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rohanaras.bsky.social
rohan aras
@rohanaras.bsky.social
240 followers 450 following 400 posts
Senior Transportation Policy Analyst @niskanencenter.bsky.social

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rohanaras.bsky.social
Here are the stated reasons:
Q: Why is Sound Transit choosing numbers for Link light rail lines? There are several advantages to using numbered lines. Compared to colors or themed names, numbers and letters are more culturally neutral and can scale more easily as the system grows. Numbers provide an intuitive, easy to remember system for all riders. Arabic numerals are the only identifier instantly understood in languages using Latin, Cyrillic, Chinese, Japanese and Korean characters, etc. Even for languages that do not use Arabic numerals, many international transportation applications (such as airport gates) still use Arabic numerals. Low numbers also imply priority and importance to riders, and this is appropriate to Link light rail as a fast, frequent, reliable and high-capacity service. Though we would prefer to use letters for Link light rail if designing the system from scratch, we recognize and honor King County Metro’s pre-existing intent to continue using letters as it expands from six to 26 Rapid Ride bus lines. For this reason, we have avoided letter designations within King County except for four stations on the Sounder line and one station on the Sounder line. Though a numbered system for Link can conflict with local bus routes, we see this as less problematic than either letters or colors because bus routes are already widely duplicated between agencies. For example, Metro, Pierce Transit, Everett Transit and Kitsap Transit all have a Route 4, yet with little to no resulting rider confusion. Given our commitments to our partner agencies and to system designs that are intuitive and equitable, an alphanumeric system with numbered Link lines is the best solution Q: How will Sound Transit avoid rider confusion with King County Metro routes 1, 2 and 3? King County Metro routes 1, 2, and 3 are short trolley routes that connect Queen Anne, Belltown, First Hill, the Central District, Leschi and Madrona. These routes would connect with the lines at Seattle Center, Westlake, University St, or Pioneer Square stations. However, these routes would not share stop or platform signs and would only appear together in digital products, trip-planning tools, or interagency products such as system maps. We will work closely with Metro to ensure that our wayfinding and trip planning tools clearly differentiate between services.
November 5, 2025 at 7:34 PM
rohanaras.bsky.social
Actually, to be fair to the eagles, I think they could just be riffing off of some New Deal era architecture. These are from the Trenton NJ (1932) and Monroe LA (1933) courthouses respectively.

For more see: www.ikonographia.com/us-bald-eagl...
Blocky relief of an eagle with wings spread and head facing (viewer) left) Blocky metal outline of eagle with wings spread looking (viewer) left
October 29, 2025 at 3:56 AM
rohanaras.bsky.social
I'm not the best at matching type, but I think this is futura?

Which has a complicated history with nazism if I understand correctly—it was originally banned in favor of gothic type only to be embraced later when gothic types were deemed "too jewish"

www.youtube.com/watch?v=SaX_...
TextEdit with "GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY OFFICE BUILDING" in Futura Medium 24pt overlaid over the same text over the entrance to the building
October 29, 2025 at 3:46 AM
rohanaras.bsky.social
The typical curb in DC is 7in, the streetcar uses a 14in curb. The planning documents mentioned that they could have used 10inch curbs to accommodate low floor buses, but they didn't buy the necessary bridge plates for the streetcar.
3.2.3.3 Platform Heights and Clearances – With/Without Bridge Plates Streetcar platform height may vary from the standard 7 inch curb at the leading edge, sloping up to 14 inches to accommodate vehicles with level boarding, or 10 inches for vehicles with bridge plates (see Figure 3-9). For shared platforms where buses and streetcars are loading and unloading (see Figure 3-3), the curb height for the bus loading/unloading should be 7 inches. Note – the current vehicle fleet is not equipped with bridge plates. Streetcar  stops  shall  be  designed  as  barrier‐free,  unmanned  stops.  Although  the current platforms  height is constructed at 14 inches above top‐of-rail to match the floor height of the vehicle, operation is  also viable using a curb height of  10 inches above  the  top‐of‐rail and  streetcars equipped with  bridge  plates,  which  could  accommodate  potential  shared  platform  use  with  WMATA  low-floor buses. All  platforms shall be accessible in accordance with ADA and local applicable regulations. 
October 9, 2025 at 4:07 PM
rohanaras.bsky.social
The Transit Costs Project's rolling stock database is incomplete, but the difference between NYC and the older European metros might not be that big
Preliminary Results Unlike the infrastructure costs database, the rolling stock database shows much narrower differences in the costs of single-deck EMUs. The Chinese metros average $92,141 per linear meter in 2023 PPP dollars. In Continental Europe, the corresponding figure is $150,641, though as we explain below, we believe incompleteness in the database biases the figure upward somewhat by including more higher- than lower-cost items; the approximate range is $100,000-200,000, and we expect a fuller database to get to a figure of about $130,000/m. The American costs, dominated by New York’s orders, average $152,602/m. Not all European cities are properly covered. This matters, because there appears to be an effect in which the largest and oldest European systems—especially Paris and Berlin—have higher metro rolling stock costs than others, with what appears to be less standardization. These cities form a larger share of the database than they do the European rolling stock market.
October 2, 2025 at 3:34 PM
rohanaras.bsky.social
There was also less public/private salary differential in general— @zliscow.bsky.social had this graph in a recent paper. I think this was separate from taxes? But the appendix link has rotted so I can't double check

www.economicstrategygroup.org/publication/...
September 25, 2025 at 8:03 PM
rohanaras.bsky.social
yeah everything in yellow or green here is part of the NHS
Map of central Seattle with National Highway System roads labeled: yellow for state highways, green for non–state highways
September 9, 2025 at 4:17 PM
rohanaras.bsky.social
They did some major street network modifications in conjunction with the project too
To “facilitate compact, transit-oriented” neighborhoods, the city is adding about a dozen new local roads to complete the street grid surrounding the future stations. Many of the major north/south arterials in the Bel-Red area will be extended and/or widened. Once the East Rail Corridor (ERC) is completed, cyclists will be able to connect from the trail to the Spring District Station through a multi-purpose path. The ERC will directly connect to the station planned in the Wilburton neighborhood. [Map of BelRed area with street modifications annotated]
September 2, 2025 at 11:54 PM
rohanaras.bsky.social
Just east of the BelRed starion
Google maps screenshot over the belred station and segment just east of it
September 2, 2025 at 11:45 PM
rohanaras.bsky.social
Not sure that blocking off the bus lane for parking traffic is the best use of scarce roadway space on gameday tbh
View out of the front of a sound transit bus with a parking garage blocking off the bus lane with cones
August 27, 2025 at 11:42 PM
rohanaras.bsky.social
Transit projects also work best when there are people nearby to use it. The Build More Housing Near Transit Act is a good step that rewards allow housing growth around "fixed guideway" capital investments. But we can go further and reward allowing growth near regular buses too
First, federal policy should encourage better zoning around regular bus stops to maximize ridership on the broader transit network. Urbanized areas with populations greater than 200,000 receive a large portion of their capital and maintenance budgets for non-fixed-guideway buses from Section 5307 Urbanized Area Formula Grants. This formula should be modified to include a competitive Transit Oriented Development set-aside that rewards agencies whose local partners have increased returns on investment by enacting pro-housing reforms. Eligibility could hinge on adopting “pro‑housing policies” (as defined by BMHNT) within a quarter mile of high‑frequency bus stops (service every 15 minutes or better at the time the policy launches). It would essentially operate as a transit “prize”—a carrot for states and localities weighing broader transit-oriented development bills. Second, federal policy should incentivize expanded feeder services to reach more areas, combined with supportive housing policies in those newly accessible areas, to maximize access to fixed guideway investments. CIG projects should receive higher scores when they encompass more developable land covered by pro‑housing policies within the project’s “transit‑shed”.
July 29, 2025 at 6:11 PM
rohanaras.bsky.social
Small agencies shouldn't need to rely on cross-pressured consultants for project management. A federal agency modeled on the Army Corp could step into this role and provide management and design expertise better aligned with the public interest.
screenshot of article with text: So agencies lean heavily on consultants for everything: from niche technical work to, increasingly, design and project management. Consultants do serve an important function for some expertise that genuinely requires temporary deployment. With thin internal capacity, agencies become “bad clients”—unclear on goals, slow at making decisions, and weak at contracting. Consultants, meanwhile, face incentives to expand project scope and complexity (not trim it), but also don’t own the hard tradeoffs needed to keep budgets in check. The result: bloated costs, frustrated agencies, and consultants who can’t deliver what they are best at. The federal government already has several successful models for addressing this challenge. For example, the U.S. Digital Service (USDS) was established with the goal of combining the benefits of in-house capacity and mission alignment with the flexibility of consultants.The USDS will deploy temporary surges of technical capacity to major software projects in the federal government. The federal government even operates a major civil engineering consultancy: the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The Army Corps has provided specialized technical construction and management expertise to many federal, state, and local clients through the Interagency and International Services program for decades.
July 29, 2025 at 5:59 PM
rohanaras.bsky.social
This is.... not fun to cross
Google maps screenshot of the intersection between Lee Hwy and Gallows Rd
July 8, 2025 at 2:12 AM
rohanaras.bsky.social
If you're going to annoyingly correct my vocab, at least have a leg to stand on?

And I was responding to a claim that free fares would impact stopping patterns. But glad we're on the same page re the merits of the claim.
Screenshot of an oxford dictionary definition of tangential via Google: Dictionary Definitions from Oxford Languages · Learn more adjective relating to or along a tangent. "a tangential line" diverging from a previous course or line; erratic. "tangential thoughts" hardly touching a matter; peripheral. "the reforms were tangential to efforts to maintain a basic standard of life"
June 14, 2025 at 4:52 PM
rohanaras.bsky.social
I mean it's been done before—it seems that even if the existing wire can't be reused, the other electrical systems that feed the wire can be. I imagine that that's where a lot of the cost of installing new trolley wire comes from in SF/Seattle/Dayton/Philly, though I haven't found a source yet
In the late 1940s, many of the city’s streetcar lines were replaced by electric trolley buses. While they were able to tap into the existing power supply system, these buses made it necessary to expand the overhead line system further. Unlike streetcars, trolley buses need two wires to run, so all the new trolley routes required new overhead equipment. [Photo of Lineman Ralph Greco making repairs to a section of trolley overhead inside the shop in 1985.]
May 28, 2025 at 2:29 AM
rohanaras.bsky.social
Engineers outside of leadership were also given some opportunities to study abroad, for weeks or months at a time 5/5
Screenshot: The attitude toward England offers an example. In 1924, the Bureau of Public Roads (BPR) tasked consulting highway engineer Austin B. Fletcher to study the rural roads of England. Although he was subjected to rain nearly every day of his three-month visit, "it was possible to get about without particular difficulty." But the comparison was not one-sided as it would have been the previous decade. Screenshot: But even before Gen. Eisenhower was in a position to establish those broader ribbons, the autobahn provided an opportunity for what today would be called a European scanning tour. The tour was inspired by reports that the autobahn's concrete pavements were superior to those in America. To determine the truth of such claims, Chief MacDonald dispatched two of his top engineers, F. H. Jackson and Harold Allen, to Germany. Their goal was to determine how the pavements were superior and "what features of German design and construction practice, if any, can be adopted with profit by American engineers."(2) In partitioned post-war Germany, they needed help from the Road Research Laboratory of Great Britain in making arrangements for their 28-day study tour July 15 to August 11, 1947). Ten days were taken up with securing clearances, making arrangements, and conducting interviews. But in the remaining 18 days, they traveled 1,600 kilometers of autobahn motorways, mostly in the American and British Zones. Driving speeds averaged about 55 km/hr with frequent stops to examine soil conditions, the quality of concrete, and structural failures.
May 6, 2025 at 6:39 PM
rohanaras.bsky.social
One of the more interesting anecdotes that I read here (and perhaps most relevant) is that one of the early heads of the U.S. Office of Public Roads (OPR) studied at the French École nationale des ponts et chaussées (National School of Bridges and Roads) in addition to Harvard and Virginia Tech. 4/
Screenshot: Logan Waller Page, who headed the U.S. Office of Public Roads (OPR) from 1905 until his death in 1918, was a Francophile on roads. He studied in France's School of Roads and Bridges and brought some of the French testing equipment to America as part of the OPR's road materials laboratory. In a September 1909 speech, he used France's strong national role to imply the need for a similar federal role in the United States."It is significant that the most perfect road system, conceded to be such by all authorities on highway construction, is that of France, admittedly the most highly centralized of all the road systems.... Certainly, the inference must be plain that centralization makes for economy and efficiency in the administration of the public roads," said Page.
May 6, 2025 at 6:29 PM
rohanaras.bsky.social
Both world wars played a large role in facilitating international comparisons for future political leaders. Eisenhower is the obvious example of this, but Truman was also influenced 3/
Screenshot: France's reputation for good roads was enhanced by America's participation in World War I in 1917 and 1918. In war-torn France, millions of Americans finally saw the "good roads" they had only dreamed about in the United States. And they came home convinced America could do at least as well. Captain Harry S. Truman of the 129th Field Artillery was one of them. While in France, he occasionally had opportunities to indulge his lifelong love of cars, driving, and speed. "The French know how to build roads and also how to keep them up. They are just like a billiard table and every twenty meters there are trees on each side," Truman wrote to his fiancee, Bess Wallace, from "Somewhere in France" on May 19, 1918. In the 1920s as county judge of Jackson County, Mo., he initiated the construction of concrete roads modeled on what he had seen in France. He even planted trees along his roads to create the sort of attractive roadside he had admired during the war, Unfortunately, the farmers who lived along the roads mowed the seedlings down; so, Truman's vision of roadside beauty was not achieved. Just as France's roads had inspired future President Truman during World War I, Germany's autobahn inspired future President Dwight D. Eisenhower during World War II. Eisenhower learned the value of good roads as an observer on the U.S. Army's 1919 transcontinental convoy, itself inspired in part by the good roads of France. But after observing how the autobahn enhanced Germany's military effort early in the war and the Allied counterattack at the end, Gen. Eisenhower was convinced that America needed similar "broader ribbons across the land."
May 6, 2025 at 6:20 PM
rohanaras.bsky.social
The State Department played a large role at multiple points as a fact finding organization (I assume due to early 20th century travel costs and having more capacity that other parts of the federal government) 2/
Screenshot: The war began at the dawn of the Good Roads Era in the 1890s. The U.S. Department of State asked its international consuls for information on roads in other countries. The State Department's nearly 600-page report in 1891 confirmed what good roads advocates had been saying: In country after country, roads were in better shape than those in the United States, often with the national government helping keep them that way. In France, the State Department found the world's best roads. They had been "inaugurated by the First Napoleon and carried forward to its satisfactory and splendid conclusion by the late Emperor, Napoleon the Third." The French consul added, "It is the opinion of well-informed Frenchmen ... that the superb roads of France have been one of the most steady and potent contributors to the material development and marvelous financial elasticity of the country." Screenshot: Not surprisingly, when Congress established a Joint Committee on Federal Aid in the Construction of Post Roads in 1913 to make recommendations on federal involvement in road building, the committee asked the State Department to again compile information on road practices in other countries. The committee found that all the countries examined, except Germany and Canada, granted some form of national aid. Naturally, the extensive review of France's "highly centralized" system was the longest part of the committee's report and did include a caveat.
May 6, 2025 at 6:12 PM
rohanaras.bsky.social
Is the sort of anti-intersection-daylighting that I saw legal for the same reasons? Or is it something that's only tacitly permitted?
View down a sidewalk with cars parked where the crosswalks would be in the US View down a crosswalk with cars parked on the intersection side View of two crosswalks emanating from a street corner with a car parked between them
April 30, 2025 at 7:25 PM
rohanaras.bsky.social
lol
October 2017 – Underground Construction Begins Immediately after breaking ground, construction delays began. Existing maps of old gas, water and sewer lines flowing beneath the center of Van Ness Avenue proved inaccurate, slowing excavation and causing the city to bring in utility contractors. The utility placement also made the BRT’s center-lane design a challenge: Any future sewer and water repairs would disable bussing for the duration of repair. Plus, overhead bus electrical wires would need to be fully removed for the safety of the crews. Water and sewer infrastructure needed to be moved to the outside lanes to keep the center-lane BRT design — deemed the best for traffic flow. April 2018 – Contractor Files Lawsuit against SFMTA Walsh Construction Co. filed three claims against SFMTA for $21.6 million to avoid paying a $50,000-per-day penalty for construction delays caused by the city’s search for a utility subcontractor to deal with the unexpected underground infrastructure work. September 2018 – Underground Gusher Work crews hit an unmapped water pipe encased in tree roots at Van Ness and Filbert, creating an underground river beneath the road. July 2019 – Resolution of Claims As the city resolves claims with the contractor related to additional underground water and sewer work, 279 days are added to the project timeline. February 2021 – Underground Construction Ends After more than three years of work, the complex utility work below street level is finally complete. The project ended up requiring replacement of the water and sewer lines as they were moved to the sides of the street, and involved greater oversight and investment from the SF Public Utilities Commission.
April 12, 2025 at 12:33 AM
rohanaras.bsky.social
Sometimes it's just a line on the road if there's no pole nearby
A screenshot of Google Streetview looking southeast from the eastbound lane of Quintara just west of 44th. A yellow line marks a "coach stop". The stop number, 16165 is written above the line. The sole route, 48, is written below
April 12, 2025 at 12:19 AM
rohanaras.bsky.social
WMATA seems to occasionally put these in metro stations, though I don't feel like I've noticed any particular patterns
A metal fence separates the flows for two escalators at the bottom. Connects to a WMATA pylon a couple feet from the bottom
April 5, 2025 at 11:30 PM
rohanaras.bsky.social
I'm a fan of this flippy boi
April 5, 2025 at 12:13 AM
rohanaras.bsky.social
Yeah this looks like a suburb to me
Google Street view image near 2543 46th Ave in San Francisco. Image has street running streetcar tracks flanked by squat two story row houses on either side
April 4, 2025 at 8:04 AM