I would have argued otherwise, but the minute I read that this was a separate project with no thru-running, I could see why a BRT seems appealing, especially after the initial poor performance of the existing LRT lines...

Burlington Vermont is shockingly hood also people are nasty in the streets. It feels like "what if 90s gritty NY but everyone has pantogonia gear". I didn't expect the hood in Vermont

In my darker moments, I'm almost tempted to argue that Long Island is just the bad place with an awful tendency for fraud because none of this happens at Metro North or NJT...

Okay CTA. This is a good sign.

Rare image of a stork delivering a baby!

*They offer massive links into China, into other cities and parts of China that don’t have international services, but they’re not hubs in the sense of the Gulf or European ones or for that matter American ones,”**

This literally sounds like an American hub.

I await the Europeans discovering that this cost is also insane.

I suspect for comparison, I wonder what the cost of a regular overpass would cost...

Put it this way, MBTA, CTA, and SEPTA aren’t exactly running 5 minute headways all day, IIRC…

*but you can run twice the number of trains off peak.*

As BFF routinely notes, the OPTO supporters will be very disappointed when reality hits.

I wouldn’t be surprised if people just ended up driving to the HSR in the first place…

The only places in the world with wide rural highway medians are the places where there’s no HSR. :-)

Everywhere else, highway medians are generally too narrow for HSR, and wide medians is an American highway technique.

What was the going rate for VA’s recent purchases of ROW?

That’s the real price…

FWIW, where else could this arrangement have been repeated?

I keep forgetting that's a thing when I see the volunteer FD service use it out here on Long Island at traffic lights.

Two. In the recent past, it was three.

From what BFF says, it's faster compared to stepping back. The crew basically ping pongs back and forth.

It's literally, charge up the breaking system, get the departure lights, accelerate, make the stop at the other end, dump the brakes, pop the doors, and charge up at the other end, and repeat.

FWIW, NYCTA’s 42nd Street shuttle works like this to speed up service. There was a rumor that the agency wanted to move that model for all lines, but it never came to pass.

The other OPTO lines are true OPTO.

BFF was shocked when heard that new employees were doing flagging because in NYC, you need at least two years on the job to do it, and some guys love flagging because of the long hours and potential for OT. It’s the conductor equivalent of diesel locomotive work for train operators…

Meanwhile, the station cleaners and a few of the station agents would kill for train operator money, and they’re one of the few groups where the strict rules are an improvement.

I’ll quickly note that NYCTA hires off the street too.

BFF will note that cleaners and station agents are far more likely to take the promotional path into subways than bus operators. The bus operators don’t want to give up their hard earned seniority to make slightly more money.

Remove Flying Blue and Skymiles!
Add Aeroplan redemption to Italy!

:-)

As a speech therapy kid, my parents never pushed back on this, so I ended up with much weaker French and Creole skills compared to my family members.

WTF?

I had zero clue about that one.

Weird ordering process, but there's something charming about it.

Low key wish it was closer to Link.

I get the strange feeling that if it was in "Branch Brook Park" in Nutley or even Bloomfield, you'd see slightly more interest.

I mentioned this to a few roadgeeks, and they basically brushed it off as "tunnels cost too much to maintain".

FWIW, this isn't the first time that they've done this. IIRC, they've bypassed three tunnels.

This is my grandfather at work back in the 80s. He was a test pilot at Grumman starting from the LEM and continuing all the way up until the late 90s.

You may know him from his work as the Apollo suit test dummy, or helping launch the Cradle of Aviation Museum on Long Island.

This (heavily edited) story of his isn't quite the same as hearing his incredible stories directly, but if you have some time, give it a read.

www.cradleofaviation.org/history/hist...

Bought a little keyboard guardian :3