(Unedited) Podcast Transcript 426: The Annual Prediction Show with Yonah Freemark

This week Yonah Freemark of the Urban Institute is BACK for the Annual Prediction Show. This year we chat about our predictions from last year and next year of course, but also regional rail in France, interesting transportation projects happening around the world, and the high cost and management of big transit projects.

To listen to this episode, visit Streetsblog USA or the hosting archive.

Below is an unedited AI generated transcript.

Jeff Wood (1m 53s):
Well, Yonah Freemark, welcome back to the Talking Headways podcast.

Yonah Freemark (1m 57s):
Thanks so much for having me Jeff.

Jeff Wood (1m 59s):
Thanks for being back. 11th time on the show. I’m always happy to catch up, but I’m, I’m curious what you’ve been up to over the last year or so. I’ve seen your name a lot in papers and reports in the news cycle I guess, and different publications and such. So what have you been up to?

Yonah Freemark (2m 13s):
Well, you know, one big thing that I’ve been engaged with a lot over the last few months is a report on zoning policy in the Puget Sound, which is the Seattle region. I’ve been working with some colleagues over at the Urban Institute putting together a big zoning atlas of the whole Seattle region and trying really to understand what barriers there are to more housing growth around their transit lines. And I think one thing that’s really interesting about the Puget Sound region is that they’re building this massive complex of light rail and bus driver transit lines, but they don’t necessarily have the zoning ready for those new systems. So our report came out in January and we’ve actually seen a lot of interest in that, including from state legislators and I think they might be on the, the way to passing some interesting state zoning reform bills.

Jeff Wood (3m 3s):
Yeah, so as we’re speaking right now, this probably come out in a couple weeks, so you know, things can change obviously over time, but as of right now, I think something recently happened at the State House where they are pushing on these specific issues, zoning, et cetera.

Yonah Freemark (3m 15s):
So there are several bills that have passed either the State House or the state Senate and they’re sort of switching back and forth to the other assembly, including one bill that would encourage or require four to six units in almost all municipalities throughout the state and then another that would significantly increase allowed zoning in areas right near transit station. So within a quarter mile. And what’s interesting is that I think that both of those policies are needed because they address different aspects of what it means to allow for housing growth. You’re addressing both the single family neighborhoods where you know you can allow sort of moderate middle densities and frankly the high densities that you need around transit stations where most of your new housing growth is likely to be.

Jeff Wood (4m 6s):
You’re also working on some stuff related to state policies related to housing, right? That there’s a whole kind of catalog of of policies that you’re actually putting together with a group of other researchers.

Yonah Freemark (4m 16s):
Yeah, so we at the Urban Institute have been working with the Turner Center out of uc, Berkeley, on developing a database of about 150 state laws that are intended to promote housing of all sorts. And it’s pretty exciting because there’s just a huge variety of ideas out there from state governments about how to actually get housing going, but folks haven’t been able to catalog that yet. So hopefully our database is just the start of what’s gonna be a broader project of, of really cataloging all of these laws across the country and then we can actually start researching what have they done, what have the effectiveness of these laws been in terms of actually changing outcomes.

Jeff Wood (4m 59s):
So over time, since I’ve known you anyways, we’ve focused a lot on transportation and now I see you popping up on these housing discussions. I mean obviously they’re important to each other because everything’s tied together, that’s what we always talk about on the show. But are you kind of making a move more towards housing or are you staying in the transportation space or is it supposed to be a melting pot of everything?

Yonah Freemark (5m 18s):
Well, I would say that I think my goal is, is really to be the, the melting pot kind of guy. I hope that that, I hope that it works out well. You know, I think ideally we find ways to connect transportation and housing. I tell people a lot, you know, the best way to increase housing affordability is to reduce cost of transportation. If folks can stop using a car, stop relying on a car to accomplish their daily needs, you can save them thousands of dollars a year and you know, they can afford their housing more easily. And I think we need to be thinking about housing and transportation together, not as separate silos. And so everything I do, I try to find ways to connect.

Yonah Freemark (5m 58s):
So I wouldn’t say I’m necessarily more into housing than I used to be. And in fact, Jeff, I don’t know if you know this, but I actually got interested in urban policy by studying Roosevelt Island in New York City and the history of mixed income housing development there. So that was actually my original interest.

Jeff Wood (6m 15s):
Aerial tramways as well, right?

Yonah Freemark (6m 17s):
Well yes they do have aerial tramways and a subway station.

Jeff Wood (6m 20s):
That’s right. That’s really fascinating. I mean obviously as somebody who worked at the Center for Transit Oriented Development, I connect those two dots very closely and and appreciate that as well. And for the newsletter specifically, you know, there’s been a lot of requests in the past to only go for transportation or only go for urban issues, but I, I just feel like there’s a, a need to have all of the topics together so that people from different disciplines, if they’re reading, you know, the top section about transportation, I’m hoping that they go to the next section about urbanism or the next section about issues, which includes housing. So you know, all these things are are, you know, symbiotic, they’re all connected to each other and I think that’s really important. So, you know, one of the things I thought about actually when you’re saying that was there was actually something that came out this last week from London where they were talking about some of the east more eastern most boroughs where Crossrail was.

Jeff Wood (7m 4s):
And I think the whole kind of region of London is having some housing issues and kind of price drops and things like that. I think partially because of Brexit and some other things, but this one, you know, district where the crossrail actually allowed people to access central London in 30 minutes has had seen price increases, which means there’s demand for people looking for lower cost, you know, borough. So I think that’s interesting kind of in connecting those two dots as well in terms of housing, in terms of building new transportation infrastructure too.

Yonah Freemark (7m 33s):
Yeah, I mean one thing that folks don’t often realize is that one of the reasons why dense urban areas often cost more to live in than suburban areas when you look at the square footage of of cost per housing unit is because frankly people are able to put in the savings that they get from increased transportation accessibility from living in those types of communities. Now, my hope is that we can find ways to ensure that housing in places that it’s really accessible to transit is also affordable to folks who, you know, are in the low and moderate income ranges. But this is a challenge that I think all of us face, which is that public transportation has real benefits and it ends up being capitalized into the prices that people pay.

Jeff Wood (8m 18s):
A lot of that too has to do with commuting. And so I, I think right now we’re seeing this interesting thing happening post or during covid, I guess we’re still in the middle of it obviously, but you know, thinking about how the work commute for white collar workers has changed, right? So for folks that are in industries where they can work from home, they can have that option to do that a couple times a week. And so I think that it’s an interesting kind of inflection point in history maybe that we’re in the middle of and we don’t know what comes up at the end, but it’s interesting also to think about what happens after, right? And because a lot of these systems are created for commuting, what happens to them as they go? And we’ll talk about this probably a little bit later too, but that point too is strongly in my mind because of the road that the transit agencies are on as well as regions as a whole.

Yonah Freemark (8m 60s):
You know, I, this is obviously a question everyone’s thinking about right now and it’s, it’s hard to prognosticate the future, but I would say one thing that I think we need to study more and understand better is what happens when folks go into the office two or three times a week, which seems to be increasingly popular for from an employer perspective. Does that maintain the sort of value of living close to work and having access to work from a transportation perspective? Or are people willing to take even longer trips on those two or three days that they go commute in compared to what they used to and I just don’t think we know yet.

Jeff Wood (9m 40s):
Five days of pain versus three days of pain. What’s the value there? Maybe it’s more if they can afford something, you know, further out. So that’s another question for something we’ll probably talk about next year. I’m guessing when you’re back on the show, we’ll get to your annual openings in construction starts piece in a second. But my last question for you before we get to that is, one of my favorite things about watching your Twitter feed is when you’re in France and the things going on there. And so some big news came out of France recently where, you know, they were talking about expanding regional rail in a number of different cities around the country. I’m wondering if you can share kind of what that information is and also maybe a little bit more about your experience when you’re there in terms of transportation and, and policy and the things that you care about.

Yonah Freemark (10m 20s):
Sure. Well, you know, I’ve been doing research in France for quite a while now because I, I spent some time there when I was a kid and I have connections there. So I like doing research in France. I feel like I learn a lot and you know, one thing that’s interesting about French planning is that this concept of regional rail has been in the national mindset since the 1960s when the first decision was made to invest in this regional rail system in the Paris region. Unfortunately since that time, while the regional rail system in the Paris region has expanded and frankly become the most important connection system for the region in terms of transportation, it, it serves millions of people a day.

Yonah Freemark (11m 4s):
This concept has not translated to other regions in the country. So you have a lot of other major cities in France from neon to, to Aldo that are relatively large but do not have a regional rail system with frequent trains that operate all day that go in both directions, the kinds of commuter rail systems that we wanna see in a lot of American cities too. So there’s been some interest over the last few years in thinking about how to extend regional rail and the president recently announced that they want to invest a significant amount of national funds in instituting regional rail systems in 10 or so urban areas throughout the country.

Yonah Freemark (11m 45s):
And I think this has a lot of potential for changing commuting patterns throughout France because it can leverage their already very extensive railway network in a better way for the people who live in these rather large urban regions that, you know, metro or tramway systems cannot because they can go much further across the regions and they can do so at a much faster speed. The thing that I’m perhaps most interested in with regard to this movement is that the current plan is for the constructor of the Paris Region Metro Expansion program, which is called the associated .

Yonah Freemark (12m 25s):
So the Grand Paris company to build or at least manage the rollout of these regional rail lines. This is really interesting because this is a public authority that was created by the national government in 2010 to manage the development of 200 kilometers of new metro lines in the Paris region. And they’ve been doing pretty well at it. I was able to visit some of their construction sites the last time I was in France, see some of their new subway stations that are under construction, you know, outside of the city. And what I thought was really interesting about the, the government’s announcement was they were focused on trying to identify a government public sector agency that would have these sort of management skills, the capacity to actually move forward with a major construction project.

Yonah Freemark (13m 17s):
And that’s something that I see as lacking in the United States. I think we have a big problem with lack of public sector capacity to get major infrastructure works to a large degree done, but especially public transportation and inner city rail. We don’t have great experience in that in many parts of the country. And so it often feels like we’re starting from scratch when it comes to developing new projects. And I think we’ve seen a lot of that with the California high speed rail project where, you know, the state has a big ambition, folks want a high speed rail line, but the capacity to actually get it done affordably and on time is, is clearly not there. And I’m excited by the idea that the national government would say in France we have this agency that we know is capable of building a big construction project, we’re gonna allow them to take the lead on teaching other regions around the country on how to do this.

Yonah Freemark (14m 9s):
And so this is gonna be really interesting to watch and I suspect it could be something that we could learn from in the United States as well.

Jeff Wood (14m 15s):
How do you think that would work in the United States? I mean I obviously don’t know the answer yet because this is something you haven’t looked into too deeply, but you know, France is a country the size of around Texas, right? Like that’s kind of the usual comparison between the two. So in the United States, you know, if you have such a, an entity like what would that look like? And you know, in Austin for example, they built kind of a, an Austin transit partnership where they’re trying to put together a network of rail lines which had actually just got cut down because of cost issues and things related to the problems that we see with most projects in the United States. But if we had like, you know, cuz Eric Iland came on with actually some folks from France a number of years ago on the show and talked about kind of some of the structures that they have in place to actually build these things from the architecture department at the state and and others to actually have a foundation for building these.

Jeff Wood (14m 57s):
And so I’m wondering how that would look like in the United States because it’s obviously something that we’re lacking and it’s obviously something that we would have to build up and structure over time, but it seems really hard for us to get our heads around what that might look like.

Yonah Freemark (15m 9s):
I think that we do not have a single entity in the United States that I can point to to say that this agency knows how to manage a project of massive scale at a reasonable cost and on time. I think we have a problem here. I would say, you know, we have a number of agencies throughout the United States that are dipping their toes in major transit expansion programs. You know, the ones that really come to mind are sound transit in the Seattle region and LA Metro for Los Angeles. Are they capable enough to share their learnings across the country? At the moment, I’m not sure. I’m not confident in that fact. I think part of the problem is that their system expansion programs are large but nowhere near the scale of 200 kilometers of, of metro, for example, under construction simultaneously.

Yonah Freemark (15m 58s):
And so I think what we need to do is invite best practice practitioners from around the world, develop a new federal entity and get that entity going. We need them to have the ability to spread best practices to every state in the country and do so in a different way. And we need that international experience. I just, I’m not confident we can get it from within the us.

Jeff Wood (16m 25s):
Last time we had talk with you and Beth, I feel like we had this discussion a little bit anyways and one of the things that is a little bit frustrating is the expertise and the ability of state dots to get things done on a road level and not on a everything else transportation level. And I think that’s partly because over time they’ve built up this expertise that we’re talking about that other countries have when they’re building rail systems, whether it’s Germany or France or Asian countries too. But I feel like there’s, there’s something there in what the state dots are able to do, whether it’s trying to trick their way into building long segments of highway or going through the NEPA process or whatever it is, they’re very proficient at what they’re doing.

Jeff Wood (17m 5s):
And so there’s a model there. It’s not obviously a model for building rail lines and transit United States, but it’s there. Maybe it can be co-opted in some way.

Yonah Freemark (17m 15s):
Yes, we have an entire system like mega structure of best practice information development when it comes to highways. We have this state grouping called Asto that brings together the state departments of transportation. They fund huge research programs out of universities and other research centers that investigate things like the best way to use asphalt, the best types of, you know, lighting devices, the best ways to position signage, ridiculous things like that that you, and I don’t know the answer to, but highway engineers need to be able to use to be able to build a, a highway in a successful manner. And as a result, every state in this country has the capacity to investigate and learn how to build highways based on what all the other states are doing.

Yonah Freemark (18m 3s):
There is nothing at all related to that when it comes to things like inner InnerCity rail. Right now we have the Biden administration and the US Congress about to spend or in the process of spending 66 or 70 billion on InnerCity Rail over the next five years, right? We’ve funded that through the infrastructure investment in jobs act for the most part when it comes to expansions, we’re asking state governments to take the lead on building out these new lines for Amtrak or improving lines for Amtrak. The capacity is just not there in state departments of transportation. They haven’t built up this knowledge base, they haven’t built up the expertise at the university level and they don’t have this sort of background of small scale best practices that you need to get these things done.

Yonah Freemark (18m 47s):
So I think we need to invite people in from the, from the world, we need to get their knowledge and we need to build out yes, this domestic best practice structure that is supported by the federal government, universities, et cetera. But Jeff, one thing I point out here is that one of the reasons why the highway system and the highway development program is relatively successful in the United States is that we’ve had seven years of constant funding that has never been questioned. No one ever reduces the amount of money we’re spending on highway investment. And so year in, year out there is a commitment from the federal government to make sure that every state gets their billions of dollars to build the roads as they wish and to, you know, follow up on research and things of that sort.

Yonah Freemark (19m 33s):
We have no similar commitment to, to the railways or to public transportation.

Jeff Wood (19m 37s):
Well you see that, and again, you know, I point out Austin a lot just cuz I follow it a little bit closer in other places, but you see this last week where several people at the State House filed tried to file bills anyways, where they were trying to say that, well if you’re gonna ask for more bonding capacity over time, you’re gonna have to have a, another election to pass, you know, rail in Austin and they passed 58% on the, the plan that they had even though they’re, you know, they’re now, they’re gonna cut it down and the the price is too much, et cetera, et cetera. But I mean that’s exactly pointing to what you’re talking about is like, you don’t have people at the State House saying, oh my god, I 45 and, and I 35 are going way over budget. We need to have another election to make sure that it’s under control. But you know, there are no elections for roads, there’s, there’s just this steady stream of funding that they can use to their discretion at the state level.

Jeff Wood (20m 21s):
And it’s frustrating I think for us as people who see how it could be versus how it actually is. Let’s go to, let’s, let’s go to, I know, I know you agree, so I’m gonna worry about it, but let’s go to your Honolulu tracking system, the, the Transit Explorer program and your annual report on openings and construction starts. You joked last year about the project and it’s something that comes up every year. Actually, I have a quote from you about Honolulu that you might enjoy if it doesn’t open in 2022. I swear I’m giving up.

Yonah Freemark (20m 52s):
It didn’t open,

Jeff Wood (20m 53s):
It’s supposed to open in July of 2023 this year. I guess. I guess you should just give up Yona and just walk away and, and no more transit prognostication for you.

Yonah Freemark (21m 1s):
Oh my God, these poor Honolulu folks. You know, I can’t imagine what it would be like to be a transit advocate in Honolulu. It must be difficult.

Jeff Wood (21m 8s):
Well, I mean, they’re gonna open something so I guess they got further than a lot of other cities. I mean they’re further along the Nashville for example, so there’s silver linings everywhere, right?

Yonah Freemark (21m 17s):
Yeah. You know, Honolulu is such a interesting situation where it’s like, this should be a great example. This could be the first automated metro rail system in the United States. It serves a quarter that theoretically should attract hundreds of thousands of rides every day. It’s a place that is very densely populated and it would be great to see the system succeed. It just hasn’t opened yet. Yeah,

Jeff Wood (21m 41s):
Well hopefully it does when it, it opens, it’ll succeed and people will say, okay, well this was a good idea and let’s keep going on

Yonah Freemark (21m 47s):
It. Do we get a free trip to Honolulu as part of that deal?

Jeff Wood (21m 51s):
Yeah, sure, yeah, let’s ask them. I’m sure they can

Yonah Freemark (21m 53s):
Afford it. You just skim off a piece of the construction cost.

Jeff Wood (21m 56s):
Well, so openings in construction starts, you’ve, you’ve done it again 2023. But it also, it coincides this year our, our discussion with Transit Christmas, which the annual news parts report came out too. And I have in front of me this whole chart that comes out with, you know, lists of, of all the projects that are getting funded. And it’s a very interesting list this year also. Is it called New Starts anymore? I, I don’t, I, I’m not sure.

Yonah Freemark (22m 18s):
I think that the concept of New starts has been,

Jeff Wood (22m 21s):
I

Yonah Freemark (22m 22s):
Think it’s eliminated,

Jeff Wood (22m 22s):
Right? Even though on the website still in some places it says New starts, but most of it says C I G capital.

Yonah Freemark (22m 28s):
Yeah, I think we should say Capital Investment Grants technically.

Jeff Wood (22m 30s):
Yeah, yeah. Capital Investment Grants. Anyways, I’m gonna call it new starts. That’s what it’s been since the 1990s. But yeah, so there’s a lot of interesting projects on here and I imagine that a lot of these projects are in your database. But one thing I noted about these is that it’s a lot of big projects and in a small number of regions, which is worrying I think to me and maybe to you as well.

Yonah Freemark (22m 51s):
So this year the Federal Transit Administration is asking us to commit to 19 billion worth of long-term federal support for just a few projects. So we have the, you know, second Avenue subway in New York City, we have the Gateway Tunnel in New York City and a few other projects that you can name cuz I don’t have a list in front of me.

Jeff Wood (23m 11s):
There’s, there’s, let’s see here, the Houston University Avenue Corridor, there’s the BART to San Jose, the Sakas Hudson Tunnel, the Charleston Low Country Rapid Transit, Chicago Redline Extension, et cetera,

Yonah Freemark (23m 25s):
Right? And those are the major ones. And then there are a bunch of small scale projects like mostly bus, rapid transit investments. You know, I think that the challenge we’re running into is that essentially when the federal government signs a full funding grant agreement, it is not guaranteeing, but it’s pretty much guaranteeing that it will give an agreed upon percentage of the cost of a project at the time the contract is signed. So several billion dollars in the case of several of these projects. The problem that we’re running into perhaps is that committing to 19 billion worth of projects in one year could make it more difficult for other projects in places like Austin and Seattle to get funded in the future.

Yonah Freemark (24m 9s):
That’s one thing that really concerns me. How are we going to make sure that projects like the West Santa Ana branch in, in Los Angeles, the, you know, west Seattle to Ballard light rail projects in Seattle actually get their federal share if so much of the federal dollars are already accounted for. I think this situation has been made worse by the fact that there’s just incredible amounts of construction cost inflation that we’ve seen over the past few years, which are making the already high American construction costs even worse. And you can see that just looking at the Second Avenue subway, which between 2022 and 2023 increased by hundreds of millions of dollars in their projected construction costs.

Yonah Freemark (24m 52s):
I know everyone says it, but it’s true. We have to find a way to reduce these costs or at least minimize cost inflation, but we’re just not gonna be able to build that much.

Jeff Wood (25m 1s):
How much influence do you think the feds should actually have in reducing costs for these projects? Because obviously this is a big problem and we’re not even talking about, you’re looking at, and I mentioned these highways before, but I’m gonna mention ’em again. Austin’s I 35 and Houston’s I 45, the costs for those two projects alone is around 15 to 20 billion. And the projects that we’re looking at here for the whole country, we just only got 4.5 billion this year. So, you know, we’re talking kind of pennies on the dollar when you’re comparing to the amount of road money we spend around the country. But how much do the feds, you know, have, you know, say, or should they have like really strong opinions about this cost inflation, how much things are costing and, and also the scope of some of these projects.

Jeff Wood (25m 44s):
I mean some folks have talked in the past about the tunnel project, the Hudson Tunnel project where it’s something along a hundred billion that somebody’s, you know, mentioned about what it might cost. But that’s actually a ridiculous amount of money for a tunnel that should only be, you know, maybe a couple billion.

Yonah Freemark (25m 60s):
You know, I think that the challenge we face goes back to this issue of government capacity. Do we think that there are folks in the Federal Transit Administration who have the solution to reducing construction costs, who have the ability to give the different cities that are proposing transit projects, the formulas and the engineering approaches that can assure that the construction costs can go down? And I’m afraid that the answer is probably no. So we’re asking the federal government to supervise the grant making for these major transit projects, but the reality is that they are not, I think, capable of informing these transit agencies what changes they need to make to significantly reduce construction costs.

Yonah Freemark (26m 47s):
And frankly, neither am I, I’m not capable of doing that. I’m not the right person to do that. But I mean, one thing I think is worth pointing out, Jeff, is that what we do know is that American transit agencies when designing these projects are incredibly reliant on consultants and third parties in the planning and scoping phases for these projects. They spend hundreds of millions of dollars on this. Just to give you an example, the derm to orange light rail line that was canceled, I believe that the government spent something like 200 million on consultants without even a shovel being hitting the ground. I think we have a problem in the US with this reliance on consultants because of a complete lack of public sector capacity.

Yonah Freemark (27m 32s):
And so this situation sort of continues over time because those consultants also have power to encourage this continued use of them throughout the project construction process because there are not effective management systems in place at these local levels or at the federal level. So I think we can’t expect the federal government to change its strategy unless the federal government is able to significantly ramp up its in-house engineers and improve its capacity to monitor these projects.

Jeff Wood (27m 60s):
Do you think it needs to go that deep though? Or do you think that they could actually just say, look, this half mile project from Fourth and King to the already existing Trans Bay Transit Center should only cost a billion dollars. I don’t care what you tell me, it should only cost about a billion dollars, not 7 billion. Right? There’s a ridiculousness factor I think, to some of these cost estimates where there needs to be somebody that if, even if they don’t know the answer as to why, they just need to say this is dumb and then this is costing way too much and why are you bringing me this price tag that is ludicrous? I feel like it needs to start there and then the agencies and stuff can go figure it out. Another thing that that kind of bothers me is I actually had Janet Walker Ford, who works for W S P and you know, she’s the rail lead I guess for East Coast or for W S P, and I asked her and then, you know, she goes back and says, well this is what, you know, the people that we work for are asking for, they’re asking us to do these projects and so we do what the community wants us to do.

Jeff Wood (28m 52s):
And so there’s this like circular kind of thing going on, right, where nobody seems to have the, you know, gumption to like put their foot down and be like, this is not a 7 billion project, this is a billion dollar project, maybe it should be 500 million. Why are we going to spend that much money on this project?

Yonah Freemark (29m 10s):
Well, I mean, listen, if if it were that easy, I, you know, I would say yes, go ahead. I, I wish it were that easy. I don’t know if it works that way because I think we are assuming that the transit agencies themselves or those involved in designing these projects could answer this question, could say, okay, well we, our budget’s only 1 billion so we can take these things out, et cetera. I am not confident that they have that capacity to do so. You know, I think one thing that we are not so great at in the US is thinking about thinking sort of holistically about what it is that is causing the massive increase in costs and then trying to find systemic ways to address that.

Yonah Freemark (29m 52s):
I think one of those is this public sector capacity problem that I think really needs to involve significant hiring and building up of a public sector that can do this kind of work. But another one I think is, is more related to the specifics of how we think about projects. So just to give you an example, when you look at construction costs for some of the biggest metro projects in the US you’ll often find that the biggest expense are the stations themselves, right? And the stations are usually enormous for a number of reasons. One, we design them to allow very long trends for the most part. And then two, we design them with like multiple levels. They’re usually like pretty well built out, et cetera.

Yonah Freemark (30m 34s):
In my view, that suggests that we need to think what is it that the station is trying to accomplish and why is it designed in this way? Fundamentally, my perspective then goes to, okay, well we have this problem where we’re sending out these enormously long trends on these trips, which frankly are never gonna fill these huge trends. And as a result we have to build these enormous stations to serve them when we could be developing the system in a different way. And to give you an example of this, the silver line outside of Washington dc, it’s a extension of the metro rail system designed entirely to accommodate these eight car long trains all the way out to Loudoun County extremely far from downtown Washington, DC The project was never designed to ever fill those eight car just wasn’t.

Yonah Freemark (31m 24s):
But there was a decision that the answer to the problem was to create an extension of the metro system that would be able to handle the trains at the capacity that current metro trains are designed for. Instead of as many other places are looking at, for example, automated light metro trains that are much shorter, they could allow much more frequent trends and they could allow the stations to be much smaller. But that wasn’t even considered, that was not even part of the conversation. And I think that’s the kind of situation we often get into with these construction projects. Yeah,

Jeff Wood (31m 56s):
I understand that completely. And, and the station thing, and it goes both ways too. I mean if you under plan for stations like the central subway here in San Francisco, you can only have two car trains, which is like ridiculous from all kinds of perspectives. But yeah, the stations are ridiculous and, and that’s why I’m complaining about this cost for the extension of Caltrain is because we already have a station, right? We already have a station with a train box underneath. So why is this subway tunneling costing so much money when you’re not even building the most expensive part of the process, which is the, the station. So it’s super frustrating, but let’s talk about some good stuff, right? Let’s talk about some stuff that’s opened and stuff we’re happy about. Obviously here in San Francisco, the central subway opened and the van S B R T opened. I actually, regrettably and almost embarrassingly, I have not ridden them yet.

Jeff Wood (32m 39s):
I’ve walked next to the Van s B rt, but I haven’t gotten on the on them yet. But those have opened, which is exciting. The Silver Line extension as you mentioned has opened. Is there anything that you’re super excited about? You know, if you ever get to go to X City, what you’d wanna ride most?

Yonah Freemark (32m 54s):
Well, you know, today I was just reading the news and I saw that the Crossrail project in London, the Elizabeth line, which opened last year is now carrying 600,000 passengers a day. And you know, the Elizabeth line had a lot of issues, it was very expensive, it was extremely delayed. But that’s, that’s successful. That is incredibly exciting to see. It suggests that the investment actually is paying off, from what I understand, the ridership is actually higher than their estimates despite Covid and despite the fact that, you know, the UK is facing a lot of difficult economic situations right now. Yep. And I’m, you know, I’m just really ex I’m excited about what that tells us about the benefit of building these regional rail lines.

Yonah Freemark (33m 38s):
You know, we were talking about that before, I think Regional rail by speeding people through a city and allowing them to cross the city without changing trains just has this incredible appeal to people and people will use it. And cross rail is showing that off.

Jeff Wood (33m 51s):
That’s a really interesting point too. There’s a lot of discussion about what type of trends that you should build in your city. And I think if we’re gonna have a discussion about access overall and getting people to places where they want to go and fast and be competitive with automobiles, because that’s kind of the standard that you have to have in, in many of the cities in the United States. There needs to be a discussion about how we get through the center of cities. I mean, we talk a lot about light rail and, and tramways and those types of things, but a lot of times that actually slows the ability of people to get to where they want to go. And I guess a good example historically is Portland, right? You have to go on the surface through downtown and it kind of cuts the ability to go from one side of the city to the other.

Jeff Wood (34m 31s):
You’re only going to the center city, which actually limits the, maybe the usefulness of a system-wide transit plan. And so I think that’s a really good point that you’ve made about, you know, regional rail and, and Cross Rail specifically does this, that it connects different parts of the city and as we mentioned before, the burrows on the east and west side and the airport. And it’s a line that didn’t exist before that should have existed before.

Yonah Freemark (34m 53s):
Yeah, I mean, to be fair, it’s exciting to see, you know, hopefully this coming year we’ll see the opening of the regional connector in Los Angeles, which will provide that sort of cross city connection for the light rail network there. It doesn’t provide the sort of speed that I think is really the hallmark of, of what’s provided by Crossrail. And I think we still have work to do in the US to be making moves on the regional rail concept. There are folks in, in Boston, even some folks in Washington DC region and Chicago who are talking about regional rail. And that’s exciting to see that movement in terms of the advocacy, but there has yet to be a commitment from a public sector agency to really be thinking about transforming the commuter rail network into that cross-regional system that allows people to speed through.

Yonah Freemark (35m 46s):
But I think that if the experience from Paris and London tells us anything, it will be incredibly successful. Yeah,

Jeff Wood (35m 53s):
I mean Bart’s a good example, right? I can get on my train at at 24th Street Mission and get to Lafayette in the, in the East Bay in 38 minutes. And that’s something that is rare, I feel like in the United States, just to get that fast to a suburb with that type of speed. And sometimes it’s way more competitive than a car. The rush hour is gonna take you two, three hours to get home that way in a car. But a 38 minutes every day, every trip is pretty impressive. And I think that that’s the kind of time savings that people are looking for. So coming up, I guess next year we talk about the regional connector. There’s a few other lines I think that are interesting that are coming up. What’s coming up in the next year for you that you’re excited about as well? So things that are, that may be coming under construction, maybe something that’s opening, something along those lines.

Yonah Freemark (36m 34s):
Well, folks may or may not know this, but Lagos is opening two new rail lines, which I think is super cool because it’s exciting to see an African country that has not invested significantly in transit. You know, see the opening of a new rail network. And you know, we’re seeing that also in some parts of the Middle East Istanbul’s continued expansion of its metro system. Riyadh is getting a massive automated metro network. And so I think we’re actually seeing this idea of metros as the key to urban development grow a around the world. I remember when I was first sort of getting involved in learning about urban development, I think, so this would’ve been, you know, in the, in the late 1990s, early two thousands, you would read things from many American perspectives that would say things like, well, you know, metros are dead.

Yonah Freemark (37m 27s):
The future is probably the car for the most part. If we have to have rail, it’s gonna be light rail, sort of the end. But frankly, outside of the US the movement towards metro systems as the backbone of regional mobility has only accelerated in the last few years. And we’re seeing that on every continent. You know, Australia’s automated metros, Bogota, the bus, rapid Transit Capital is getting a metro all throughout the Middle East. Their metros, Indian China have enormous networks of metros.

Jeff Wood (37m 56s):
Southeast Asia too, I mean like middle metro.

Yonah Freemark (37m 58s):
And I think, you know, to me that is a really interesting story.

Jeff Wood (38m 2s):
Yeah, that’s, it’s really interesting and, and I think it, it actually maybe reinforces some of our priors about the importance of kind of getting between places and understanding the importance of, of networks of different types of transit in cities. It can’t be just one type of metro or light rail or meter rail or whatever. I think a lot of times that in the 1990s and two thousands there was a lot of sales pitches for, you know, one type of transit system over another. But I think that the, the network effect is huge. And this is kind of showing the way in in Lagos. I mean, it’s a huge city. I don’t, I, you know, I, I think people kind of get how big some of these cities are around the world, but I don’t think they really understand the size and understand how big some of these places are and the congestion that really impacts them as well.

Jeff Wood (38m 45s):
And I think it’s more of an impact than it is say in the United States even. Oh yeah. I think it’s just, it’s on a level that we don’t even understand and could never understand unless we go to these places.

Yonah Freemark (38m 55s):
I think you’re absolutely right. Yeah.

Jeff Wood (38m 57s):
So let’s talk about predictions. Let’s go back to last

Yonah Freemark (39m 0s):
Year. Oh no, I, well you already told, told me a terrible prediction.

Jeff Wood (39m 4s):
Well, I, you know what, I’m actually gonna tell you that you should just wait for the results to see how you did last year. All right. I think you’re gonna be surprised at the positive actions that you have predicted and the negative actions that I predicted. How’s

Yonah Freemark (39m 16s):
That? Sounds good.

Jeff Wood (39m 16s):
So here’s here, I’m gonna start with mine because there, for some reason over the last few years I think I’ve made ridiculously silly predictions that never come true. And you’re the one kind of the, the sane voice in the pot here telling us the right thing. So my first prediction was that BBB is dead and we won’t get another crack at the transportation parts of the bill. And I think that that’s true except for BBB came back through a miraculous mansion thing where he focused on a lot of things, the electric tax credits and those types of things. Yeah. But you know, DeFazio’s transportation inclusions and things like that never came back in that bill. I don’t believe so. Well

Yonah Freemark (39m 52s):
There is a little money I think for Neighborhood Streets, I think about a few billion dollars sort of adding on to what was in the infrastructure law. So there was a little more for transportation, but, and I, you know, there was some money for electrified buses, school buses especially. So I don’t know, you know, there’s something there

Jeff Wood (40m 10s):
A little bit, maybe a, a tiny bit, but you know, DeFazio’s inclusion of kind of an access to places, part of the bill where he was gonna fund a lot of transit improvements and, and service and things like that got knocked out. And I think that that was kind of where I was going. But, but you’re right. I mean there’s some transportation improvements but not the stuff that I would, you know, be super excited about.

Yonah Freemark (40m 28s):
Can I tell you a story about that though, Jeff, really

Jeff Wood (40m 30s):
Quickly? Yeah, sure.

Yonah Freemark (40m 31s):
Absolutely. You know, I, in my job I’m fortunate sometimes to speak with staff on congressional committees, folks who work for senators and Congress, people who are thinking about legislation. And one thing I was shocked to hear from a staff person that I talked with last week was that they are already thinking about what the next surface transportation reauthorization will look like. Okay. Now for those who are listening, that means a bill that will probably come up in 2026. So I was, I was frankly surprised to hear that. But it is interesting, you know, folks in Congress are always, I think, looking to pounce at the moment that they could potentially work.

Yonah Freemark (41m 13s):
So you never know when something positive could come up.

Jeff Wood (41m 16s):
I mean, they were trying to do a reauthorization for years and years and years and then always just kind of got a stamp. Let’s just extend the previous one, right? Right. There was never, what was it, safety Lou was the last kind of big one before. Was it that one Fast, I believe for Fast the FAST Act, yeah. But it wasn’t really that much different. No, it felt like from the previous ones it, it wasn’t like a ice tea kind of generational change type of thing, which is, I think the infrastructure bill kind of was, but it could have been better. I think a lot of us were frustrated about it. But, you know, I, I wanna see another ice tea where you change the structure of the whole thing where you change the way that U S D O T interacts with states and the how the states can spend money and how much more flexibility there is, et cetera, et cetera.

Jeff Wood (41m 58s):
And I don’t know if we’ve gotten that time period, but it’s interesting to think that they’re thinking ahead and it used to be like a six year bill, right? I think back in the day, but now it’s probably, you know, shorter. And I imagine that going back to our discussion about how much money is in the transit kitty and how much projects are gonna steal from that steel relative term, obviously to take away from other projects, I think that there’s gonna have to be revisiting at some point. So that’s really interesting. Yeah, So the, the, the next prediction I had was that Van Ness and Central Subway will open in 2022 and, and Van s opened, but Central Subway just recently opened at the beginning of 23. So I was kind of

Yonah Freemark (42m 33s):
Like, did they not have a preview day though

Jeff Wood (42m 35s):
Or something? I guess so, but I don’t think that counts, you know, that that is

Yonah Freemark (42m 38s):
Exactly, I think, I think I’d give you credit for that. There was a

Jeff Wood (42m 41s):
Preview day, I saw a lot of San Francisco Chronicle reporters taking their cameras in and stuff like that in 2022. But I don’t know if it got to that point. And then my last one was that Charlotte won’t have a transit election. I I got that one right too. Charlotte, it’s interesting because now they’re going to the state house and trying to beg state legislators for the ability to do this and the conservative state. I think this is kind of a problem around the countries, the conservative state’s preempting local decision making on this. And even if they wanted to have election, maybe they couldn’t. So, you know, there’s, there’s a lot of that going on too. So I don’t know if Charlotte’s gonna have a transit election. I think with the pandemic and kind of the fiscal cliff discussions and all that, I’m really struggling to see where we might have kind of these big idea elections in the next few years because of the turmoil around transit funding and ridership.

Yonah Freemark (43m 26s):
Yes, I completely agree with you. I think that this is a real challenge for a lot of agencies and cities that have been thinking about how to expand their transit networks. You know, I’m thinking about not only those that recently passed referenda, but also places like Portland that have been talking about, you know, building a new light rail tunnel or something of that sort. Yeah. It’s very unclear that they will have the financial wherewithal to be thinking about expansion when they are facing such a sort of existential crisis in the coming years if they can’t figure out how to fund their operations.

Jeff Wood (43m 60s):
Yeah. And here in the Bay area, you know, they’re talking about the second tube and they’ve already cut that down a little bit. I’m frustrated with that because I feel like if you’re looking at a 2050 time horizon, you can’t be making decisions based on, you know, little dinks in the, in the road, which is, I think what this is, obviously it’s a big dink, but it’s something that I feel like if you’re looking at that time horizon, I think it’s folly to restrict yourself that much if you’re doing ridership projections based on, you know, the next five years rather than the next, you know, 20, 30 years, which projections in its 30 years in the future are ridiculous generally anyways. But it, it just seems silly and, and, and I think that, you know, that’s something that we have to kind of fight against because I think we are in this lull and I think it is down, but we’re gonna figure something out to make it work.

Jeff Wood (44m 41s):
And, and I, I’m gonna be positive about that.

Yonah Freemark (44m 43s):
Okay. I like that.

Jeff Wood (44m 44s):
I’m gonna be positive about that. Okay, so now your predictions and then you had two, you had one kind of main one and then a four, a four prediction parlay, I don’t know if you went back and listened to last year’s show, but you had a four prediction New York City parlay, which I was, I’ll just, we’ll get into it. So the first prediction you had was that other cities will copy Michelle Wu’s, free transit implementation. And you said five cities will pilot free transit. I think that’s a win.

Yonah Freemark (45m 10s):
Have five cities. Yeah, I

Jeff Wood (45m 12s):
Don’t know, I think some were getting there, right? Well, so we can throw in a cup, maybe we throw in some lines and things like, so Sun Runner was free, right? And Kansas City is free. There’s obviously Boston DC was getting close before some funding stuff started to bubble up. So you’re at four, I can’t think of a fifth, but there might be some small change

Yonah Freemark (45m 34s):
Agencies around the country. Okay. That, that may be true, Jeff, but I may not have, I, I don’t know if it was five or not five, but what I can say is that since I made that prediction, I think that the free fair discussion has actually become even more prominent than it was Yes. A year ago. So we can have a debate about whether or not free fairs are a good idea, but it is certainly, I think, more part of the public discourse than it was then. So I’m giving myself a point. Can I give myself

Jeff Wood (45m 60s):
A point? Yes, you can. Absolutely. I was gonna give you a point anyway, cuz I, I thought that was a pretty impressive prediction. But here’s the thing though, with the fiscal cliff stuff coming up, again, we, you know, we’re gonna keep talking about this, but I’m worried about this free transit discussion because I think that it’s tough for agencies to find the money for service as it is, let alone free transit. I think that’s gonna be a tough discussion.

Yonah Freemark (46m 21s):
I think it’s going to be really interesting to see whether there’s going to be a debate, especially among like city councils about whether they should deal with that operating loss that a lot of agencies are gonna be facing or fund the free transit. You know, one, one thing that’s interesting in, in DC Olivia and you know, the free bus proposal, there’s been some question about whether they can actually follow through on this just by, you know, the council passing it a few months ago. I’m kind of surprised that wada, the transit agency hasn’t come back and said, we actually need you to give us that money just to run the buses. Yeah. In general.

Yonah Freemark (47m 2s):
So it will be interesting to see if that becomes a agency versus city dialogue over time.

Jeff Wood (47m 8s):
I think it probably will. Okay, here’s your four part parlay.

Yonah Freemark (47m 12s):
Okay.

Jeff Wood (47m 12s):
This is, I was reading it last night. I was like, my brain got exploded. Okay. Number one gateway project will receive a commitment from the federal government for a grant

Yonah Freemark (47m 22s):
That happens

Jeff Wood (47m 23s):
For a mega grant. Yep. It did happen. Number two, the second phase of the second avenue subway will get a full funding grant agreement. Okay.

Yonah Freemark (47m 29s):
It didn’t happen, but it’s, but it, but it’s on its way.

Jeff Wood (47m 32s):
It’s it’s in this list, right? It’s in the list. So

Yonah Freemark (47m 35s):
It’s it’s in

Jeff Wood (47m 35s):
The list. It’s in the list, right. Second avenue of subway, phase two. It’s in the proposed new starts projects. I think

Yonah Freemark (47m 40s):
It hasn’t been signed. I mean it doesn’t

Jeff Wood (47m 42s):
Happen F F G A but an F F G isn’t even a promise anyway, so, we’ll, we’ll give you that one. Chuck

Yonah Freemark (47m 47s):
Schumer is still the majority leader, so I’m predicting it will definitely happen.

Jeff Wood (47m 51s):
Number three, Interborough Express project will be serious and they will move forward and put it in the planning process. So last year was kind of an announcement. Now I feel like it is more prominent and they are actually discussing it more.

Yonah Freemark (48m 5s):
Yeah. I feel like that’s a half point because Okay, it’s, it’s not in the federal list. It’s not on that list.

Jeff Wood (48m 10s):
No, it’s not on this list, but it’s, I feel like it’s more prominent in New York discussions. Right. It’s like

Yonah Freemark (48m 14s):
It hasn’t been abandoned yet, which is saying something for New York where I feel like we’ve been throwing out transit proposals every year and getting them thrown away.

Jeff Wood (48m 22s):
Yeah, that’s true. And then number four, LaGuardia AirTrain will be canceled and replaced by a subway extension.

Yonah Freemark (48m 30s):
Ooh, okay. I got that halfway.

Jeff Wood (48m 33s):
So close.

Yonah Freemark (48m 34s):
So close.

Jeff Wood (48m 36s):
They decided that a bus would be best and they actually released this last week, which is good timing for our predictions.

Yonah Freemark (48m 43s):
So I am really happy about that killing of the AirTran, which is a bad project.

Jeff Wood (48m 48s):
It was a bad project.

Yonah Freemark (48m 50s):
I saw something about how the bus project would cost 500 million. I don’t entirely understand how that’s

Jeff Wood (48m 56s):
Possible. How do you spend that much money on

Yonah Freemark (48m 58s):
It? I don’t know.

Jeff Wood (48m 59s):
Planes and buses. It doesn’t make any sense to me unless you’re buying a whole, are you buying a whole new fleet of buses for this one section?

Yonah Freemark (49m 5s):
I don’t. I mean, how many buses would you need?

Jeff Wood (49m 8s):
I don’t know. And then the other kind of bonus thing you said was the mayor will announce a reconstruction of the BQ e Oh. Which I feel like there’s been secret meetings and all kinds of stuff

Yonah Freemark (49m 18s):
That

Jeff Wood (49m 18s):
Hasn’t happen yet. We don’t, we don’t know what’s going on there. So, but it was outside of your parlay, so, okay. Excellent. I don’t know, I feel like I’d give you your parlay. I feel like, you know, it wasn’t exactly right, but this isn’t sports and you can’t exactly get, you know, one score versus another

Yonah Freemark (49m 31s):
Score. Jeff, this is my, this is my version of sports. I have nothing better.

Jeff Wood (49m 36s):
I know it’s, well, today is the first day of March Madness. So here we go. I’m very impressed with your predictions. You, I, I always am.

Yonah Freemark (49m 44s):
Okay.

Jeff Wood (49m 45s):
I think it, it went well. It’s gonna be hard to top for next year for sure. Ooh,

Yonah Freemark (49m 48s):
I have some though. Okay.

Jeff Wood (49m 50s):
Do you wanna go one in one and one and one, like just go, go back and forth. Okay. So why don’t you go first and then I’ll go second. All

Yonah Freemark (49m 56s):
Right. My first prediction is that we’re going to see a state fund, a universal mobility pilot involving autonomous vehicles. So we’re gonna see a state agree to essentially give several thousand people some sort of voucher they can use on transit and autonomous vehicles in some constrained place to get around.

Jeff Wood (50m 21s):
Okay. So now, now I have to make an asterisk here. Now I know that you’re connected because you just told me this juicy information. Are you insider trading?

Yonah Freemark (50m 28s):
I promise this is not informed by any, any knowledge. However, if somebody is listening to this and decide to get an idea, feel free.

Jeff Wood (50m 36s):
We actually just chatted with, it’s not been released yet, but it will be by the time this show comes out. But we chatted with David Heer about the next iteration of Moss and they call it mobility as a feature. And, and it’s interesting to hear what they’re talking about in terms of how the moss system as it is, is kind of a dead end. And if transportation agencies are doing it, then it’s never really gonna be what they want it to be. And so if we think outside the box and think about bank companies and, and insurance companies and others who are related to transportation in some way, by the way that people use their services, that might be the way forward. So I feel like this is something similar or along those lines where you’re thinking about the state being the one who’s basically tendering this idea and controlling it in that they wanna do a pilot and then maybe build it into something bigger like a, a mobility as a feature type of thing.

Jeff Wood (51m 24s):
Yeah. Okay. All right. That’s a good one. Okay, here’s mine. Okay. So when I talk to you next year, we’ll be in the middle of a presidential election, right? It’ll be 2024.

Yonah Freemark (51m 34s):
How is that possible?

Jeff Wood (51m 35s):
I don’t know, but it, it, it goes so fast. So I, I’m sure these things are gonna, are gonna stack up next year in terms of like what’s going on. But I think we’re gonna see more of a freakout because of the fiscal cliff and transit agencies. And I predict there’s gonna be a move by some states like here in California to do a rescue plan. I think that that’s gonna happen. I think a few states are gonna step in and say we’re gonna do some rescue work on the transit agencies that are gonna see this fiscal cliff, you know, happen. And maybe because it’s a presidential election or a big election, they’ll wait till after the election to do this. And so that will mean that I’m wrong. But I feel like this year coming up between the next time that we chat on on the show is gonna be a make or break for some of these agencies and their kind of budget calculations for the years in the future.

Yonah Freemark (52m 20s):
So do you think we’re gonna see states fully funding the gap, or do you expect something different? What are you, what are you thinking?

Jeff Wood (52m 27s):
I think they’ll fully fund the gap, although, you know, if you think about it, there might be some shuffling going on about what their priorities are and what they’re spending money on, right? Maybe in California they’re gonna take cap and trade money and give it to agencies. Maybe they’re going to take some of their flexible funding from the infrastructure bill and, and use it that way. I mean, there’s inherent flexibility in the money that goes to state dots. So I’m focusing mostly on California because I, I understand it a little better, but I think that there will be a state or two that think about this in, in a hardcore way.

Yonah Freemark (52m 57s):
I definitely think that I’m optimistic about the support for transit that is de despite the ridership declines that we’ve seen in a lot of cities, I, I think there’s a lot of support for transit out there. Yeah. And folks wanna make sure that these agencies don’t have to cut their services. So I think I agree with you.

Jeff Wood (53m 14s):
Yeah. It seems like it’s necessary otherwise you’re looking at the, at the abyss. Okay. What’s your next one?

Yonah Freemark (53m 21s):
All right, my next one actually is related, which is the Biden administration Is part of the budget proposed that transit agencies could flex their capital dollars and spend them on operations to fill that gap that we’ve been talking about? I’m actually predicting that that will not happen. That the Congress will not agree to this. And the reason for that is that I’m relatively convinced that the Congress is very attached to the idea that the purpose of federal commitment to transportation is about building infrastructure and not running things. Now I question whether that’s the right strategy, but I’m not convinced that we have the congressional support to actually make this kind of change happen.

Jeff Wood (54m 7s):
I probably would agree with that in the future. I, I think that that is what the outcome will be because of the way that the senate’s structured with rural states having a more controlled than urban states and Congress where it is with the control being held by the Republicans who are not gonna really want to give any cities wins. I think that’s structurally that’s probably what it will

Yonah Freemark (54m 29s):
Be. Yep.

Jeff Wood (54m 30s):
Okay. My second one, cost increases are gonna be severely impact transit expansion and we won’t see any new big expansions announced next year. And I said this a little earlier, I feel like Atlanta has pulled back. Austin is pulling back. Phoenix has to deal with the hostile state legislature. Cities need to get more innovative pitching transit to their writers and constituents. So I, I feel like there’s not gonna be a big expansion announcement and we’re probably gonna see some pullbacks.

Yonah Freemark (54m 55s):
I,

Jeff Wood (54m 56s):
I, I see your face. You wanna be contrarian, you wanna go

Yonah Freemark (54m 58s):
Wanna be contrarian? I wanna be, I’m just gonna say No, I think you’re wrong. I am going,

Jeff Wood (55m 4s):
I’m more than happy to be wrong.

Yonah Freemark (55m 5s):
Oh, I actually have an idea. Okay. For a sort of sub guess out of that. Okay. Which is that, I don’t know if this is really a sort of region-wide transit expansion idea, but I’m hearing a lot of rumblings out of Philadelphia about trying to get this Roosevelt Boulevard subway up and going, okay, this is like this project that people have been talking about for a really long time. And folks in Philadelphia really want it septa, the, the transit agency doesn’t seem to care, but I’m gonna predict that there’s gonna be a mayoral, well there is gonna be a mayoral election and the mayor is gonna push for SEPTA to change its mind. And by the time we talk about this next year, SEPTA will agreed to do a major study related to building that Roosevelt Boulevard subway system.

Jeff Wood (55m 50s):
Didn’t the CEO say we don’t have the money and Yeah, but they’re open to, you know, if somebody wants to give them money or, I don’t remember exactly what it was, but she was saying like, you know, we don’t have the money to do this. We’re already doing the one to King of Prussia, so if you wanna push on it, fine, but we’re not gonna entertain any grand ideas at the moment. But I feel like if you look at the papers and you look at kinda the news cycle, there’s been a lot of pressure building for a Roosevelt subway.

Yonah Freemark (56m 16s):
I think she’s gonna reverse

Jeff Wood (56m 17s):
Herself. You think so? Okay. Yeah. Okay. I like, I mean, I like it. I’ve been watching this from afar as well and the media hype seems to be around a Roosevelt subway, so maybe there’s enough pressure there to kind of change tack and, and you know, it’s interesting cuz they’re talking about several billion dollars going to that king of pressure line and saying like, well, you know, you can spend that for a couple thousand writers, or you can spend this for hundreds of thousands of writers. So what do you want to do? And so I think the rhetoric is, is in the right place. And it reminds me of going back to Austin. It reminds me of the Austin fights I used to have with people where, you know, they wanted to do a commuter rail line that went around the edge and now we have this spine which would’ve kept more ridership. So it reminds me of that fight and I feel like they should be justified in building this subway.

Yonah Freemark (57m 1s):
Yeah, we’ll see. We’ll see. Okay, but can I have one more prediction?

Jeff Wood (57m 5s):
Absolutely. Yeah. As many as you want.

Yonah Freemark (57m 7s):
Oh, great. All right. Well then maybe two. My first prediction is about ridership on the New York City subway. Okay. Okay. So before the pandemic we were seeing ridership of five to 5.5 million writers a day on, on the New York City subway. And recently it’s been below that. So I’m predicting we’re going to see a day with at least 4 million writers by May, and we will see a day with at least 4.5 million writers by the end of October.

Jeff Wood (57m 39s):
Is that cuz the Yankees are in the World Series?

Yonah Freemark (57m 42s):
Maybe so, yes.

Jeff Wood (57m 46s):
Okay. I’m, I’m not as familiar with New York Transit, so I don’t know if I have too much of an opinion on that. I try to stay out of New York stuff because I feel like there’s so many more people with so much more knowledge than I have. But

Yonah Freemark (57m 55s):
No, that’s a good reason to just say things. Yeah. To make

Jeff Wood (57m 58s):
People upset. Just say and cause a stir. I try not to cause stirs, but I guess maybe I should cause more stirs. I don’t know. Okay. I like that. It’s good. Okay, I’ve got one here, this is my last one. Okay. The bright line expansions are going to spark new interest from a number of states in inner city and regional rail. So I was in Miami for Revolution now Impact in November, and I got a chance to ride Bright Line and it’s really impressive, I must say just like the quality of the train cars, the smoothness of the ride, the connection between different cities along the corridor. And I feel like if more places had this kind of experience, they would be all in on this type of regional rail.

Jeff Wood (58m 39s):
And so I think this implementation of it from this perspective, I think is going to maybe change a few minds around the country.

Yonah Freemark (58m 48s):
I haven’t had a chance to try a bright line yet, but it definitely gives off the impression of being perhaps the only inner city rail line in the US that feels equivalent to international standards.

Jeff Wood (58m 59s):
Yeah, we heard that a lot when we were on the train. People are like, this is the closest thing to like European train travel we’ve seen in the United States. And I would agree with that except for the extensiveness of networks or anything like that. But just from the feel of sitting in the seats and riding the train and all those things. And I’ve been on a number of Amtrak trains and I haven’t been on Aela, but I’ve been, you know, on a number of regional trains and stuff like that. And I just don’t get that same, I didn’t feel the same experience that I did when I was on Bright Line, I guess.

Yonah Freemark (59m 26s):
Well I hope you’re right Jeff. And you know, I think one question is from my perspective is whether Bright Line is going to be able to be financially successful. You know, I, it’s clear that they know how to run a train service. The question is, can they make money running the train service?

Jeff Wood (59m 41s):
Yeah. Well I think they have some kind of connections that are making it possible. So the ownership of the properties around the station areas making those deals, they also leased their rail line, they gave their rail line away to somebody else, and then they basically got free passageway on it forever. So somebody else is running the freight on there, some kind of deal like that. So there’s like little things, little financial things they’re doing to hopefully make it so that they do make money and so that they can expand and so that they can provide an example for the rest of us. So we’ll see what happens.

Yonah Freemark (1h 0m 14s):
So do you think there’s gonna be progress on the proposal to connect Las Vegas with Southern California? Yeah,

Jeff Wood (1h 0m 19s):
They just made a deal, I think with the, the labor unions, right? That’s, that was the big news last week I think. So I think that they’re getting closer. Let’s see what it says here. Yep. Bright Line Southern Nevada unions enter deal for train between Las Vegas and Southern California. So that was six days ago. So that’s I think, a promising news for that line. And so if it could, if it could connect to the spine of the high-speed rail line, you know, California speed rail, that’d be a big, big deal

Yonah Freemark (1h 0m 46s):
Too. Yep. Okay. Let’s, let’s make it happen. I

Jeff Wood (1h 0m 48s):
Hope so. Yeah, let’s do it. You you got one more?

Yonah Freemark (1h 0m 51s):
Oh yeah, one more. Okay. This last one is kind of a gimme

Jeff Wood (1h 0m 55s):
A gi Okay.

Yonah Freemark (1h 0m 55s):
Which is, I predict that over the next year, because of the fiscal cliff, we’re gonna see the transit agencies in all the big cities putting out maps showing how they’re gonna have to cut their service in half. Nobody’s gonna have any trains or buses anymore, and it’s gonna be an utter disaster. What

Jeff Wood (1h 1m 13s):
Do you think? Yeah, I think, I mean, yeah, that sounds about right for the way we’re headed right now. I, I wish it wasn’t, but it seems like that’s the, that’s the case, unfortunately. Yeah. Let’s end on a positive note. Do you have any like fantastical crazy ideas that you wanna see happen?

Yonah Freemark (1h 1m 32s):
Hmm. Oh, okay. I have a fantastical crazy idea. Okay. I don’t know if it’s so crazy or so fantastical, but wada, which is my local transit agency, the new c e o Randy Clark recently announced that they would consider looking into open gangway trains for their next series of new metro trains. And my fantastical idea is that they will commit to that. Okay. In 2023, they’ll commit to saying the 8,000 series is gonna be an open gangway train and you know, we’re, we’re gonna be the first trans big transit agency in the country to make this like a, the full part of our order.

Jeff Wood (1h 2m 6s):
Awesome. That’s a, that’s a great one. We need to see more open gangway trains. I wish, I wish part would’ve done that with their new trains, but they didn’t up doing it, but we’ll see. Yeah. Awesome. Well, Yona, where can folks find you before next year when you come back, back on the show again and we share whether our predictions were correct or not, where can folks find you in the meantime?

Yonah Freemark (1h 2m 24s):
Well, I invite everyone to check out the Urban Institute [email protected]. We have a lot of research mine, but also hundreds of other researchers working on lots of great interesting work. And for my, usually right, but sometimes wrong opinion. You can check me out on Twitter at Y Freemark.

Jeff Wood (1h 2m 42s):
Awesome. And then also at Transport Politic, right on the website, go to and check out Transit Explorer. It’s a really cool archive of transit projects and what’s coming next. So definitely

Yonah Freemark (1h 2m 53s):
Go there. And I should say, since we’re talking about Transit Explorer, it will be expanding much more over the coming year. Even more excitingly,

Jeff Wood (1h 3m 1s):
How do you have time to do?

Yonah Freemark (1h 3m 2s):
I don’t.

Jeff Wood (1h 3m 6s):
Well, we should probably let you get to that then. Yona, thanks again for joining us. We really appreciate your time.

Yonah Freemark (1h 3m 11s):
Thanks.