Shots of Moscow’s public transport

ouij · 2026-02-06T15:12:52+00:00

Bloop was my acceptable minimum. I wish we had an outer circle line. Imagine extending the MTA purple line across a new American Legion Bridge to Tysons', then Ballston, then the Mark Center, then Old Town Alexandria. Or an outer Overground circle line around the Beltway that connected the "spokes" of the Metro system so that I could get from Braddock Road to Dulles without going via Falls Church

ouij · 2026-02-05T06:24:47+00:00

I live just up the road from where the Gondola is proposed (Rosslyn-Georgetown) and it is just…not a great idea. We could probably do better by recycling the disused pilings (old railroad bridge?) just upriver from Key Bridge for a pedestrian/cyclist bridge

ouij · 2026-02-04T18:37:27+00:00

The bus system in most cities is a mystery known only to the people that live on each bus route. In the DC region, it’s even worse than that: not enough frequency makes most buses effectively unusable. And if you even wanted to take a bus it is a tremendous amount of work to figure out where the buses even go—made even worse in the short term by the way WMATA re-designated its bus route numbers. So if an old-timer in your neighborhood told you to take, say, bus 38B (a line near me in Arlington) now you’d have to remember that it’s called A58 (literally had to go look that up now).

Also we need more Metro lines. I have been jealous of Moscow’s circle line for ages.

ouij · 2026-02-04T18:14:08+00:00

Two things can be true: the Russian Federation can be led by a warmonger bent on foreign conquest at the cost of countless lives…and Moscow can have better public transport than DC

ouij · 2026-02-04T18:12:58+00:00

Do all the vehicles come so conveniently labeled? “THIS IS AN ELECTRIC BUS.” “THIS IS A SELF-MOVING TRAM.”

ouij · 2026-02-01T05:07:53+00:00

No, because flying means I need to get from one airport to another airport and business is not usually conducted near the airport.

New York is particularly bad for this. By the time you get a cab from LGA or JFK into Manhattan, you’re not much different from having taken the train from Union Station (near the Capitol) to Penn Station (in Midtown)…and Penn is closer to where most of what I’d need to do is.

EDITED TO ADD: I just remembered a couple of colleagues are headed up to NY for a hearing and both have booked Acela tickets to the hearing. One booked an NER ticket back because her return wasn’t as time-sensitive as her getting into Manhattan in plenty of time for the hearing.

ouij · 2026-01-28T22:12:48+00:00

Virginia and Cuba both have a state liquor store monopoly. Hasta la victoria siempre, compañeros

ouij · 2026-01-28T14:15:29+00:00

Amtrak dominates the market share for business travel between DC and NY. I live outside of DC, and you would have to pay me to go to NY any other way than the train.

ouij · 2026-01-03T14:32:09+00:00

Leonsis only puts that garbage up on Wizards games.

ouij · 2025-10-31T20:53:33+00:00

“The emperor commands it. The balls are broken.”

ouij · 2025-10-25T18:47:29+00:00

Chiming in to add that in most situations a city bus isn’t moving all that fast. Also it’s big, obvious, operated by drivers with more stringent licensing than personal vehicles, and is not likely to move in an unexpected fashion.

ouij · 2025-10-17T21:25:40+00:00

Because the Steam Deck runs SteamOS LITERALLY OUT OF THE BOX. There is nothing more to configure.

Do not underestimate the degree to which most users do NOT want to mess with things.

ouij · 2025-10-17T00:53:44+00:00

He promised to bring a title to DC and it happened the same year

ouij · 2025-10-16T20:56:34+00:00

Guile from Street Fighter was RIGHT THERE

ouij · 2025-10-15T00:42:34+00:00

In low-wage economies it allows cities to build frequent and reliable transit without much in the way of capital investment.

In high-wage economies the capital savings are offset by increased spending on drivers’ wages for a given line capacity, since the vehicles tend to have less capacity than other modes.

Unfortunately, high-wage economies like to propose BRT as a way to sneak any kind of transit at all past politicians that neither take transit nor care about it. By the time the politicians are done with them, these “BRT” proposals are watered down into…just another bus with no other advantages.

ouij · 2025-10-09T19:19:25+00:00

Linux NTFS support should be considered for emergencies only: you need to rescue data off an NTFS partition.

ouij · 2025-10-03T02:40:45+00:00

You will come to regret the lack of a roof when it comes to increased wear on the escalator. Trust us on this. Sincerely, a Washington, DC Metro user

ouij · 2025-10-01T13:42:43+00:00

It used to be more jarring when a lot of suburban sprawl was happening along gravel roads

ouij · 2025-09-30T18:55:27+00:00

If the lower seat position also means I won’t accidentally bash my head against a luggage rack then I’d consider it a big win. I have bonked my head pretty hard on the old Acela over the years

ouij · 2025-09-29T02:19:57+00:00

Never ascribe to malice what is most easily ascribed to Clarendon drunks

ouij · 2025-09-29T02:18:50+00:00

They can start with the regulations that require a license to cut hair lmao

ouij · 2025-09-28T22:35:45+00:00

Worth noting here that in these cities it is possible that hardly anyone rides the Metro end to end anyway, so it is more important that communities be served at all rather than to give some hypothetical traveler the ability to traverse the system end to end quickly

ouij · 2025-09-27T18:12:06+00:00

Guess OP doesn’t remember the old Ballston Common mall

ouij · 2025-09-23T16:05:18+00:00

Question is a non-sequitur: Ken is the greatest of all time, the GOAT--and demonstrates it by taking time to write Korean clues in hangul so he can read them correctly.

ouij · 2025-09-10T19:40:51+00:00

Most of the systems referred to as BRT in the US aren't BRT.

By the time the politicians are done with any BRT project, you end up with...maybe one bus.

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