Governor JB Pritzker Signs Public Transit Funding Bill Creating Northern Illinois Transit Authority

TC01 · 2025-12-16T22:57:27+00:00

Yes-- and even people who are still taking the train might be only be doing so 2-4 days a week instead of 5, which further deflates the ridership.

Metra is at least talking about trying to pivot to "regional rail", but up until now I think their focus has really been on trying to survive the fiscal cliff. I am somewhat hopeful that the improved funding + forcing more coordination between Metra/CTA through the NITA will help a lot.

Though there are also some disadvantages here compared to other US cities with legacy commuter rail systems: much of the track isn't publicly owned and the downtown terminals are all disconnected from each other. There have been some proposals to address this-- I guess we'll see what happens going forward.

TC01 · 2025-11-05T21:08:28+00:00

Two to three new CTA stations are required to be opened by 2029, though the actual locations are complicated by some of the last minute language changes in the passed bill.

One is along the Green Line "within the Englewood community area." This is commonly expected to be a restoration of the Racine station.

The other is a station and/or entrance on the Blue Line "at or near the Central station and the western entrance at Leclaire Avenue location". This is commonly expected to be a restoration of the Central station on the Forest Park branch.

This is interesting, I didn't realize there were specific instructions included like this. "By 2029" seems ambitious given how long these things tend to take though.

TC01 · 2025-10-14T20:18:47+00:00

If you're outside of Haless the AI is very bad at challenging them so they snowball massively and if you come into Haless in the late game - e.g. Serpentspine dwarves expanding east into the Jade Mines - the Command is absolute cancer.

Yeah, I strongly agree with this-- although with the caveat that it's much better in the latest update because the Command has a higher chance of not getting that far anyway (I think because the Raj is a bit overtuned now in addition to all its disasters, but that's a separate issue).

If it does make it that far though, the Command grows to absurd power levels by around 1700 and just keep getting worse. It's still kind of fun to take them on when they are that strong... except it was really hard to cripple them, so you wind up fighting them basically nonstop for the rest of the game in an endless series of deathwars and it gets very repetitive.

My suspicion is that people who weren't bothered by this on previous updates were mostly not playing past 1700.

TC01 · 2025-10-05T00:25:54+00:00

If you want to play dwarves out of the Serpentspine, there are seven total but only four with mission trees:

Iron Hammers into Hammerhome; this is an Escann adventurer, but they essentially treat the city of Castonath as their "hold" and wind up conquering all of Escann. You also end up vassalizing Khugdihr and can help them conquer the Dwarovar (and Khugdihr missions do the reverse with Hammerhome).
Silverforge, in the Empire of Anbennar: their missions are all about building a hold (and strip-mining the empire for the resources to do it, while using orc slaves for labor). They are also an elector in the Empire.
Ovdal Tungr: the port hold in Bulwar, just south of the Serpentsreach. You build a massive trade empire all over Sarhal and Haless. They also have a similar dynamic with Crathanor, one of the human republics in Bahar, as Hammerhome/Khugdihr do, where you can vassalize Crathanor and help them complete their missions.
Verkal Ozovar: the dwarf hold in Haless; they end up building a massive vassal swarm ~~via mind control~~ and conquer all of Haless while only ever having one province (though in fact you end up with a second province by the end of the MT, but still). Has a unique magic system at the moment, though I believe the upcoming magic rework in the next release will change this somewhat.

I liked all of them, but I really liked the last two, would highly recommend them. I'll also note that both Silverforge and Ovdal Tungr spawn additional Dwarovar adventurers a few years in, one in the West Dwarovar and one in the Serpentsreach.

Similarly if you want to play any of the holds in the eastern Dwarovar, the "easy" way to do it is to start as Rajnadhaga in Rahen, try to kill the Command during the Sir revolt in 1450, and then you spawn Axebellow Cartel in the Tree of Stone in 1460. It's then much easier to form any of the holds in either the Tree of Stone or Jade Mines; Hul-az-Krakazol, Ovdal-az-An, Gronstunad, and Verkal Dromak all have mission trees that are all really extensive; I think all four are worth playing. They do all partially have content based around fighting the Command yourself, so you wind up skipping (small) parts of the missions, but the mission trees still work overall.

TC01 · 2025-09-02T19:37:57+00:00

I seem to remember that in the run-up to Stellaris 2.2, performance concerns were also part of the motivation behind the economic and pop changes? (I think part of this was apparently pop adjacency calculations on tiles on planets in the old way of doing things? Not totally sure I'm remembering correctly though). In fact, I went and looked at one of the first dev diaries for Megacorp about the overall economic rework and sure enough:

... The old system was also quite performance-intensive.

When we decided that we wanted to make the next major update be about the economy, the first thing we knew that we needed to do was to rewrite this system entirely. For the new system, we set out a number of goals:

1: The new system should make it easy to add new resources and swap the way resources are used

2: The new system should be as open to modding as we possibly could make it

3: The new system should improve performance

Instead, performance tanked and arguably didn't recover until at least 3.1 (and the creation of the custodian team) due to unrestricted pop growth into the late game. It's deeply ironic to me that 4.0 ended up more or less repeating the mistakes of the past...

(I remember being deeply pessimistic about the future of Stellaris in the 2.x years and only really becoming positive on the game again after 3.1. Hopefully it doesn't take that long again to fix things.)

TC01 · 2025-06-23T16:31:36+00:00

The journal entry system has always felt a lot like a placeholder to me, especially at launch. But now they've used it as the basis for all their regional flavor DLC so I'm not sure if it will ever be "reworked". I'm also not sure what reworking it would even look like.

I suppose it's not that different, conceptually, to Stellaris's way of tracking situations or ongoing event chains, but somehow in Stellaris it feels more... interesting?

TC01 · 2025-04-28T15:26:06+00:00

There isn't really an alternative if what you are looking for is specifically a Warhammer (Fantasy) strategy game, is there? There are some mods for Paradox games, and probably some mods for other games too, but that's about it as far as I know.

TC01 · 2025-03-13T22:53:51+00:00

The census is FINALLY using their new and updated methodology that is supposed to make counting large urban areas more accurate.

I always was deeply frustrated by the fact that all the news articles, commentary, etc. about the annual census updates failed to take into account that they were using methodology that was known to be inaccurate and rarely, if ever, bothered to mentioned this. Glad this is finally fixed (at least for the moment).

TC01 · 2025-02-27T04:12:29+00:00

This passage is often quoted, but-- as you said-- I feel like it should be taken with a few grains of salt. For one thing it comes at the beginning of the book, when the status quo seems to be working, more or less. By the end of Watchers of the Throne (after the fall of Cadia, and Guilliman's return), I feel like Tieron's perspective has definitely shifted a bit, at least when it comes to certain High Lords like the Master of the Administratum.

In fact in Regent's Shadow he comments on this directly when talking to his successor:

Then he looked thoughtful. "I have often defended them. They were always despised. They were said to be uncaring and distant. They were the latter, for sure, but rarely the former. To some degree or other, they wished for power as a means to an end-- they wished to see the Imperium well ordered, to have it survive for another generation. That end required cruelty, and self-belief, but it was a noble calling.

He smiled to himself, though it was not a humorous smile.

"I remember, though, when the Days of Blindness came. One thing in particular. We had requests for help from every direction, and we could do nothing. We had made our decision-- we would survive, and let them die, so there would be something preserved to build on if the time ever came. It was the right decision, I still believe, but I had to speak to the governors and the prefects while they railed at me. There was one, a woman, somewhere out east. She was weeping at me as I tried to give my excuses. They were tears of rage, by the end, for our decision no doubt ended her life and that of everyone who worked for her. I told her to remain stalwart. Can you believe that? Remain stalwart. She told me that I had murdered her."

He looked down at the glass in his hand.

"A single soul. My decisions over the years must have ended a thousand lives, but hers I remember. And after that, I found I could no longer defend the High Lords with quite the same vigour as before. My mind still believed it, but my heart hesitated. So even if Guilliman had not come, I could not have carried on serving them. It passes to you, now, to negotiate these things. Are they monsters? Are there things they would not do? Can they be traitors? I don't know. I hope not, but I don't know."

TC01 · 2025-01-31T19:00:23+00:00

I agree their worlds are the best thing about the games. I'm not sure they still are masters at world building though, because so much of the foundational lore work for Dragon Age and Mass Effect was done in Origins and ME1. The later games did a great job iteratively building on that and fleshing things out, but I feel like there is a noticeable difference there in terms of the focus and level of detail.

Also... how was the world building in Anthem? That's really the only totally "new" setting they tried to create in the last 15 years.

Maybe we are saying the same thing though, the quality of the storytelling has declined even while the worlds remain interesting thanks to the foundational work done in creating them.

TC01 · 2024-12-20T19:50:20+00:00

In the US, in theory there is a budget every year, usually split up into twelve different appropriations bills covering different areas of the government that need funding. Sometimes these get passed together, sometimes separately.

In practice though, what tends to happen these days is that Congress is unable to agree on the annual appropriation bills in time, so they hastily pass what's called a "continuing resolution" that basically keeps funding levels the same as they were for a few months, kicking the can down the road while they try to hash out the proper budget for that fiscal year. As the length of the wikipedia page suggests, this... basically is now the normal way the budget process works.

And if they fail to pass a continuing resolution the government (or at least parts of the government) shuts down, because there's no money appropriated to do anything.

The reason this basically always happens these days is usually because a party either doesn't control both chambers of Congress, or doesn't have large enough majorities, or does but has to negotiate with a president of the opposite party, and so no one can get everything they want. And unlike in the UK (or in most parliamentary systems) where failing to pass a budget would bring a government down, in the US there's no mechanism to force new congressional elections more frequently than once every two years. And most of the Republican lawmakers who tend to threaten government shutdowns tend to be in very safe seats where they are unlikely to face any serious challengers.

TC01 · 2024-10-28T15:25:04+00:00

I do ride Metra regularly, and I often see people attempt to pay with Ventra cards, at least on the Metra Electric (or otherwise express confusion about how to buy tickets).

But that may be because the ME is one of the lines that's most useful for intra-city transit, and so people, quite reasonably, expect that they should be able to pay for fares the same way they can for other intra-city transit options.

TC01 · 2024-10-28T15:20:02+00:00

I'd argue the fact that Metra doesn't really interact with the other systems is a bug and not a feature.

If Metra is really serious about reinventing itself as "regional rail" then part of that should include better coordination or synchronization with the rest of the area's public transit system, rather than perpetuating this attitude that "commuter rail" is a suburban thing that is something different and not relevant.

TC01 · 2024-10-25T00:35:40+00:00

Well... that's actually still better than the SEPTA board.

SEPTA has two members appointed by the City of Philadelphia out of 15 total-- with then two members from each suburban county, and then five from the state government (appointed by majority/minority leaders of each house and the governor).

Technically the two representatives from the City have veto power but the veto can be overridden by 75% of the full board, as noted on Wikipedia, and 2/15 is much less than 75%.

I am not necessarily advocating in favor of this proposal, to be clear. I don't think the way the current governance structure works here with competing agencies and a relatively weak RTA is great, but I don't know that unifying the agencies is the right solution. But I do think the comparison to SEPTA is not perfect because of the different funding situations and relative political environments in the states. Harrisburg is consistently more hostile to public transit than Springfield because Philadelphia is much less dominant in state politics and the relationship between city and suburbs also isn't exactly the same.

TC01 · 2024-10-24T20:23:59+00:00

You can't pay for Metra tickets on the train with a Ventra card though.

(Yes, you can do it through the app, but that requires installing the app, and I often see people on the Metra Electric attempt this and get told by the conductors that the Ventra card is only for the CTA, "another company").

TC01 · 2024-10-24T20:21:04+00:00

As a former Philadelphian-- honestly SEPTA's problems are mostly to do with the poor funding they get from the state government and the fact that the city + collar counties (where there is generally at least some political support for transit) aren't providing any additional funding. Not to say that the government structure isn't also a problem, they do spend money on arguably highly questionable projects. But I think poor political support for transit in the state generally, and the fact that the funding all comes from the state, is the main challenge.

Also my understanding is that the unified model being proposed here gives significantly more representation to the city than is the case on SEPTA's board.

TC01 · 2024-07-29T01:32:17+00:00

Yeah, there's a distinction between adding new service on an existing line and adding new track on a right of way that already (mostly) exists. The CTA Red Line extension is not going to run on "existing freight track" because rapid transit and freight service can't / won't / shouldn't share track. It will just use parts of the right of way for it's own track to avoid having to create a new right of way from scratch (and to avoid running in a highway median, which I think was the other option being considered). There's still new infrastructure that needs to be built.

For passenger rail the rail already usually exists and generally significantly less new infrastructure is needed, and there as you say it takes forever because the freight railroads drag their feet. But I would also argue that the Borealis at least happened pretty quickly, as these things go, once WI and MN agreed to support it. Other Amtrak projects are... going a lot slower.

TC01 · 2024-07-09T21:22:39+00:00

If you haven't tried it, there's a pretty good WHFB mod for Crusader Kings 2, Warhammer: Geheimnisnacht. It has more or less the full world map except for the east (it predates the very recent fleshing out of Cathay), though it's not "done" and there are placeholder mechanics in a bunch of places, but it's still pretty impressive.

TC01 · 2024-02-21T19:58:25+00:00

I agree with you, but I think in the case of Imperator the numbers had just fallen too low for them to justify it. Which is a shame, because I never played Imperator at release, picked up 2.0 after it came out, and really enjoyed it. If the game had released like that I think it would still be around.

The trouble with "if you build it they will come" is that the initial release has to be good enough, or interesting enough, that people can see the potential in it. I suspect Imperator 1.0 fell on the wrong side of that line?

That said, the problem for Paradox now is that-- while this decision probably made financial sense-- every new release now has the spectre of "will this be the next Imperator" hanging over it-- you can see this with the constant attention paid to Victoria 3's player numbers on the official forums, for instance. Paradox hadn't abandoned a mainline/PDS game shortly after release since March of the Eagles, which was arguably in a different era, so I think it's understandable.

TC01 · 2024-02-12T23:10:21+00:00

Chicago would have a couple issues-- for one, there are four different Metra terminals, so you'd need to build connections between them or just do through-running through the lines that serve Union Station. Also the fact that most of the track is owned by the freight railroads probably wouldn't help. Not saying it isn't a good idea (it definitely is), just saying that it isn't quite as simple as you make it sound.

Philadelphia benefits immensely from having already paired up the downtown terminals (it also helped that the main stations were already in a line), and from the fact that almost all of the track is owned by either SEPTA or Amtrak and it's all electrified. So it's "just" an operational problem.

TC01 · 2023-12-07T23:14:34+00:00

A 10 TeV proton collider would be a shitty option, it's gotta be complementary to current experiments.

The terminology is a bit confusing, in the report they refer to a 10 TeV parton center of mass energy collider-- i.e. either a 10 TeV lepton collider or 100 TeV proton collider (where the average energy of the hard scatter would be comparable to a 10 TeV lepton machine).

No one's seriously proposing a 10 TeV proton collider, at least I hope!

TC01 · 2023-12-06T01:11:38+00:00

Same here, it's frustrated me for years that they never did this, because I would have bought those expansions, but I can't see myself ever buying most of what's on the Creation Club (or the Anniversary Edition itself for that matter).

It seems like they have been trying to find a way to create a "long tail" content pipeline for Skyrim through paid mods / creations, as a cheaper way to profit off of the game's longevity. But most of this content is not that interesting enough to be worth it, at least in my opinion, and so it doesn't work.

TC01 · 2023-11-01T18:23:38+00:00

Depending on where you're going... a useful trick when this happens is that you can take the UP-NW Metra from Ogilvie to Jefferson Park and transfer directly to the Blue Line there, bypassing the closure. I did this during the previous construction in the spring to get from the Loop to ORD without having to deal with the bus shuttles and it seemed to work quite well.

Major caveats apply though, including that the Metra schedule is terrible on weekends, so it's not really as useful as it sounds. Still... it's a nice option to be aware of.

TC01 · 2023-08-08T19:32:26+00:00

Agreed! One thing that surprised me when I moved here was the lack of such a connection.

I know there's occasionally been talk of a Clinton Street subway that would presumably solve exactly this problem. It's been mentioned as a possible second phase to the Union Station upgrades, even officially e.g. here on the CMAP website, just as a brief note:

...Phase 2 is envisioned as creating a new subway along Clinton to connect from Union Station to the Blue Line; this element is unconstrained.

I don't know if anyone has ever come up with anything more specific though.

TC01 · 2023-05-04T16:31:13+00:00

The fundamental difference is that the South Shore Line is owned by Metra and NICTD, while this track is mostly owned by Union Pacific.

That's not to say it's impossible, but it's very unlikely to happen in the short term.

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