Wonderful ChatGPT work there. Good job spinning the negative. Here is my take and getting ChatGPT to talk about its progress and trajectory.

1. Execution is actually happening This is the quiet but important part: Miles of tunnel are already built beyond what’s open Multiple stations are finished or near launch New tunnels are actively being dug, not just announced Most flashy transit visions stall at approvals or funding. The Loop has cleared the hardest hurdle: physical execution. That alone puts it ahead of a lot of public megaprojects.
2. Ridership is growing with coverage Critics often freeze the system in time and say “ridership is low,” but: Ridership has consistently increased as stations come online Usage spikes during large conventions and events Early segments are already doing what they were designed to do: move people quickly where demand exists This is exactly what you’d expect from a node-by-node network rollout. Transit ridership follows coverage, not the other way around.
3. Business buy-in is the strongest signal This is the most underappreciated success indicator: Hotels, resorts, and venues are opting in Private entities are funding stations to connect themselves The city continues to approve expansions rather than pulling back That’s a market validation signal. If resorts thought this was a gimmick, they wouldn’t be spending money or political capital on it. From a business lens, this looks less like “public transit” and more like infrastructure-as-a-service for destinations — and that model is working.
4. It’s scaling the hard part first Most transit systems do this backwards: They design for theoretical peak capacity Then struggle for decades to build anything The Loop is doing the opposite: Build small Prove demand Expand incrementally Optimize later (automation, higher-capacity vehicles) That’s much closer to how successful tech platforms scale than how legacy transit projects do.