save a life, toll a car

New NBER paper finds that the congestion zone in NYC sped up emergency responses by over a minute - about 5-6%. Great stuff! www.nber.org/papers/w35414

Children love trains and bikes because their hearts are pure and uncorrupted by the auto industry.

IDOT has awarded the NITA consultant contract to Boston Consulting Group

literally one day apart. goldfish would scoff at this lack of object permanence

This shit is awful and unacceptable. What a malevolent, truly evil act. This month most of all, be unapologetically proud of who you are. Fuck the haters. open.substack.com/pub/petebutt...

Happy Juneteenth, may we all be liberated

We were out last night and took some photos at the jam and vigil ride for Riley O'Neil (hosted by @bikegridnow.org), a CDOT employee who spent his life working to make biking safer in Chicago, and was killed in a crash in Bridgeport on Friday June, 5th. Rest in Peace, Riley.

It is so fun! Join us! It’s you and hundreds of your closest friends and colleagues who all love talking about the same stuff.

As a reminder, Pulte is the guy who goes through the mortgages of Trump’s enemies, looking for mistakes, which he then uses as a basis to refer them for criminal prosecution. See, e.g.: Letitia James

Happy NITA day!

The winters are in fact worth it.

Maya Polsky's huge co-op apartment at 199 East Lake Shore Drive is up for sale, and it is without exaggeration one of the wildest homes I've ever seen: www.trulia.com/home/199-e-l...

Cult of personality watch

This is when I started to feel my spirit leave my body.

Get outside! Ride a bike! Glorious day to be a Chicagoan.

What in the actual fuck

👀👀👀👀

I’m really stating to think that this guy did not deserve the inaugural FIFA Peace Prize

This is an actual post. This is not funny. This is beyond desperate. This is a deeply unwell man who doesn’t belong anywhere near the levers of power. Every member of his cabinet and Congress is complicit in not demanding his removal now.

you, a naive fool: i do believe there are some things the nytimes won’t both sides the nytimes:

Overheard next to the Chicago water tower from a very earnest ~7 year old: “But did the cow survive!?”

Transit ridership in the Paris region is now 5% higher than it was in the pre-Covid period, as car traffic along the Paris ring highway & within the center city is 15 to 20% lower than pre-Covid. www.institutparisregion.fr/mobilite-et-...

"Good government" is a limited frame in electoral politics, often used to obscure untidy politicking beneath a technocratic sheen, but Kaegi and his team are close to the platonic ideal of a good government team. They truly want their office to reflect best practices, and they believe in that work.

This is insane.

Shameless plug - if you want something to do in Chicago this weekend, come hear me sing! Chicago Chorale will be singing “A Peaceable Kingdom” and other masterworks Saturday night in Lincoln Park and Sunday afternoon in Hyde Park. No green beer involved. DM me for a discount code!

new mcmansion hell to cleanse the horrors: mcmansionhell.com/post/8099372...

The cherry on top of this story is “please press uno” - you gotta listen to it

Callers to Washington state’s driver’s license agency who select automated service in Spanish are instead hearing an AI voice speaking English with a strong Spanish accent.

Lovely side effect of taking transit - sometimes you run into friends and get a chance to catch up!

Everyone loves a good false spring. Beautiful day to be outside in Chicago!

In Phoenix/Scottsdale for the weekend - there are Waymos *everywhere*. And they are totally normal/unremarkable. Feels like this is what everywhere else will be experiencing in a few years (or months in some cases?). Maybe we should do some proactive work to prepare for that!

the end result of knowing basic things about urban planning is reacting to every news story by just constantly wanting to grab people by the collar while shaking them and shouting "do you have any idea how many Americans die in car crashes every year???"

Fantastic article on the perils of financializing everything. And not from the NYT columnist I would expect. www.nytimes.com/2026/02/06/o...

‘Lord Of The Rings’ Reader Can’t Believe How Long It Taking Sam And Frodo To Fuck https://theonion.com/lord-of-the-rings-reader-cant-believe-how-long-it-taking-sam-and-frodo-to-fuck/

This week’s episode of This American Life features 911 calls from the people being terrorized, assaulted, and seized by ICE. It will ruin your day. You should listen to it anyway. We can’t look away from what is happening. www.thisamericanlife.org/880/what-is-...

This is not de-escalation, for anyone who still thought that was a thing.

It *is* happening here. Well past the “could never” stage. Bleak, powerful, and critical journalism. Support it. Subscribe to publications you want to see continue this work.

Abolish ICE. Impeach Trump. No kings.

The US government should be focusing on the fact that half the country is about to be overwhelmed by a debilitating ice and snow storm. Yet here we are instead, with the government’s focus being on killing random people in the street

again my heart just breaks for this person, beaten and executed on the street for trying to defend their community, and for the people of Minneapolis, who have just been targeted for this endless dehumanization and brutalization just because of who they are & the inclusivity the city represents

Thoughts from a great long weekend in Mexico City: - What an incredible place! So alive. - The transit infrastructure is impressive and *so* well-used. - Metro tickets were 5 pesos - same as my last visit 8 years ago. So cheap! Perhaps too cheap for the investments they could make instead. 1/

I try to avoid hyperbole when it comes to Trump policies, but this is absolutely frickin’ insane—on about eleventy different levels. Massive, systemic Fourth Amendment violations because … reasons.

lake forever problems for now (weird "night mode" edition)

Video message from Federal Reserve Chair Jerome H. Powell: www.youtube.com/watch?v=KckG... www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/s...

Change in DoT staffing levels by agency since the start of ‘25. I do not think it’s been widely acknowledged how FHWA has been hallowed out.

You and your wife drop your 6-year-old off at school. You just moved here. You see ICE terrorizing your new neighbors. You film them, as is your legal right. Your wife complies with orders. She is then shot in the head. You still have to pick up your child later today. This could be you.