Okay CTA. This is a good sign.

Bolts staff writer @burness.bsky.social breaks down what you should know—and why you should care—about this week’s supreme court election in Wisconsin.

Mockup of the triumphal arch for dc. Source https://www.cfa.gov/system/files/meeting-materials/1-CFA-16APR26-1-EOP_DOI_Arch-pres%20%5BApr9%5D.pdf

Is that a winged… Statue of Liberty? What is she triumphing over? Logic? Democracy? The people of dc?

More pastiche trash for DC #winning

French government announces it will ban installations of gas heating in new building construction by the end of this year, as part of the country’s effort to wean itself off fossil fuels.

US electric vehicle sales dropped 27% in the first quarter, compared to last year www.businessinsider.com/ev-shakeout-...

VW announced it would stop manufacturing its top selling EV in the US
www.reuters.com/business/aut...

Meanwhile, gas prices in the US inflated by 40% this month.

I went to this elementary school. This is awful.

New rules mean many DC restaurants are closing streateries The District made streateries permanent. But restaurant owners say the rules are too costly and complicated to keep them up.

DC implemented a new policy for its streeteries that cost restaurants $20,000 to implement.

The result: virtually every restaurant eliminated their outdoor dining, many have reduced their hiring, & now a few cars can park more easily.

Congrats on the successful policy change, DC government!

Thoughts, @ndhapple.bsky.social ?

I'm excited to read it!

Electrify to Charlotte, electrify to Albany, electrify to Hartford/Springfield, etc. Make the NEC a network!

Interesting new legislation proposed in Minnesota—HF4449—includes some provisions related to transit-oriented development (TOD):
—Requires cities to zone for TOD for a transit project to be built there.
—Allows Met Council, cities, counties, housing agencies to acquire land specifically for TOD.

This is a cool effort by a school system to leverage publicly owned land to create thousands of housing units, affordable to teachers.

School districts own huge amounts of well-located, underutilized land that they could use for such housing projects. But few districts are actually doing so.

This project is batshit insane and nobody’s paying attention. $11bn is enough to make good progress on regional rail, moving riders from slow, uncomfortable, high-operating-cost buses to trains. Instead it’s happening in isolation from Gateway/Penn planning, resulting in no major new transit service

Lol. I wish Amtrak/VA had a real plan to work to electrify DC–Richmond to improve this further, but that's probably too much to ask.

The lack of seat assignments would be more acceptable if there were frequent trains and easy-to-get last-minute tickets that were transferrable between trains, which is the case in most of the cases without seat assignments but not for Amtrak.

Put me on the Amtrak board, I promise I'll make a stink about all this stuff, talk about it constantly, and force the agency to change.

All this before we even begin talking about expansion...

Just to add: The lack of seat assignments means conductors are still doing the thing where they go down the aisle, checking the tickets, and placing paper indicators above seats, as if it's the 1880s. Guys.

Clearly, I should take the trains in CA! Haven't done that.

It's so, so frustrating

When you compare Amtrak with the major urban transit systems—MTA, WMATA, CTA, etc—the contrast is particularly perceivable. The experience on urban transit >is actually< substantially better than it was in the 1990s. A testament to quality work by urban transit staffers.

I've been riding these trains on the Northeast Corridor for ~30 years, and virtually nothing has changed. There's an app now with tickets. The new trains can't come soon enough, but there's a lot more work to be done...

I love Amtrak, but almost every time I get on a train, man: Complete disorder in the boarding line; automated announcements incapable of saying basic words like "Acela"; no assignments, forcing everyone to fight for a seat; broken seats; conductors yelling to assure us "we know what we're doing"...

This is a cool effort by a school system to leverage publicly owned land to create thousands of housing units, affordable to teachers.

School districts own huge amounts of well-located, underutilized land that they could use for such housing projects. But few districts are actually doing so.

Colorado has a tentative agreement with BNSF for passenger rail service between Denver and Fort Collins via Boulder.

Est. upfront costs are $333mn for 3 daily Denver-Fort Collins roundtrips funded by state and local sources. It’s described as a starter service.

www.cpr.org/2026/04/08/t...

A New Law Voids IDs of Transgender Kansans. It Also Threatens Their Voting Access. - Bolts Almost as soon as Kansas lawmakers passed a new law targeting transgender people in late February, state officials started invalidating some people’s driver’s licenses without warning. The law, which ...

Just to spell this out…

You need ID to vote in Kansas. For most, that means a driver’s license.

Kansas has canceled valid licenses of people who’d updated their gender marker. Many of those affected will need new licenses to be able to vote.

A new license costs $16.

= Poll tax on trans people.

Wow, that is shocking.

a graph of ridership on the KC streetcar

Ridership on the Kansas City streetcar is also up 290% compared to this time last year after the opening of the main street extension to UMKC!

The system now has more ridership than the New Orleans streetcars, and is set to be extended to the riverfront this year.

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🧵

Fully electric cars achieved a 24% market share in Germany in March.

They achieved a 28% market share in France in the same month. www.aaa-data.fr/actualites/c...

In the US, electric cars achieved just a 6.3% share in Jan–Mar 2026 www.nada.org/nada/nada-he...