As someone who lives in the Bay Area we already have trains, and they're literally past the point of bankruptcy because they (1) don't actually charge enough maintain the variable cost of operations, (2) don't actually make people pay at all, and (3) don't actually enforce any quality of life concerns short of breaking up literal fights. All of this creates negative synergies that pushes a huge, mostly silent segment of the potential ridership away from these systems.
So many people advocate for public transit, but are unwilling to deal with the current market tradeoffs and decisions people are making on the ground. As long as that keeps happening, expect modes of transit -- like Waymo -- that deliver the level of service that they promise to keep exceeding expectations.
I've spent my entire adult life advocating for transportation alternatives, and at every turn in America, the vast majority of other transit advocates just expect people to be okay with anti-social behavior going completely unenforced, and expecting "good citizens" to keep paying when the expected value for any rational person is to engage in freeloading. Then they point to "enforcing the fare box" as a tradeoff between money to collect vs cost of enforcement, when the actually tradeoff is the signalling to every anti-social actor in the system that they can do whatever they want without any consequences.
I currently only see a future in bike-share, because it's the only system that actually delivers on what it promises.
> they (1) don't actually charge enough maintain the variable cost of operations
Why do you expect them to make money? Roads don't make money and no one thinks to complain about that. One of the purposes of government is to make investment in things that have more nebulous returns. Moving more people to public transit makes better cities, healthier and happier citizens, stronger communities, and lets us save money on road infrastructure.
If a system doesn't generate enough revenue to cover the variable costs of operation, then every single new passenger drives the system closer to bankruptcy. The more "successful" the system is -- the more people depend on it -- the more likely it is to fail if anything happens to the underlying funding source, like a regular old local recession. This simple policy decision can create a downward economic spiral when a recession leads to service cuts, which leads to people unable to get to work reliably, which creates more economic pain, which leads to a bigger recession... rinse/repeat. This is why a public transit system should cover variable costs so that a successful system can grow -- and shrink -- sustainably.
When you aren't growing sustainably, you open yourself up to the whims of the business cycle literally destroying your transit system. It's literally happening right now with SF MUNI, where we've had so many funding problems, that they've consolidated bus lines. I use the 38R, and it's become extremely busy. These busses are getting so packed that people don't want to use them, but the point is they can't expand service because each expansion loses them more money, again, because the system doesn't actually cover those variable costs.
The public should be 100% completely covering the fixed capital costs of the system. Ideally, while there is a bit of wiggle room, the ridership should be 100% be covering the variable capital costs. That way the system can expand when it's successful, and contract when it's less popular. Right now in the Bay Area, you have the worst of both worlds, you have an underutilized system with absolutely spiraling costs, simply because there is zero connection between "people actually wanting to use the system" and "where the money comes from."
You're definitely right on (2) and (3). I've used many transit systems across the world (including TransMilenio in Bogota and other latam countries "renowned" for crime) and I have never felt as unsafe as I have using transit in the SFBA. Even standing at bus stops draws a lot of attention from people suffering with serious addiction/mental health problems.
1) is a bit simplistic though. I don't know of any European system that would cover even operating costs out of fare/commercial revenue. Potentially the London Underground - but not London buses. UK National Rail had higher success rates
The better way to look at it imo is looking at the economic loss as well of congestion/abandoned commutes. To do a ridiculous hypothetical, London would collapse entirely if it didn't have transit. Perhaps 30-40% of inner london could commute by car (or walk/bike), so the economic benefit of that variable transit cost is in the hundreds of billions a year (compared to a small subsidy).
It's not the same in SFBA so I guess it's far easier to just "write off" transit like that, it is theoretically possible (though you'd probably get some quite extreme additional congestion on the freeways as even that small % moving to cars would have an outsized impact on additional congestion).
>The better way to look at it imo is looking at the economic loss as well of congestion/abandoned commutes. To do a ridiculous hypothetical, London would collapse entirely if it didn't have transit.
You're making my argument for me. Again, my concern isn't the day-to-day conveniences of funding, my point is that building a fragile system (a system where the funding is unrelated to the usability of the service) is a system that can fail catastrophically... for systems where there are obviously alternatives (say, National Rail which can be substituted for automobile, bus, and airplane service) are less to worry about, because their failure will likely not cause cascading failures. When an entire local economy is dependent on that system -- when there are not viable substitutes -- then you're really looking at a sudden economic collapse if the funding source runs dry, or if the system is ever mismanaged.
This is a big deal. When funding really actually does run out and the system fails, then if the result is an economic cascade into a full blown depression, then you would have been much better off just building the robust system in the long term. I just really don't think people appreciate how systems can just fail. Whether it's Detroit or Caracas, when the economic tides turn in a fragile system people can lose everything in a matter of a few years.
But my point is that noone has a robust system according to you in Europe at least - the bar is so high to cover all operating costs with fares (or is that your point - if so I'm lost - I definitely would not recommend replacing European transit networks with nothing?).
And National Rail isn't replaceable at all with bus/cars/planes. You really underestimate the number of people which commute >1hr into London (100km+). There is just no way to do that journey by car or bus. It would turn a ~1hr commute into a 3hr _each way_ and that's not even considering the complete lack of parking OR the fact suddenly the roads would be at (even more) gridlock with many multiples of commuters.
That's not even getting into what you consider fixed vs variable costs. Are the trains themselves a fixed cost (they should last 30-40 years)? Is track maintenance a fixed cost (this has to be done more often than the trains themselves), etc etc. The 2nd point is very important - a lot of rail operators in the UK can be made profitable or not on your metric by how much the government subsidises track maintenance vs the operators paying for it in track access charges.
Equally, are signalling upgrades (for example) fixed costs? But really they are only required to run more frequent services. So you could argue they are a variable cost?
I’m not advocating that they do. Fixed costs should be fully subsidized. I’m only advocating that revenues are set so that during a median year, each additional rider on average, provides income that is proportional to the level of service needed to move that rider through the system.
Lighting money on fire by funding an extremely expensive system that most people don't want to use is not an "investment." It's just a good way to make everyone much poorer and worse off than if we'd done nothing. The only way to change things is to convince the electorate that we actually do need rules and enforcement and a sustainable transportation system.
This isn't just happening in America. Train systems are in rough shape in the UK and Germany too.
Ebike shares are a much more sustainable system with a much lower cost, and achieve about 90% of the level of service in temperate regions of the country. Even the ski-lift guy in this thread has a much more reasonable approach to public transit, because they actually have extremely low cost for the level of service they provide. Their only real shortcoming is they they don't handle peak demand well, and are not flexible enough to handle their own success.
I'm not sure if this was intended or not, but this is a common NIMBY refrain. The argument of "This thing being advocated for that I'm fighting against isn't something people want anyway". And like walkable neighborhood architecture, extremely few Americans have access to light rail. Let alone light rail that doesn't have to yield to car traffic.
Regardless, the cost arguments fall apart once you take the total cost society pays for each system instead of only what the government pays. Because when you get the sum of road construction & maintenance, car acquisition, car maintenance, insurance, and parking, it dwarfs the cost of the local transit system. Break it down on a per-consumer basis and it gets even uglier. New York City is a good example to dive into, especially since it's the typical punching bag for "out-of-control" budgets.
Quick napkin math pins the annual MTA cost at $32-$33 billion and the total cost of the car system between $25 and $44 billion per year. Since the former serves somewhere around 5.5 million riders, and the latter only about 2 million, the MTA costs $5,300-6,600 per user annually where the car system costs $12,000–$22,500 per user annually.
People want transit as long as that transit reasonably meets their quality of life standards. The reason why automobiles have been so popular -- even while being wildly more expensive -- is exactly that they allow the user to adjust their travel to their optimal quality of life expectations.
Public transit advocates need to be honest with themselves that anti-social behavioral issues really matter to people. People are willing to pay more to have a more pleasant experience. When a transit system fails to meet that standard, then you'll suddenly find yourself with a transit system that people don't want to use.
It's worth noting that, at least for bart, the reason that it is facing bankruptcy is precisely because it was mostly rider supported and profitable, and not government supported.
When ridership plummeted by >50% during the pandemic, fixed costs stayed the same, but income dropped. Last time I checked, if Bart ridership returned to 2019 levels, with no other changes, it would be profitable again.
You can't say that BART "is facing bankruptcy is precisely because it was mostly rider supported and profitable, and not government supported" when it is very obvious that BART would be in a much worse situation if it had had more government support... because all those governments are facing massive budget deficits right now.
BART has already been bailed out by the state, twice. It has already failed, twice. It very much needs to reduce the level service it provides if it wants to be sustainable, or seek other forms of revenues while we wait to see if ridership returns. Many have suggested BART explore the SE Asian model of generating revenues by developing residential housing, which seems fairly straightforward.
If ridership never returns, then we ought not continue throwing good money after bad, and we ought to adjust the level of service to meet the level of revenues. Obviously the main problem here is that it's literally illegal to just build high density corridors directly adjacent to the transit stations... which is what we ultimately need to prioritize.
Trains need well behaved people, otherwise they are shit.
I don't want to hear tiktok or full volume soap operas blasting at some deaf mouth breather.
I don't want to be near loud chewing of smelly leftovers.
I don't want to be begged for money, or interact with high or psychotic people.
The current culture doesn't allow enforcement of social behaviour: so public transport will always be a miserable containment vessel for the least functional, and everyone with sense avoids the whole thing.
I quite agree with the overall point but can we leave this kind of discourse on X, please? It doesn't add much, it just feels caustic for effect and engagement farming.
No matter what, people are going to still use cars because they are an absolute advantage over public transportation for certain use cases. It is better that the existing status quo is improved to reduce death rates, than hope for a much larger scale change in infrastructure (when we have already seen that attempts at infrastructure overhaul in the US, like high-speed rail, is just an infinitely deep money pit)
Even though the train system in Japan is 10x better than the US as a whole, the per-capita vehicle ownership rate in Japan is not much lower than the US (779 per 1000 vs 670 per 1000). It would be a pipe dream for American trains/subways to be as good as Japan, but even a change that significant would lead to a vehicle ownership share reduced by only about 13%.
Source? The biggest source of environmental issues from EVs, tire wear from a heavier vehicle, absolutely applies to AVs. VC subsidizing low prices only to hike them later isn't exactly "without subsidy" - we pay for it either way
I don't think individual vehicles can ever achieve the same envirnmental economies of scale as trains. Certainly they're far more convenient (especially for short-haul journeys) but I also think they're somewhat alienating, in that they're engineering humans out of the loop completely which contributes to social atomization.
Trains only require subsidies in a world where human & robot cars are subsidized.
As soon as a mode of transport actually has to compete in a market for scarce & valuable land to operate on, trains and other forms of transit (publicly or privately owned) win every time.
Sure but most of the world has a density low enough that cars work and trains don't really. I like trains as much as the next nerd, but you're never going to be able to take a train from your house to your local farm shop or whatever.
Where trains work they are great. Where they don't, driverless electric cars seem like a great option.
NYC "congestion" pricing (actually cordon pricing) is a good idea. Would be great to see more road use fees proportional to use (distance, weight^3, etc.).
Me too but given our extensive car brain culture, Waymo is an amazing step to getting less drivers & cars off the road, and to further cement future generations not ever needing to drive or own cars
As someone who lives in the Bay Area we already have trains, and they're literally past the point of bankruptcy because they (1) don't actually charge enough maintain the variable cost of operations, (2) don't actually make people pay at all, and (3) don't actually enforce any quality of life concerns short of breaking up literal fights. All of this creates negative synergies that pushes a huge, mostly silent segment of the potential ridership away from these systems.
So many people advocate for public transit, but are unwilling to deal with the current market tradeoffs and decisions people are making on the ground. As long as that keeps happening, expect modes of transit -- like Waymo -- that deliver the level of service that they promise to keep exceeding expectations.
I've spent my entire adult life advocating for transportation alternatives, and at every turn in America, the vast majority of other transit advocates just expect people to be okay with anti-social behavior going completely unenforced, and expecting "good citizens" to keep paying when the expected value for any rational person is to engage in freeloading. Then they point to "enforcing the fare box" as a tradeoff between money to collect vs cost of enforcement, when the actually tradeoff is the signalling to every anti-social actor in the system that they can do whatever they want without any consequences.
I currently only see a future in bike-share, because it's the only system that actually delivers on what it promises.
> they (1) don't actually charge enough maintain the variable cost of operations
Why do you expect them to make money? Roads don't make money and no one thinks to complain about that. One of the purposes of government is to make investment in things that have more nebulous returns. Moving more people to public transit makes better cities, healthier and happier citizens, stronger communities, and lets us save money on road infrastructure.
>Why do you expect them to make money?
I don't.
That's why I said "variable cost of operations."
If a system doesn't generate enough revenue to cover the variable costs of operation, then every single new passenger drives the system closer to bankruptcy. The more "successful" the system is -- the more people depend on it -- the more likely it is to fail if anything happens to the underlying funding source, like a regular old local recession. This simple policy decision can create a downward economic spiral when a recession leads to service cuts, which leads to people unable to get to work reliably, which creates more economic pain, which leads to a bigger recession... rinse/repeat. This is why a public transit system should cover variable costs so that a successful system can grow -- and shrink -- sustainably.
When you aren't growing sustainably, you open yourself up to the whims of the business cycle literally destroying your transit system. It's literally happening right now with SF MUNI, where we've had so many funding problems, that they've consolidated bus lines. I use the 38R, and it's become extremely busy. These busses are getting so packed that people don't want to use them, but the point is they can't expand service because each expansion loses them more money, again, because the system doesn't actually cover those variable costs.
The public should be 100% completely covering the fixed capital costs of the system. Ideally, while there is a bit of wiggle room, the ridership should be 100% be covering the variable capital costs. That way the system can expand when it's successful, and contract when it's less popular. Right now in the Bay Area, you have the worst of both worlds, you have an underutilized system with absolutely spiraling costs, simply because there is zero connection between "people actually wanting to use the system" and "where the money comes from."
You're definitely right on (2) and (3). I've used many transit systems across the world (including TransMilenio in Bogota and other latam countries "renowned" for crime) and I have never felt as unsafe as I have using transit in the SFBA. Even standing at bus stops draws a lot of attention from people suffering with serious addiction/mental health problems.
1) is a bit simplistic though. I don't know of any European system that would cover even operating costs out of fare/commercial revenue. Potentially the London Underground - but not London buses. UK National Rail had higher success rates
The better way to look at it imo is looking at the economic loss as well of congestion/abandoned commutes. To do a ridiculous hypothetical, London would collapse entirely if it didn't have transit. Perhaps 30-40% of inner london could commute by car (or walk/bike), so the economic benefit of that variable transit cost is in the hundreds of billions a year (compared to a small subsidy).
It's not the same in SFBA so I guess it's far easier to just "write off" transit like that, it is theoretically possible (though you'd probably get some quite extreme additional congestion on the freeways as even that small % moving to cars would have an outsized impact on additional congestion).
>The better way to look at it imo is looking at the economic loss as well of congestion/abandoned commutes. To do a ridiculous hypothetical, London would collapse entirely if it didn't have transit.
You're making my argument for me. Again, my concern isn't the day-to-day conveniences of funding, my point is that building a fragile system (a system where the funding is unrelated to the usability of the service) is a system that can fail catastrophically... for systems where there are obviously alternatives (say, National Rail which can be substituted for automobile, bus, and airplane service) are less to worry about, because their failure will likely not cause cascading failures. When an entire local economy is dependent on that system -- when there are not viable substitutes -- then you're really looking at a sudden economic collapse if the funding source runs dry, or if the system is ever mismanaged.
This is a big deal. When funding really actually does run out and the system fails, then if the result is an economic cascade into a full blown depression, then you would have been much better off just building the robust system in the long term. I just really don't think people appreciate how systems can just fail. Whether it's Detroit or Caracas, when the economic tides turn in a fragile system people can lose everything in a matter of a few years.
But my point is that noone has a robust system according to you in Europe at least - the bar is so high to cover all operating costs with fares (or is that your point - if so I'm lost - I definitely would not recommend replacing European transit networks with nothing?).
And National Rail isn't replaceable at all with bus/cars/planes. You really underestimate the number of people which commute >1hr into London (100km+). There is just no way to do that journey by car or bus. It would turn a ~1hr commute into a 3hr _each way_ and that's not even considering the complete lack of parking OR the fact suddenly the roads would be at (even more) gridlock with many multiples of commuters.
That's not even getting into what you consider fixed vs variable costs. Are the trains themselves a fixed cost (they should last 30-40 years)? Is track maintenance a fixed cost (this has to be done more often than the trains themselves), etc etc. The 2nd point is very important - a lot of rail operators in the UK can be made profitable or not on your metric by how much the government subsidises track maintenance vs the operators paying for it in track access charges.
Equally, are signalling upgrades (for example) fixed costs? But really they are only required to run more frequent services. So you could argue they are a variable cost?
Very few transit agencies have fares that cover services. I know others said this, but I wanted to add my take as well
I’m not advocating that they do. Fixed costs should be fully subsidized. I’m only advocating that revenues are set so that during a median year, each additional rider on average, provides income that is proportional to the level of service needed to move that rider through the system.
Well then invest in those things, then. It would probably cost less than the amount they're spending to make a Waymo World Model.
Lighting money on fire by funding an extremely expensive system that most people don't want to use is not an "investment." It's just a good way to make everyone much poorer and worse off than if we'd done nothing. The only way to change things is to convince the electorate that we actually do need rules and enforcement and a sustainable transportation system.
This isn't just happening in America. Train systems are in rough shape in the UK and Germany too.
Ebike shares are a much more sustainable system with a much lower cost, and achieve about 90% of the level of service in temperate regions of the country. Even the ski-lift guy in this thread has a much more reasonable approach to public transit, because they actually have extremely low cost for the level of service they provide. Their only real shortcoming is they they don't handle peak demand well, and are not flexible enough to handle their own success.
> most people don't want to use
I'm not sure if this was intended or not, but this is a common NIMBY refrain. The argument of "This thing being advocated for that I'm fighting against isn't something people want anyway". And like walkable neighborhood architecture, extremely few Americans have access to light rail. Let alone light rail that doesn't have to yield to car traffic.
Regardless, the cost arguments fall apart once you take the total cost society pays for each system instead of only what the government pays. Because when you get the sum of road construction & maintenance, car acquisition, car maintenance, insurance, and parking, it dwarfs the cost of the local transit system. Break it down on a per-consumer basis and it gets even uglier. New York City is a good example to dive into, especially since it's the typical punching bag for "out-of-control" budgets.
Quick napkin math pins the annual MTA cost at $32-$33 billion and the total cost of the car system between $25 and $44 billion per year. Since the former serves somewhere around 5.5 million riders, and the latter only about 2 million, the MTA costs $5,300-6,600 per user annually where the car system costs $12,000–$22,500 per user annually.
You seem to be misunderstanding my point. I am a transit alternatives advocate, and have been my entire adult life.
I'm NOT saying "people don't want to ride trains."
I AM saying "people don't want ride trains that allow 5% of the riders to smoke cigarettes on enclosed train platforms and in enclosed train cars."
You might says "what? but that's not happening."
In Chicago, yes it is: https://resphealth.org/snuff-out-smoking-on-cta/
People want transit as long as that transit reasonably meets their quality of life standards. The reason why automobiles have been so popular -- even while being wildly more expensive -- is exactly that they allow the user to adjust their travel to their optimal quality of life expectations.
Public transit advocates need to be honest with themselves that anti-social behavioral issues really matter to people. People are willing to pay more to have a more pleasant experience. When a transit system fails to meet that standard, then you'll suddenly find yourself with a transit system that people don't want to use.
People want to use it everywhere in the world
People want to have their cake and eat it too.
Maybe not BART but the new Caltrain electrification program seems to be a success and ridership and revenue are up
https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/caltrain-says-could-clos...
It's worth noting that, at least for bart, the reason that it is facing bankruptcy is precisely because it was mostly rider supported and profitable, and not government supported.
When ridership plummeted by >50% during the pandemic, fixed costs stayed the same, but income dropped. Last time I checked, if Bart ridership returned to 2019 levels, with no other changes, it would be profitable again.
You can't say that BART "is facing bankruptcy is precisely because it was mostly rider supported and profitable, and not government supported" when it is very obvious that BART would be in a much worse situation if it had had more government support... because all those governments are facing massive budget deficits right now.
BART has already been bailed out by the state, twice. It has already failed, twice. It very much needs to reduce the level service it provides if it wants to be sustainable, or seek other forms of revenues while we wait to see if ridership returns. Many have suggested BART explore the SE Asian model of generating revenues by developing residential housing, which seems fairly straightforward.
If ridership never returns, then we ought not continue throwing good money after bad, and we ought to adjust the level of service to meet the level of revenues. Obviously the main problem here is that it's literally illegal to just build high density corridors directly adjacent to the transit stations... which is what we ultimately need to prioritize.
The government facing a budget deficit doesn't mean BART would be worse off with more subsidies.
Trains need well behaved people, otherwise they are shit.
I don't want to hear tiktok or full volume soap operas blasting at some deaf mouth breather.
I don't want to be near loud chewing of smelly leftovers.
I don't want to be begged for money, or interact with high or psychotic people.
The current culture doesn't allow enforcement of social behaviour: so public transport will always be a miserable containment vessel for the least functional, and everyone with sense avoids the whole thing.
> some deaf mouth breather
I quite agree with the overall point but can we leave this kind of discourse on X, please? It doesn't add much, it just feels caustic for effect and engagement farming.
Roads (cars) need well behave people too. The only way cars filter some of the out is by the price.
Price helps a whole lot, I think more than you give it credit for. Driving is also an active thing, this also helps.
We also police driving behaviour, in a way that nobody does for public behaviour.
And no matter what I don't have to hear or smell other drivers.
No matter what, people are going to still use cars because they are an absolute advantage over public transportation for certain use cases. It is better that the existing status quo is improved to reduce death rates, than hope for a much larger scale change in infrastructure (when we have already seen that attempts at infrastructure overhaul in the US, like high-speed rail, is just an infinitely deep money pit)
Even though the train system in Japan is 10x better than the US as a whole, the per-capita vehicle ownership rate in Japan is not much lower than the US (779 per 1000 vs 670 per 1000). It would be a pipe dream for American trains/subways to be as good as Japan, but even a change that significant would lead to a vehicle ownership share reduced by only about 13%.
Isn't a vehicle that goes from anywhere to anywhere on your own schedule, safely, privately, cleanly, and without billions in subsidies better?
>cleanly >without subsidies
Source? The biggest source of environmental issues from EVs, tire wear from a heavier vehicle, absolutely applies to AVs. VC subsidizing low prices only to hike them later isn't exactly "without subsidy" - we pay for it either way
I don't think individual vehicles can ever achieve the same envirnmental economies of scale as trains. Certainly they're far more convenient (especially for short-haul journeys) but I also think they're somewhat alienating, in that they're engineering humans out of the loop completely which contributes to social atomization.
> I don't think individual vehicles can ever achieve the same envirnmental economies of scale as trains.
I think you'd be surprised. Look at the difference in cost per passenger mile.
I'm looking. Comes out unfavorably to cars. Obviously.
I guess you're comparing the total cost of trains vs a subset of costs of cars, as is usual. Road use and pollution are free externalities after all.
Trains only require subsidies in a world where human & robot cars are subsidized.
As soon as a mode of transport actually has to compete in a market for scarce & valuable land to operate on, trains and other forms of transit (publicly or privately owned) win every time.
Not necessarily, and your premise is incorrect.
Cars don't work in dense places.
Sure but most of the world has a density low enough that cars work and trains don't really. I like trains as much as the next nerd, but you're never going to be able to take a train from your house to your local farm shop or whatever.
Where trains work they are great. Where they don't, driverless electric cars seem like a great option.
>without billions in subsidies
Is there a magic road wand?
No, but roads are paid for by road users (i.e. everyone).
Huh? Last I looked, roads are paid for by the general public, not (car) road users?
Billions of subsidies? Im confused you talking about cars or trains.
No major US public transportation system is fully paid for by riders.
Yep. https://www.transitwiki.org/TransitWiki/index.php/Farebox_Re... is a sobering reminder that many cities’ public transportation would cost $20-50 per trip if paid entirely by riders and thus could not exist without subsidy.
Neither is any private transportation system?
That includes cars on public roads.
NYC congestion pricing seems to be working quite well though, and probably helps offset MTA costs.
NYC "congestion" pricing (actually cordon pricing) is a good idea. Would be great to see more road use fees proportional to use (distance, weight^3, etc.).
[dead]
Me too but given our extensive car brain culture, Waymo is an amazing step to getting less drivers & cars off the road, and to further cement future generations not ever needing to drive or own cars
Ski lifts man, ski lifts all over the city
> Ski lifts man, ski lifts all over the city
Don't they have those somewhere in South America?
Quite a few places. Cable propelled transit (CPT) is the term to search for. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gondola_lift#Urban_transport
What a glorious utopia we could have
I think future generations will resent us for bureaucratizing our way out of the California HSR.