I started living near the New Haven Line when I was 6 and I can't remember a time when there weren't bridge plates in use frequently. What does the concept of "state of good repair" mean if the rider and operational experience is this consistently degraded?

The frustrating thing about agency structure is that there's very little connection between it and results. Sometimes obviously flawed structures still lead to great projects and service, and no "good" structure guarantees good transit. People and political culture matter much more.

Let’s discuss an org called Firefighter Air Coalition (FAC) and how it reflects a contrived safety-need-to-profitable-monopoly pipeline common in fire code. fFAC’s address? PyroChem, a Johnson Controls subsidiary. JCI happens to make the very expensive FARS system this "nonprofit" advocates for.

It’s very funny that Massachusetts two senate candidates are big transit and rail boosters, but meanwhile the state can’t even bring itself to electrify the fairmont line or buy electric multiple units. Deep State in action!

WHY? Why do we want to think outside the box? Why not just say "go to Europe and Japan and figure out what is best there and just do that?" www.railwaygazette.com/suburban-com...

Here’s an idea for Zohran Mamdani to create more jobs in NYC: he could ask Julie Menin and City Council to relegalize the construction of new hotels, which Bill de Blasio banned citywide as a parting gift to the hotel workers union on his way out of office in 2021 www.nytimes.com/2026/06/02/n...

We avoided closing the street for 2-3 months twice and as a result you get to stand on an escalator for an extra 3 minutes every time you use this station. Ignore the fact that’s a whole day wasted per person each year if this was a daily weekday commute

If you look at the world, especially the US, we're desperately in need of better design, but design is not apps with luxury aesthetics. It's functional, ethical, sustainable, enjoyable systems, services, and products. Getting that stuff funded and facilitating the decision-making is the work.

E24-24, my proposal to raise the IBC’s single-stair apartment building height limit from three stories to four, has passed the final membership vote, and will now officially make it into the 2027 IBC 🎉

Pedestrian Observations: Meme Weeding: Regular Funding pedestrianobservations.com/2026/05/28/m...

It’s on Threads, so grain of salt, but hundreds of transit normies here complaining about the loss of weekly/monthly MTA passes & lack of visibility into charges w OMNY And I agree. Fare-capping is great (tho much less so when it’s so hard to keep track of your balance) but WE NEED THE MONTHLY BACK

Italy needs to get rid of its stub end terminal stations for reasons of life expectancy. Every time an intercity train stops to reverse direction in one it's a 10 minute smoke break for a lot of people.

Fascinating finding. Railways around Tokyo rely on timed overtakes to provide exp and local service on 2 tk lines. These lines tend to have very high reliability (>95% <5m late), but there's apparently a *lot* of on-the-fly adjustment. More than 20% of overtakes do not take place where scheduled!

Most of you hate Nader the most for costing Gore Florida. I hate him more for killing New Deal Liberalism with a million paper cuts via Heckler’s Veto and red tape to permitting. We are not the same.

the sudden "nobody has to pay taxes" thing with even fairly progressive dems wreaks of klein/shor/eggy brainworms that has somehow merged with mmt/linux guy brainworms

A POSITIVE THOUGHT FOR TODAY Honestly, voting is like taking a bus. If there isn't one going exactly to your destination, you don't stay at home and sulk—you take the one going closest to where you want to be. We can vote better than they can cheat.

crux of the entire piece and it's just casually dropped not critically examined.

This is why the Democrats' current obsession with tax cuts is so dangerous. They're paving the way for more extreme proposals like ending progressive taxation altogether. Again, we don't need "Republican lite." We need a party that affirms that paying for the things government does is good.

Last year intra-city ridership topped 25% of all LIRR travel for the first time. We should stop talking like LIRR is only for wealthy Long Islanders. Need to cut down on costs so we can continue to drive fares lower for everyone and further grow ridership both in New York City and on Long Island.

29 stories, 373 ft. tall, 625,000 sq. ft. going up in Sunset Park – all without a tower crane. NYC forces contractors to build in a deeply expensive, slow, and unsafe way. newyorkyimby.com/2026/05/497-...

The ripest speedup fruit to pick on the NEC right now has to be between Newark and New York. It's getting work done on it, but other segments are too without trains going half the speed the ROW allows. That railroad is also probably in the best shape it's been in since I've been alive.

Hoy algo un poco distinto: Por qué el urbanismo hace que un país tan rico como Estados Unidos dé la sensación de ser tan pobre. www.4freedoms.es/p/la-ciudad-...

For once, I'm with Nathan Robinson. www.currentaffairs.org/news/why-the...

Why does America have so many empty storefronts? Maybe we started this century with too many and zoning codes keep demanding more?

Irony of these figures is that town centers of small and mid-sized towns in countries like the Netherlands, France, and Germany are wildly more vibrant & retail-packed than those of most US cities. Difference at play is that US & Canada have far more huge big boxes & fewer small-scale retailers.

Why is this overtime? Why isn't this just... part of the job?

The Abundance folks catch a lot of flack for the imagery of flying cars, and utopia and yadda yadda. But at its core is a pretty basic RETVRN premise: Government should be able to build things; politicians should be able to deliver the reward — not just take the arrows — for housing and transit.

This passed today :) Up to eight stories, actually.

this is catastrophically untrue, and the fact that it's even come close to picking up currency on the left is a complete disaster for leftist governance. if you expropriated the entire wealth of every billionaire in the country, you could pay for the federal government for one year. that's it.

. @aoc.bsky.social responds to this trend: "BOOOOO" "This race to try to see who can be exempt from participating in society is not a conversation that I'm interested in," she tells me, calling it an uninspiring message. "I'm a Great Society Democrat, and I believe in building that together."

About 20 years ago, lighting was the single largest use of electricity in American homes. But energy-efficient lightbulbs has shrunk the category to sixth place! www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

Philly's precipitous decline of biotech VC share despite a huge regional talent pool suggests that the continued decentralization of labs due to high business taxes is a prime contributor. We don't have another industry to save us unlike Seattle!

Council Speaker Menin is proposing to allow single-stair buildings up to eight stories on narrow lots. She would also get rid of the requirement for a trash room on every floor www.nydailynews.com/2026/04/24/n...

Well, I guess there's a second reason to do Penn Station discourse today, and that's the new RPA report on through-running, which is bad. And I think this schematic nicely highlights how obtuse the RPA is being. Because, obfuscating the existence of both Jamaica and THE MAIN LINE is a choice.

@rpa.org You guys need to show your work on why passengers getting off putative through-running trains need 6 minutes *before any boarding riders are allowed on the platform* when we have the platforms and stairs being fine for two-way flow way before that. github.com/effective-tr...

I want to know why @rpa.org thinks passengers need 5 minutes to get off a *train* when our simulation finds they can clear the *train and platform* in less time than that--and that two-way flow on platforms and stairwells is fine. github.com/effective-tr...

Train Station Benches Labeled "Remove" Inside a Cage MTA, mixed media, 2026

Is it too soon to ask whether these elevators will be designed with the future 2nd Ave Subway extension in mind? What if Columbia and the MTA spend tens of millions of dollars for elevators here, only to have to knock them down and rebuild them in the context of a new underground Q station?

🧠 Fluid ops, so Glenbrook flyover and turnback tracks 🧠🧠🧠🧠 CANOPY 🤤

lmao neither Gillibrand nor Schumer are on here relative to baseline partisanship NY might have the worst democratic senators in the country

Unironically move the Final to Philly at this point

It’s dumber than you think; the exits *are* numbered—with tiny placards!

New York City Council’s main policy goal with regards to supermarkets is to keep Walmart out of the city so that Gristedes can stay in business and John Catsimatidis can keep stealing New Yorkers’ money to donate to Donald Trump. These people will help anybody but their constituents.

We can take advantage of MTA's modern signaling and adopt the global norm if we adopt one-person train operation. We have the chance to make this happen in Albany. https://www.nydailynews.com/2026/04/01/groups-urge-albany-reject-nyc-transit-unions-2-person-subway-crew-push/

Caltrain peninsula 🤝 SEPTA Paoli-Thorndale line Horrific office sprawl oriented away from the single wealthiest transit corridor

In Mountain View this morning and wandering why we don’t have SB 79 for office space near transit. Because the auto-centric job dispersal continues in spite of rail electrification.

Boy, what a terrible headline. We *need* the wealthy to participate in public services. If only poor people ride the bus, then rich people won't wield their power in support of public transit or, worse, will wield their power *against* it.

Janeese Lewis George, GGWash's pick for DC mayor, outlines her plan to build more housing in the District.