Last summer, the #Massachusetts legislature set aside $15 million in the state budget to fund fare-free transit. Now, 8 regional #transit authorities are suspending fare collection:
https://mass.streetsblog.org/2024/01/05/new-year-no-fares-beacon-hill-bankrolls-dozens-of-free-bus-routes-statewide #mapoli
This announcement by Metro LA is amazing: https://www.instagram.com/reel/C0kpxQ8xYZo/?igsh=bDkyZXFxeXBwYjg3
San Francisco subway system still runs on 5¼ inch floppy disks
https://sfstandard.com/2023/02/02/sfs-market-street-subway-runs-on-reagan-era-floppy-disks/
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In addition to these projects, more than half a dozen new trail projects will break ground in the year to come.
https://mass.streetsblog.org/2023/12/26/new-trails-we-can-look-forward-to-in-2024
"Musk never had any intention of building the Hyperloop. He only needed it to help kill or substantially delay the high-speed rail project and the alternate vision of sustainable collective transportation it offered. It threatened his interests as an automaker and his elite vision of “individualized” mobility that simply worked better for him." https://www.disconnect.blog/p/the-hyperloop-was-always-a-scam
Cool, now everyone else in the automotive industry do the same
Apple's focus on edge AI is a win for privacy and perhaps UX but what will it mean for climate change? The power and water consumption of cloud computing is high but it is also concentrated in centers that can be targeted for clean generation. Unless the grid gets a lot cleaner globally AI might end up with a sprawling energy footprint that is hard to track and control.
Bird, the poster child of the zero interest rate era, has declared bankruptcy.
Massive funding from Sequoia using PR to try and make "micromobility” a buzzword for what was mainly Uber for scooters. Except the business model missed the entire point of Uber which was not owning the vehicles.
Turned out the scooters wear out to fast to recoup investment especially when vandals dump them in lakes.
Yet it’s SPAC valuation hit $2.5 billion which has now dropped to zero.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/20/business/dealbook/bird-bankruptcy.html
"Cruise, the self-driving car startup that was just forced to pull its cars off the streets of San Francisco, pays 1.5 staffers to supervise every car on the road. In other words, their AI replaces a single low-waged driver with 1.5 more expensive remote supervisors – and their cars still kill people. If Cruise is a bellwether... then the pool of AI applications shrinks to a puddle." -Cory Doctorow
https://locusmag.com/2023/12/commentary-cory-doctorow-what-kind-of-bubble-is-ai/
#Train #Transit #Climate #CleanTransportation
#USA Federal employees take 33,000 rail trips per year, but 2.8 million flights (!!).
When I was first hired by #NASA and needed to travel between NYC and the mothership (DC/Greenbelt), they would make me travel by plane. I would have to write special requests to justify taking Amtrak (often more $$ than flights).
Now, looks like rail will be the default mode of transit for federal employees going <250 miles. (Woot!)
#ClimateDiary - Writing research plans for postdoc applications -> anxiety and guilt about whether I am working on climate change to the extent that I could be.
Only real reassuring thing is remembering I am just one part of a whole community of people who care about this, especially on here. Thankful for that.
I wonder what Google getting out of the location data game will mean for mobility data providers...
https://www.businessinsider.com/google-maps-location-data-history-stored-locally-2023-12
I just opened #Threads for a lark, to see if it had gotten any better, and was greeted by a firehose of trolling and toxicity. I guess at least it it's no longer only brands and influencers posting there!
“In Finland, the number of homeless people has fallen sharply. Those affected receive a small apartment & counselling with no preconditions. 4 out of 5 people affected make their way back into a stable life. And all this is CHEAPER than accepting homelessness.” https://t.co/EH3reri9lz
headline: No more drunk driving? US to force carmakers to adopt life-saving tech by 2024
“If it’s [only] 99.9% accurate, you could have a million false positives,” Carlson said. “Those false positives could be somebody trying to get to the hospital for an emergency.”
...or, this country could, you know, just offer some sort of viable alternative to driving everywhere all the time?
A train manufacturer designed their cars to lock up when serviced by third-parties
From a 100-mile city to a desert ski resort: why is Saudi Arabia spending billions on architectural ‘gigaprojects’?
Founder and CEO, Manhan (http://manhan.co, @manhan)
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Developer of over 20 land use forecasting models
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