punt

..trickiest part seems to be parking access to me

you can get more units out of a point access block courtyard building, and that also allows more than just studios and 1 bedroom units. many of the courtyards in europe are basically just a bunch of adjacent buildings sharing a big yard

really the tr

yeah, building the cadillac escalade of transit once a decade and going 'well it is a car, cars are expensive ya know' is not a great strategy

what's frustrating is how many cost drivers are still off the radar- for example station size comes up here and there but hardly ever nfpa 130 specifically

this *is* blandness imo, it’s just sort of chaotically bland

i assume there’s some way to split your tasks to effectively bolt together two 128gb machines. does that not exist

sure, but i think waymo is a significantly better experience than cabs, ubers, or these guys. those 3 all involve some version of ’guy in car’ and waymo doesn’t

not to mention waymo cars being newer and generally better

waymo is going to be 100% more effective against this stuff than the port authority

hm. i don't get why stamford ct seems so far ahead in terms of infill, both downtowns have solid office jobs and easy amtrak access. stamford is faster to nyc and goes to grand central, I guess that could be part of it

what else has it happened with?

wilmington is attempting to redevelop a bunch of former industrial land right next to downtown/amtrak, they hired a big name architect to draw up a plan

In 2025, more than 10,000 STEM PhDs quit or were fired from federal jobs. That's 14% of the federal STEM PhD workforce, and 17% of STEM PhDs at 14 critical agencies. A huge loss of expertise and institutional memory, representing more than 106,000 person-years of experience.

brief searches in continental europe are showing me 4-5x, not 10-15, so there's something i guess

don't have the expertise needed to evaluate this whatsoever, but if it turned out that oops there's actually just some absurd regulation or custom that makes it this expensive.. it wouldn't be the first time... elevators, subway stations, railroad electrification...

here's a utility saying its 10x more expensive: cdn.xcelenergytransmission.com/blobvizxe609...

which.. idk, maybe they have some incentive to fudge it but that's nuts to me. 'specialized equipment and labor' especially- man they use *helicopters* to install poles!

imo there's gotta be more to it

i’m wondering why we even have poles at all if we can bury those!

sepulveda demand actually seems slightly higher than wilshire to me!

seupulveda line for la metro for sure.

my guess is that you'd need 2 things for it to catch on:

-at least midsize (5+ story?) buildings that have repetitive units

-enough separate, individual buildings that you develop an actual system for it instead of just reinventing each one

and we haven't had both at once since like, the 1920s?

interesting. is it legal to not just drill the holes, but put actual pipes in them in the factory? and then just seal them together on site?

@pipedreaming.bsky.social any ideas?

how about a federal program that provided agencies money, *solely for in-house hiring*, of subject matter experts?

this is great, but one thing i'd add: we absolutely need to reform the design of underground stations specifically.

there's just no way to make these (good) expansions and tunneling projects work if each station costs a billion dollars imo.

simply doing this on every street corner would be such a big quality of life boost, its nuts

wonder how easy it is to install utilities with this. at high volume maybe you could put pipes in in the factory and just attach them on site?

are 'all season tires' actually real?

similarly its amazing how popular the union pacific steam train is even today

isn't that a great situation for batteries?

the bolt specifically was a weird project imo. it’s not part of their new platform, they were just extending their old one a little for it.

if it really is all underground this project absolutely needs nfpa 130 reform and i highly doubt it will get it

sure i guess. i'd still be fine with nyc making the 14th st bus a tram for example.

and like i said doing both at once would mean you wouldn't have the rip up the street, so it'd be cheaper than a typical light rail project.