scroll_lock's recent activity

  1. Comment on Four proposals to improve the design of fuel economy standards in ~transport

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    Comment box Scope: comment response, information, opinion Tone: neutral Opinion: yes Sarcasm/humor: none Many states have a weight-based vehicle registration fee for at least some categories of...
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    Many states have a weight-based vehicle registration fee for at least some categories of vehicles, but it does not scale proportionally with the overall damage to infrastructure, environment and society that large vehicles cause.

    Proportionally scaled registration fees would functionally eliminate the sale of large vehicles, as long as the baseline fees were also raised. If not, they would help, but not eliminate the problem.

    For example in PA a 6,000 lb truck has a $111 fee while a 60,000 lb truck has a $1,739.00 fee. The fee increases at a higher rate for even heavier vehicles. This is a very small incentive to own a lighter vehicle, and you occasionally see people trying to register their 7500 lb truck as 6500 lb to save $103. For this to be effective, the state would have to raise the fees on all truck registrations and make the slope of fee increases steeper than it already is. They might need to add additional weight registration fees for smaller vehicles too?

    All of this would be politically unpopular in any municipality where a plurality of people drive light trucks or SUVs. Even with exemptions for commercial uses/people who actually 'need' trucks, it would still be unpopular. It would be more feasible in urban centers, but giving local municipalities the ability to levy their own fees on top of DOT fees would probably require legislation from the state government, which would be a challenge in most states.

  2. Comment on Deinterlining: simpler subway service, fewer delays (New York City) in ~transport

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    Comment box Scope: summary, information Tone: neutral Opinion: none Sarcasm/humor: none An approachable explanation from the Effective Transit Alliance of the benefits of deinterlining reverse...
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    An approachable explanation from the Effective Transit Alliance of the benefits of deinterlining reverse branches in the New York City subway system. This applies to other train systems too.

    This is one of the most complicated subjects about railroad service, but the article explains it well.

    Definitions:

    • Line: a subway service
    • Trunk: a collection of lines sharing tracks for some distance (imagine: tree trunk)
    • Simple branch (often deinterlined): line(s) splitting off the trunk (imagine: tree branches)
    • Reverse branch (often interlined): when two independent trunks are connected by a shared branch; delays in one cause delays in both

    Why it's important: Delays are inefficient. People intuitively don't like transferring between services because the worst-case scenario of transferring increases the probability of at least 1 train in your commute being delayed. Deinterlining alleviates those worst-case scenarios and makes transfers less cumbersome, while also improving the predictability of service for riders who are not transferring. These psychological improvements increase the attractiveness of subway ridership instead of driving cars. A mode shift to transit is more resource-efficient than driving cars, so deinterlining even has overarching financial and environmental benefits even to people in NYC who don't ride the subway.

    Computer analogy: Deinterlining is like modularizing concurrent code so components are better encapsulated and don't share resources (threads/queues). They still interface, but a slowdown in one module doesn’t cascade through the entire system. (I'm doing my best for you ~comp people)

    The New York City Subway is famously complicated. Many lines are three or four tracks; trains can run local or express; and, crucially, different services often branch and merge with each other. It is this complexity that not only creates the potential for delays, but allows those delays to spread far and wide.

    Most well-designed transit networks use branches to fill a central trunk, if branched at all. For example, the A train has branches running to both Far Rockaway and Lefferts Blvd, which allows higher frequency at busier stations in Brooklyn and Manhattan. The same is true of D and N trains, which have separate branches toward Coney Island, but share tracks running express on 4 Av. This type of branching is relatively easy to schedule, as trains can be made to arrive at their merge point at staggered times so that they fit into a neatly spaced pattern in the middle. In this way, trains don't conflict with one another, and they provide more service to denser areas.

    The subway, however, also has many reverse branches, where services that have already branched out from one central trunk line join with a branch of another. A prominent example are the 7 Av (2/3) and Lexington Av (4/5) Expresses: these lines branch in the outer boroughs, but the 2 and 5 trains, which run separately in Manhattan, merge onto the same tracks along White Plains Rd in the Bronx and Nostrand Av in Brooklyn. Reverse branches are incredibly difficult to schedule: ensuring that trains always come to interlockings at different times quickly becomes a very difficult, and often impossible, problem to solve. Perhaps worse, when delays mess up this delicate balance, they can cause cascading delays across lines that would otherwise be unaffected.

    There is one simple solution to this scheduling and delay-inducing headache: eliminating reverse branches through a process called deinterlining. Deinterlining simplifies the subway’s complex and delicate arrangement, creating a more robust, reliable network. This is why, as the broader transit advocacy has noted for years (e.g., Alon Levy, vanshnookenraggen, Uday Schultz, NYTIP, Joint Transit Association, Mystic Transit), deinterlining is a crucial step in enabling better service on the subway.

    The article discusses the "F/M" swap, which is difficult to explain, but in short it reduces delays throughout the entire subway system by switching the tunnels used by these two trains and therefore reducing the number of spatial conflicts with other interlined services.

    The article also discusses Nostrand Junction (Rogers) (2+5 and 3+4 conflicts). As with many train service problems, delays from this junction could be resolved with grade-separating the lines: building physically separate tracks so that trains don't have to worry about colliding. However, that's expensive. A nearly-as-good solution is "strategically adding new switches" to deinterline the services. In other words, they can improve the efficiency of the system without extremely costly infrastructure changes.

    Lastly, the article discusses the DeKalb Interlocking, a notoriously inefficient part of the subway system. The 6th Avenue "Communications-Based Train Control" (CBTC) project will update the physical systems that control train movements on the B/D/N/Q. Assuming MTA can overcome the logistics of implementing CBTC on multiple sets of rolling stock asynchronously, deinterlining this interlocking would result in meaningful improvements to service and a reduction in delays to the system as a whole, with relatively minor side effects.

    Most subway systems are not as complicated as NYC's, so they don't have this problem as much. But for NYC, effective deinterlining could be a huge time savings for the entire system at a fraction of the cost of grade separation.

    2 votes

  4. Comment on Virginia's Long Bridge Project will improve rail capacity around Washington DC in ~transport

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    Comment box Scope: comment response, information, opinion Tone: neutral Opinion: yes Sarcasm/humor: none I agree, a well-functioning regional rail system should have service beyond traditional 9-5...
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    I agree, a well-functioning regional rail system should have service beyond traditional 9-5 commuting hours. It's increasingly common for people to work at different times outside the "standard" workweek. Also, there are many non-work-related reasons to travel.

    DC is fortunate to have a subway system with multiple lines running into Virginia (orange/yellow/blue), but the VRE regional rail goes to population centers much further out. It's important for that line to have more service in order to reduce Vehicle Miles Traveled in the area.

    24h subway service is pretty uncommon because it makes farebox recovery harder - there just isn't much demand at 3am. NYC and Chicago are possibly the only cities in the USA that do this at any meaningful scale. However, having relatively late-night (but not 24h) service is still really important for VRE and much more financially feasible. Should be achievable in DC.

    In an ideal world, DC/VA would build an additional radial train line to Arlington along Columbia, possibly to Annandale, and a circumferential line between Alexandria and Annandale (?) up to the Orange Line, and then to Silver Spring or something (similar to the IBX in NYC). This is a fairly densely populated area of the DMV and would benefit from transit availability a lot. The whole region needs a ton of transit-oriented upzoning though.

    2 votes

  5. Comment on California High Speed Rail Authority advances track and systems construction procurement in ~transport

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    Comment box Scope: summary, information Tone: neutral Opinion: only at the end Sarcasm/humor: none [Archive] California High Speed Rail is a big project that's eventually supposed to connect San...
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    [Archive]

    California High Speed Rail is a big project that's eventually supposed to connect San Francisco and Los Angeles by train, with faster service than current tracks. Construction has been ongoing for a few years in the Central Valley and between San Francisco and San Jose.

    The way construction projects happen is more or less:

    • Institution develops vision plan
    • Plan goes through many tedious, extremely expensive engineering and environmental reviews
    • Alternative [to existing condition] is selected
    • Engineers create more detailed plans
    • Institution issues RFP for contractors to submit bid proposals on, i.e. making them compete to do it cheapest
    • Institution issues RFQ to finalize price (I guess this can happen first sometimes)
    • Contractors build the thing

    Most of those stages take several years each, so we're pretty far along.

    The California High-Speed Rail Authority has issued a Request for Proposals (RFP) to solicit bids for constructing high-speed rail and track systems next year.

    the $3.5 billion RFP is one of the largest contracts for the country. It includes track, train control, communications, the overhead contact system, and safety certification and testing for service. The contract has nine separate packages with phased Notices to Proceed.

    Once the Track and Systems Contract is awarded, the Authority will begin systems installation along the [119-mile] alignment.

    So far, the CAHSR Authority has mostly been building bridges/alignment structures for the train. This RFP is for the physical tracks and equipment operators need in order to run trains. The procurement of the trainsets will come later.

    The Central Valley segment is mostly funded and the CA state legislature will likely cover any gaps. There is currently no funding to connect San Jose and Merced, or Bakersfield and Los Angeles. However, basically the entire route is environmentally cleared, so if they can get funding for procurement and construction, it's mostly ready to go.

    5 votes

  7. Comment on Virginia's Long Bridge Project will improve rail capacity around Washington DC in ~transport

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    Comment box Scope: summary, information Tone: neutral, except a quip at the end Opinion: none really Sarcasm/humor: none archive Work is beginning on the Long Bridge Project between Washington DC...
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    archive

    Work is beginning on the Long Bridge Project between Washington DC and Virginia. This is an upgrade to the Amtrak/commuter rail corridor. The new tracks will significantly increase capacity and allow for faster and more frequent train service in the region. This will also improve Amtrak travel times for long-distance routes passing over the bridges.

    The project seeks to add a new two-track passenger rail bridge that traverses the Potomac River. In all, crews will work to add seven new bridges, five of which are for rail. According to VPRA, these bridges will stretch from “south of L’Enfant Plaza across Maine Avenue, the Washington Channel, and I-395 to the Potomac River.”

    From VA Passenger Rail Authority:

    The Virginia Passenger Rail Authority’s Long Bridge Project is a 1.8-mile rail improvement that will relieve one of the biggest rail bottlenecks on the East Coast. The project will improve reliability and expand capacity for both passenger and freight trains traveling between Virginia and Washington, D.C. The project will create a continuous four-track corridor between the Long Bridge Aquatic Center in Arlington and L’Enfant Plaza in D.C. It includes five new rail bridges and two new pedestrian and bicycle bridges. A new two-track rail bridge will be built over the Potomac River next to the existing Long Bridge, along with a new bike and pedestrian bridge connecting Long Bridge Park in Arlington to East and West Potomac Parks in D.C.

    Project Benefits:

    • Increased rail capacity that enables more frequent passenger rail service with better on-time reliability.
    • Improved bicycle and pedestrian connectivity between
    • Northern Virginia and the District of Columbia with a new bicycle-pedestrian bridge that is wider, brighter, and safer than other options.
    • Billions of dollars invested in the regional economy.
    • Infrastructure improvements that increase safety and security along the project corridor

    The total cost is around $2.6 billion. Thanks Joe Biden for the infrastructure funding. (No thanks to the current administration.) Construction is beginning now and will complete around 2030.

    See also: the S-Line Project in North Carolina, which will really make it faster to get to Washington DC on rail from the south.

    4 votes

  9. Comment on Living wage calculator in ~finance

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    Comment box Scope: comment, opinion, rant Tone: disgruntled (not at you personally, just society) Opinion: yes Sarcasm/humor: none I think the benefit of this tool is to demonstrate how far below...
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    I think the benefit of this tool is to demonstrate how far below adequate the legal minimum wage is. The bar is low and we still fail to reach it. In my city it's still $7.25 because the state prohibits higher local minimum wages. This tool says it should be $23.26 where I live, more than triple the current. I think laying it all out like this is helpful - it's not making the argument that wages shouldn't be even higher, just showing that WOW we are REALLY far behind.

    I agree with you though, the "living wage" here is really just the "scrape by" wage. Which I guess is more or less accurate. But still sad. I'm not sure of a term for a better tier - the "comfort wage" sounds too luxurious.

    I remember when we were talking about the $15 minimum wage, and Congress did nothing to raise it. It seems Sisyphean because of inflation - why can't we at least get legislation to attach the wage to inflation? Then we can talk about raising the baseline.....

    or spending your life hotbunking in a shared room and scrounging for every penny

    This feels like a Western and especially an American problem, or maybe just a problem with liberal interpretations of capitalism. In places with functioning social systems --- I don't mean the government --- family units are expected to care for the elderly, whether that's immediate or extended family, just like how parents are expected to care for children. And for people who have no family, neighbors are expected to help. That's not enforced by the government, it's not a law, it's not a social program - when people live in a real society, they help each other. Intellectuals came up with the term "mutual aid" to describe this, but the idea of social cooperation is not new and is not originally academic.

    Modern society is so individualistic and prideful that people (even those with immense houses) consider it undignified for elderly relatives to live with them. People are socialized to say things like, "Oh, I love my mother, but I could NEVER live with her." Most of the time this means they are mildly annoyed by their mother or reminded of their childhood in mildly annoying ways - so it's not even considered an option, and everyone's poor parents needs to spend a LOT of money living BY THEMSELVES in their own house (expensive/inefficient) or share a room with strangers and scrounge instead of being taken in by relatives. (FYI I AM NOT TALKING ABOUT ABUSIVE PARENTS, I KNOW THERE ARE REASONS NOT TO DO THIS FOR EVERYONE) It's just accepted in America that the only people who have households with multiple generations are immigrants and poor people. This is really inefficient. This also means that young parents have to pay thousands of dollars in childcare because they have no elderly relatives nearby to watch the kids while they work!!! Really it doesn't need to be a blood relative, that's just the most automatic arrangement. We could totally live more efficiently as a society if we swallowed our pride a little.

    Obviously it's extra hard and unpleasant and if you're already living in a tiny space, it isn't necessarily appealing to bring in another person into your household. But the reason housing is expensive is because there is way too much demand and not enough supply. People living alone, including old people, severely restricts housing availability. This was made more obvious by the pandemic and because young people in recent years are also increasingly living alone. If the amount of housing doesn't change but everyone wants their own apartment until age 35, then obviously rents are going to get really high. And we have all these artificial requirements in our heads about, well, each person needs their own room, or a certain amount of space, because we spend such an excessive amount of time indoors. So people buy and build bigger houses, which means there is less available space for units per square mile, which further restricts supply. People have good reasons to make their own decisions, but we have to be honest -- our collective decisions are part of what drives up the cost. It's really easy to blame everything on billionaires (and it's not like that's wrong) but if that's all we blame, then we forget we are also partially responsible.

    The biggest absolutely essential expense this website lists is housing. Childcare is second, but that decreases a lot in intergenerational households - partially if elders are working part-time, or potentially to zero. Transportation is directly linked to housing availability (Transit-Oriented Development reduces COL); transport costs are high in places where car ownership is required. This is because everyone paying to operate their own car is space/energy-inefficient and therefore cost-inefficient. If we just built more housing in places near transport, then tons of affordability problems would go away. (And if we accept that we should be less antisocial and return to slightly larger family or social units, we could reduce costs even more.)

    I post on here all the time about NIMBYs keeping local zoning laws restrictive to prevent more housing from being built. I think people intellectually recognize the problem. But the NIMBYism is extremely strong and people don't always stick to their intellectual beliefs when it affects them personally.

    • Nearly everyone with even modest income/wealth (even people who would go on websites like Tildes) says 'oh no we should fix the COL and build more housig!' However, whenever THEIR neighborhood is going to get a new apartment complex, they vote against it because: 'it'll cause traffic' 'parking will be terrible' 'it's too big of a building for this small town' 'it's ugly architecture' 'the construction will be terrible' 'it'll bring the wrong people in' 'just build it somewhere else'. Really??? So plans are canceled, downsized, or moved to areas with no access to transportation/amenities - not because that's a better place, but because there's less resistance. And if the housing DOES get built, people complain in dismissive tones about how much worse XYZ has gotten 'since they put those new condos up'. It genuinely drives me insane.

    • Poorer people are sensitive to the idea of gentrification (understandably -- it's a personal impact). On average they are also less educated, and not reading scientific research papers about economics. But it is true that all housing construction increases supply (by definition), and where supply increases, demand decreases - in a free market that means prices always decrease. It's just that a local housing market is larger than 1 neighborhood, so if ONLY a few neighborhoods are building new housing, hyper-local/block-by-block price changes are always going to be lopsided (even while the average price in the city decreases). So even if the new apartments are branded as 'luxury' and are themselves unaffordable, there is still MORE housing in the local housing market in total, which reduces all prices, because people who would otherwise be competing with you for Class B or C apartments can now rent Class A apartments. This isn't just my opinion, it's backed up by research. Even in the case that a development craze causes people to move into a city they didn't live in previously, that means they are moving AWAY from somewhere else and decreasing demand in that other place. This is why the most effective zoning strategy is to pass statewide upzoning laws, especially transit-oriented development, and prevent local municipalities from downzoning everything to inefficient SFH. Some legislation in California has been successful in this, but it's still tepid.

    NIMBYs in the first category - the ones who pay attention to politics and go to zoning meetings - make all the specious arguments they can to politicians to stop development on conservative grounds. If that doesn't work they make up some BS about negative environmental impacts (which they obviously don't believe). If that doesn't work, they go out of their way to spread narratives about how adding new housing will raise the COL - which, like much misinformation, has a core of accuracy but is mostly wrong and greatly exaggerated. So equity-minded progressives get wrapped up in these anti-development beliefs that do not correspond to economic reality, and so the NIMBY voting bloc dominates elections and becomes socially unacceptable to argue against.

    COL is more complicated than all that but the foundational concept of supply and demand is highly influential.

    Anyway that's all to say that there are solutions to this problem beyond just raising the minimum wage. I'd like that to happen, but for real social change to occur we need to do many things at the same time. So, if you ever find yourself in a local zoning meeting, I recommend you give up on your aesthetic preferences and just agree to build more housing. It's for the greater good.

    10 votes

  10. Comment on Hi, how are you? Mental health support and discussion thread (December 2025) in ~health.mental

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    Comment box Scope: comment, personal perspective Tone: thankful, worried Opinion: yes Sarcasm/humor: none Grateful that I have food and water Glad I can go to a library to get more books for free...
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    • Grateful that I have food and water
    • Glad I can go to a library to get more books for free
    • Thankful I can still access internet
    • Excited for Portal North Bridge to open next year. Faster trains mean less cars on 95 and less pollution
    • Happy to see my state is considering that plug-in solar panel bill, I would totally do that to save money
    • Worried about the transit in my city, it still doesn't have permanent funding so it could all just stop in January - that would be bad

    Also I don't read news much except about infrastructure or urban planning but it sounds like AI will take away a lot of jobs and I don't see a solution, unless someone does something really smart really fast. It just seems like the AIs are getting better faster than people can make new companies to create more jobs. Anyway that's scary and I don't want to think about it, but it's the only thing anyone is talking about, so I can't avoid it.

    9 votes

  11. Comment on United Kingdom electric vehicle owners to face pay-per-mile tax in ~transport

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    Comment box Scope: comment response, information, opinion Tone: neutral, slightly skeptical Opinion: yes Sarcasm/humor: none There is already a petrol tax and tolls on motorways. People already...
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    now the perceived cost of pay-per-mile will make this far worse.

    There is already a petrol tax and tolls on motorways. People already pay per mile. Is this really different?

    Also -- Is this a significant cost - and is it really unnecessary? All cars, including electric cars, incur expensive externalities for infrastructure - more than any other mode of ground transport, per passenger-mile. If it's not going to come from taxes on petrol, it has to come from somewhere.

    I feel like it's fair to pay for what you use - and if you don't drive, you don't have to pay as much. Some people might call that 'regressive' but I don't think that's accurate. The truly poorest people don't have cars at all, and also bear the majority of the externalities of cars - the pollution (EVs also pollute - a lot), the destruction of ecology, the poor land use and accordingly high cost of living, even traffic fatalities.

    3p per mile for an average of 7,000 miles annually (UK) is £210 per year. As a relatively poor person I understand that can be a lot. But the cost savings of switching from petrol to electric is at least £400 even if you only use public chargers (assuming averages for other numbers). So even with a 0% home charging rate, it's still a cost improvement from petrol? And electric cars are going to continue to drop in price, so the savings will grow in the future compared to petrol cars.

    Clearly this is a disincentive to go electric, but it's also a disincentive to drive - which is probably a net benefit for society.

    9 votes

  12. Comment on Tweaks to state laws mean many Americans will be able to benefit from small, simple plug-in solar panels in ~enviro

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    Comment box Scope: comment response, information, opinion Tone: neutral Opinion: yes Sarcasm/humor: none The UL 1741 standard apparently handles this but I don't know how stringently it would be...
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    The UL 1741 standard apparently handles this but I don't know how stringently it would be enforced on the manufacturer level, as you say. It's voluntary I think.

    There is negligible risk to the grid though. Household electricity demand is a small part of total demand. The number of units this issue could apply to is a subset of the number of people who would decide to get one, which is a subset of apartment-dwellers, which is maybe 10% of the USA population, which is a subset of total demand. Even if 10% of auto-disconnect functions failed simultaneously (implausible), at the same time as a localized grid blackout (also implausible), the output would be too small to have any meaningful effect. Even in a city, the grid is big ---- the smallest grid in the USA is Texas which is an entire state.

    There is a risk to electrical workers because electricity is inherently dangerous. I'm not an electrician but I believe it is standard practice to physically isolate a line before doing maintenance on it. The worry would be that the electrician believes a line is dead but the device is backfeeding because it's broken. If they're operating on a single circuit, that could shock someone, but it's not fatal. Whereas if they failed to follow circuit isolating procedures, the live energy of a whole house could totally kill them. So presumably any electrician is wearing some PPE to begin with. With precautions I speculate the risk is minimal.

    Obviously regulation to make sure devices are following the standards would be ideal. But that's for the state government to decide.

    If it works in other countries I don't see why it wouldn't work here.

    3 votes

  13. Comment on California Department of Motor Vehicles approves Waymo operation in many more cities in ~transport

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    Comment box Scope: comment response, information, opinion, clarification Tone: neutral, clarifying Opinion: yes Sarcasm/humor: none You are right, I misinterpreted the comment. The study I linked...
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    You are right, I misinterpreted the comment. The study I linked states that Waymos have a 96% crash risk reduction against a typical driver. You are right that no studies exist evaluating UberX vs Uber Comfort for crash risk (that I am aware of).

    My guess is that the difference is small relative to the difference between any human rideshare and Waymo. Anecdotally, Uber Comfort or other premium tiers DO have safer drivers, however the Waymo can still react to things 100x faster and never gets distracted. And unlike humans, the robo-taxi software keeps getting better.

    I have really changed my mind on these Robot cars. I was skeptical of them 1-2 years ago but now I think they are a plus, at least for safety, we'll see about more holistic questions later.

    2 votes

  14. Comment on California Department of Motor Vehicles approves Waymo operation in many more cities in ~transport

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    Comment box Scope: comment response, information, opinion Tone: neutral, slightly moralizing Opinion: yes Sarcasm/humor: none Seems like they are empirically safer too (96% reduction in crashes)....
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    They are around 20% slower than a normal one, but they are really nice cars and feel way way safer.

    Seems like they are empirically safer too (96% reduction in crashes).

    If humans get "comfortable" around Waymos that travel more slowly, react better/faster than human drivers, and are safer for everyone, maybe that's just a return to a human-based society rather than a car-based one. Instead of urban/suburban people living in a subconsciously heightened fear state all the time, they can just... live? Without worrying about being instantly killed by a 2-ton death machine?

    I hear the practical worry you have, but the issue would be people getting comfy around Waymo behavior and forgetting that human-driven cars are dangerous, and doing the same stuff around them. Personally I consider this line of reasoning victim blaming, just like blaming dead cyclists for not wearing bright enough colors. The problem is still humans being terrible drivers, and engineers designing dangerous environments. The direct source of traffic violence and fatality is cars having too much [mass * velocity], not vulnerable road users.

    The engineering process of making streets ~100% safe is essentially solved and some cities have achieved Vision Zero already (like Helsinki and Hoboken). It is not implemented everywhere for mostly political reasons, not scientific ones.

    when they finally corner the market and drive humans away the prices will get crazy high.

    I doubt this very much. Waymo's competition now is human drivers. But other autonomous car companies exist and will compete for market share just like Uber and Lyft compete with each other. I don't see how this could possibly raise prices when the underlying cost of operating the service will be lower.

    7 votes

  15. Comment on The final line in Los Angeles's holy trinity of future rail: Vermont corridor in ~transport

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    Comment box Scope: comment response, information, opinion Tone: neutral Opinion: yes Sarcasm/humor: none Nandert doesn't cover intercity rail except as sidenotes (so far). The best source on...
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    Nandert doesn't cover intercity rail except as sidenotes (so far). The best source on Brightline West and the High Desert Corridor is Lucid Stew. He also covers California High Speed Rail and HSR projects in other regions, like the Northeast Corridor.

    Stew's latest coverage on Brightline West has not been optimistic, but the project isn't doomed. It's not going to be built before the LA Olympics though.

    1 vote

  16. Comment on The final line in Los Angeles's holy trinity of future rail: Vermont corridor in ~transport

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    Comment box Scope: summary, information, opinion Tone: neutral Opinion: yes, of Nandert; otherwise, not really Sarcasm/humor: none Extremely high-quality and detailed alternative analysis of an...
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    Extremely high-quality and detailed alternative analysis of an important future heavy rail project in Los Angeles. He discusses alignment options, tunneling methods (cut-and-cover, tunnel boring) and depth considerations, utility impact, ridership projections, and potential cost savings.

    One of the best transit content creators on the internet and I wish such a person made similar material for my city.

    4 votes

  18. Comment on Amtrak steadily continues upgrading Wisconsin stations for level boarding - improving access and travel time in ~transport

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    Comment box Scope: comment response, information Tone: neutral Opinion: yes Sarcasm/humor: none Amtrak often agrees with you. For example they recently agreed to start running the Pennsylvanian...
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    I think it'd be a lot more useful to have a few choices on timing than a faster train

    Amtrak often agrees with you. For example they recently agreed to start running the Pennsylvanian train twice daily rather than once. And they have meaningfully increased NEC service in the past couple years.

    While often easier than massive realignments, increasing service is also difficult, and sometimes requires infrastructure changes anyway. Challenges include:

    • Rolling stock - For long routes, every additional timeslot means a new train. The trains obviously circulate roundtrip, but it becomes quite costly at low travel speeds. The solution is either to make the train faster or to buy more trains. A single locomotive and passenger cars is probably $30 million in equipment plus testing and staff hiring, training. Not nothing, but not exorbitant. However, no long-distance routes are profitable (demand is low without higher frequency and speeds), so they have to get the money to run this service from somewhere, like a grant or state funding, or raid the profits of the Northeast Corridor.
      • For example, if a route that's 6h each way (12h roundtrip) currently runs 1x a day, the point at which you can reuse a particular locomotive/trainset within a single day is once every 12 hours. So you can run a train from the origin station at 8am and the same train again from the origin station at 8pm. But demand might be too low for the nighttime trip to justify the operations, so maybe you can shift it to 6am (arriving 12pm) and 6pm (arriving 12am). That could work but is still not necessarily convenient to induce high demand. If you bought a duplicate trainset, then maybe you could run a [6am + 6pm] circulation departing from the origin station, and an additional [12pm + 12am] circulation. In that case the 6am is probably partially cannibalized by the 12pm and the 12am is probably not going to be extremely popular either, so the operating profit is imbalanced. So if you add a third and then run [6am + 6pm], [9am + 3pm], [12pm + 12am], that probably covers demand pretty well, but now those new trainsets are $60m and you might start running into issues with physical space on trackage...
    • Physical timetabling - Running more trains means making sure they don't physically collide. Many routes are single-track, meaning Amtrak would need to double-track or build more sidings to accommodate trains passing each other in different directions. You can schedule these in a way that they overlap at specific points (with sidings), but that means they can't arbitrarily add service at more convenient times. The timetabling is constrained by the infrastructure. It has to be relatively specific or else one train gets delayed waiting at a siding far ahead of the incoming one.
      • If the tracks go through a regional train system too, then you have to account for their demand peaks, which are very different than long-distance. Regional systems often reuse a trunk segment for like 6 branches, so it's a bottleneck. You can sometimes make this work on a double or triple track with sidings. But in practice this means a shared Right of Way between, say, Amtrak and LIRR has to be quad-tracked so that the long-distance trains can consistently pass the local ones.
    • Freight conflicts - Most Amtrak trains run on freight Right of Way, so the timetabling is made more complicated. Many current Amtrak delays are caused by being stuck behind a freight train. That's not allowed to happen technically, but it still does. Also, freight companies are skeptical of construction impacts because they don't want their own service to be affected by building new tracks next to their existing ones. (Maybe Amtrak would want to deliver construction materials at night, and that's when the freight train usually runs, etc.) They see the long-term benefits, it just makes it complicated to do. And they might ask for additional compensation. (They're allowed to say no to upgrades that aren't perfect for them - they literally do not care about passenger service.)
      • In some areas of the NEC there are six tracks to allow for Amtrak + NJ Transit + whatever else is going on there. Six tracks is just a lot. Track config gets more complicated when you consider the need for flyovers, maybe if a train starts off on the left side but needs to end up on the right, and having it cross over at-grade would interrupt/delay other services sometimes.

    The Northeast Corridor could run faster and more frequent trains by better scheduling its existing service and service of local systems like LIRR better, and relatively affordable infrastructure improvements. Levy and Wilkins talk about this in the new Transit Costs Project Report for the NEC.

    Often, for long-distance, new rolling stock and adding 1-2 more tracks (or long sidings) around problem areas is enough to make this work OK. But to really avoid delays the ROW has to be continuous and pretty much uninterrupted, and scheduled very well; and capable of recovering if a delay does occur, which is surprisingly difficult.

    I think your intuition is right that increased frequency helps, but the case is MUCH stronger if the service also takes 6 hours and not 18 hours. As with all things, they are somewhat hand-in-hand, which is why the NEC is such a strong corridor.

    1 vote

  19. Comment on MIT researchers develop polymer film that could prevent solar panel corrosion in ~enviro

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    Comment box Scope: summary, information Tone: neutral Opinion: yes Sarcasm/humor: none Perovskite solar cells are a frontier technique that dramatically reduces the cost of solar panels while...
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    • Scope: summary, information
    • Tone: neutral
    • Opinion: yes
    • Sarcasm/humor: none

    Perovskite solar cells are a frontier technique that dramatically reduces the cost of solar panels while improving efficiency. However, they have short lifespans because they are ironically killed by solar radiation and that kind of thing.

    New protective technology enables perovskites with lifespans equivalent to other solar cell types at a fairly low cost. There are a bunch of layers and approaches that will probably have to be combined to get a truly dominant perovskite panel.

    This particular discover focuses on protecting the cell from gases. This is not the only group experimenting with the tech, it's being pursued in industry as well. Would expect to hear more on it continually....

    7 votes