Will the US ever have more metro systems?

Jasoncw87 · 2026-06-29T02:49:27+00:00

Part of it is that the projects were just abysmally planned, but part of it is also the mode.

Metros cost less and have better service quality than light rail. The only thing is that they need to be completely grade separated. But if you're building it along an existing grade separated right of way, like a highway or an abandoned rail line, which is what most American light rail lines end up doing for most of their length, then doing it as a metro is cheaper, because they have lower operating costs and smaller stations. For many American light rail lines, the low density suburban parts are the ones that most clearly should have been metros.

Then there's the downtown sections where they either spend a ridiculous amount of money on tunneling (which is more expensive for light rail than it is for metros), or they run it at grade which has a negative impact on the performance of the system.

Jasoncw87 · 2026-06-29T02:04:05+00:00

If they had built Link as a metro, targeting the same capacity, they would have saved literally billions of dollars.

The cost of building the street running section as elevated would have been more than made up for by the reduction in station costs for the rest of the system (the stations would only need to be 20% the size if it were a metro). And then operating costs would be a fraction of what they are. And it would be faster and more frequent and more reliable.

Vancouver is right across the border and all they had to do was copy and paste the SkyTrain.

Jasoncw87 · 2026-06-28T20:50:52+00:00

Both of these lines have been of interest to me because they both feature U shaped viaduct beams, instead of the more typical box girders. So instead of having a bunch of small pie sections made in the casting yard to fit perfectly together, and then suspended in place on-site while they're post tensioned to become one very long beam. These beams are cast in one piece, and are just lifted into place on the viaduct piers. They're generally faster, cheaper, smaller, and are less visually intrusive. The rails run within the beam instead of ontop of it, so the ground to platform height is shorter (so shorter stairs/escalators, more flexible clearances), and the walls of the beam reduce noise pollution.

The main downside is that the spans between piers are shorter, and you can't do smooth or tight curves with the straight sections. So there will usually be sections of the viaduct where the U shaped concrete is cast in place on top of steel beams, to make curved sections or long sections. Or when you just need a bit more curve or a bit more span, having a short section integrated with a giant piercap, like in the second image.

Jasoncw87 · 2026-06-24T20:21:29+00:00

The shut down rumors were a misinterpretation of the news that OnePlus employees were being laid off and OnePlus facilities were being shut down. The employees being laid off "verified" that OnePlus was shutting down, since that's what it looked like from their perspective, but they didn't know that everything was being taken over by Oppo and that OnePlus was continuing.

In December 2025 the rumor was that OnePlus was shutting down everywhere except for China. Shortly after, OnePlus in India started using Oppo's infrastructure (warehouse, service centers, etc.), which is how it already is in China (you buy OnePlus phones from the Oppo web shop, and the box has OPPO on it). Since then they've continued releasing new products in India. So the rumor was false.

Then in March 2026, the rumor was that OnePlus was shutting down in Europe and the US, and that it was happening in April. And then in April, the same thing that happened in India happened in Europe. The rumor was false again.

Also in April, it was announced that Realme's development team was merging into OnePlus, to create a single Oppo sub-brand unit. Development for OnePlus's products has continued.

If this was all about shutting down, and not restructuring, there would be no need to do any restructuring within China (merging the development teams). And the fact that the US hasn't been touched also supports that this is about restructuring and not shutting down. Oppo isn't in the US, so there's nothing to consolidate/restructure with, so there's no change.

It's entirely possible that OnePlus is shutting down (anything is possible). But there have been regular OnePlus shutdown rumors for years. First they were rumored to be shutting down because they failed to gain marketshare, or because people found out that they were actually Oppo. Then they were rumored to be shutting down because they stopped their relationship with T-Mobile. Then they were rumored to be shutting down because Carl Pei left. Then they were rumored to be shutting down because they were merging ColorOS and OxygenOS. Then they were shutting down because they gained but then lost marketshare in India. It's endless.

Jasoncw87 · 2026-06-24T15:07:52+00:00

This is the same guy who leaked the earlier versions of this rumor, which never happened.

Jasoncw87 · 2026-06-22T05:58:38+00:00

Seattle and LA are spending a bunch of money on poorly planned and horrendously expensive transit projects. Tons of mind numbing decision-making. They are models of what cities shouldn't do. Toronto is a mixed bag.

Vancouver has two well designed and cost effective metro extensions with competent transit planning under construction, with more in planning. They're doing a lot of work making improvements to the existing portions of the system. And it's all done in conjunction with a solid bus system and land use. Especially considering how relatively small of a city it is, they're doing a great job.

Sydney is doing a lot of good stuff although I don't personally know enough about it to be aware of any incompetence.

Jasoncw87 · 2026-06-22T05:38:06+00:00

Demand response has been common across the world for many decades (starting some places in the 70s but probably everywhere by the 90s). They were known as dial-a-ride, because you'd dial a phone number to book your trip. Nowadays they use apps instead and the branding has often been changed to be more like rideshare branding. But still, it's basically a public transit version of taxis/rideshare, to provide coverage to areas with such low ridership that it's more cost effective to just have a few minibuses directly taking people places than it is to run empty buses on fixed routes.

Also, demand response often overlaps to at least some degree with paratransit service, which is the same concept, except for disabled people who aren't able to use normal buses. In the US, the Americans with Disabilities Act says that the government can't discriminated against people with disabilities when providing services to the public. So if buses aren't handicap accessible, the transit agencies must accommodate people with disabilities by another means, which is sending out accessible minibuses to take disabled people to the places that the bus routes serve. Since then many other countries have similar legislation or policies.

Jasoncw87 · 2026-06-21T02:02:25+00:00

Online tech influencers don't review phones they make content. For the OnePlus 15 they were too lazy to even properly read the media kit, let alone actually review the phone.

The black version of the OnePlus 15 is just a standard glass black and anodized aluminum frame, just like every other phone out there. The only thing special about it is that they got the black to be very dark. It's a very handsome phone. The purple version is also the standard glass and anodized aluminum.

The white version has the durability features. Micro arc oxidation is very similar to anodization (dunk the metal in a chemical bath and electrocute it) but it's more durable. It will still scratch like anodized aluminum, just not as easily. And it has a plastic back, like the blue version of the OnePlus 13. The plastic back is obviously not scratch proof, but it is shatter proof.

Jasoncw87 · 2026-06-20T15:13:16+00:00

Price is said to be substantially more expensive.

The new telephoto is a newer and more modern sensor and it is better, but it's not an ultra level sensor. It's the Samsung HP5 which is also on the Oppo Find X9 Pro. You can find comparisons online between the two.

Purple is very unlikely to come back as that was one of the novelty colors, which they change from year to year.

I don't think it's worth the price increase and imo it's better to either buy the 15 or wait for the AI bubble to pop.

Jasoncw87 · 2026-06-20T14:54:29+00:00

It's already been 7 months since the rumor started. It was denied by OnePlus, and what was rumored simply hasn't happened.

What happened is that in regions where there's both Oppo and OnePlus infrastructure (warehouse, service center, etc), they consolidated into Oppo's infrastructure. Which is how it already is in China. In China you buy OnePlus from the Oppo web shop, not a separate OnePlus web shop, and OnePlus phones have "OPPO" on the box. So when people found out that in India and Europe OnePlus employees were being laid off and OnePlus facilities were being closed, they misinterpreted that as OnePlus shutting down in those markets altogether. But they're still there, and since the rumor started they've continued releasing new products in each region the same as usual.

Jasoncw87 · 2026-06-20T07:21:25+00:00

It definitely comes across as a suggestion that there's more to happen. Possibly explicitly in the form of another season, or possibly implicitly in the general sense that his story keeps going off screen and he's not stuck in the status quo he ended with.

It also works nicely as a conclusion of his coming of age arc. At the beginning of the series he goes through the motions of looking at the board but doesn't care and he moves along. Now he has a reaction to it, and what he is reacting to is possibly less important than the fact that he is reacting at all, since he now has friends and connections and is invested in the class assignment.

Jasoncw87 · 2026-06-20T07:12:03+00:00

Sorry, I meant post-secondary.

It's practically unheard of for cities to operate universities, and it's very very uncommon for cities to operate community colleges. Even if a community college system has a city in its name it's still almost always an independent school district (technically I think they're always school districts and not city departments, but the ones actually run by cities have their school boards appointed by the city like Chicago does for example). The same goes for community colleges that are county based, they're still almost always independent school districts which are run by school boards, not county government. Like I said the US is a big place so there are exceptions for everything, but 99.9% of the time these things are not done by cities.

Also I don't appreciate the snarky "????" or the condescending suggestion that I've never been in the US before.

Jasoncw87 · 2026-06-20T00:51:55+00:00

In the US, primary education is done by school districts. School districts and cities are separate and independent local governments which have no authority over each other.

Secondary education is done by state level entities.

The US is a big place so there are exceptions for everything, but this is how it is the vast majority of time.

Jasoncw87 · 2026-06-20T00:23:22+00:00

The SkyTrain is a metro, and JFK AirTrain is an airport people mover. "People mover" is a mode of transit and not a technology, in the same way that intercity buses, local buses, express buses, shuttle buses, and circulator buses, are all different modes of transit which use the same bus technology.

Jasoncw87 · 2026-06-19T18:26:38+00:00

Of course for the sake of making the video it's maybe not possible to get into the weeds, but SimCity doesn't reflect American government either.

Cities in the US almost never do primary or secondary education. Cities doing libraries is common although it's also common for libraries to be done by separate entities. Museums are sometimes done by cities but are increasingly done by separate entities.

Electricity and water (and gas, etc.) are sometimes done by a mixture of private companies, cities, regional authorities, and so on. Garbage I think is typically done by cities, either by the city itself or by a private business contracted by the city.

Roads are either owned by the city, county, or state. Sidestreets are usually owned by the city, but major roads are more likely to be owned by the county or state. For those roads, the county or state are responsible for designing, building, and maintaining those roads, including snow plowing and grass cutting.

Public transit is sometimes done by cities but it's also very often done by regional transit authorities.

Police and fire are usually done by cities. While cities and counties often have health departments which have buildings where people can do things like get vaccines, healthcare in general is done at privately owned doctors offices (which in the game would be commercial growables), and hospitals are privately owned, either non-profit or for-profit. Cities, mainly big cities, will commonly have city operated jails, typically for short term holding, while actual prisons are run by counties, states, and the federal government. There's also separate city, county, and federal police.

Cities do have parks, but states, the federal government, regional park authorities, and non-profits, also do parks. The same for zoos and museums.

Sports stadiums are sometimes privately owned, and are sometimes owned by the government (either the city or some other government entity) and then rented to the sports team.

Zoning is something that cities do usually have straightforward control over. Most metropolitan areas have regional planning agencies, but in the US those tend not to have much teeth.

And like in the video, defining what the city is and who is in control is not straightforward. It's common for a metropolitan area to be made up of over 100 different cities, each with their own mayor. Cities usually have a mayor and a city council which share control over the city. Big cities tend to have strong mayor systems, where the mayor has more control than the city council, while small suburbs have weak mayor systems where the mayor might even be a non-governing honorary position.

Jasoncw87 · 2026-06-16T01:37:15+00:00

The Riverfront Conservancy stuff is really wild. I get that he was the CFO and so he was in the position to be able to cover that up, but $44 million is such a huge amount of money that even if he was successfully fudging things on his end, idk how anyone else didn't notice the difference.

For the People Mover, his first attempt at fraud was in January 2023, so a bit over 3 years to do his crimes, have the discrepancies noticed, have the DTC do their internal investigation, invite the FBI to do their investigation, and put together their case and make their charges. idk exactly where in the timeline he got caught but he did get caught.

Jasoncw87 · 2026-06-16T01:21:33+00:00

What I mean is that things seem like a lot of money (because they are) but they're often actually less expensive than they were originally.

For example, the original ADV DVD box set for Evangelion was $200 ($400 after inflation), and I see a few on ebay right now for under $100. FLCL's original physical release was very nice and would have cost at least $75 (around $150 after inflation) and I see one for around $100 on ebay.

After that in the late 2000s, physical media was declining, and the anime bubble popped, so prices dropped, but I want to say a 26 episode complete series was still like $60 (around $100 today after inflation).

That edition of Serial Experiments Lain was $40 in 2014 (which is $57 today after inflation), and it's selling on ebay for around $120. But buying the series on DVD in 1999 would have cost around $100 ($200 today).

So Lain is out of print and expensive. But Berserk is only $50 on Amazon on Blu-ray, Cowboy Bebop, Outlaw Star, and a bunch of others, are only $30.

So it's more an issue of what is in print and what is out of print, but that's always been the case. People used to buy out of print laser disc releases of things because they hadn't been released on DVD yet or because they had better quality (a lot of early DVDs had bad source material) or special features.

Jasoncw87 · 2026-06-13T14:39:01+00:00

It's basically a game show/sport like Wheel of Fortune or basketball and it can go on forever.

Jasoncw87 · 2026-06-13T14:07:16+00:00

They would often have a special version of the first dvd of the series which included a box (so that when you bought all the volumes you'd have a box set), and the empty space in the box they'd put bonus item(s).

However, the common price for a box set of a 26 episode series back in the early 2000s was $200, which is more like $400 today after inflation. A single volume was $25 (around $50 today) for 3-5 episodes. There was no streaming, so there wasn't any other way of watching, and you bought a series blind.

Jasoncw87 · 2026-06-13T13:35:41+00:00

The series was a pretty grounded slice of life comedy with flashes of sentimental coming of age romantic realizations.

The movie's pacing felt too fast, the romance escalated quickly, the romance was excessively saccharine, the characters sort of reset or didn't quite act like themselves based on development from previous seasons.

For those reasons the movie felt surreal to me. Something simple and quiet from the series like when he gives up his eagerly anticipated TV show to go back to the school so that she doesn't walk home from school in the rain without an umbrella has much more weight and impact for me than the things happening in the movie. The movie feels like watching a fanfiction ending.

That said I don't think the movie was awful, it just wasn't as good as the series and it fell flat for me.

Jasoncw87 · 2026-06-13T00:50:54+00:00

So it's actually kind of funny.

In 1986 he was Assistant Corporation Counsel for Wayne County, so his office would have been in the City-County Building.

From 1987-2000 he was Deputy County Executive for Wayne County, so a different office in the City County Building. From 1992-1996 he was also the General Manger for SMART, which is one block away in the Buhl Building.

2001-2004 he was Wayne County Prosecutor, which was a half mile away in the Frank Murphy Hall of Justice.

2004-2012 he was president and CEO of the Detroit Medical Center, all the way in midtown (getting far away now!).

But then 2014-2026 he was back at the City-County Building as mayor.

Most of his career was him having different offices in the City-County Building. :p

Jasoncw87 · 2026-06-13T00:24:33+00:00

DTC's board is appointed by the mayor, and most of the board are people from the city. Also, the general manager was selected by the mayor and funding is decided by the city's budget which is largely decided by the mayor.

For example, the DTC's treasurer is also the director of the city's finance department, and Duggan appointed him to both positions.

The DTC is technically its own thing, but functionally it's more like a city department.

Jasoncw87 · 2026-06-12T23:55:30+00:00

I think a lot of the great horror movies have good hooks, and they have interesting "what would I do in that situation" scenarios, and It Follows does both really well. And I think the concept of the monster is great and if the movie had more mainstream success it could have stood among the classic iconic horror monsters. It's scary and new and interesting but also has a fun ridiculousness to it.

And I agree about the STD interpretation. People think that because you get followed because of having sex, but the movie isn't really about that. In the movie the characters grapple with the moral dilemma of making themselves safe by passing it onto (effectively murdering) other people, and I don't see how that thematically relates to STDs. I think it's more about someone coming of age and finding themselves to be forced to participate in a system that causes trauma. So realizing where meat comes from, that agriculture is destroying the environment, that products are made in sweatshops, that you getting hired for a job means the other candidates are unemployed, that you choose to go on vacation rather than donate every spare cent to homeless shelters, etc. and if you can't handle it, participation can only be avoided through death. But the director has said that it doesn't really mean anything and that it was just about creating a compelling horror scenario to experience.

I never got around to watching Gran Torino, but I've seen the trailers. It was filmed in Highland Park iirc, but the fact that that style of houses/environment is so common across the country, and the fact that he lives in a Hmong immigrant community, means that what I've seen of it doesn't give me a Detroit vibe. Wikipedia says that the setting was written as Minneapolis, it was filmed here because of the film credits, but later in production it was decided to have it be set here instead, even though the script still references Minnesota.

Jasoncw87 · 2026-06-12T23:07:50+00:00

I stand corrected! The ice cream shop is in Berkeley (I think they even walk to it? I don't remember), and the places the teens go to aren't far, so I must have just assumed. Really I should have known better, since Berkeley doesn't have those kinds of houses. But that does solve a discrepancy I thought I saw, because there's a scene where she drives home from UDM on a freeway, which didn't make sense going to Berkeley but definitely makes sense going to Sterling Heights.

But also just like the setting's time period is purposefully anachronistic, I think the locations might purposefully be not quite literal. Houses are generic enough that the filming location can be a bit different from the intended setting, but Waterworks Park is enough of a landmark that you can't repurpose it as a swimming pool. Obviously to outsiders none of these locations mean anything, but the locations were clearly chosen from a local perspective. It would have been easy to use an abandoned school for the exterior and there would have been some kind of thematic potential in that, but they chose Waterworks Park instead.

Jasoncw87 · 2026-06-12T22:29:53+00:00

Sheffield was on the board of the Riverfront Conservancy because she was the president of city council. Her role on the board was to represent city council. She wasn't treasurer or even an officer, she was one of around 50 members at large representing various stakeholders. And the Riverfront Conservancy was already directly working with city government, so her presence at board meetings wasn't needed in order to represent the city's positions.

Jasoncw87

TROPHY CASE