For local and urban transportation a pivot to all formula funding combined with much more robust federal technical assistance seems likely to produce better outcomes than the current system. If there’s no “free money” for applying for grants and you have to work with what you have…

Is Marin IJ LTEs how they’re circulating this stuff now that Marin Post is no longer publishing?

The sheer optimism of this passage.

@estupi.do @mgm.ink important

wow

A good example of concrete led planning.

Circumstances have changed since this bond issue and there are better ways to address travel demand than a new garage. BUSD should be focused on fixing the problem of transportation, not building stuff just bc it was on a project list 5 years ago.

Organization before electronics before concrete

I can’t get over the fact that there’s a relatively new and underutilized city-owned parking garage 2 blocks away and BUSD would rather build new parking on this lot than work out a permit agreement with the city.

Plans, specifications and estimate in state DOT land requires the former for contractors to hard bid jobs and get to work. Obviously it's different with CMGC et al that transit might use, but the baseline for DBB civil work in the US is that you need ready for construction drawings.

Would need to reform American design bid build procurement rules for this to work, which require 100% design prior to procurement. I understand that France and other places allow for design to proceed somewhat contemporaneously with procurement.

The median American takes 1 flight a year.

Any disruption of air travel is treated as a red line politically while so many other aspects of domestic policy fester without care.

Unfortunately there are a lot of policymakers who are unaware of this problem and perceive the role state investment as slicing thin salami rather than getting transit capital projects into revenue service.

In this environment each additional capital source is like getting another souvenir soda cup when you’re trying to bail out a slowly sinking ship.

Another challenge: the discretionary grant model that CA uses is almost always in nominal dollars.

So a grant of $100m awarded in 2019 (at 5% design) will have lost a third of its value in 2025.

This is the National Highway Construction Cost Index — not transit — but it’s a proxy for any concrete heavy transit project.

A project trying to finalize its capital stack over 5 years is going to get wrecked in this environment, especially if it hasn’t reached 30-60% design.

It’s strange because many of the SF Progs keep talking about how SF need their own Mamdani without any introspection as to how he explicitly embraces market rate and low income supply and streamlining when they do not…

I’ve found the impulse to “break up the massing” to be a received wisdom of planners regardless of the frontage width or any other considerations such as construction quality and maintainability.

The fact that it was identified as basically unsupported by public so early is even worse somehow.

Tag yourselves, I’m Mississippi River

Harsh imo