Eric Goldwyn

An absolutely incredible bit

​Greetings from the Northwestern University Transportation Library, where Rachel just showed me the original!

I rounded up. Wikipedia says 192.

“People used to tell me that explaining jokes ruins them. But I enjoy it. Telling people why things are funny can be funny too.”

And dream bigger than 12k units on 200 acres!

A Better Billion: Expanding transit and housing for a more affordable New York · Luma Event Description During the mayoral election, Zohran Mamdani repeatedly promised to tackle New York City’s affordability crisis. One of his signature campaign…

We are talking A Better Billion at NYU Marron next week. Housing + Subway Expansion is catnip for New Yorkers. Definite cameos from @27a01.bsky.social, @vanshnookenraggen.com, @eensari.bsky.social, and @ndhapple.bsky.social. We will have food and beverages. Please join us! luma.com/ub7q20a6

Also @sandypsj.bsky.social what is going on with the CRRC plant in Massachusetts?

im into. the people need to know about rolling stock costs.

Just different contexts. Larger diameter, different delivery agency, etc. etc.

It’s a bad comp. No shame in that.

Yes. That seemed like a tough benchmark…

“The highway’s final cost came to $238 million, about six times the 1946 estimate, of almost $2 billion in today’s dollars, for 6.5 miles of highway.”

For everyone who asks us to do roads: “At first, planners estimated the Cross Bronx’s projected total cost at $38,670,000. When work had been underway for about a year, the estimate went up to $60 million.”

A BETTER BILLION, AMA: This is the latest report from the Transit Costs Project. It sought to take all the work we've done on subway construction and push it forward into a vision of what could/should be possible in NYC with a steady source of funding -- transitcosts.com/a-better-bil...

We at the Transit Cost Project are hosting an event on our most recent report, "A Better Billion", at 370 Jay St in Brooklyn on March 4th.

If you are interested in hearing about the planning proposal in person and ask your burning questions on the report, RSVP on Luma here: luma.com/ub7q20a6

Also, there aren’t good local benchmarks to draw upon. We did draw up a few lines that did cross east river, but ended up going in a different direction.

LISTEN: ‘The Master Plan of New York is the Subway’ Get THE CITY sent right to your inbox.

LISTEN: ‘The Master Plan of New York is the Subway’

www.thecity.nyc/2026/02/18/b...

Expanding subways more pro-affordability than free buses, report says The new report comes from the NYU Marron Institute.

Happy our project is getting some local news love.

@egoldwyn.bsky.social @ndhapple.bsky.social @27a01.bsky.social

ny1.com/nyc/all-boro...

Look how much Canadians hate the United States now It’s not just about the trade war. Nearly half of America’s neighbors to the north now think the U.S. is a bigger threat to world peace than Russia.

Look how much Canadians hate the United States now www.politico.com/news/2026/02...

Look how much Canadians hate the United States now It’s not just about the trade war. Nearly half of America’s neighbors to the north now think the U.S. is a bigger threat to world peace than Russia.

“Canadians were the most likely — among respondents in Canada, Germany, France and the U.K. — to say the U.S. is not a reliable ally (58 percent).”
www.politico.com/news/2026/02...

Yes. But I don’t think they operate at 110.

Do they hit 125? I thought they only went up to 79? But, I guess when CAHSR comes through they will have trains going 125+

@galvinalmanza.bsky.social is it even possible to be arrested for bus fare evasion since MTA Eagle Team enforces? Sometimes those teams may be accompanied by NYPD, I suppose.

@galvinalmanza.bsky.social I read your op-ed, congrats! I wanted to ask if the person you defended was a bus or subway rider? The set up suggested a bus rider, but the precise phrase you used was “public transit.” Thank you

Seamless Bay Area on Service-Led Planning and how it can help regional network management in the Bay, including:
1. Better transfers;
2. Incremental upgrades to speed, reliability and frequency;
3. More cost effective capital project selection and development.
www.seamlessbayarea.org/blog/2026/2/...

Abstract for Transportation for the Abundant Society: A growing chorus known as the abundance movement seeks to overcome artificial scarcity in the built environment—especially housing. Yet this movement’s signature goal of increasing housing production collides with a central driver of scarcity: development restrictions rooted in traffic concerns. Advocates often assume that building more housing will generate support for needed transportation reform. Experience suggests otherwise. In auto-dependent regions, adding housing without reconfiguring transportation tends to reinforce the logic of restriction. Unlocking abundance’s promised feedback loops requires re-grounding transportation policy in its relationship to land use. This Article makes two contributions. First, it introduces into legal analysis a core urban-planning framework: transportation accessibility, which evaluates system performance by users’ ability to reach destinations. Though facially modest, anchoring policy in accessibility would depart sharply from a century of practice, with significant implications across state and local government law. Second, drawing on 13 original interviews with current and former transportation officials, the Article develops a novel account of institutional barriers to reform. Far from the marble corridors and mahogany courtrooms where law is articulated, transportation policy is functionally made in the unglamorous offices of state and local government. We call this institutional crucible—shaped by agency culture and industry convention as well as hard law—“transportation policy linoleum.” It helps explain why proven, seemingly unobjectionable reforms routinely wither. The Article closes with a policy playbook designed to help accessibility break through the linoleum and deliver abundance.

Table of Contents CONTENTS INTRODUCTION 3 I. ABUNDANCE AND TRANSPORTATION POLICY 6 A. The Rise of Abundance 7 B. Transportation as a Binding Constraint 10 II. THE PURPOSE OF TRANSPORTATION POLICY 17 A. What Counts as Success? 18 B. From Mobility to Access 20 C. Transportation Policy Spillovers 24 1. Housing affordability 24 2. Climate mitigation 28 3. Roadway safety 29 III. OPERATIONAL BARRIERS TO REFORM 32 A. Network Effects and System Interdependence 33 B. Operational Complexity and Risk 34 IV. LEGAL BARRIERS TO REFORM 36 A. NEPA and the Dawn of Conservation Primacy 36 B. Judges as Planners: California’s CEQA Regime 40 C. Judges as Planners Around the Country 44 1. Minnesota and comprehensive planning 44 2. Washington, D.C. and density review 46 3. Montana and constitutional penumbra 46 V. TRANSPORTATION POLICY LINOLEUM 48 A. Policy “In Books” and “In Action”: 13 Interviews 48 B. Fragmentation and Coordination Failures 49 C. Path Dependence and Institutional Lock-In 53 D. Legal Risk and Defensive Administration 55 VI. A POLICY PLAYBOOK FOR ACCESS 57 A. Behavioral Data as Participation 57 1. Ex ante participation 58 2. Ex post participation 59 B. Realistic Alternatives Modeling 59 C. A More Honest Cost-Benefit Analysis 60 1. Requiring cost-benefit discipline 61 2. Accounting for opportunity costs and externalities 63 CONCLUSION 64

ToC continued, plus first bit of text from article: A central claim of the emerging “abundance agenda” is that in the physical world, more is more: more housing, more clean energy, and more infrastructure to support both. Abundance brings the American promise of plenty into policy, arguing that government should expand capacity—so that individuals can access the good life and society can advance climate goals, scientific discovery, and prosperity. In both its academic and popular expressions, the ideologically diverse movement contends that law has created artificial scarcity and that the remedy is to loosen outdated constraints and rebuild state capacity so government can build and approve major projects—housing, transportation, energy, health—more quickly and reliably. Abundance draws on a substantial literature diagnosing law-made supply constraints in American public policy. Its core question is pragmatic: how to clear regulatory blockages to enable more building. Scholars have long identified such blockages at the intersection of land use and transportation, from highways to high-speed rail. Yet even improved megaprojects would not meet most Americans’ daily transportation needs. And the connection between transportation policy and abundance remains underdeveloped, even as political interest grows.

✨ introducing… ✨

🌇 Transportation for the Abundant Society 🚅

"Abundance" says our problem is artificial scarcity—especially housing. But you can’t build your way out if transportation policy still treats traffic flow as sacred.

Transportation is the binding constraint. ssrn.com/abstract=538...

Let’s go!

Since we're crayoning:
Here's a challenge.
Pick a metro area.
You can build 10 miles subway, 20 miles elevated rail, or 40 miles at grade (street, freeway, rail ROW) rail (or any suitably weighted combination.)
Where do you put it for max ridership?
How do you adjust the bus network to work with it?

Very excited to say that the stars have aligned and NYU Marron/Transit Costs Project have landed a grant that will fund a second edition of Momentum, which will apply the high-throughput framework to major regional rail networks beyond the NY area.

Our three big new cases:
- NJT
- SEPTA
- METRA

“But having read more non-fiction about whaling after my “Moby Dick” re-read, I now know this is not true.”