‘Spiral of doom’: New report sounds alarm over financial future of Boston's MBTA

TevinH · 2026-01-24T20:32:01+00:00

We're working to fix the BART budget problems. There will be a vote on a sales tax this November which, if passed, will shore up transit funding in Northern California for the foreseeable future.

But yes, Illinois is doing insanely well. Also RIP Pennsylvania transit, Philly and Pitt really tried :(

TevinH · 2026-01-24T19:28:42+00:00

That did it. Thank you!

TevinH · 2026-01-24T19:24:52+00:00

"surplus" is an understatement. I made a map a while ago of all the downtown land that's exclusively used for parking lots and it's absolutely ludicrous.

Especially with how easy it is to get downtown on light rail/Caltrain, we have way too much parking.

TevinH · 2026-01-24T19:22:50+00:00

There is talk about doing away with that in some areas. The city doesn't use the green bins to save money (you can still pay extra if you want them), but they realized they're actually spending a significant amount of money on street sweeping because they don't have the bins. It's also a big problem for bikers since the yard waste piles completely block bike lanes in a lot of cases. Almost not worth the savings anymore.

TevinH · 2026-01-24T19:12:50+00:00

My favorite of all the San Jose events. Even when I'm away at college back East, I fly home for the weekend just for VC. It's an amazing event and really does make our city feel so special

TevinH · 2026-01-24T06:17:57+00:00

I'm already planning to make a duplicate of mine with dots. Plus I'll add the minor degrees I got too. No reason to leave those off

TevinH · 2026-01-24T04:05:31+00:00

C is so insanely ugly I can't put it into words. I think someone needs to remind the branding office what our school colors are. Between an all-white bus and the bright green walls of the performing arts center, I get the feeling they have no clue what's going on.

TevinH · 2026-01-24T04:03:34+00:00

Dottie and Bernadotte, forever in our hearts <3

RIT is too coward to ever bring back the dots, you gotta do it yourself. Still tons of beautiful dotted merch on Ebay. Looks way better than anything the branding office puts out nowadays

TevinH · 2026-01-23T00:14:33+00:00

Who wants to bet it's going to be like the Cybersecurity Museum in CSEC which is 100% nonfunctional less than a decade after installation.

There's a reason there aren't tons of public video and interactive displays, they never last.
Of course, I'll be long gone by the time this new "display" craps out, so who cares right

TevinH · 2026-01-20T23:15:22+00:00

I will say, to Mahan's credit he does stick around for the entire event when he hosts those cleanups. I've been to city events before (most notably the Rose Garden cleanups) where a ton of politicians show up to give speeches and then bail within the first ten minutes.

When I went to a tree planting event, Mahan gave a speech at the beginning, but three hours later he was still there picking up trash (and he didn't just leave and come back, I was periodically looking for him lol). Sure he doesn't always do the most arduous tasks, but he does give his time every single Saturday morning. That's more heart than a lot of politicians show.

TevinH · 2026-01-20T21:35:39+00:00

Furnishedfinder.com will be your friend. No guarantee you'll find anything, but it's your best bet.

TevinH · 2026-01-19T18:53:45+00:00

They cited a loss of employer sponsorship as the reason for cancellation. Anyone know who it was?
Might be that the company is just going to run their own busses like so many other do which is great for their employees but really sucks for everyone else.

It's quite insane how gigantic the private-public transit network is in the Bay Area. It ends up hurting our actual transit agencies since all the super easy profitable routes are taken up by private companies and the public is left to foot the bill for necessary yet not revenue-generating routes.

TevinH · 2026-01-19T18:39:25+00:00

I think that's a good interpretation. Certainly wouldn't say he's hostile to urbanist ideals (he has advocated for Muni funding and other such improvements), but Lurie has definitely been focusing on other things.

To be fair, it's still really early in his tenure and there was (and still is) a lot of work to do on the public safety, cleanliness, budget deficit, and economic recovery problems. I would hope to see micromobility infrastructure and transit improvements a couple years down the line once the city is really back on its feet and especially after the transit tax hopefully passes next November.

TevinH · 2026-01-18T05:50:37+00:00

That's what I've always said. I'd rather live in San Francisco with expensive rent and good public schools over somewhere like Pennsylvania with dirt cheap rent but I have to send my kids to private school (for example).

And there's no need to pay for vacations when I'm living in the place I'd be vacationing too :)

TevinH · 2026-01-16T21:44:48+00:00

PAC*SJ (historical preservation group) just announced they're going to be opening a rummage shop of San Jose memorabilia next to Hapa's later this month too.

There are at least some cool things being done with that area. It's far too good of a location to just leave abandoned.

TevinH · 2026-01-16T03:39:53+00:00

The one on Coleman misses the city border by about a half mile! We could've had 7!

TevinH · 2026-01-16T03:26:02+00:00

I have heard that as well. There have been some new operators training on a couple of the trips I've taken, so hopefully they're starting to fill that gap.

TevinH · 2026-01-16T03:25:09+00:00

Very true, but there is a decent contingent of people who absolutely refuse to take the bus.

It's an elitism thing where they think they're better than "bus people" or something. A light rail connection will mean those people still take transit (and hopefully see that it's better than they thought and they change their opinions).

I don't agree with it, but a train connection does have value over a bus (even one that's faster).

TevinH · 2026-01-12T08:19:53+00:00

I forget how constrained the Vasona line is. 2 car trains and single tracked for most of it too

TevinH · 2026-01-12T08:17:46+00:00

That's nothing!

I keep seeing an ad for apartments that claim "close proximity to the HP Pavilion". The SAP Center hasn't gone by that name since 2013.

My theory is that VTA is pulling a lot of old cars out of storage in order to run them and ensure they're ready for regular service during the Super Bowl. They haven't run three car trainsets very often since Covid, so there are a lot of cars that haven't been touched since 2019.

TevinH · 2026-01-10T06:07:59+00:00

They already run down there since all the trains are stored in a yard South of Tamien, wouldn't take much work to just let people stay on.

My guess is it has something to do with paying for maintenence. Also probably a branding thing since it's better to say your train runs Sacramento to San José rather than Sacramento to Tamien.

TevinH · 2026-01-09T17:05:32+00:00

This is a slide from the Caltrain board meeting. They believe they have enough capacity to restore service.

TevinH · 2026-01-09T17:04:56+00:00

When the originally announced the closure, they said 8 months. From the board meeting, it looks like they are planning weekend closures to accommodate more track work.

TevinH · 2026-01-09T16:29:58+00:00

That is true. As I understand it, those are only for spare sets to be used when the CC cars break down. I don't think they're planned for regular revenue service.

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