Andrew

The intent of this thread wasn't to post a trove of vacation photos, but to share the progress being made by our southern neighbors.

The build out of this system wasn't perfect - I've whitewashed much of it - but hopefully this motivates you to learn more about Mexican transit and urbanism. 🙂

It's incredible what this project has brought to the Yucatán Peninsula. The Tren Maya serves an interesting mix of Int'l passengers visiting tourist sites, Mexicans from other regions wanting to connect to Mayan culture, and local residents who just need to travel economically through the area.

We finished our route in Palenque, at another Tren Maya Hotel.

Palenque features breathtaking Mayan ruins, nearby natural water features, and is home to the residence of former Mexican President AMLO, who championed and oversaw construction of this system during his term in office.

While this would have ordinarily taken us directly to the city center, the Tren Ligero was only in partial operation, due to Carnaval happening on the malecón that night.

But that's a whole different story. 🙂

Our next stop was Campeche. While the Chetumál - Mérida segment is fully electrified, our route switches to diesel for the rest of the journey.

The transportation system here features the Tren Ligero, which is a fully separated, full BEV, guided bus system from the station to the historical center.

Along with the BRTs, many stations have extensive bike storage and connect to various bike share systems. The biking connections to population centers is still relatively sparse at this time, so usage is low, but they're clearly building for the future with this strategy.

During construction of the Tren Maya, a massive build out of BRT systems was created in many cities, connecting passengers to the train stations and running downtown.

Our next stop, in Mérida, featured the Ie-Tram - a fully electric system using Irizar buses - taking us right near our lodging.

An interesting quirk of the train system is that it is constructed and operated by the Ministry of Defense. This results in airport-style security checkpoints and many military personnel stationed and traveling along the route.

Some of the stations offer a government-run 'Hotel Tren Maya', which have luxury lodging and locations near nature preserves and archeological sites. We stayed at these in Chichén Itzá and Palenque.

The stations are generally quite impressive. Everything is newly constructed, with many stations integrating natural features and references Mayan culture.

They also feature impressive multi-modal connectivity. More to come on this.

We started our trip in Cancún, making our first stop in Chichén Itzá.

The rolling stock is primarily Alstom electro-diesel MUs, with Tourist or Premier ticketing options.

Prices are tiered for Int'l, Nat'l, or Local passengers, with local tickets comparably priced to existing bus services.

The system is a ~1500km loop around the Yucatán, starting in Cancún and ending in Palenque. The route includes cities, small villages, and many "Pueblos Mágicos", archeological sites, and nature preserves.

Many of my urbanist friends have yet to hear about the progress made in the Yucatán Peninsula around the recently-opened Tren Maya. I spent a couple of weeks there and would love to tell you about it!

🚆🧵

Maybe try Marty Surpreme next, haha!

We're celebrating the fact that this announcement is a massive reduction in the project cost and scope.

@ravibhalla.bsky.social

YouTube video by Not Just Bikes Cities Aren't Loud: Cars Are Loud

Here’s a video recommendation for you:

youtu.be/CTV-wwszGw8?...

I’d like to see it expanded.

Imagine this system improving the efficiency of every loading zone through the city! We could eliminate the impulse for double parking overnight.

And business was actually up throughout the corridor during the enforcement pilot.

Parking turnover was up. Spending was up. Parking transactions were up. All signs were positive.

It’s really frustrating that a handful of people are blocking this program from being restored.

HPU enforces parking violations like this, not HPD.

HPU simply doesn’t have the capacity to position someone at 1 location. Automating part of their patrols was a huge benefit of the CLEAR program that allowed additional enforcement elsewhere, but, yet again, this has yet to be reauthorized by CC.

Phil Cohen supports the enforcement program.

He’s doing what he can to fix the problem, but he needs a vote from Fisher, Imus, Russo, Ramos or Presinzano to get anything done.

The situation you described happens all the time. It is dangerous, chaotic, inefficient, and completely preventable.

Hopefully our City Council will choose to do something about it.

We had a system that automatically sent these violations to HPU to be ticketed along lower Washington, but @tiffaniefisher.bsky.social fought for its repeal.

As chair of the Transportation SC, she now holds the authority to reintroduce and expand the program to upper Wash anytime she wants.

We could really use your help in Hoboken over the next few weeks. The portal bridge rerouting is going to be a disaster for us, unless NJ Transit deploys even more buses, similarly to what was done during PATH closure last year.

Please don’t post stuff like this unless you have more information. Otherwise you’re just spreading fear and confusion.

S.A.L.U.T.E. is a good framework to think through the next time you are suspicious.

@tiffaniefisher.bsky.social is on here.

Upper Willow is the most dangerous street segment in Hoboken, where around 1/10th of our traffic injuries occur. It’s a county road that has a planned redesign:

hudsoncountyview.com/letter-weve-...

The @bikehoboken.org 2024 Traffic Injury Report has more data:

www.bikehoboken.org/s/2024-Bike-...

This certainly could account for the entire effect, but I wonder how the Hoboken PATH shutdown affected the data, considering the 126 is such a high volume line.

Much of the volume was traveling on charter buses and using cross-honored tickets. If there is an effect, it’d be seen throughout Feb.

Suspend Enforcement of Hoboken’s “Tests and Vests” Ordinance — Bike Hoboken In light of increased ICE activity in Hoboken, we are asking the City Council to suspend enforcement of the “Tests and Vests” delivery registration program.

In light of increased ICE activity in our community, we are respectfully asking #Hoboken City Council to suspend enforcement of the “Tests and Vests” delivery worker registration program.

www.bikehoboken.org/articles/sus...

I'm sorry, I read your comment as saying Hoboken's model of success isn't replicable, and is mainly just a function of it's geography.

If that wasn't your point, than great!