dave

Huh…my impression from using regional service centered around Berlin is that it’s mostly provided by that odd collection of companies like ODEG. I thought DB was mostly IC(E) service

What’s the best explanation of the D-ticket’s issues? Alon also mentioned today it’s hurting budgets and I can’t say I understand how it’s flawed. I read a paper about the 9€ version’s failure to drive modal shift but have seen nothing about the current offering.

whereas breaking fare integration is a meager financial boost to all (felt most/only by the very poorest) while also negatively effecting that same poorer tranche the most by trapping them in slower, worse, more expensive thus politically vulnerable service 2/2

It seems to me the solution side differs: adding housing supply is like improving transit service/operations in that it helps everyone in the housing chain proportionally and *substantially* 1/2

I don’t think that preventing production of housing is anything like actually existing transit fares.

Agreed, which is why imo it’s bad to frame “free buses” as a good idea in normieworld when it actually makes the transit system more challenging to run

Better to reduce fares or expand integrated free fares piecemeal

So I guess we agree that it’s more signaling than good governance

Scottish Greens free bus travel plans to benefit half a million Scots Scottish Greens free bus travel plans to benefit half a million Scots - Cheap public transport is a win-win for people and planet

*Seems* they tried and failed to expand existing program to under-30s in the recently passed budget and this is a bombastic claim before the upcoming vote

greens.scot/news/scottis...

I’m ignorant of Scottish politics/infra but seems odd/short-sighted given the country’s recent push for integration. I wonder if there’s tactical context I’m missing

Operating “wholly in the known rather than in the unknown” seems to be the irreducible point that points to what LLMs will and will not be used for from here onward.

“Code input to [LLM] training is heavily biased to ‘working-at-all’ and the ingestion itself it geared strictly to work to build a plausible-continuation model. Good code works as exemplars of clarity, layering abstractions, maintainability, and sad-path security – but so does bad code.”

Related, what is the urbanist equivalent of filming short form video sitting in your parked car? There’s nothing wrong with it but the car-ubiquity of it is a little unnerving.

The Stasi was bad but platforms should auto-detect content filmed while driving and report it to authorities who seize the vehicle. In terms of distraction it’s more like driving while scrolling than it is like chatting with a passenger. It’s even normalized for parents with kids in the car! Wtf!

If you make buses free but rail still costs, then you split ridership and create strong desire for bus routes that duplicate rail. Operationally it’s quite bad

Is it even a coherent question to ask what free-bus money would do if applied to reducing fares across the system? Or is it too disconnected a political question

The napkin estimate for free buses is $1B — is there a similar number for making the whole system free?

The bad outcomes are for the riders themselves, too, by creating a hard-to-improve, hard-to-fix two-tier system that demands expensive duplicated routes.

“If there is money for making the buses free, and it must go to fare reductions rather than to better service, then it should go to a broad reduction in fares, especially if it can also reduce the monthly rate in order to align with best practices.”

Old electric scooter with half a plastic bottle taped over the rear wheel

Rusty bike with plastic bag on the seat

Electric sit-scooter with plastic bag on the seat

Spiffy electric motorcycle/e-scooter

Vehicles of Portuguese fishing village urbanism

(Last, nice one is from the mainland)

I know what anthropomorphizing is. The phrase I referred to was in quotes. I think a small but substantial minority of users do not share your implicit understanding.

I have no idea what that phrase means as someone who understands LLMs relatively well. I definitely don’t think most normies have the faintest clue what the asterisks are or even that they’re there.

Yepp handlebar bike seat and save your pennies for a front-bucket cargo bike, the rest is optional

The canonical 🧵 for Berlin/Kreuzberg’s Kiezblock urbanism

I think I’d prefer street collection but Berlin workers come once a week (or 2?), take the bins out and later return them themselves. Where do building staff ferry it? Residents fill the courtyard bins.

Alternatively to a Hinterhof with large bins that the sanitation workers have keys to

Garbage juice is a skill issue

When did the industry make that switch? A bespoke “tenths of feet” norm is hilarious compared to, y’know, taking the opportunity to switch to metric

After using Celsius for over a decade I can’t say this has any basis in reality. Literally no scenario comes up where Celsius fails in communicating nuance or is lacking for quotidian tasks except that people who didn’t grow up with it need a few years of immersion to gain fluency.

The museum can do as they please. Walz is using the history as myth in order to shape political reality, which seems important to me. You and the museum apparently object to the necessary lossy nature of making myth of history. Should Walz then not use myth, or use some other unknown myth?