Greg Shill
@gregshill.com
ASU law professor • Student of firms, cities & transportation (and Seinfeld) • Papers: ssrn.com/author=887547 • Newsletter: gregshill.substack.com • Co-host of Densely Speaking podcast • gregshill.com
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Greg Shill
@gregshill.com
· Aug 7
🚨 Transportation for the Abundant Society 🚨
New draft paper (w/ Jonathan Levine) now up.
"Abundance" needs to grapple with transportation beyond megaprojects and institutions beyond zoning. We propose anchoring planning metrics in *access*, not speed of travel. papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....
New draft paper (w/ Jonathan Levine) now up.
"Abundance" needs to grapple with transportation beyond megaprojects and institutions beyond zoning. We propose anchoring planning metrics in *access*, not speed of travel. papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....
Reposted by Greg Shill
One of the problems with NYC's incredibly labor intensive trash removal system is it collapses whenever there's a holiday. A rich first world city like NYC shouldn't be so fragile.
December 26, 2025 at 8:53 PM
One of the problems with NYC's incredibly labor intensive trash removal system is it collapses whenever there's a holiday. A rich first world city like NYC shouldn't be so fragile.
Reposted by Greg Shill
Cracking down on assumable mortgages was a focus of SCOTUS and Congress in 1982:
December 26, 2025 at 3:12 PM
Cracking down on assumable mortgages was a focus of SCOTUS and Congress in 1982:
Cars can be useful, like pencils, and fun, like Sour Patch Kids, and yet at the same time it was a mistake to fundamentally reorganize society around them.
welcome to the Second Annual Bluesky Christmas Eve Snowball Fight!
please drop a take in the replies and I or someone else will be along to belligerently interpret whatever you said in the worst possible light
please drop a take in the replies and I or someone else will be along to belligerently interpret whatever you said in the worst possible light
it’s Christmas Eve morning and apparently Bluesky is in a fightin’ mood today.
please drop a take in the replies and I or someone else will be along to belligerently interpret whatever you said in the worst possible light
please drop a take in the replies and I or someone else will be along to belligerently interpret whatever you said in the worst possible light
December 25, 2025 at 1:21 AM
Cars can be useful, like pencils, and fun, like Sour Patch Kids, and yet at the same time it was a mistake to fundamentally reorganize society around them.
Jevons paradox behavior plus error fixing has been my base case for the impact of AI on legal services demand. Bullish!
Is it just me or is AI making MORE legal work to respond to AI bad legal advice?
December 24, 2025 at 7:58 PM
Jevons paradox behavior plus error fixing has been my base case for the impact of AI on legal services demand. Bullish!
Reposted by Greg Shill
This is the future of exam taking.
December 24, 2025 at 7:05 PM
This is the future of exam taking.
Congestion pricing is arguably the biggest policy success of 2025. I wrote up some ideas on what to do next:
papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....
papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....
December 23, 2025 at 4:03 PM
Congestion pricing is arguably the biggest policy success of 2025. I wrote up some ideas on what to do next:
papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....
papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....
Just one of many very cool scale models (this one, of a depot) among the many real trains at the Illinois Train Museum.
December 23, 2025 at 3:45 PM
Just one of many very cool scale models (this one, of a depot) among the many real trains at the Illinois Train Museum.
Reposted by Greg Shill
What historians (and other scholars do) is create knowledge. We should use that phrase more and talk about what it means. I think we don't, and it's part of why AI enthusiasts are confused when we don't readily agree that our work can be replicated/replaced by their products.
December 21, 2025 at 8:39 PM
What historians (and other scholars do) is create knowledge. We should use that phrase more and talk about what it means. I think we don't, and it's part of why AI enthusiasts are confused when we don't readily agree that our work can be replicated/replaced by their products.
Reposted by Greg Shill
There's a larger lesson about the importance of prices generally, and the problems that arise from disregarding this knowledge.
I refuse to shut up about this: NYC started charging $9 to bring a car into our most transit-rich zone, the haters & trolls predicted doom, but traffic evaporated instantly and here’s Times Square tonite (even after the holiday tourists have left). For a better future, build transit & price driving!
December 21, 2025 at 5:38 PM
There's a larger lesson about the importance of prices generally, and the problems that arise from disregarding this knowledge.
Excellent thread.
A few years ago, I wrote a long piece about why NS wanted to bulldoze part of a neighborhood on Chicago's South Side to expand an intermodal yard.
homesignalblog.wordpress.com/2023/07/18/c...
homesignalblog.wordpress.com/2023/07/18/c...
Chicago’s Railroad Problem
In February 2023, two thousand feet of Chicago’s South Normal Boulevard disappeared. The street’s end came at the hands of Norfolk Southern’s 47th Street intermodal terminal, a facility which moves…
homesignalblog.wordpress.com
December 20, 2025 at 9:29 PM
Excellent thread.
Fittingly, this quote was sponsored by Countrywide Financial and only came to be sponsored by Bank of America following its acquisition of the subprime lender in early 2008.
December 20, 2025 at 3:52 AM
Fittingly, this quote was sponsored by Countrywide Financial and only came to be sponsored by Bank of America following its acquisition of the subprime lender in early 2008.
Grim, especially for those of us who want to see more private investment flowing into major infrastructure.
Ratings downgrade from S&P late Friday for Brightline's Florida ops. The agency now anticipates lower revenue growth, owing to fares "drastically discounted to encourage new riders [proving] particularly sticky," meaning it won't hit revenue targets.
Expects parent company to default in Jan '27.
Expects parent company to default in Jan '27.
December 20, 2025 at 3:44 AM
Grim, especially for those of us who want to see more private investment flowing into major infrastructure.
Reposted by Greg Shill
You either allow more housing to be built to meet demand, or you create increasingly complicated and expensive ways to deal with the lack of supply
This woodsy Marin County suburb is offering up to $14,000 in a one-time payment to property owners who agree to sign a one-year lease with someone who works in Mill Valley.
Read more → www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/arti...
📸: Lea Suzuki/S.F. Chronicle
Read more → www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/arti...
📸: Lea Suzuki/S.F. Chronicle
December 20, 2025 at 2:51 AM
You either allow more housing to be built to meet demand, or you create increasingly complicated and expensive ways to deal with the lack of supply
Reposted by Greg Shill
Big 'W' for my pals at the Marron Institute's Transit Costs Project!
Gov Hochul will veto a bill to require both a conductor and a driver on every subway train, according to two sources familiar with the decision. Story to follow. Details on the bill here:
www.nytimes.com/2025/11/13/n...
www.nytimes.com/2025/11/13/n...
Does the Subway Still Need Train Conductors?
www.nytimes.com
December 19, 2025 at 6:50 PM
Big 'W' for my pals at the Marron Institute's Transit Costs Project!
Reposted by Greg Shill
City officials are the figures most often held accountable for traffic safety, but states and U.S. DOT set the rules. To save lives, we must remove institutional roadblocks and advocate for the creation of national standards that put safety first.
nacto.org/latest/the-1...
nacto.org/latest/the-1...
The 11th edition of the MUTCD, two years later - NACTO
It’s been two years since the Federal Highway Administration published the 11th Edition of the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices (MUTCD), which was the first update to the manual in almost 15 ...
nacto.org
December 19, 2025 at 2:47 PM
City officials are the figures most often held accountable for traffic safety, but states and U.S. DOT set the rules. To save lives, we must remove institutional roadblocks and advocate for the creation of national standards that put safety first.
nacto.org/latest/the-1...
nacto.org/latest/the-1...
Reposted by Greg Shill
The new MUTCD still falls short in areas that play an outsized role in the unsafe design of our streets and continues to prioritize motor vehicle movement over the enormous range of other urban street users. nacto.org/latest/thous...
Thousand-page document governing nearly every street in the U.S. gets a refresh - NACTO
A single federal document dictates what nearly every American street looks like–and federal regulators recently updated it for the first time since 2009. The Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices...
nacto.org
December 19, 2025 at 2:47 PM
The new MUTCD still falls short in areas that play an outsized role in the unsafe design of our streets and continues to prioritize motor vehicle movement over the enormous range of other urban street users. nacto.org/latest/thous...
Pre-kids: who on earth is buying these multiple-terabyte shared cloud plans?
Post: excuse me while I upload this two-minute HD video
Post: excuse me while I upload this two-minute HD video
December 19, 2025 at 4:00 PM
Pre-kids: who on earth is buying these multiple-terabyte shared cloud plans?
Post: excuse me while I upload this two-minute HD video
Post: excuse me while I upload this two-minute HD video
I think the TikTok divestment requirement very clearly *was* about national security when it was enacted in April 2024, but there’ve been one or two changes (really just one) since then.
The US TikTok sale has been signed. The company will be controlled by a joint venture including Oracle, Silver Lake, Andreessen Horowitz, Abu Dhabi-based MGX. Adding a UAE company really makes it clear that this was never about national security concerns.
www.axios.com/2025/12/18/t...
www.axios.com/2025/12/18/t...
Scoop: TikTok signs deal for sale of U.S. unit after yearslong saga
The deal would end a yearslong saga to force TikTok's Chinese parent ByteDance to sell the company's U.S. operation.
www.axios.com
December 19, 2025 at 1:28 AM
I think the TikTok divestment requirement very clearly *was* about national security when it was enacted in April 2024, but there’ve been one or two changes (really just one) since then.
Reposted by Greg Shill
9️⃣ CTA
The gold standard. The cars themselves have a solid wrap job and good LED light show (including on the roof!), but putting Santa and his sleigh on a flatcar is absolutely next level.
Grade: A+
The gold standard. The cars themselves have a solid wrap job and good LED light show (including on the roof!), but putting Santa and his sleigh on a flatcar is absolutely next level.
Grade: A+
December 18, 2025 at 8:10 PM
9️⃣ CTA
The gold standard. The cars themselves have a solid wrap job and good LED light show (including on the roof!), but putting Santa and his sleigh on a flatcar is absolutely next level.
Grade: A+
The gold standard. The cars themselves have a solid wrap job and good LED light show (including on the roof!), but putting Santa and his sleigh on a flatcar is absolutely next level.
Grade: A+
Welcome, Hogan Lovells Cadwalader. www.ft.com/content/c395...
Law firms Hogan Lovells and Cadwalader set to merge in record $3.6bn deal
Combination that would deliver 3,000-lawyer behemoth is latest transatlantic merger
www.ft.com
December 18, 2025 at 10:14 PM
Welcome, Hogan Lovells Cadwalader. www.ft.com/content/c395...
The end of a five-year gush of federal funds has been mitigated in some places by state aid or sales tax, but local government fiscal cliff is here.
I suspect this will get worse before it gets better. Property value growth can provide some buffer (though beware the gathering property tax revolt).
I suspect this will get worse before it gets better. Property value growth can provide some buffer (though beware the gathering property tax revolt).
State government employment growth has collapsed — not really a surprise given the end of pandemic money but it’s now in the data:
December 17, 2025 at 2:37 PM
The end of a five-year gush of federal funds has been mitigated in some places by state aid or sales tax, but local government fiscal cliff is here.
I suspect this will get worse before it gets better. Property value growth can provide some buffer (though beware the gathering property tax revolt).
I suspect this will get worse before it gets better. Property value growth can provide some buffer (though beware the gathering property tax revolt).
Reposted by Greg Shill
Transit reform bill signed by Governor Pritzker yesterday funds passenger rail service to the Quad Cities. www.kwqc.com/2025/12/17/i...
Illinois transit bill funds Quad Cities passenger rail
The bill, which Pritzker signed Tuesday, secured $475 million for the Chicago to Quad Cities Passenger Rail project, according to a media release.
www.kwqc.com
December 17, 2025 at 1:00 PM
Transit reform bill signed by Governor Pritzker yesterday funds passenger rail service to the Quad Cities. www.kwqc.com/2025/12/17/i...
Reposted by Greg Shill
If there is anyone left who hasn't read the 1000+ page Illinois transit reform bill, this is a good summary in @chi.streetsblog.org.
Here’s an independent summary of NITA, by Austin Busch for @chi.streetsblog.org
chi.streetsblog.org/2025/11/04/e...
chi.streetsblog.org/2025/11/04/e...
Everything in the new transit bill on Pritzker's desk - Streetsblog Chicago
By Austin Busch Last Friday, the Illinois General Assembly passed a transformative piece of legislation for transit reform and funding with veto-proof majorities, and Gov. JB Pritzker is widely expect...
chi.streetsblog.org
December 17, 2025 at 1:23 PM
If there is anyone left who hasn't read the 1000+ page Illinois transit reform bill, this is a good summary in @chi.streetsblog.org.