Adrian Brandt

MARTA bus drivers now have ‘fare evasion’ buttons For MARTA bus drivers, catching passengers who don’t pay their fare is now as simple as hitting a button.

New “fare evasion button” lets MARTA bus drivers discreetly alert police to remotely review video & choose to contact fare evaders while the bus continues on its route. www.atlantanewsfirst.com/2025/06/18/m...

… and generous gov’t ZEV grants. Stadler’s underway development and future testing, certification, and delivery of Caltrain’s new battery EMU was 100% funded with an $80m CalSTA grant. Same for many / most agencies’ H2 & battery bus buys (eg SamTrans, Santa Cruz Metro) made largely with grants.

Why Do Transit Agencies Keep Falling for the Hydrogen Bus Myth? - CleanTechnica Transit agencies keep choosing hydrogen buses due to cognitive biases like anchoring, operational tunnel vision, and reliance on misleading narratives.

On a related topic: cleantechnica.com/2025/03/13/w...

Trump dumped these farmers’ water. They’d rather not talk about it. President Donald Trump followed through on his promise to unleash California’s water — only the water he released belonged to the very farmers he’d promised to help.

Trump just literally wasted 2.2 billion gallons of summer farming water, but Trumpy farmers have nothing bad to say:

“But, he said, ‘I’m a farmer. I have a conservative mindset. I encourage the trigger-pulling attitude, like, ‘Hey, let’s just get stuff done.’”

www.politico.com/news/2025/02...

Canada's Hydrogen Bus Trials Canceled Due To High Costs & Emissions - CleanTechnica Whistler, Edmonton and Winnipeg saw very high emissions and costs for hydrogen, so canceled orders. CUTRIC claims otherwise.

cleantechnica.com/2025/02/05/c...

Barnard being on the board of a UK-based battery aircraft co. is irrelevant to his data. AC’s 5x5 used 2020/21-era BEBs, ignored H2 production GHG & leak emissions of cheaper gray H2 @ > $9/kg. Despite that, their BEBs are >2x as energy efficient as their HFCBs actransit.legistar.com/View.ashx?M=...

Hydrogen Buses Hurt The People They Are Meant To Help - CleanTechnica Hydrogen buses more expensive to buy, very expensive to fuel, more expensive to maintain and higher GHGs, so poorer people will suffer if they are bought.

Devastating economic analysis on H2 vs. battery bus O&M cost and total cost of ownership:

Hydrogen Buses Hurt The People They Are Meant To Help
cleantechnica.com/2025/02/04/h...

German hydrogen trains experience problems - Trains Germany has more hydrogen-powered trains in use than any other country, but regular operation has been hit by snags leading to the temporary replacement of the largest fleet by older diesel trains. ...

Germany’s hydrogen train woes & buyer’s remorse sparks shift to Battery EMUs:

www.trains.com/trn/news-rev...

Since the initial gov’t funding was exhausted, no further hydrogen-train orders have been received from German operators … while some have switched their planned HEMU purchases to BEMUs.

Highway Robbery - Dissent Magazine Government highway agencies have enabled the blatant falsification of traffic model results. Consequently, the United States wastes billions on road expansions that fail to cure congestion and make it...

Exposed & proven: pseudo-scientific traffic-modeling fraud is used to justify never-ending road- & highway-widening projects, wasting billions, failing to cure congestion & auto-dependency, while inducing more driving (VMT), pollution & warming-emissions. www.dissentmagazine.org/online_artic...

@Caltrain reports its new⚡️trains are drawing much less ⚡️ (100% carbon-free!) from the grid than projected. And that ~40% of ⚡️ drawn is being regenerated into the catenary during braking. About half of that is being used by other trains and half is pushed back into the grid.

Trump Taps Former 'Real World' Cast Member as Transportation Secretary Donald Trump has nominated Sean Duffy to be the next secretary of the Department of Transportation and serve in the next White House administration.

Trump’s nominee to head DOT is die-hard Trump backer, Fox News pundit, and reality TV contestant Sean Duffy, who recently lobbied DOT on behalf of a large oil & gas pipeline company.

This unquestionably bodes well for transit & rail policy & funding. 😭

www.rollingstone.com/politics/pol...