http://yelling-at-trains.org/ Recent content on Yelling at Trains Hugo -- gohugo.io en-us Sat, 06 Apr 2019 12:51:21 -0800 http://yelling-at-trains.org/post/hsr-carbon/ Sat, 06 Apr 2019 12:51:21 -0800 http://yelling-at-trains.org/post/hsr-carbon/ For a few weeks each year, often coinciding with the latest climate accords, emergency summit, or wildfire, the United States collectively kicks around the idea of saving the planet. This year, I feel slightly more optimistic that all the talk will eventually lead somewhere, thanks to actually-good congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a bunch of ne’er-do-wells kicking around in Dianne Feinstein’s office, and their renewed calls for a Green New Deal bill to push the nation towards carbon-neutrality. http://yelling-at-trains.org/post/fare-hikes-feedback-loops/ Thu, 28 Feb 2019 20:28:18 -0800 http://yelling-at-trains.org/post/fare-hikes-feedback-loops/ My friend Kenny messaged me the other day asking for a quick take on the proposed 2019 MBTA fare increase of 6.3% – in brief, it would raise the cost of a subway ride from $2.25 to $2.40. That spiraled out of control into the draft of a Twitter thread, which made me remember that I actually run a blog about transit and haven’t posted for a while, so here we are. http://yelling-at-trains.org/post/carbon-math-personal-addendum/ Sun, 24 Feb 2019 19:54:52 -0800 http://yelling-at-trains.org/post/carbon-math-personal-addendum/ This post is intended as an addendum to this one. If you got here from somewhere else, well, spooky. While aviation only accounts for about 2% of global emissions, it’s a heavy hitter in many Americans’ carbon footprints – mine included. A certain amount of my self-identity is built around being a big trains guy and not eating meat, I’m fully aware that due to the amount of flights I take, my carbon footprint is probably larger than a lot of Americans who drive everywhere but have the decency of mostly staying put on a continental scale. http://yelling-at-trains.org/post/buying-in-bulk/ Thu, 06 Dec 2018 09:24:34 -0700 http://yelling-at-trains.org/post/buying-in-bulk/ I don’t want to be the one to jinx it, but the MBTA – “the T” to its college drinking buddies – appears to really be building the Green Line Extension (GLX) to Somerville, finally fulfilling a prophecy inscribed on a mysterious ivory dagger excavated during the Big Dig. This is the agency’s first urban rail expansion since the mid 1980s when the Red Line was extended as far northwest as standard-issue Catholic racism would permit, and it’s particularly exciting because it came very close to not happening at all. http://yelling-at-trains.org/post/optimists-guide-to-caltrain/ Mon, 08 Oct 2018 12:00:00 -0700 http://yelling-at-trains.org/post/optimists-guide-to-caltrain/ As a millennial, I am totally still a young person1 and therefore familiar with the Glow-Up: a personal transformation so complete that the “after” and “before” pictures look like totally different people. It will come as no surprise to folks that know me that I love watching the same thing happen to transit systems, and there’s a great example taking shape right in my backyard. If you’re a Bay Area commuter, or just a person who read the title of this post, may have already guessed that I’m talking about Caltrain, the commuter rail line that carries me and about 60,000 other daily passengers between San Francisco and Silicon Valley. http://yelling-at-trains.org/post/whose-line/ Sat, 28 Jul 2018 08:00:00 -0700 http://yelling-at-trains.org/post/whose-line/ A housing project — maybe a tower, some condos, or a whole new neighborhood, is in the news. Proponents are excited at the chance to add more housing (near a new transit line, no less!) that will help address the region’s ballooning rent prices. Detractors are worried that the project will cause rents to skyrocket in the area, displacing the current residents. Who’s right? Mathematically, at least, there’s no reason they both can’t be. http://yelling-at-trains.org/post/now-this-is-podracing/ Mon, 01 Jan 2018 23:45:00 -0600 http://yelling-at-trains.org/post/now-this-is-podracing/ Another year, another startup claiming to have solved urban congestion — this time it’s Arrivo, which has announced “the end of traffic” and dropped a slick video of their vision for travel in the 21st century, involving private vehicles loaded onto maglev pods and rocketed along highway medians at 200 miles per hour. A surfer dude pulls on a wetsuit at Mach 0.25 before we jump-cut to the beach in time for to shed some early morning gnar. http://yelling-at-trains.org/post/nsrl/ Sat, 11 Nov 2017 21:50:58 -0800 http://yelling-at-trains.org/post/nsrl/ Imagine for a moment that your city lacked a highway network entirely. Instead, it had a series of ordinary two-lane streets in place of Interstates X, Y, and Z, each with massively wide turns and hundreds of feet of totally undeveloped grassland on each side – in short, everything that a highway implies except the pavement. The roads don’t connect downtown, but lo, there is an pre-excavated tunnel under the city center that we can use to connect them. http://yelling-at-trains.org/post/red-blue/ Mon, 05 Jun 2017 12:49:42 -0500 http://yelling-at-trains.org/post/red-blue/ When transit advocates in Boston call for expansions of the T, the response from MassDOT and Governor Baker is that we first need to focus on fixing the core system — making sure that the vehicles, stations, and track we already have can operate at maximum efficiency. While this can sometimes feel like a “shove off, we don’t have the money”, it’s a pragmatic stance, and to their credit, the MBTA is actually in the middle of a push for such investment, with orders for new Red and Orange Line cars in the works and improved signaling and winterization schemes in the pipeline. http://yelling-at-trains.org/post/disrupt-kendall/ Wed, 22 Feb 2017 11:00:00 -0500 http://yelling-at-trains.org/post/disrupt-kendall/ A few weeks ago, my MIT inbox dinged with a piece of exciting news — President Reif announced that the university has secured the rights to redevelop a huge part of adjacent Kendall Square that is currently owned by the US Department of Transportation. Kendall is the epicenter of Cambridge’s tech community and even if you spend as much time pounding down overpriced quinoa bowls there as I do, you may not be aware that the USDOT’s Volpe Center research facility is tucked right behind the Marriott on Broadway, in an imposing but mostly nondescript building that you can’t get into without a passport and a blood sample. http://yelling-at-trains.org/post/strong-weak-transit/ Thu, 22 Dec 2016 16:33:44 -0600 http://yelling-at-trains.org/post/strong-weak-transit/ Do the people who plan your city’s transit system watch basketball or soccer? It’s a question that probably doesn’t come up much at community feedback meetings, and yet when we look at the way money is spent on transit in America, it might be wise to pause for a second and consider what sports metaphors are rattling around the brains of the planning community.1 On the surface, basketball and soccer may appear to be just two variants of sportsball, in which a group of people work hard to put some kind of ball in some kind of net more times than their opponent. http://yelling-at-trains.org/post/what-is-this/ Wed, 21 Dec 2016 21:04:05 -0600 http://yelling-at-trains.org/post/what-is-this/ For a long time I have been very vocal about transportation issues to my very forgiving friends and family. I’ve decided that rather than subject them to this madness directly I should start a blog – this will also serve to help me practice writing clearly and organize my thoughts. I suspect this blog will mostly stay related to transit and urbanism since I spent so much time on the wonderful graphic in the header, but we’ll see what becomes of it.