Faina

A Tunnel to Transform Los Angeles The ambitious Sepulveda Transit Corridor project — an automated subway line underneath Bel Air — aims to do something rare in LA: Get people out of their cars.

“A year after the $1.1 billion overhaul,” which added a new lane each direction, “the 405’s rush hour drive times were a minute slower than they were before the workers broke ground. Five years later, traffic was worse at all times of day.”

www.bloomberg.com/news/feature...

Want to run social media for an aggressively reform-minded NYCDOT?

Now's your chance.

cityjobs.nyc.gov/job/creative...

AOC or bust

I knew I saw this somewhere before. Funny that it’s almost exactly what’s actually happening now.

Repeal the light rail ban and bring back streetcars to Indy | Opinion Indiana's light rail ban is blocking billions in development. Time to repeal it and catch up with our peer cities.

www.indystar.com/story/opinio...

Great quote. I tell a lot of people interested in public power that the "feasibility study" is not a measure of our political power and shouldn't be treated like one. It doesn't actually matter until it comes time to work out the deal terms.

Once the rail is gone, it's gone forever.

Losing the rail line means fewer options, longer commutes, higher costs, and fewer chances to stay in Santa Cruz County.

Transportation isn't abstract. It's whether people can live where they work.

That's why we're organizing to build both Rail & Trail.

These key strategies could help Americans get rid of their cars  » Yale Climate Connections Research points the way to a more climate-friendly, diverse, and desirable transportation system.

Going car-free is the best thing most people can do for climate. To reduce car dependency, cities should promote car-free living, supporting compact cities through policy, and investing in public transportation, pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure, and shared mobility options.

A fact that sounds like bullshit but is actually true:

There is more square footage of parking *per car* in the US than there is square footage of housing *per person.*

Time for the 3-30-300 Rule to be Planning Law

And funded by a 50% FAR scheme with Central Gov or with any urban renewal 85% EFAR rate

FAR and EFAR = Funding or Enchanced Funding Assistant Rate
It is a formula NZTA uses with local authorities for transport but can be adapted to Green Infrastructure

The political background is a little more complicated, Rod’s vision is way better than what was actually able to be implemented due to the anti transit attitude in several key cities. But he has delivered real projects and hasn’t stopped advocating for the real deal, which I appreciate.

What’s the hate for Rod? He shows up to everything and is a great advocate, yes the big network didn’t get built but he’s still advocating for it. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rod_Dir....

Storm Leonardo flooding kills man in Portugal, woman swept away in Spain Storm Leonardo pounded the Iberian peninsula with torrential rains on Thursday, prompting more flood warnings, as a man was killed by a deluge in Portugal and Spanish rescuers searched for a woman swe...

Found out about the mass flooding in Spain and Portugal on a call with a friend in Lisbon this morning. Haven’t seen this shared here, boosting to boost awareness and add to our global news. www.reuters.com/business/env...

Find someone who lives you as much as contemporary tram designers in Italy loves to overinterpret the UNI-FER definition of "metrotranvia" and unnecessarily fence off their entire right-of-way, achieving both higher capex, higher opex and total ugliness.

That's talent.

(Bergamo, T2, u/c)

Whoever promises to stop funding highways and start funding transit

Water color flyer for Make a Friend (on Transit) Day made by Alfred Twu. It shows three friendly people sitting on transit chatting with each other, wearing name tags. Mini personifications of a smiling BART train (with name tag) a bus and a ferry are also on board engaged in conversation. In the lap of a person is a smiling Caltrain akin to a lap-dog, and another person has a tote bag with a picture of a BART car face on it.

Make a Friend (On Transit) Day is next Wednesday! Join the fun and help pass out name tags at @bart.gov @caltrain.com, bus hubs, and @sfbayferry.com terminals that morning. And who knows, an hour of your time might help spark a lifelong friendship. Check it out docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

Know the Facts About Rail & Trail

Greenway's strategy is simple: repeat claims that are completely false, but that they wish were true, and count on those claims being treated as a legitimate "competing perspective."

If our "environmental protection" frameworks can stop an affordable housing project but can't stop a detention center or a highway expansion we really need to start talk about ripping things up root and branch.

Step 1: deliberately scare people with misinformation and lies about what a proposed policy or plan will do. Step2: wait for misinformed people to complain. Step 3: say that “clearly people are concerned,“ so we should “listen to the people“ and reject the plan. The Populist Playbook

Step 4: mainstream media “reports the controversy” rather than the fact it was manufactured, and the amplify the quotes of those who manufactured it.. Step5: other elected leaders who know the truth, still vote against the good plan or policy, because they’re too afraid of the “heat.“

Have you heard of “The Populist Playbook?”

A few years ago, I posted what I still consider one of my most important messages.

It was about “The Populist Playbook” that I’ve watched play out often over my 33+ years of city planning.

Since then, it’s only gotten worse.

Do the steps sound familiar?

It’s not actually a good bus route, hence why it’s always cut when budgets are lean

Since METRO is likely not running a new funding measure it’s unlikely the 90 will come back, which means we won’t have any bus service on that part of the highway anyway. They just used the pretend bus only lane for imaginary bus service as an excuse to add one more lane.

This is how you replace a bridge.

For all the hullabaloo over first-mil/last-mile solutions, 90%+ of US transit riders arrive at a station by means of their own two feet.

www.nationalacademies.org/projects/TRB...

I’m pretty sure everyone is *meh* on everyone except AOC. She seems to be the great unifier, am I missing something? If not, Schumer should be terrified.

VICTORY! The emergency funding deal we fought so hard for in 2025 has finally been made! The state will issue a $590 million emergency loan to hold off disastrous cuts to BART, Caltrain, AC Transit, and Muni that would have started this July.
(1/x)

Nearly One in Five Americans Want to Ditch the Car As seen in cities such as Paris, fewer cars and fewer drivers can translate to less traffic congestions, cleaner air, healthier and happier people and local businesses.

If one in five Americans already wants to be free of government driving mandates, and an additional 40% would like to try living outside those mandates --

That's not just a collossal market failure. That's the largest, most costly policy failure in human history. momentummag.com/nearly-one-i...

I wasn’t happy with Barbara Lees transit positions. Do you think there’s room to move her towards public transit support?

YouTube video by Science Savant The Inefficiency of Cars Explained by Bill Nye the Science Guy! #science #green #climatechange

If you haven’t seen this before, a warning, you might end up liking Bill Nye even more.

x.com/CarsRuinedCi...

Yes

The key to the far right’s recent ascendence is the realization that if they simply go on traditional or social media and describe things that are completely false but they’d prefer to be true, many people will treat this fictitious reality as, at least, a competing theory that must be dignified.