Isn't vibe-based politics the natural end of post-mass parties and low-engagement politics? Isn't this what the media and the "politics as opinion polling" have been working toward since the 1990s? We live in an era of ideologically shallow masses and deeply ideologized elites, don't we?

One cannot fully understand the Italian urban planning discourse of the last 70 years without looking at that map and knowing what "dissesto idrogeologico" means. And how 1966, the year of the "urbanistic disasters", the floodings in Florence and the landslide of Agrigento was a turning point.

Very excited to say that the stars have aligned and NYU Marron/Transit Costs Project have landed a grant that will fund a second edition of Momentum, which will apply the high-throughput framework to major regional rail networks beyond the NY area. Our three big new cases: - NJT - SEPTA - METRA

From a Diab & El-Geneidy 2015 paper: Just moving stops far-side and removing the right-turn/stop conflict could save up to 8.7% of running times on line 165 in Montréal, equivalent to adding 7-9 trips per weekday per direction for free We leave so much on the table. tram.mcgill.ca/Research/Pub...

I guess today Toronto won the day. Having these issues during ypur first winter, fine. During your second winter, not good but ok. On your third winter, hell no. What is it with the Canadian transit industry forgetting that winter exists?

The architecture firm UNStudio won the competition for the design of the metro stations of Turin's upcoming second metro line M2. www.comune.torino.it/novita/notiz...

>You'll vote the LPC forever to stop the CPC God knows how much I came to hate first-past-the-post electoral systems.

Do you folks know any other application of Curitiba's "sistema trinário de vias", i.e. a 'growth corridor' structured around a BRT/+ local circulation boulevard in the middle and bounded by one-way arterials on each side?

One of my new favourite example of "maybe buses/streetcars stop too often" is line 93 - Jean Talon westbound that stops twice within the footprint of d'Iberville station, two blocks apart, and then stops again one block further because... who knows

New level of design requirement absurdity here 👇 And then people ask why things cost so much..

The Cirenaica neighbourhood in Bologna, developed as a working-class area during the first three decades of the 20th century, is an interesting example of how the principle of "environmental areas" is applied deliberately even when a full through grid could be established

Find someone who lives you as much as contemporary tram designers in Italy loves to overinterpret the UNI-FER definition of "metrotranvia" and unnecessarily fence off their entire right-of-way, achieving both higher capex, higher opex and total ugliness. That's talent. (Bergamo, T2, u/c)

Google earth has recently updated the 3D images for Bologna and now you can see the tram <3 So cool.

I find it pretty wild that Eugene BRT's designers could get away with an alternate-direction contraflow bus lane with so many driveways and small streets just managed with stops and a bunch of "look both ways" road signs. When you want, you can, I guess.

To add some perspective to the free bus debate, these are the opex per pessamger trip of different modes in the Greater Montréal area from an STM presentation. The metro has by far the lowest unit opex, while buses can be up to 10x more expensive in the case of suburban ones (Exo bus)

In Turin, the multiway boulevard typology known as "corso" is a dominant feature of the city's urbanism. The side access roads provide parking, collect flows from local streets, and sometimes provide for an indirect left turn. Curbside transit lanes run undisturbed from right turns and curb access.

-11 C Sunny No wind Winter perfection.

Une chose que j'ai malheureusement pris du temps à comprendre est que, au Québec, les besoins des urbains sont complètement évacués du débat politique. Le système de vote uninominal par comté et la structure de l'offre politique fait en sorte qu'on est rayé de la carte.

Paris pedestrian refuge and traffic islands markers. Almost the same design as today's The permanence of place-specific street design elements over time is a very interesting phenomenon. It makes the case for road engineering as a more place-bound "craft" rather than a "hard" STEM science.

It's not like they had 15 years to work on it, right? I guess the budget was too tight...

During the winter Olympics, Trenord is going to step up service to out-of-town venues, including a direct half-hourly takt between Milan and Tirano with service well into the late night/early morning. Quite a feat for Italy where, apart from a few busy corridors, late evening/night service is meh

Reading the minutes and final report of a Conference of Parties (Conferenza dei Servizi), the project permitting procedure introduced in Italian administrative law in 1990, is very instructive about some dynamics of the bureaucracy A couple of funny examples from a trolleybus project in Bologna

Let's do this for Rome which, being a sort of rushed makeshift capital never really had an embassies area, so they are scattered around the city.

"State Capacity" is when the govt is able to closely monitor the construction market and issue detailed sectoral indexes that can be used to escalate contracts based on actual market conditions instead of using core inflation of gross aggregate construction indexes www.insee.fr/fr/statistiq...

If you want to better understand the unfolding of the Western alliance we are experiencing, I really suggest reading Alfred Memmi's "Dependence: A Sketch for a Portrait of the Dependent." It's a deep reflection of the condition of "being dependent," which is relevant to the US-allies relationship

A recent casual conversation with someone who worked in a major transit project in Canada: "Dealing with CN or CP is a nightmare, they don't care, they come at the table and clearly tell you: 'you are worth nothing, because they were there before the Confederation even existed'"

A few days ago an administrative tribunal invalidated the generalized 30 km/h limit established by the city of Bologna. The ruling regards the method used by the city, a single ordinance covering the whole city rather than a street-by-street evaluation as demanded by the road code.

The ICE "brand" has become so toxic that even Meloni's government is rushing to deny or play down the possibility of the presence of ICE agents in Italy as security detail of US athletes and dignitaries for the Winter Olympics. www.lastampa.it/sport/specia...

"It is rare in Canadian architecture for a building to embrace colour." This piece by @alexbozikovic.bsky.social made me think about the movie "Universal Language" and how well it depicted that particular characteristic of a certain Canadian architecture that I call "beigeness"

Very conforting to think that Québec provincial politics is going to revolve around the debate about a referendum nobody wants because voters are fed up with the CAQ and PLQ is a scandal-addicted party, which will result in the PQ misunderstanding it for support for independence.

The one thing Québec gets better than anyone else.

During the years of the first Berlusconi government, the news of both the public broadcaster RAI and of Mediaset, owned by Berlusconi himself, specialized in a news format called "sandwich": xx secs of "the govt says", xx secs of "the opposition parties says", xx of "majority parties says"

Fun fact: many Italians (including me in the past) believe that it can't snow when temperatures are way below zero. It's only when I came in QC that I realized it was a myth.

Last week two lines reopened in Italy after long closures: the Pustertal line, which undergo extensive modernization of stations, OHLE replacement and works for the new Y connection to the Brenner line; the Isernia-Campobasso line which was (still partially) electrified and track-renewed.

Today the northern rail access into Milan's Malpensa airport was inaugurated. Initially, only one of the two half-hourly Regio-Express serving the airport (formerly the Malpensa Express) has been extended to Gallarate.

A country that has a lot of stations in different locations has apparently reached a conclusion on that matter: youtu.be/mavBKTue0IA?...

That's a good argument, but as a person who think that we do not need to reanalyse every planning problem from first principles but rather look at what others did, I think that the fact that a wide majority of HSR systems worldwide has near-CBD stations tell us something.

Milan's ATM published a new map of the metro + linee S for the urban area. It's way better than the previous one and one of the best in Italy (in truth, a very low bar to clear...)

It's nice to see that certain things remain unchanged a century apart 🫠 Toronto please, never change.

New pastime: fire-safety-spotting.

Thos is true,.but for doing this you need a framework to do track sharing with Exo (no room to add separate tracks) and you also need funding to fully modernize Exo's St-Jerôme with high-performance EMU, stations with level boarding and full electrification even oitside the shared corridor.

Trump demands Carney give him his standing ovation from Davos

It's interesting that grade separation in urban contexts was essentially achieved in many cities throughout the developed world by WWII, but by the 1960s the grade separation effort was de facto almost abandoned in North America but continued elsewhere.

With the little guys or without the little guys. Which one is better?

The United States' president lashes out at historic allies, threatens Canada's prime minister, reiterates he's going to get Greenland one way or another, etc. One of the most important politicians of the opposition party: "it was boring" I'm speechless.

Where is transit expansion happening around the world? Basically everywhere! Brand new on The Transport Politic: The hundreds of metro, light rail, bus, & aerial tram projects planned to open in 2026. 🛤️ 🚋 🚌 www.thetransportpolitic.com/2026/01/20/t...

new acquisition

My understanding of the current political moment in Italy is that Meloni has been able to intercept the conservative petit-bourgeoise voting block that after the collapse of the postwar political order in 1992-93 first moved to Berlusoni, then erred home-less from Renzi to 5-star, to the Leaugue.

How many months away are we from a Rubio-Lavrov pact to stab in the back and carve out pieces of Europe?

The sort of NIMBYism I can get along: a multi-story parking was planned atop this existing parking in Bologna as part of the tramway works to "compensate" for the on-street one lost along the corridor. It was NIMBYed by the neighbours and the city decided to drop it, saving several millions.