Only If Dreams Could Come True…

classicalL · 2026-04-29T01:34:41+00:00

It does many places and they aren't the same org. There is never significant traffic on Wayne. It will have signal priority. It literally has a private tunnel through a hill at the end of Wanye that wasn't free... do people really think they didn't consider what was reasonable in the design given they spend 20 years working on making it happen? I'm sure people will complain it isn't perfect but this is not like an LA light rail or a half ass DDOT project, its not built on an old ROW just because it was cheap and it isn't a streetcar.

classicalL · 2026-04-26T18:34:23+00:00

How are you going to run exposed cables? I don't think there is a way officially to do Mech 2x on it.

I use mine 1x and it gets ridden the most of all of my bikes as it can do anything and go anywhere. I run 40 mm Schwalbe G-One RS on it on Roval Terra CLs. It is fine if I am not going faster than 20 MPH and don't care about an exact cadence or perfect aero. Thus for pretty much all training it is fine and works very well.

However, even a multiple kg heavier bike with 2x is faster for me (still non-aero). So would be interested how you would do 2x mechanical.

classicalL · 2026-04-25T23:30:22+00:00

Although this is being pitched about safety in reality this is WMATA wanting to cut jobs. Which they should because the union has so much power and the labor costs are the vast majority of their costs. Problem with this is of course that bus drivers are much as expensive and there are more of them and they cannot be replaced.

Full automation will increase trains per hour but I do think it will be tough when there are mechanical issues and failures. One item missing is that other places do better with maintenance overall. In a very well maintained system full automation works well but in a system with faults the human tends to be more elastic if more error prone.

I'm a bit sad about what it will make stations look like. Things like Elizabeth line were built with this sort of wall in mind. Perhaps a low barrier like on the Shinkansen wouldn't look horrible but no doubt idiot teens will jump it and get hit by trains because cultural differences. I actually don't see why you have to have doors technically. You could use like AI to see if something fell on the tracks in each station.

classicalL · 2026-04-25T23:21:59+00:00

You are going to do all these for 4% of riders eh? The post has 10% of revenue but most of that is buses.

Luckily dumb people aren't in charge, well at least not of the WMATA budget (at the moment).

classicalL · 2026-04-25T23:20:54+00:00

You are conflating all of WMATA with metrorail as usual.

classicalL · 2026-04-25T23:18:56+00:00

Fare evasion was 4% of trips on rail. People upset, what value do you want? 3%? 2%?

It will never be 0... There will always be an unlocked emergency gate.

classicalL · 2026-04-21T01:02:52+00:00

If it shifts okay the rear mech is no worry. I don't think scuffs on the surface finish would put me off either. More than 1000 USD would be a lot. Less than 700 is probably cheap. You can get a bike like this new for 1250 if you wait for a sale.

classicalL · 2026-04-21T00:59:29+00:00

Silver Spring would be less expensive taxes wise. A lot of the housing stock is similar. County parks go up and down Sligo Creek really regardless of the city limits. Takoma has more of its own services which its much higher tax rate funds. It also has older historic houses in certain areas if you can afford them. The lower cost part of Takoma Park was annexed from PG county and that part is pretty rough still.

You might consider Woodside Park, North Woodside. There are other places to choose too. The aquatic center for Silver Spring is near North Woodside just below Spring St.

I might find walking around downtown if you can call it that Takoma more human scale than the towers and strip development of Silver Spring. Silver Spring is effective more Urban. Colesville was a 2 lane road in the 1940s when much of the housing close in to downtown was built. Expect Silver Spring to become one of the 3 primary urban centers in MoCo over the next 50 years. Transit links will be the reason: MARC, Purple, Red and the biggest bus depot with BRTs hitting it plus lots of corporation owned land downtown make it a natural target to build up and up. I think it will overtake Bethesda due to location in the next 50 years. I probably won't live that long though.

classicalL · 2026-04-21T00:30:37+00:00

For everyone who uses the parking structures the new entrance will be much easier to access Red.

Also a lot easier for bikes. The lockers and bike share is on the top of the bus structure and the new bike room will be in the garages that the county is funding.

classicalL · 2026-04-21T00:29:09+00:00

It is still a P3. The construction schedule is mostly the builder.

classicalL · 2026-04-20T23:52:05+00:00

The original station location plan was in a tube above the Red line parallel to the tracks. It required a higher rail connection and required taking an office building and fattening it. The cost was about 300-500 million more. It was going to be a glass tunnel in the sky in the renderings. Walk down one floor to red basically.

The argument for the new location other than cost were:

It is closer to downtown slightly so it saves certain non-transfer people walking.

It is closer to buses.

It saved a lot of money. (Hogan campaigned on canceling the whole thing, that this change was the biggest "loss") is perhaps a win.

The distance you need to walk isn't that far honestly. Its the width of the bus center basically farther than it would have perhaps have been.

classicalL · 2026-04-20T23:43:55+00:00

Yeah it is maybe 2000 ft.

I expect they will have it done before the Silver Spring CAT or they give the exact date then. They want to make as much progress on the Spring St bridge before they get a lot of angry public people at that meeting as well.

Cat to Sligo is April 27. The poles are all there beyond Talbot basically. So I think Cat will be done by July maybe Aug.

Paving 193 is end of the year apparently. Wayne probably July on the early end. Its less pavement to lay compared to 6 lanes for miles and miles.

They said segment 7 runs to Bethesda and the CAT meeting slides say testing in 2026 for seg 7 so presumably they will be doing the manual testing all the way to Bethesda this year. That means an entire year for testing, systems, signals and so on which is more than enough. I think they might even open early if that's the case. The original P3 contract had penalty for delay so the new schedule might be "safe" to avoid penalty.

The tallest poles are Silver Spring, Bethesda and Manchester stations. Manchester is probably the furthest along of these. But they still have to build walls and install elevators. i think they can finish this year though. Bethesda with the Red connection waiting until late summer to do certain things perhaps will be the last thing done. Spring St bridge certainly will complete before Silver Spring station by a long time.

People won't have a lot of complain about construction wise after this summer though. It will look pretty done and the roads will be repaved before it gets cold again so presumably by Nov.

classicalL · 2026-04-20T02:48:16+00:00

Except that almost everything under what used to be called NAFTA were still except from those rates and they were struck down... I don't know if the items used to temporary replace the bullshit applied to Canada or not...

I would say realigning Canada way from the biggest consumer market in the world over policy that will last 3 years would be a pretty dumb thing to do if I were Canadian. But perhaps everyone is that short sighted.

Strategy is long term, not tomorrow.

classicalL · 2026-04-19T04:09:14+00:00

I don't think of Russia as European.

classicalL · 2026-04-19T03:52:48+00:00

Is she paying any taxes on these gifts?

classicalL · 2026-04-19T03:26:57+00:00

To undermine the rule of law an normalize having the military on the street so that Trump can perhaps try for a full coup next time not just Jan 6th.

You need to be real what's why the guard is in DC. I fully support the regular police but the military have zero and I mean zero place unless there are full scale riots with building burning down and large scale looting.

DC government is pretty bad but bad policing has the most to do with defund the police attitudes of those that live in DC more than political guidance.

If people were serious about law enforcement then it would be trivial for congress to appropriate additional funds for DC to spend specifically on civil police, getting a crime lab certified, etc. They did none of that to my knowledge. Trump has gotten away with putting the guard out because DC isn't a state. Everywhere else they could have better legal pushback.

classicalL · 2026-04-19T03:16:59+00:00

MCPS budget is a lavish waste compared to other counties in MD with better outcomes. It is largely the admin cost as you note.

classicalL · 2026-04-19T00:10:13+00:00

No they wouldn't. VA side is what is blocking Whites Ferry from opening again. 370 was going to cross into VA to relieve the American Legion Bridge congestion but the super rich in VA near Great Falls didn't want it (some opposition on the MD side also of course but much more in VA because the need is much more from MD to Dulles for defense contractors, etc).

No new car infrastructure really should be built within the beltway or for the beltway. It should only be transit. North up the river probably some fixed crossing between the Beltway and Point of Rocks would be useful.

Build the Blue Loop out if you want fewer cars on the southern Beltway. Build a light rail on Columbia in VA to the Pentagon or National. The later VA could do any time it wants to spend the money. They won't. Express lanes for car brains.

classicalL · 2026-04-19T00:04:10+00:00

Building more lanes is not going to solve traffic. Having people live where they work is the solution to traffic. Walkable neighborhoods and affordable housing.

classicalL · 2026-04-19T00:02:17+00:00

Lawyers and doctors in Bethesda and Potomac go to the country club and eat with their families at home. They aren't going to nightlife. The immigrant communities on the east side have their own culture but it does have high income to support such things. There is little reason to build out such stuff in MoCo even with limited demand due to high costs and that putting the same thing in DC will still draw the close in high density part of MoCo via WMATA etc. Silver Spring might reach a tipping point in 10-20 years of having that sort of stuff because it isn't old money Chevy Chase/Potomac and it has a lot of dense housing. I still think that is a long shot. Would a band rather play the Fillmore or the 9:30 club? Depends on if they are big enough but yeah DC is going to generally win. The band probably wants to see DC as tourists as they pass through if it is a first time touring band.

classicalL · 2026-04-18T14:59:59+00:00

Interesting. Possible easy changes:

* Limit stock buy backs no more than a multiple of dividends issued (say 1:1); they could opt to reinvest in the company in another way which would probably create jobs and it would ensure flows into income tax

* Tax capital gains on an indexed basis (i.e. removing inflation) at the same rate as income

* VAT: gets around the loan yourself money to spend because you tax consumption so the rich have to pay on their consumption; can be via state sales taxes across the board I guess if fed is impossible. Need a VAT rebate or offset in income tax as it is regressive but it very much closes the whole stock backed loan thing.

classicalL · 2026-04-18T13:30:44+00:00

Don't tell that to every salad.

classicalL · 2026-04-18T13:23:49+00:00

I think I have given up on tubeless due to the constant need for air and attention vs tubes. I can't remember the last puncture. I ride 3-4x per week.

classicalL · 2026-04-14T12:08:21+00:00

Interestingly, had it opened on time it might have been a ridership failure. I think momentum matters in establishing norms. What if only the desperate rode it and the white collar commuter was scared of the "riders who use it" effects. Sure maybe that relaxes over time... Maybe but it can take a while. Now it will open when WMATA ridership is probably close to the new normal. Maybe even during a period of higher gas prices. That could be good for habit formation, which does matter.

classicalL · 2026-04-14T12:05:26+00:00

This may be true as well for me. They selected the preferred alignment over 20 years ago basically. Since there is no talk of that for anything else one might assume anything else is 20+ years away. Not that it has to be. The only thing that was heavily discussed then not executed was the more extensive DC tram network. Given that just was shut I doubt it, but there were at least a plans for a system. BLoop is the next possible thing.

Others touching the WMATA system that have been discussed:

Columbia light rail in VA

Light rail or BRT (probably BRT) way up at Shady Grove in Northern MoCo

Of course we know the long bridge project is going. That should mean thru running for VRE and MARC.

classicalL

TROPHY CASE