olong

Interesting article about how India’s new American-style highways aren’t peeling trucks away from the old roads because, essentially, there isn’t enough sprawl infrastructure (mechanics, rest stops) to support trucking www.bloomberg.com/features/202...

You know the alternative is extremely fucking bad when the *YIMBYs* are saying to vote for Ben Allen.

There's no world where the central valley sprawl builders would see eye to eye with Greenbelt Alliance, their goals are directly opposed. But the fact that they made it an anti-HSR measure shows what idiots they are. They could've built a broader coalition with a prop that wasn't so MAGA chud coded.

You hear a lot of about how important constituent services are for winning elections. I'm very politically engaged person and I've never gone to a politician for help on a personal problem, and I don't know anyone who has either. Are constituent services really used so widely to affect elections?

Another win for the farebox fandom: August saw 29,457 fare checks, similar to the 32k in July. ~1/3 of these were on the northern A Line, where Metro DPS did over 10k fare checks and issued 735😮citations in August, after an initial two week warning period in Jul/Aug. 🎉🙌🎊

First E line fare inspection in ever. 11pm in DTLA. Officer poked in her head from the platform for 5 seconds, a single passenger (our self-appointed spiritual leader) produced a single tap card for visual inspection as a sort of Passover door marking, and we proceeded on.

D LINE: From Friday, Oct 23 through Sunday, Nov 1, Wilshire/La Brea, Wilshire/Fairfax, and Wilshire/La Cienega stations will be closed due to electrical infrastructure maintenance work. Trains will operate only between Union Station and Wilshire/Western Station.

My count is: Barger - GOP Spiegel - GOP Trembley - GOP McCallon - GOP Marquez - GOP Nguyen - GOP (?) Berkson - ? Solis - Dem Sandoval - Dem Chaffee - Dem So good question as to why a blue region lets Republicans run our regional transit system.

The number of parameters that Portland TriMet's trip planner is willing to optimize is pretty amazing.

This is so embarrassing for the Metrolink board that I couldn’t see a single member that wants to face the public in Los Angeles. Every single one of them that I could see is going to phone it in from their home or their local city hall.

RETVRN

Nobody at all looks at the big picture. One of the pitfalls of government by lawsuit.

Steel bollards for terrorist attacks that almost never happen, plastic posts for bicyclists who get hit every day.

basically the size of a set of plans! Some of the urban blocks of Sanborn maps get really detailed. See this one from San Francisco for example library.sfgenealogy.org/sanborn/1899...

Their next idea is going to be to have random celebrities act as sidewalk sheds and too-closely-spaced bollards

I wasn't even watching this last night because I was so sure it would be going to the Governor's desk. @gavinnewsom.bsky.social call a special session to force a concurrence vote!

Seattle drivers immediately stopped for me at an unmarked uncontrolled crossing... transportation mecca man, I didn't even remember this was a thing that can happen at first

First ride on Sound transit and there's actually fare enforcement... a cruel attack on my LA Metro traditional folkways

Despite being absolutely crawling with station ambassadors, fare evasion is still rampant. As I was exiting at Pershing Square, a guy was telling some tourists who had their credit cards out to tap, “no no no you don’t need to tap it,” then ushered them through the gate that opened for me.

So when Bass, with an almost unimaginable tone-deafness, bragged tonight that Sherman Oaks Homeowners Assn members have her cell number, I must point out that we have evidence direct from her mouth on how these calls influence her. In January, while public comment was ongoing in the metro board-

The sidewalks in Barcelona are so wide that utilities are usually buried under them rather than in the street. As a result, it’s incredibly rare for a street or sidewalk to be completely closed due to construction.

I got interviewed for this story, and it's a great read. As Kavish Harjai clearly lays out, free fares on Metro are a dead end gimmick policy that Metro already thoroughly examined and discarded. We don't have to stand by and let Karen Bass rehash this whole thing for campaign purposes.

Having lived in Ktown for a few years, it's a real problem. The most mind-boggling thing for me is that if my gf stayed overnight, she had to find street parking because *no one rents parking off-street overnight*! It seems like some private garages in the area could make a killing, but nah.

THR covers @nickandert.bsky.social covering the LAX people mover drama

that’s a lot of ads

@stephenjacobsmith.com When they redid the Greely Square pedestrian plaza on Broadway, they actually built the pavers up level with the sidewalk. Looks good.

We finally got covered by the LA Times!!! Go watch Brian and Nimesh make the case for fare enforcement on LA Metro. And thanks to reporter Tom Carroll for reaching out in the first place. www.instagram.com/reel/DbMemTe...

Color me skeptical about Mayor Karen Bass' Metro priorities - a sort of promise-almost-nothing version of Mamdani's fast&free buses. Bass has not made Metro, especially Metro transit riders, a priority for 3.5 years. Yesterday's speech mostly signals continuation of that inaction.

From @erikyesayan.bsky.social on yet another law:

Covered by the K Line North planned stop. But yes, private transit and (pre-SB 79) zoning laws are at the very edge of readable into the law: escholarship.org/uc/item/7g41...

Ciclavia's loneliest booth

Today, LA Metro DPS released their security update and it turns out, like people have been observing, there are some fare checks happening. It went from ~4k in March to ~19k in April. Here's that on the graph. It's basically invisible because before 2018, LA Metro used to do ~350k a month.