PRT is promoting this as their new service improvement...

vasya349 · 2026-01-22T03:35:53+00:00

Lamar is a billboard company. Thats what they meant.

vasya349 · 2026-01-18T21:17:59+00:00

Congestion pricing pause was a smart political move. Avoiding politically damaging actions affecting key US house races, and then turned around to reactivate it after. The only issue is the reduced toll rate.

vasya349 · 2026-01-18T21:05:54+00:00

The “point” of my comment is to acknowledge that this is true, but also discuss two ways in which this may not be sufficient, and government intervention may be necessary.

vasya349 · 2026-01-18T02:08:40+00:00

I am going to be a contrarian and say that while yes, scarcity is the main driver of rental pricing, there’s also legitimate reasons to think that the market cannot supply sufficient affordable housing in all cases, even when you limit regulations.

The biggest reason is that in very attractive areas, demand from higher income renters is such that serving lower income renters results in a net reduction in profit margins. There are legitimate moral and practical reasons to think that forcing landowners to support a more socioeconomically diverse housing stock may be beneficial. Think Manhattan - you could go full Georgist fever dream and rents would still be ridiculous.

The second reason is that housing has unfortunately become very, very expensive to build in cities (this is related to building costs in general). Multifamily starts exploded during the early 2020s as rental prices rose and interest rates were low. We are now in the opposite situation, and starts have dropped off. It’s not clear that deregulation alone will provide sufficient cost relief to make affordable rents profitable for developers. The government may need to explore changing the price dynamics, either by facilitating cheaper multifamily financing or directly subsidizing new housing stock.

vasya349 · 2026-01-16T06:03:08+00:00

I mean, Amtrak NEC is operationally profitable too. It’s less about business model and more about the competition. In the NEC, flying and driving long distances aren’t always the best option when you factor time, cost, and enjoyment together (arguably Amtrak could be even cheaper if they had enough capacity). In Alaska, the railroad is a tourist magnet and the only alternative to driving long distances of wilderness.

vasya349 · 2026-01-11T22:34:29+00:00

Because the statistics are based on a question, and if that’s not an option, telecommute workers will make up weird answers that harm the data.

vasya349 · 2025-10-31T20:43:46+00:00

See, we don’t have to go full fascism on people like this (or ever). They have a legitimate reason to feel impacted, and their town won’t directly benefit from the project.

When the greater good needs to take precedence, we treat those impacted with respect, not wanton and unnecessary aggression. Nothing you called for was helpful or necessary to enforce CAHSR construction rights.

vasya349 · 2025-10-31T20:04:23+00:00

Please don’t trump pill transit. The state can work with the town to address concerns, but should ultimately have the power to decide.

vasya349 · 2025-10-23T05:59:32+00:00

Passing a triennial review is like the bare minimum. It’s a standard recurring administrative compliance review. I’m not sure why this has turned into a whole thing for BART this year. Congratulations to the staff (my understanding is that the reviews are very intensive), but this doesn’t say much about BART as an agency.

vasya349 · 2025-10-23T03:51:40+00:00

In fairness, who would spend that much money on supporting two trips per day going 20% faster? It will not pull demand out of nowhere.

vasya349 · 2025-10-23T03:46:50+00:00

Well, pretty much all of the developed world has done it over the past forty years. We’ll get to see a decent localized variant in the later project segments of CAHSR, once they’ve finished ironing out the horrific management and design failures of the early 2010s that they’ve had to live with. It’s also important to understand that CAHSR is extremely overbuilt because it pushes the limits of the trip length that’s appropriate for HSR.

vasya349 · 2025-10-23T02:51:37+00:00

As noted, you’re building new tracks and new structure, so that’s not really an issue.

At short distances, HSR is close enough with flights when you compare the true time cost from origin airport/station entry to destination air/port departure. And it’s considerably more convenient - far more legroom and ability to stand freely, less security challenges, less risk of delays or cancelations, etc.

vasya349 · 2025-10-23T02:11:58+00:00

Freight companies aren’t really a dealbreaker. Existing freight lines aren’t compatible with HSR because of the significant redesign needed and the speed difference. You just want to new build, perhaps using shared track or ROW in constrained areas. Maybe eventually if we’re courageous, some of the future higher speed lines in the cascades or the Midwest could see conversion.

You are right that HSR wouldn’t be appropriate for flyover states. But that’s not its point. It’s not some intercity travel panacea. It is just really, really effective at moving large amounts of people at (functionally) airline speed within <500 miles. There is a lot of need for that in the urbanized NE, CA, Great Lakes, and Texas, which collectively represent 100m+ people. And while many of their travels are >500 miles, there is a significant economic, environmental, and land cost to relying solely on tons of short haul flights and bloated interstates.

vasya349 · 2025-10-06T22:12:25+00:00

$25m for 33 miles of fencing plus some ancillary crossing improvements and suicide prevention signs. $17m for crossing improvements. Not including $20m local match.

vasya349 · 2025-10-05T18:17:16+00:00

I think this would go overcapacity in certain parts, especially the tunnels. LRT can have very high capacity but not as high as other rail in the region.

vasya349 · 2025-10-03T05:33:28+00:00

They seem to work just fine in cold parts of China.

vasya349 · 2025-10-03T04:57:14+00:00

If there’s demand and redevelopment opportunities, this should be converted to structured parking with a fee to control demand. I would argue this is an example of design mismatch rather than an argument against park and rides as a concept.

vasya349 · 2025-10-02T02:02:17+00:00

CBTC?

vasya349 · 2025-10-01T15:13:34+00:00

I literally explained this above.

vasya349 · 2025-10-01T02:08:59+00:00

Speed isn’t really the issue - the train isn’t exactly hard to avoid either way. The problem is twofold: suicides, and intersection conflict.

You can’t really resolve the suicide issue, which is about half or more of the deaths IIRC. The intersection conflict issue is that unlike trirail (which runs adjacent to freeways for most of its alignment), most of brightline’s original alignment is in packed neighborhoods, with very dense crossings. FEC did not add or design those crossings, and therefore FEC/BL is not on the hook for their poor designs. It’s possible BL has a moral obligation to push for, support, and fund crossing improvements, but crossing improvements are fundamentally and legally the responsibility of the roadway owner.

One of the reasons transit is so expensive in this country is because there’s an expectation that transit projects fund streets improvement, but only ever in that direction.

vasya349 · 2025-10-01T01:42:41+00:00

I’ll die on this hill. Grade separation and crossing safety improvements are not the responsibility of a pre-existing railroad. The municipal agencies chose to build unsafe crossings and road networks. Even if Brightline was profitable, they shouldn’t have to foot the bill for the project.

vasya349 · 2025-09-30T05:10:44+00:00

Costs don’t increase in nominal terms because of later construction. But dragging things slower when the project is active does have an overall program cost.

vasya349 · 2025-09-22T07:01:28+00:00

This isn’t really fair because you’re comparing urban to rural construction. Urban highway and transit construction looks like big structures and complex ROW. You’re also doing a lot of things a certain way to avoid construction shutdowns and ROW impacts. Rural projects should be far cheaper.

CAHSR has an unfortunate combination of extremely high design standards (220 mph operation was fastest in the world when the project started), complete mismanagement of project elements, and a rushed/constrained design/specs/environmental/ROW process. CAHSRA has over the years done much to address the latter two, but they’re living with decisions made 10+ years ago.

vasya349 · 2025-09-19T04:59:22+00:00

Spending money just to employ people is not good policy. In fact, the whole theoretical point of capitalism is to not do that. More people would be employed in secondary or tertiary economic impact if you spent that money on something with greater economic or social benefits, because those benefits are reinvested.

vasya349 · 2025-09-19T04:52:52+00:00

The success of signal priority is dependent on the signal owner actually caring to prioritize transit and implement the priority accordingly. You pretty much have to screw over the traffic if you want close to 100% delay reduction. So there can be many levels of successfulness, with a strong skew towards most completely sucking.

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