Rutgers '24, transit enthusiast/advocate, New Yorker now in Jersey, runs
@BlessedTrains
He/They, train good, car bad. ADHD, Autistic, Ferroequinologist
AVIATION THREAD: the US should allow select foreign airlines “cabotage rights” i.e. the right to operate domestic routes in the US.
Imagine how great air travel would be if Emirates, Etihad, Singapore, Qatar, etc were allowed to compete here.
Take a journey with me...
No part of the DC Metro will run less than every ten minutes starting next week, with much of the system seeing 5-6 minute headways or better. It's easy to say no system in the US can ever achieve service admirable by global standards, but here we are
More frequent service is coming to Metro beginning Monday, September 11, when the transit agency will roll out its eleventh service increase since last summer. Learn more:
#wmata
We should nationalize Greyhound and make it part of Amtrak. Think of the network effect power of being able to essentially link the intercity bus network with the intercity rail network and have it all be ticketed as the same network.
I would kill for the source art for these GE ads (as opposed to the high quality scans I found ~2 years ago). Just beautiful industrial design artwork that I would totally get on a poster
"Walkable cities are ableist"
Shut up, this is a stupid talking point. Any truly good human-scale city has quality accessible options. Walkable doesn't mean literally forcing you to walk everywhere!
As someone who grew up with buses, being able to freely travel around the city by myself starting at like age 11 meant that I was much more independent than my suburban peers who needed to be driven, or wait until they got a driver's license. Transit is freedom.
Carmel, IN has had the same Republican mayor for 27 years: James Brainard
Under his reign, the population has quadrupled, he replaced all the stoplights with roundabouts, and built a classical downtown out of stone and brick
Cue the cope from NYcels and SF hostages
Guy with two cars, two homes, who admits to insurance fraud and using illegal plate covers claiming that it's unfair the city will charge people to drive into the core of Manhattan because it hurts working class people "just like him" is truly the pinnacle of carbrain in action.
What's this odd trident-shaped structure jutting into the Sandy Hook Bay? Well, it's a good thing you asked, because we're about to take a look at one of the oddest pieces of rail infrastructure in the US.
Why are Miles and I on the far West Side at almost 2 AM? To take the world's longest Megabus trip from New York to San Antonio. Our morale? I think it's pretty high?
While the fossil fuel industry reports record profits, millions of humans and other sentient beings are suffocating today from the impact of global warming. Those who blame "wildfires in Canada" are missing the deeper cause.
The Brooklyn Bridge today in NYC. Photo:
@Phil_Lewis_
Love to see a 3 train absolutely tearing through 50th Street at 50 MPH, and a 1 train flying in behind it. Experienced operators know they can keep it on full power on the express past the station before the timers approaching Times Square
In 2 minutes, 4 trains manage to stop at Grand Central-42 Street on the 7, thanks to efficient operations and modern signalling allowing for very close headways. More people are being moved on trains in 2 minutes than an 8 lane highway can carry in half an hour
🚌Big news for MoCo commuters! Look out for new red lanes on University Blvd. These dedicated bus lanes mean faster Ride On & Metrobus services, easing your commute. One of the ways
@MontCoExec
&
@MCDOTNow
are making public transportation easier!🚦🔴 Info:
I genuinely am floored by someone trying to blatantly lie like this. They literally slowed down footage of an Acela passing New Brunswick at full speed.
I had to give a short talk in New Brunswick NJ (Rutgers) today. Left the house at 8:30 - got there at noon. (Septa and NJT) Only 51 miles - average of 20 miles per hour. Shinkansen in Japan would have been 10 minutes. We failed public transit. Actual train speed…
I'm always impressed by the skill of train operators here to smoothly bring a 500-foot long train to a perfect stop with one smooth brake application from >40 MPH. Well-trained and experienced employees are such a crucial part of our great transit system
Manhattan, south of 60th street, is not an amusement park despite having clowns as elected officials. A $23 admission fee is not the same as a distance-based toll road.
These comparisons to the toll on the NJ Turnpike are fallacious.
I love how radically Andy Byford was able to change the operational culture at NYCT. You now see operators who take the curve out of Grand Central so aggressively that the train visibly leans to the right on a curve superelevated to the left
@Chaswied
that warsaw switchback is one of the dumbest, best things that's ever happened here. two tracks compressing into a shared single track which loops back through itself due to how tight the turn is, and both approaches are blind. IDK how anyone survived the early 20th century
Amtrak's ridership isn't because stations have parking lots, it's because so many of the trains are daily (or worse!). If every long distance route was three times a day, and every corridor route 6 times a day or more, there'd be way more ridership regardless of land use.
@ThunderWolf08
Every Amtrack station and line is bad. That's the point. Amtrack gets a fraction of the ridership compared to similarly dense European corridors. We should not settle for mediocrity. Building parking lots around train stations is terrible land use.
Guys don't worry we can run 15,000 foot long freight trains with one crew member, nothing bad could possibly happen please don't Google Lac-Megantic disaster
The Jones Falls Expressway is such a crime of urban highway construction. There's a beautiful creek under there just covered by an expressway that cuts Baltimore in half
The MTA bringing a battery bus to the EV pavilion at the Auto Show is nothing short of genius (it's not a trolley, but battery bus > battery car, any day of the week)
It blows my mind when suburban residents say stuff like this, as if their existence in a city driving around in a car is what drives local businesses. It doesn't. Go to anywhere in the commercial cores of places like Philly and NYC, and almost everyone's arriving not in a car.
The problem is bus lanes make driving in the city that much more miserable. And the more miserable/expensive you make driving & parking, the less those of us who live in the suburbs will come into the city. And we're essential to the well being of restaurants, shops, etc.
The amount of misinformation about the East Palestine derailment, deliberate or otherwise, is absurd. Nobody is covering it up, and it's nowhere near the scale of disasters like Bhopal or Chernobyl.
They Chernobyled Ohio, they are very good at silencing people and blacking out the media, you need to be aware. Pennsylvania, you're fucked too. This will be a finger of God smearing cancer and death across multiple states, visible from space, a biblical blight and horror.
It's extremely clear to me that the people saying that Greyhound - and intercity bus travel writ large - are doing just fine right now have never had firsthand experience riding anything more than a short trip, if at all.
Yesterday at the Free Library of Philadelphia, the librarian brought out this massive report from the Government Documents section, and said "I think you guys might find this interesting." Little did we know it would have incredible plans for rapid transit that never happened!
Brooklyn has a density of 36,000 or so people per square mile and 95% of it looks like this. People are really terrible at actually knowing what population density correlates to when it comes to the built environment of a city is like.
if you’re curious what “10000 people per square mile” actually looks like, here’s a neighborhood in Chicago with almost exactly that density (Edison Park). looks nothing like a skyscraper hell to me.