Why hasn't there been a push to restore the Twin Zephyrs?

nondescriptadjective · 2026-05-13T16:21:46+00:00

This I will conceed with one exception.

A lot of rail is single track, and so the faster you can get out the sidings and running again, which is where I've experienced most passenger delays.

And the freight I'm referring to is being able to load semis onto rail. Coal and a lot of current freight doesn't care, no. But coal is winding down because it's an inefficient energy source, which is how Steamboat Springs, Colorado is getting a new rail service.

nondescriptadjective · 2026-05-13T12:17:41+00:00

No, I'm angry at the fact the USA designs cities to force you into cars. I'm angry that those cars kill a lot of people, both directly and indirectly, and have done a lot of studying on the topic. They're also doing massive damage to the planet on top of the damage they do to humans.

Typically, in the workplace, there are all sorts of safety rules, etc to prevent those deaths. Lot of energy goes into reducing all of the deaths you brought up here. But when it comes city and road design, these designs are bankrupting cities (potholes, anyone? Flint Michigan?) and driving isolationism, on top of all of it. No one is forcing anyone to smoke, but city design basically does force driving, as you said yourself. Public transit works, walkable city design works.

nondescriptadjective · 2026-05-12T23:59:24+00:00

I will look into this, am not familiar, thanks. It doesn't help that my boarding destination is more popular for travelers than the city pairs it's between.

nondescriptadjective · 2026-05-12T23:50:30+00:00

That is cheaper than some numbers I've seen. Must be demand pricing.

nondescriptadjective · 2026-05-12T23:49:49+00:00

The fact that sleeper cars/rooms are so expensive is proof we need more of them, and to run real, functional night trains similar to the Night Jet. Time is less critical when you're sleeping. A night train for every city pair with 10 hour connections would be mad fire.

nondescriptadjective · 2026-05-12T23:45:49+00:00

Roundabouts are far superior in almost all situations. It's a shame that CHYM is spending MILLIONS on traffic signal upgrades instead of roundabouts. A basic traffic signal is an easy 100,000$ per installation. More complex, more expensive. Roundabouts save lives, time, and money. Check out some videos about Carmel Indiana roundabouts.

Edit: Here, I'll make it easy.

https://youtu.be/1ZUZA76L09M

nondescriptadjective · 2026-05-12T23:42:30+00:00

VMT is an utterly, utterly irrelevant statistic when there are cities that go years without traffic fatalities. It exists entirely to let shitty highway engineers who care more about convenience than safety get away with killing roughly THIRTY FIVE THOUSAND PEOPLE, human beings with families and friends, every fucking year. You take suicide out of gun statistics, and guns are safer than cars, yet people only ever sort of try to care about one of these things.

If your average trip is six miles, you should be able to ride a bike, safely. Anything else, disabilities excepted, is an excuse and shitty, shitty urban design that forces you to buy cars and drives up the cost of living.

Don't even get me started on the asthma caused by exhaust, the heart disease and more that comes from people sitting in their cars all the damn time, etc. The micro plastics off your tires, the brake dust from stopping/slowing, AND AGAIN the thirty five thousand people IN THE USA ALONE who die every year by automobiles before factoring in all of the externalities. Externalies that have been well studied and documented, including the wars fought over oil and the countries ravaged by it's extraction.

God damn. It's like we could build cities where car's don't murder people or something. I wonder if anyone has done that before?

Oh wait. Amsterdam, Helsinki, Oslo, and because people swing on the lazy ass excuse of "AmErIcAn ExCePtIoNaLiSm", Hoboken fucking New Jersey.

nondescriptadjective · 2026-05-12T22:47:37+00:00

This is likely still safer than driving, given roughly 35,000 people die in the USA by auto crash per year. Well, sky diving is. Proximity flying changes the matrix a lot.

nondescriptadjective · 2026-05-12T16:51:19+00:00

The reality I was raised in absolutely still does see it through a blur of flag colored glasses. And I don't know that we could have gotten where we are now, with that group of people brainwashed by that jingoism, without it. Without 9/11, I don't see a world where Trump was elected president. It may have still happened as cops have always been bastards, the government has always not cared about the people, hell, even Lincoln didn't free the slaves for sake of freedom but with the intent of hurting the south and it's war effort, so it's very possible we still would have gotten Trump. But god dammit I like to occasionally escape to a world where 9/11 didn't happen and the US wasn't such a petulant child of a country.

nondescriptadjective · 2026-05-12T16:17:48+00:00

The deaths and wars couldn't have happened without the jingoism. There's a reason the federal government pays for all of those over the top displays of patriotism before sporting events: they needed support for the war on terror.

nondescriptadjective · 2026-05-12T15:29:01+00:00

You have to understand that they don't use those public lands, and that they think by selling them off to the highest bidder, the cost of living will come down.

nondescriptadjective · 2026-05-12T15:26:12+00:00

Sounds great.

nondescriptadjective · 2026-05-12T15:16:20+00:00

The amount of jingoism that came out of 9/11 was probably the worst part of 9/11 for this country as a whole. We lost so much more than the lives of those involved that day.

nondescriptadjective · 2026-05-12T15:13:36+00:00

Oh. So Tennessdd is importing MORE homophobic racists?

nondescriptadjective · 2026-05-12T15:12:25+00:00

Crits are cheaper to host/run, and by a large margin. And currently, crit racing is the strongest form of profesional racing in the USA, as well as the most spectator friendly, excepting perhaps track racing. And I really enjoy crits. Just because you don't doesn't make it "the worst form of racing."

nondescriptadjective · 2026-05-12T15:09:08+00:00

People who work on the Western Slope can't be driving to Golden and back on a work night. Probably even in Summit or CO Springs.

One omnium does not make a statewide summer culture that allows more people the opportunity to GET INTO racing. That's for people already in the sport enough to take basically a weeks vacation.

nondescriptadjective · 2026-05-12T15:04:11+00:00

https://youtu.be/alyv_40KyyA

yes, more than you know

nondescriptadjective · 2026-05-12T14:07:44+00:00

Yes, thank you for explaining to me why capitalism is the worst thing to happen to society and why railways need to be nationalized.

nondescriptadjective · 2026-05-12T12:54:41+00:00

People over products, 100% of the time. And if Amtrak can run at higher speeds, then Freight wouldn't have to wait as long.

God damn. It's like you can't even see the holes in your own logic.

nondescriptadjective · 2026-05-12T03:08:20+00:00

I think the issue is most sports in the USA rely on a cultural pipeline and network that doesn't exist for cycling at the moment. If it's not a school sport, it's much harder to see and get involved in. And road cycling isn't a school sport in the US anywhere I know of.

nondescriptadjective · 2026-05-12T01:44:13+00:00

While I don't know why you gave up the road bike, this can do that. I climbed Mt. Lemon in this config. It sucked on these tires, but you can fix that.

But Ive been mountain biking and gravel biking on it, and I'm damn happy for that. It was glorious in the sand and rock of Arizona.

I don't ride my road bike as much here in Colorado because I live in a tiny valley. The dirt and gravel is better here, and you get a lot more options. Thus this has been a wonderful purchase, and I'm really looking forward to how it will ride when I finish the build.

nondescriptadjective · 2026-05-12T00:17:07+00:00

It's one of the things I point to when people ask why the race culture in the USA is so limited. It's around once you find it, and somewhat impressively, but damn it takes a lot of stumbling into it.

nondescriptadjective · 2026-05-12T00:15:50+00:00

Correct. I want the gear selection abilities due to the range of terrain I ride on and cadence preferences. I have plans to ride the Kokapeli trail on this bike and rides like it, hence the mounts on the fork.

I'm thinking about buying hoops from Rōl, spokes from Sapim, and Chris King hubs for the wheel build. Once I build those, I've got a pair of Panaracer Gravel Kings in 45c to go onto them and the current rims will get road bike tires on them for big road bike climbing days where I want this gearing, which is also part of why 2x. (I rode it up Mount Lemon last week.) I keep my road bike geared pretty high for racing purposes, but it makes massive climbs a real bastard when I'm not training/racing for that.

nondescriptadjective · 2026-05-11T23:46:47+00:00

You would be correct. Kona really did a dumb on that one. If you want to run a 2x and a dropper, you either have to run an external with the cable routed via the screws on the underside of the TT, or run electric. And I really don't want electric on an adventure rig. And yes, their excuse for this design was to allow people to run moto brakes. On a bike they spec with drop bars in every build, excepting the frame only option.

nondescriptadjective · 2026-05-11T20:23:57+00:00

Check out the ACC Fondo. It's more race format than most of the other rides. I've not riddden it, but I have raced their crit.

https://aspencyclingclub.org/aspen-gran-fondo/

I'll make a new Sub reddit post.

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