I’ve never liked Lafayette, boring and dull, dark under the freeway and of course very noisy

A graph of ridership growth in the 10 largest US urban rail networks

Early 2026 transit data is in today, & SF is seeing a mini rail boom with Muni ridership up 15% & BART ridership up 12% compared to last year

SEPTA (Philly, 9.2%) and WMATA (DC, +6.8%) are also seeing strong growth, while the MBTA (Boston) & MTS (San Diego) are losing riders🧵

West Portal crash: S.F. judge says driver who killed family of 4 will get probation Mary Fong Lau, 80, will face no jail time according to remarks from San Francisco Superior Court Judge Bruce Chan. She must complete 200 hours of community service and undergo probation.

Mary Fong Lau, the 80 year old woman who killed four people including a baby and a toddler after crashing into a bus stop going 75mph the wrong way down a 25mph street, has been sentenced to probation and will not permanently lose her drivers' license.

This is a despicable miscarriage of justice.

I see. I’m just going off the KCM spec which lists the vehicles as a different model than the Urbino, with admittedly similar styling but very different innards for buy America compliance.

No they’re not, they’re an entire new model/range, complete with a raised rear floor.

Other agencies can and have inquired about that extra door but that’s much less likely on a model they are designing for the average North American customer that does not want the extra door and does not utilize all door boarding yet.

The extra door on this from what I understand is because of the above “side-stepping” of the American standards/general specifications, that allow for Solaris to graft the basic Canadian safety requirements onto the existing trolley design, instead of making an entirely new product (the BEB).

They’re not coming from the same factory, and all the BEBs will confirm to the stricter USA FMVSS regulations that these trolleys don’t have to comply with. Note the lack of a big front collision bumper on this, normally that’s a requirement, but these can sidestep that. The BEBs (made in NA) can’t.

Vertical conflict wasn’t an issue, it was planned with many insulators to ensure no conflicting electrical currents, but for the sake of simplicity and $ it was abandoned in favor of Muni reducing the electrification on 16th with the arrival of the (then) new 40’ trolley fleet w/ bigger batteries.

Mike Healey’s book doesn’t have photos but it has some good context and commentary about the various plans and how we got to what got built.

That’s part of a separate project, which is still ongoing

Out of all of the options, I think they picket the best one not going to lie

What exactly are the phases here of this “phased opening”

Yes but they won’t run there ever. They’ll just be used as “tow trucks” elsewhere (like over the Dolores hill on the J), since the new LRVs can’t accommodate the tow bar adaptors necessary to tow PCCs around.

CPUC regulations generally make this impossible, beyond the more practical issues surrounding electrification, accessibility and the wharf merchants shunning anything “modern.” There will be at least one Breda around for work purposes, but that’s obviously less intensive than passenger certified.

Not Balboa Park though, somehow they counted that as an open air station and it never has had them.

Or enclosed stations without side access, BART’s Warm Springs Station has them for that reason I think?

Not to mention, at the time phase I was designed, phase II wasn’t planned to include both tracks on 4th in front of the Caltrain station. The working design for phase II was still the split 3rd/4th st alignment on the surface, and the 3rd st subway north of Bryant.

Fairly common especially around construction. Some operators also like to just keep going to wherever is convenient to put poles up instead of at the actual automatic re-poling “pan” which can increase the amount of time spent on battery mode.

The original (and still installed) battery extender system was intended much more for detours rather than constant use, which has caused the batteries to wear down faster and have less useful life than anticipated, which (depending on how old a particular vehicle is) could also factor into range

Yes/no, the buses themselves restrict down acceleration at 50%, and then at 20% the onboard software limits the vehicle to 15 mph and limits it to half acceleration. That could get some but not all routes back to the barn, depending on how much of the grid is down.

Only four buses in the entire fleet have that upgrade. The rest still have the same old ~5-8 mile max range, and will continue to do so for several years until they get their “mid-life” rehab.

They also have half the battery life of the existing handheld readers 😀

This is true, every agency using the new scanners has reported that they take around 5-10 seconds per verification, given the querying that the reader has to do.

It was ruled out a while ago at this point, it’s technically impossible

Arrivederci 🫡

Yay, SB63 signed into law, authorizing a regional transit funding measure for the SF Bay Area, essential to save and improve service for BART, Muni, AC Transit, Caltrain! Bill allows a signature-gathering effort that would passage with 50%+1 of the vote. www.gov.ca.gov/wp-content/u...

Muni had to remain a part of the project, including financing most of the overall cost, because that 2022 bond failed, which took away the major dedicated funding source for this project. If that had passed, then things likely would have turned out very differently.