This is a phenomenal example of how people advocating for the "character of the neighborhood" are often actually advocating to *change* the character to be less dense and more suburban. Which, if you go play with the city's n'hood GIS explorer, is what has happened all over Boston!

Everything wrong with everything housing in a nutshell: “Nearby residents who opposed the proposal cited all the variances the proposal needed…” to build housing identical to that surrounding it

Decatur, Illinois Pop: 87,236 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decatur,_Illinois Images: https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=107913948 https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=107905604 https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=107913357

New CT railcars look nice (though the seats look narrow), and kudos to CT for buying what looks like a relatively off-the-shelf Euro product with state $$, but it's pretty funny to see these marketed as "European-style" when they're not MUs. www.nbcconnecticut.com/news/local/s...

Beware the beached floof whale, the tummy is trap

Experimenting with using some cork roadbed I had laying around to level out between Unitrack in the yard and reduce the amount of scenery mortar I need to use. Note the wide variety of small objects holding down the cork while the glue dries.

Answer: no

Is SEPTA buying the EMUs just retired from the Deux-Montagnes line? www.phillyvoice.com/septa-region...

Knowing things about trains in Iowa means realizing how much coal mining used to go on there, even though it's not what the state is known for (map from Rail Guide)

The names on the Mamdani transition teams in housing and transportation are...impressive?

Fascinating! This accords with my prior that the people most likely to experience mobility isolation are living in big-lot SFHs in suburbia or rural areas--but beware of findings that reinforce priors :-). Looking forward to reading the paper.

Walter Payton uses a paper transfer to ride public transit on the 1979 RTA commercial.

The idea that Schenectady is the hardest place name to pronounce in New York is objectively false. It's basically spelled phonetically! Valatie or Skaneateles, though... secretnyc.co/hardest-town...

"After nearly a decade as an attorney representing community associations, I entered city government as a zoning believer. I quickly lost my faith." From the outgoing director of Baltimore's zoning appeals board. www.baltimorebrew.com/2025/11/24/b...

I think this is mostly San Francisco finally shrugging off the pandemic, but it is *really* funny that rent prices in San Francisco shot up *immediately* after the city banned RealPage and other algorithmic price setting software. My pre trends are incredible!

For decades, China's only electrified suburban railway was a 300km-system in Fushun, an industrial city of a little over a million in Liaoning province. I wrote a little about it: kaptrice.blogspot.com/2025/11/the-...

Brightline October numbers are out, a significant jump following the rollout of a new schedule. Oct ’25: 260,370, up 20% y/y Sept. '25: 227,851 Aug: 252,425 July: 255,472 June: 254,627 May: 256,633 April: 243,285 March: 280,003 Feb: 247,083 Jan: 266,346 Dec '24: 264,201 Nov: 246,563 Oct: 217,735

I've had zero to do with it other than watching as an Orange Line rider, but rapid implementation of dropbacks on the OL is one of the coolest things I've seen in my time at the MBTA. From a process improvement exploration project to full-bore implementation in just a few months.

Good news: Congress is poised to prevent Trump from ending federal transit support. "Asked whether he wanted to eliminate the mass transit account, [House Transportation Chair] Graves responded, 'No...it's been there for 40 years, and I want this to be a bipartisan bill...I'm just not interested."

The US continues to lose manufacturing jobs—payrolls are down 94k over the last year, & another 6k jobs were lost in September Transportation (especially auto manufacturing) and electronics/electrical manufacturing are the biggest losers, but almost no subsectors are doing well

I actually think the salient point about residential choices is that a huge part of the way Americans have gotten used to dealing with cost tradeoffs is by externalizing them on others or society as a whole, and that's what the suburbs specialize in offering

Cab ride video from an adorable narrow-gauge Swiss interurban/tram/S-Bahn line? Yes please. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wohlen%... www.youtube.com/watch?v=RfUk...

First experiment with using some kind of paste or mortar to do layout scenery. This is Busch "scenery mortar," colored with some acrylic craft paint. Picked up for cheap; it'll also get a top coat and some ballast/yard cinders on top

Developers openly talking about adding “aggressively priced product farther out from the employment core” – as explicit of an admission as any of a traffic time bomb – while we continue to allow NIMBYs to routinely derail any notable amount of transit-oriented apartments in the name of “congestion”

Hard to see this as anything other than a regional policy failure. If the only place in the six-county region where first-time homebuyers can afford to buy a home is outside the six-county region, we aren’t adding enough supply in the urban (or suburban) core. www.chicagobusiness.com/residential-...

I once when living in Albany had a social media interaction with a suburban who insisted that the priority should be to "Make Albany easy to use," by which he meant tear down buildings for roads and parking

Major announcement in just-posted board documents: DC's Metro is moving fast toward automation. Over 15 years, Metro plans full automation & platform screen doors, which the agency says will improve safety, reliability, & travel times—at reduced costs. www.wmata.com/about/board/...

New data shows that since @mayoroflondon.bsky.social launched the Direct Vision Standard lorry safety scheme in London we've seen: 📉a 50% fall in people killed & seriously injured by HGVs ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️six fewer fatalities every year tinyurl.com/j3475ua3

"Giant trash mountain with ballfields and tall native grasses" makes Millenium Park the most Midwestern-coded part of Boston

Gusty afternoon walk around Millennium Park, West Roxbury

One up, one down, all sleepy

Almost everywhere in the City of Toronto has fewer people that it did 50 years ago

Asserting as fact that "top-down investments" are what drives gentrification is...a choice

This is really, really good.

You really don't need to look for complicated answers to the housing problem. It's right there.

People in my "progressive" neighborhood NIMBY'd a *senior affordable housing development* into reducing its units from 71 to 41. Just an absolute moral travesty. (Rogerson/Beaufort project in JP)

The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law passed 4 years ago. In new research @urbaninstitute.bsky.social we study its effects. US transport spending increased by 30%, but: —Funding for non-highway projects flatlined —Construction cost increases resulted in no actual increase in infrastructure

A developer is offering to do 1/3 more affordable units than required—and 130% more than have been produced in the 18 year history of Evanston’s policy—for zero actual budget outlay from the city, and Council is saying do less

The small town industry scene is starting to really come together

Really interesting analysis from @zyudhishthu.bsky.social about how building housing, in general, benefits the ability of families to live in a city. pencillingout.substack.com/p/chicagos-d...

Fighters vs institutionalists is one of the most important axes for understanding macro or micro politics and there's never been a worse time to be an uncritical institutionalist.

Mad respect for these 🔥🔥🔥YIMBY comments by my sister-in-law's dad about the Solano Ave. rezoning in Berkeley. www.berkeleyside.org/2025/11/07/b...

Let me distract you from bad politics with a really cool Conrail-themed garden railroad www.facebook.com/share/1H8kXm...

RIF Update: The proposed appropriations legislation would invalidate RIFs conducted between 10/1/25 and 1/30/26. (Section 120). It does not include any provisions invalidating RIFs pre-10/1/25 or preventing future RIFs conducted after 1/30/26. www.appropriations.senate.gov/imo/media/do...

The long awaited Rapido RDC is here!

This aligns with my experience talking to a lot of staff at environmental organizations who understand the necessity for land use and permitting reform but can't bring along senior leadership or donors. bsky.app/profile/robi...

I...what?

The fact that Parks and Rec's depiction of public meetings is 1,000% accurate really undermines a lot of dogma and that breaks brains

Riders want one thing and it's [25kv 60hz electric humming sounds]

Multiple Commuter Rail schemes at North Station this morning