" and "forcing"?

Memorial in a Manchester park for mathematician Alan Turing. Many have come by and engaged with it in the 10 minutes I've watched. I wonder why he is a bit smaller than life size. If we must have statues of famous people, let's sit them on benches so they don't intimidate, but keep us company.

Yes, the US has higher GDP than Europe. But the US spends more of its wealth fixing the roofs of single-family homes, not to mention selling a lawnmower to every one of them.

Tip: When someone dares to criticize the culture of dogpiling on Bluesky, and gets immediately dogpiled by a bunch of people who never engage with their work otherwise, it kind of proves their point. The way out of our dark place is persuasion, not bullying.

I'm sorry to say that I agree with every word of this, and I'm willing to say so on Bluesky. This doesn't mean I agree with everything Noah Smith says. He has offended me plenty of times, but he's right about this. www.noahpinion.blog/p/the-bluesk...

I've heard people complain about Manchester's weather all my life, and now I get it. Not just wind and rain, but the extreme unpredictability. Apple's weather app is just making wild guesses an hour into the future, and its comical false precision is never more comical than here.

After defeating the man in hand to hand combat, the centaur scratches his head affectionately. These replicas from the Elgin Marbles in the Manchester Art Gallery are a wee bit comical out of context. (The originals, from the Acropolis in Athens, are still in the British museum.)

Many old British rail stations have original lovingly painted maps of the first commercial railways, like this one in Manchester Victoria. However, I am not sure what the Manchester detail is trying to tell me.

Traveling in the UK I'm struck by rare moments when it looks just like America. Surface parking in Manchester decorated to signify Chinatown: pagoda, screens, bamboo. Exactly what an American city would do here.

A simple idea is often better than a complicated one, even if the latter is easier to patent.

Did I get all of Britain's main architectural styles in one photo here? Exchange Square, Manchester.

What would happen to England if train ticket prices were set by someone who wants lots of people to ride trains? I once had an empty car to myself for £80 and thought: This could have been 40 people each paying £2. Instead, those people are on competing buses on the motorway.

Important discovery about British trains: if you need to buy your ticket in the station for a last-minute trip, always find a human ticket agent. Their prices are lower than what the machines will charge. What's more, they're actually pleasant to deal with.

This sentence is from a @taylorgriggs.bsky.social story on Oregon's transportation bill, but I bet people in every US state will think it's about them.

Good example of how blue-state Democrats can lose the narrative even when they have all the power: the Oregon transportation bill, which is needed to prevent disastrous cuts in both road maintenance and public transit statewide, and whose transit element has already been watered down.

Interesting gap in attitudes toward free buses in New York City, depending on whether you ask (a) people "support" the idea or (b) if "NYC should do this". I think I understand. We can support an idea in the abstract while knowing this isn't the time to do it. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/10/u...