Created Monday 20 January 2020
See also: Transportation
January 17, 2020 by Jake Berman
They don’t build neighborhoods like they used to. That’s at the root of the housing crisis that plagues rich coastal cities like New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco.
I’m going to use LA as an illustration. In the popular mind, Los Angeles is defined by the freeway, the automobile, and endless suburban sprawl. Four million people live in the city proper, and nineteen million live in the megalopolis. Four in five Angelenos drive to work, while only one in twenty takes mass transit.
The horrible irony of all of this is that LA was never designed to be a car city. Quite the opposite. The bulk of Los Angeles was laid out before World War II around the old Red Car system of the Pacific Electric Railway. They just overlaid the postwar freeway system on top of it. At its peak, the Red Car system had over 1000 miles of track, but the system went into a terminal decline as the automobile and the bus gained popularity.
https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2020/1/17/las-lost-transit
Darrell Etherington / 8:56 am PDT•October 14, 2020
The city of Toronto is going to start operating autonomous shuttles on a trial basis, through an agreement with Local Motors that will see that company’s Olli 2.0 all-electric self-driving shuttle ferry passengers beginning in Spring 2021. The trial is being conducted with Pacific Western Transportation, a transportation operations company, and each ride over the course of the trial will include two full-time staffers, an operator on board from that partner, as well as a customer service rep from either TTC or Metrolinx, the company Toronto engages for much of its commuter transportation services.
The Olli 2.0 vehicle has a passenger capacity of up to eight people at a time, and includes accessibility features like a wheelchair ramp and securing points. It also includes an AV system for providing information and updates to passengers. The safety operator onboard the vehicle has the ability to take over manual control at any time, should the need arise due to safety concerns or for any other reason.
The U.S. is one of the most expensive countries in the world for building transit, according to the Transit Costs Project. A research group at the NYU Marron Institute of Urban Management is working to understand why.
Nov. 1, 2022 - Jared Brey
For the last two years, a group of researchers at the New York University Marron Institute of Urban Management has been building a big database of public transit projects around the world. Their goal: To understand what drives the costs of transit projects, what makes some places more expensive than others, and how costs can be brought down.
The Transit Costs Project is led by Eric Goldwyn, an assistant professor and program director in the Transportation and Land Use Program at the NYU Marron Institute, along with research scholars Alon Levy, Elif Ensari, Marco Chitti and a group of international contributors. To date, the group has built a database with details on hundreds of projects, sourced from popular media, trade publications and official plans. And they’ve begun publishing in-depth case studies on a handful of individual cities, including projects in Boston and New York in the high-cost category, and Stockholm, Italy and Istanbul in the low-cost category, based on additional data gathering and hundreds of interviews.
https://www.governing.com/finance/why-are-u-s-transit-projects-so-costly-this-group-is-on-the-case
Cities around the globe are doubling down on transit. Why can’t the U.S. do the same?
08-05-2024 - Benjamin Schneider
The most spectacular way to cross the Bosphorus is by boat, but the most impressive way is by subway. Istanbul’s Marmaray Line, completed in 2013, links Asia and Europe by way of an eight-and-a-half-mile undersea tunnel. The ride is so fast and so smooth, it feels like a hovercraft.
When my dad and I traveled to Istanbul last year, we were prepared to witness the city’s beauty and stand in awe of its history. But what really blew us away was the city’s transit system.
“It’s like a sci-fi movie,” my dad remarked as we rolled above the waters of the Golden Horn on the M2, another relatively new transit line that crosses another iconic body of water in Istanbul. (His take on robotaxis: “It’s like The Invisible Man!”) Even Istanbul’s light rail lines are completely different from their American counterparts. The T1 tram arrives every two or three minutes, and enjoys seamless signal priority that keeps the train moving at all times, except when it’s picking up passengers. The view, once again, is awesome.
For Americans, state-of-the art transit systems like the one in Istanbul are about as familiar as the transporter on Star Trek. As the U.S. lavishes billions on highway expansions and subsidizes tricked-out SUVs, other countries are investing in transit systems that are setting new standards for speed, convenience, and technology. Increasingly, transportation is looking like another area of American exceptionalism.
https://www.fastcompany.com/91166562/us-transit-exceptionalism
Sri Taylor - June 26, 2025 at 12:33 PM PDT
Philadelphia’s largest transit system approved sweeping service cuts and fare hikes as it struggles to deal with a gaping budget deficit.
Officials at the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority voted Thursday to approve a fiscal 2026 budget that slashes service by 45% and raises fares by 21.5%. The system has been warning about a $213 million operating deficit for months.
With a July 1 deadline to pass a balanced budget, officials said they had no choice but to move forward with the sweeping cuts to keep the system afloat, though they are continuing to press the state for help.
By Sri Taylor June 26, 2025 at 12:33 PM PDT Takeaways by Bloomberg AI
Philadelphia’s largest transit system approved sweeping service cuts and fare hikes as it struggles to deal with a gaping budget deficit.
Officials at the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority voted Thursday to approve a fiscal 2026 budget that slashes service by 45% and raises fares by 21.5%. The system has been warning about a $213 million operating deficit for months.
With a July 1 deadline to pass a balanced budget, officials said they had no choice but to move forward with the sweeping cuts to keep the system afloat, though they are continuing to press the state for help. BloombergCityLab Sao Paulo Pushes Out Favela Residents, Drug Users to Revive Its City Center Squeezed by Crowds, the Roads of Central Park Are Being Reimagined California Reaches $321 Billion Budget Deal Boosting Hollywood Mapping the Architectural History of New York’s Chinatown
The vote could kick off the first phase of what transit advocates call a “death spiral” of ridership. Commuters who rely on the system for their daily needs may be left stranded or forced to drive, leading to declining revenues and further cuts.
“This budget will effectively dismantle SEPTA,” said SEPTA General Manager Scott Sauer during a board meeting Thursday. “Once this dismantlement begins, it will be almost impossible to reverse, and the economic and social impacts will be immediate and long-lasting for all Pennsylvanians, whether they ride SEPTA or not.”
Posted by msmash on Friday January 16, 2026 10:13AM
Seattle was late to the light rail party – the city rejected transit ballot measures in 1968 and 1971, missing out on federal funding that built Atlanta's MARTA, and didn't approve a plan including rail until 1996 – but the Pacific Northwest city is now in the middle of a multibillion-dollar building boom that has produced the highest post-pandemic ridership recovery of any US light rail system.
The Link system opened its first line in 2009, funded largely by voter-approved tax measures from 2008 and 2016. The north-south 1 Line now stretches 41 miles after a $3 billion extension to Lynnwood opened in June 2025 and a $2.5 billion leg to Federal Way debuted in December. Ridership is up 24% since 2019, and 3.4 million people rode Link trains in October 2025.
Test trains have been running since September across the I-90 floating bridge over Lake Washington – what Sound Transit claims is the world's first light rail on a floating structure – preparing for a May 31 opening. The Crosslake Connection is part of the 2 Line, a 14-mile, $3.7 billion extension voters approved in 2008 that was originally slated to open in 2020. The expansion hasn't come without problems. Sound Transit faces a roughly $30 billion budget shortfall, and a planned Ballard extension has ballooned to $22 billion, double original estimates.
https://news.slashdot.org/story/26/01/16/1813239/seattle-is-building-light-rail-like-its-1999