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We must continue to prepare for acute shocks—
events that could threaten our City’s ability to function, such as
natural disasters. We must also address chronic stresses—challenges that weaken our natural, built, or human resources, such
as income inequality and chronic homelessness. Stresses often
exacerbate the effects of shocks when they occur, particularly for
vulnerable populations.
— City of Seattle
The plan comes as Seattle, the fastest-growing city in the country, and the larger Puget Sound metropolitan region around it, prepare to nearly double in population by 2050. View full entry
Proposition 105, a measure backed by a group called Building a Better Phoenix, would halt all future light rail expansions, directing already-earmarked tax dollars toward “other transportation improvements”—mostly road construction. Like a number of efforts to kill urban-rail plans around the U.S., the initiative to stop Phoenix’s transit development has ties to Americans for Prosperity, the advocacy group funded by David H. Koch and Charles Koch. — CityLab
CityLab's Laura Bliss delves into the multi-faceted and contentious back-and-forth effort to build new light rail infrastructure in Phoenix, Arizona, where issues of urban equity, dark political money, and changing transportation needs have rankled residents of all stripes. View full entry
Eight months after the discovery of cracked steel girders forced its closure, the Transbay transit center is safe to reopen, an independent panel of engineers and experts has concluded. The reopening is set for 6 a.m. July 1. — San Francisco Chronicle
A five-member peer-review committee appointed by the Metropolitan Transportation Commission has approved a series of recently-completed structural repairs made to the Pelli Clarke Pelli-designed Transbay Transit Center in San Francisco. Workers repair damaged structural beams at the Transbay... View full entry
I’d been assigned to write a story about Pennsylvania Station, but I wanted to get a caboose-eye view of the decaying tunnels leading up to it, because the only imaginable way the station could be any worse is if it were underwater. Penn, the Western Hemisphere’s busiest train station, serves 430,000 travelers every weekday—more than LaGuardia, JFK, and Newark airports combined. — Bloomberg Businessweek
"As the gateway to America’s largest city," Devin Leonard writes in his piece for Bloomberg Businessweek, "Penn Station should inspire awe, as train stations do in London, Paris, Tokyo, and other competently managed metropolises. Instead, it embodies a particular kind of American failure—the... View full entry
The estimated cost of the Long Island Rail Road project, known as “East Side Access,” has ballooned to $12 billion, or nearly $3.5 billion for each new mile of track — seven times the average elsewhere in the world. The recently completed Second Avenue subway on Manhattan’s Upper East Side and the 2015 extension of the No. 7 line to Hudson Yards also cost far above average, at $2.5 billion and $1.5 billion per mile, respectively. — New York Times
Against the back drop of the New York subway system's massive delays, the New York Times looks into why project costs for a 3.5-mile tunnel connecting Grand Central Terminal to the Long Island Rail Road ballooned to nearly $3.5 million for each new mile of track. View full entry
It took six years, but every subway station in the Washington, D.C. area is now immortalized in song. For musician Jason Mendelson, it’s his magnum opus. — Washington Post
The Magentic Fields wrote 69 songs about love; professional tax manager and sometime musician Jason Mendelson has managed to record 91 songs about the Washington, D.C. Metro system, with one song for each subway stop. Map of the Washington, D.C. Metro.While music critics will not be equating... View full entry
The urgency to fix the station has reached a peak. But this also creates a great occasion to get something done — something grander than Mr. Cuomo's current plan, a project born of political expediency. — The New York Times
For the majority of commuters in New York, New Jersey and the surrounding areas, Penn Station has been the source of many headaches, late arrivals to work, and chaos as of late. Throughout the month of April, multiple trains have been derailed, a train got stuck at Penn Station, there have been... View full entry
The notion of spending time at a subway stop or other major transit center for pleasure may strike you as odd, but many cities and transportation companies are investing heavily in building up this part of their infrastructure to create desirable public spaces (it adds a whole new dimension to... View full entry
Whether you envisioned Hyperloop One as an overhyped pneumatic tube or an inventive way to transport cargo and/or passengers, 35 teams from 17 countries around the world have just been announced as semifinalists in the contest to create working transit corridors for the technology. The 35 proposed... View full entry
In 2019, New York City's Hurricane Sandy-damaged L Train tunnel will shut down for repairs, making it tricky to get across the East River without a new form of transport. In a competition sponsored by the Van Alen Institute to find alternatives, AECOM suggested building a fiber-glass fabric tunnel... View full entry
Oh, SF BART Twitter account—back at it again with the going rogue. This time, instead of getting real with folks on the platform, they decided to have a little fun with the Los Angeles Metro account, challenging them to a full-on haiku battle on Twitter this past Friday. — Upout Blog
The official Twitter account for the BART isn't sycophantic or pandering: when confronted with customer concerns, it answers them with actual facts, even if those facts wouldn't gel with a traditional PR department. Now, however, the BART account has gone one step further and is outright having... View full entry
Could Los Angeles grow to become a “real city” like New York or London? Last year, LA gained at least 50,000 people, according to a recent report from the California Department of Finance, pushing the population to more than 4 million people for the first time in the city’s history. — Vice
Part of the appeal of Los Angeles has been its refusal to be like other cities. For years, its objective "center" was a forbidding cluster of office towers with near zero street life, while in outlying, low-density neighborhoods, people partied in back yards that ran up against wildlife preserves... View full entry
Deutsche Bahn, a German-based railway and logistics company that transports about seven million train passengers every day ... plans to operate fleets of autonomous vehicles that could be ordered via an app, much people already do when they order a ride-hailing service like Uber. These driverless cars would be used to pick people up and bring them to public transit stations, solving the so-called “last mile” problem. — fortune.com
More news on automated vehicles and public transit:Google, Uber, Lyft, Ford and Volvo join forces to lobby for autonomous vehicles"In LiDAR We Trust" – Poking the subconscious of autonomous vehicles with special guest Geoff Manaugh, on Archinect Sessions #43Beverly Hills wants to provide... View full entry
For almost a decade, transit ridership has declined across Southern California despite enormous and costly efforts by top transportation officials to entice people out of their cars and onto buses and trains.
The Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority, the region's largest carrier, lost more than 10% of its boardings from 2006 to 2015, a decline that appears to be accelerating.
— LA Times
"Despite a $9-billion investment in new light rail and subway lines, Metro now has fewer boardings than it did three decades ago, when buses were the county's only transit option."Related:Eric Garcetti vs the Car: how LA's mayor plans to change the way Angeleños get aroundLA's freeway system is... View full entry
[Hyperloop] has the swagger of Elon Musk rather than the stigma of a public bureaucracy. Second, it’s going to be, like, a billion times faster than HSR. [...]
And yet, this combination of enthusiasm and magnetism doesn’t buy farmland. It doesn’t ease eminent domain takings. It doesn’t blast through bedrock or relocate utilities. It doesn’t design station area plans. [...]
The very same mountains, cities, canals, farmers, and habitats that complicate HSR also complicate Hyperloop.
— cp-dr.com
For past reporting on Hyperloop in all its emerging forms:Designing the Hyperspace: UCLA studio imagines Hyperloop's future in CaliforniaA first look at the Hyperloop's real tubes and imagined winged terminalsUnpacking the Hyperloop's lofty promisesElon Musk launches Hyperloop Pod Competition to... View full entry
