"The Jetsons Lied to Us."
Twonks on the AI Revolution.
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𝚃𝚊𝚛𝚊𝚜 𝙶𝚛𝚎𝚜𝚌𝚘𝚎 🚇
@straphanger@urbanists.social
mastodon 4.7.3Travel slowly, fix things.
Author of Straphanger: Saving Our Cities and Ourselves from the Automobile. Advocate for bicycles, transit, walking, alternatives to the car...and great cities.
Words in The New York Times, The Guardian, National Geographic, Smithsonian, L'actualité, The New Yorker, Wall Street Journal.
The Lost Supper: Searching for the Future of Food in the Flavors of the Past now out from Greystone. www.lostsupper.blog
7866 Followers
403 Following
50 Posts
Joined November 10, 2022
Website:
Ghost Blog:
https://@index@highspeed.blog
HIGH SPEED Blog:
The new mayor of #Paris, Emmanuel Grégoire, celebrated his victory last night by riding to city hall on a Vélib' bikeshare bicycle.
He's promised 60,000 new social housing units 15 express bus routes, 1000 new pedestrian streets, completion of bike path network...
🧵
#Finland opens world's longest car-free bridge, intended for bicycle riders, pedestrians and mobility device users, and transit riders.
#Helsinki's Kruunuvuori Bridge is 1,191 metres long, and will soon be served by trams.
https://newatlas.com/architecture/finland-helsinki-pedestrian-bridge-kruunuvuori/
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...Nightjet and European Sleeper, there's been a real revival.
Our family of 4 bought tickets on the Nightjet to #Berlin last month.
Here's how it went:
https://www.highspeed.blog/all-aboard-the-nightjet-to-berlin/
Cable cars: Not just for ski vacations.
In La Paz, Medellín, and a half dozen cities in #France, they're being used as robust forms of urban transit.
I gave #Paris 's C1, Europe's newest (and longest) aerial tram, a test drive, and here's what I discovered:
https://www.highspeed.blog/up-where-the-air-is-clear/
NEW RESEARCH: Major paper by John Pucher et. al. shows that 4 cities that invested in bicycle infrastructure ( #Berlin, #Paris , #NYC, #London) saw cycling increase, crash rates decline.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15568318.2026.2649315#d1e1634
I took a ride on #Paris 's Ligne C1, Europe’s newest, and longest, urban cable car line.
I was impressed!
I write about the downsides and (multiple) upsides of aerial tramways as public transport in this week's HIGH SPEED dispatch
#transit #france🇫🇷
https://www.highspeed.blog/up-where-the-air-is-clear/
THIS JUST IN: In #Canada, federal government announces almost $2B for 45 new battery-diesel Via Rail passenger locomotives
The hybrid locos, first in North America, will be built by #Switzerland 's Stadler.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/via-rail-newbattery-diesel-locomotives-9.7288814
"A passionately argued and important book." —The Guardian
My book #Straphanger, in which I travel world looking at best (+ worst) in transportation + urbanism, is now available as an e-book—at a nice price.
(NEW: I'm now the publisher, as well as the author! Buying here directly funds my writing—and my new project, about the passenger rail revival.)
#Paris has new Mayor! Emmanuel Grégoire is an environmentalist who rode to his City Hall inauguration on bikeshare.
Change in last decade, thanks to his predecessor: 100s of school streets closed to cars; Seine clean enough to swim in; more trips by bike than car.
https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2026-paris-transformed-hidalgo/
Replying to
The race for AI is a classic bubble. But here’s the difference between 1873 and 2026. The original robber barons were at least building railroads, which carried people and goods, and required a huge, decently-paid workforce.
Replying to
“Schwarzer Freitag” began when European investors realized US prosperity was a mirage.
After Civil War, robber barons, whose railroads were the engine of economic growth, raced to lay tracks. But they built railroads to nowhere, duplicated existing services, and exaggerated revenues...
There was lots of protest when #Japan announced it was building the world's first bullet-train in the early 1960s.
They went ahead and built it—and now the low-emission, affordable, convenient shinkansen system is the envy of the world.
🧵
Deutsche Bahn in the black, for the first time in 7 years; profit improves by €650 million to €415 million in 2026.
Now maybe they can get to work on running their trains on time...
https://www.dw.com/en/germany-news-deutsche-bahn-returns-to-profit/live-78168639
Replying to
This may turn out to be another #TACO Tuesday. Or it may prove to be a day that will live in infamy. If the latter, all those who had the power to prevent it, yet did nothing, will be forever damned by the generations to come.
Robotaxis: Silicon Valley's found another way to endanger children!
A School District Tried to Help Train Waymos to Stop for School Buses. It Didn’t Work
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Rachida Dati, with her half-million-euro (non-declared) jewelry collection, and pay-offs from Renault, represents the side of #Paris I dislike: corrupt, image- and status-obsessed.
I am *so* glad she's not mayor. Paris has come too far in the last decade to look back to the likes of her. Bon débarras!
https://www.politico.eu/article/france-culture-minister-rachida-dati-renault-nissan-ceo-carlos-ghosn-corruption-trial-lobbying/
Replying to
If this sounds familiar, consider what’s going on with the Magnificent 7: Nvidia, Meta, Apple, Microsoft…all racing to build same thing: data centers that, we’re told, will end in superintelligence. Yet there are no revenues to speak of—certainly none to justify their capital expenditures.
That’s a good sign!
Péter Magyar just posted this “Thank You #Hungary” message on Facebook.
An Orbán loss could be the start of something amazing: 2026 as the year the dictators fall.
High hopes for Nov. 3…
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The past doesn’t repeat. But it does rhyme. As a student of railway history, I’m beginning to think we’re headed for the Panic of ’26.
More in this week's High Speed dispatch:
https://www.highspeed.blog/the-panic-of-26/
Orbán concedes!
#Hungary
Welcome to the real-life Streetcar Suburb!
In 1901, the neighborhood of Carville (aka Ozonia), outside San Francisco, featured homes and shops made of cast-off horse-cars (the wagons of horse-drawn street railways).
So it is #TACO Tuesday.
But a line has been crossed. Threatening to end an entire *civilization* goes beyond even genocide.
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Today’s robber barons are racing to build data centers, which gobble resources, and employ few people. And if they succeed—and build a superintelligence—they will have created non-human agents that could potentially rob hundreds of millions of people of gainful employment.
We're getting our first look at Grand #Paris Express in action.
The driverless trains will run at 110 km/h, putting this among the fastest metros in the world.
✅ 4 all-new metro lines
✅ 68 new stations
✅ 200 km (125 miles) of new tracks
✅ 1 major line extension (Line 14, both ends)
🧵
Replying to
When Europeans realized this, the flow of capital to the US stopped, abruptly. This led to the Panic of 1873. Then Jay Cooke’s Northern Pacific failed: the beginning of the end.
Half of all railroads went bankrupt; the US economy shrunk by a third.
The hilly city of #Chongqing #China opens the Wushan Goddess, world’s longest outdoor escalator.
Equivalent of an 80-story building!
https://parametric-architecture.com/china-worlds-longest-outdoor-escalator/
Boosted by @Dragofix@veganism.social
Replying to
When I was in my 20s, I decided that I was going to live a car-free life.
Almost four decades later—no regrets. Opting for transit, trains, bicycles, buses, and subways has taken me to great places, and given me the kind of life I always wanted to live.
More in the latest High Speed dispatch:
https://www.highspeed.blog/no-regrets/
In The Devil's Picnic, I travelled the world in a quest for forbidden substances, from coca leaves in #Bolivia to clandestine absinthe in the canton of Jura in #Switzerland.
This critically-acclaimed travelogue, a deep dive into the psychology of prohibition, now available as an e-book:
THIS JUST IN: EXO, #Montreal's 225km commuter network, which has five lines + 52 stations, has a new operator: Transdev.
The #France -based private company signed a 10-year operations-maintenance contract, taking over from Alstom.
https://www.railjournal.com/passenger/commuter-rail/new-commuter-operator-for-montreal/
#Montreal adds 4 more stations to its rail transit network.
As of May 18, we'll be able to ride REM to Anse-à-l'Orme in the West Island.
And in 2027, we'll be able to ride it to Trudeau airport.
(For major rail transit projects, this is blazing fast work!)
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-montreal-rem-light-rail-new-stations/
"An $830-a-month car payment. Auto insurance for $280 each month. Thousands more for tire and maintenance repairs."
That doesn't include filling the tank.
The @NYTimes.com reports: High Car Payments Make Ownership Feel Impossible
Feel like you've read this story before? That's because you have.
The definition of insanity...
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/16/business/car-ownership-prices-interest-rates.html
Replying to
Here's the English-language original in my High Speed blog:
https://www.highspeed.blog/why-your-train-is-so-slow/
Replying to
J'approfondis le sujet dans cette chronique publiée dans
@lactualite :
https://lactualite.com/societe/pourquoi-votre-train-est-il-si-lent/
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I tell the whole story in this week's High Speed dispatch:
https://www.highspeed.blog/a-wintry-ride-on-train-601-to-jonquiere/
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...as I follow the old Canadian Northern line deep into the #Quebec woods.
More in the latest High Speed dispatch:
https://www.highspeed.blog/a-wintry-ride-on-train-601-to-jonquiere/
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@anthill Yes, most of them! Including Triton, a 5-star lodge. https://seigneuriedutriton.com/
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...sur les trains de marchandises. Ce n'est pas le cas au #Canada, où les trains VIA Rail sont mis à l'écart par les compagnies de fret de première classe comme CPKC.
Est-ce vraiment inévitable ?
Building high-speed rail was in the Conservative Party platform.
Pandering to rural base, and fossil-fuel interests, the desperate Pierre Poilievre, more unpopular than ever, comes out against the all-electric Alto train project.
Not to worry: after his love-fest with Joe Rogan and vacay in the US, Canadians no longer take him seriously.
Replying to
@jfmezei Fifty percent of Canada's population of 40 million live within 50 kms of the proposed line. It's one of the densest unserved rail corridors on the planet.
And one will do what one wants.