(Unedited) Podcast Transcript 471: Yonah Freemark Part 2

Prediction Time! This week on part 2 of our chat with Yonah Freemark, we score our transportation predictions from last year and make new ones for 2025. We talk about the Roosevelt Subway, Transit agency bailouts, open gangway trains, and coming transit elections and extensions.

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

Below is a full unedited AI generated transcript of the episode:

Jeff Wood (2m 7s):
Okay, so let’s get to predictions. We’re gonna go and talk about what we talked about last year and see if we got the answers right to the questions that we asked ourselves. Great. Are you ready for this Yonah?

Yonah Freemark (2m 19s):
No. I’m always like, God, what horrible thing did I say last Year?

Jeff Wood (2m 23s):
You did so well though. You were like four. I think you’re like three and a half out of four. You did so well last year. I think you’re gonna, you might do well again this year. Okay. So every year we’ve done this fun thing where we make some predictions about what’s going to happen next year. And we chatted about it again. When you release Yonah, the transit project openings post and transit Explorer update, which by the way, people should go and check out if they get a chance. I don’t know, If, you wanna plug transit Explorer? I mean you already have kind of, but it’s such a great resource for folks that might wanna be looking at transit projects around the country. And you can, I think you can download your, your data for a small fee. Is that correct?

Yonah Freemark (2m 55s):
Yes. You can download the data. I would say that Yonah, if there is some philanthropist out there who’s listening and wants to make the data free for all I am, all ears. There you go. But at the moment we need to keep the website running. So we need some funding source.

Jeff Wood (3m 8s):
That’s good. And I’m not really sure when we started this or how we started this predictions thing because I don’t know why we started thinking about maybe we were just like, well, you’re gonna come on every year, right? So let’s just start making,

Yonah Freemark (3m 19s):
Making

Jeff Wood (3m 19s):
Predictions for the next year. But we did it and it’s super fun and the listeners love it. So last year, like I said, you did really well. You predicted the cancellation of the AirTrain, the seriousness of the Interborough Express, which I’m surprised that now there’s Yonah, the seriousness of them proposing light rail. But that’s a conversation for another time probably and a few other things. So you got a lot right last year. Okay. And so let’s see how we did this year for both of us. And I did horribly last year, so maybe I’ll do horribly again this year. But we’ll see. So your first Prediction from last year, we’re going to see a state fund, a universal mobility pilot involving autonomous vehicles. Oh

Yonah Freemark (3m 53s):
No. If anything it’s that situation has probably worsened since last year. Right? I mean with all the, with all the situations with cruise. Yeah. Yonah. Ooh, that seems wrong.

Jeff Wood (4m 7s):
So I don’t, I don’t know if I can give you any points for this one. I will say that Yonah, there is a universal basic mobility pilot going on in South Los Angeles right now. There was an item in next city a couple of weeks ago about this. They’re given $150 wallet and you’re not allowed to use it for cars. You can use it for like car sharing, but you’re not allowed to use it for like a personal vehicle. And then you can also use it for autonomous vehicles. If you wanted, I guess, because if you’re taking a car share or whatever, or an Uber ride or whatever that is, you could do that. But for the most part, people are able to use that money for active transportation for the most part. So I don’t think I can give you any points for that. No. But there, there are programs going on with universal basic mobility and they’re trying that out. And this one’s actually I think funded by carb, which is state funded, but it’s not autonomous vehicles.

Jeff Wood (4m 50s):
So Ah, okay. It’s still kind of in the realm, but it’s not quite what you were looking for. Okay. So my first Prediction from last year, I think we’re gonna see more of a freak out because of the fiscal cliff. And some states like California are going to do a rescue plan. So they

Yonah Freemark (5m 5s):
Did a rescue plan.

Jeff Wood (5m 6s):
We did Now the state put together like a $5 billion funding package and the governor was like, okay, we’ll do this. We did try to get bridge tolls changed to a dollar more, but people freaked out about that. Barbara Lee and some other folks were against it vociferously. And so it never went through. But we did get that kind of the bailout. So I, I’ll take that one. I know MTC is gonna look at a ballot measure coming up in 2026, maybe funding for transportation projects and maybe some coordination stuff. Hopefully they don’t expand highways. I know all the advocates around here have been Yonah basically written them a letter saying, no more highway expansions. Let’s only do transit and and fix it first. But yeah, so there’s that going on here in California.

Yonah Freemark (5m 45s):
Do Yonah how they decided on the 2026 year?

Jeff Wood (5m 50s):
I don’t know. Honestly, I couldn’t tell you and I, and I don’t know the machinations behind it or anything like that. I know they’ve been talking about it for a while. Okay. The, the ballot measure that they wanna have. But I don’t know why 2026 was the year I imagine that it was because they couldn’t get it in time for 2024. And so they’re gonna have it on an even year where there’s a Senate election probably versus having it on an odd year when they’re not sure what the electorate’s gonna look like,

Yonah Freemark (6m 12s):
Which is fair. Yeah.

Jeff Wood (6m 13s):
So that’s my best guess of why it would be 26. We will talk about that in my predictions later that that’s another thing ballot measures. That’s interesting. I also Yonah something that’s also interesting from a fiscal cliff and funding perspective is Yonah Massachusetts just announced they’re gonna do their task force Yes. For Transportation funding. And so I think Yonah more and more states are actually gonna start doing this where they’re, they’re looking for funding because of their loss in gas tax revenue. I think California said like over the next 10 years they’re gonna lose $6 billion or something like that just from electric vehicles on the gas tax alone and, and fix it first funding that they already have set in place through SB one other funding mechanisms that we haven in place. So more states are starting to think about that. I even saw something in Oklahoma where they’re starting to talk about, oh interesting.

Jeff Wood (6m 55s):
Maybe thinking about stuff. So states from all political persuasions are gonna start thinking about this because their gas tax revenues are going to Yonah run flat or, or go down. I think because of that. So not just Transit, but I think funding mechanisms overall are just gonna get a rehash over the next few years.

Yonah Freemark (7m 11s):
Yeah. One thing that does frustrate me a little is this obsession with task forces. It’s, it’s like passing the book frankly. Yeah. Yonah, I mean we don’t need another task force to identify new funding options. I mean the funding options are clear. You just need political will to support Yonah making that funding option happen.

Jeff Wood (7m 34s):
Our task force is the political equivalent of grassroots organizing. Where, hear me out here. Basically the grassroots organizing happens in places like, so here in California we have Seamless Bay, Area and others who are kind of advocating and agitating for Yonah coordination among the transit agencies. And that that’s grassroots ’cause that came from outside the government. But the task force, it feels like the government side trying to create that grassroots, Yonah political will for stuff by pulling together a bunch of people and saying, here, go in a room and think about it. So it’s coming from different sides of that spectrum it feels like. And I think that that maybe is frustrating ’cause I don’t know if actually grassroots can be created from governments starting it that way.

Jeff Wood (8m 14s):
It also, I think what we’re learning from like the Met Council Yonah thing that’s going on where they’re trying to think about how to reform is you create this task force, but with all bunch of people with opposing views and they’re just gonna come out on the other side with the same views that they had when they came in. And so there’s no real progress being made there when the legislature should be, if they’re gonna vote on it or whatever, they should just be putting together a law or a bill or something. Absolutely. Where they can put pull something out the other side.

Yonah Freemark (8m 38s):
Yes.

Jeff Wood (8m 40s):
Okay. So number two on your end, the Biden administration will decide not to allow more flexing of funding for transit operations. Congress will remain committed to only funding capital needs.

Yonah Freemark (8m 49s):
Okay. That was true. I think that was too easy. Frankly,

Jeff Wood (8m 54s):
It might be easy, but it’s true. Right? I mean,

Yonah Freemark (8m 56s):
Might be easy, but it’s true.

Jeff Wood (8m 58s):
It would’ve been nice if it was false.

Yonah Freemark (8m 60s):
You have Yonah, some folks out there who are still hoping for federal support for operations. I personally would love to see federal support for operations. But it is a hard game to play. I mean, this year especially, it’s been a lot of talk about reducing government expenditures. I think Republicans see that as a priority. They haven’t succeeded at doing so yet. But the idea of expanding a federal program for transit seems very unlikely for me. So it is what it’s,

Jeff Wood (9m 27s):
Yeah, there’s a bill by Hank Johnson who’s a representative from the Atlanta area for $80 billion in operations. I think it has like 80 co-signers or whatever, probably all Democrats in the house and that’s out there. But it’s, it seems DOA. Yeah, it doesn’t seem like because of the way that the house is set up now and who is in control of things, it doesn’t seem like it’s gonna go anywhere. It’s a great idea and I like it, but I just feel like politically it’s really a hard push. Okay. My number two cost increases are going to severely impact transit expansion and we won’t see any new big expansions planned next year. I don’t know if that’s, do you think that’s true? I don’t. I was looking up things and I don’t know if that’s,

Yonah Freemark (10m 5s):
How do we define planned?

Jeff Wood (10m 6s):
Well, I guess, yeah, let’s, let’s expand the definition of plan to be in the planning process. Maybe. I feel like, and this is actually related to your kind of sub guess from what I said last year. Okay. Okay. So your sub guess was there will be a Philadelphia mayoral election and the mayor will push for a Roosevelt Subway kind of half. Right? Right. So you mentioned last year also how Yonah, the King of Prussia line was there, or maybe I mentioned that. But the King of Prussia line is there. That’s the thing that’s waiting for the federal funding. And so since we last talked, the King of Prussia line died. Yes. And so there could be more focus on the Roosevelt Subway in Philadelphia and they haven’t necessarily thrown all of their weight behind it.

Jeff Wood (10m 46s):
But I feel like there’s more momentum for this project.

Yonah Freemark (10m 50s):
There is a lot of momentum for that project. I, I gotta tell you, I mean I am hearing from policymakers in the Congress and in Pennsylvania, all of whom are telling me they wanna understand how to make this Subway happen. They wanna understand whether it’s worthwhile as a project. Then you have like an active vociferous community that very vociferous seems to support it Yonah. It’s surprising to see because I, I don’t know if there’s a similar project like that in the rest of the country where you have really sort of a ground up movement to try to get a transit line built. So in my mind that’s really exciting. Yeah. To see like people on the ground saying, Hey, this, this is a good project, let’s do it.

Yonah Freemark (11m 33s):
And getting politicians to listen.

Jeff Wood (11m 35s):
So I, I would venture to guess that I was wrong because this is really, I mean we talked about it a little bit last year because it, there was kind of some grumblings about it, but I feel like after we talked last year, it really took off as a thing. And I know that there’s like that Twitter account that’s run by somebody who’s really pushing on that. They tweet everybody and it feels like they’re everywhere. But also, not even just that, that, that might be like a little tiny corner of the internet, but Yonah just having it in the Enquirer a lot in the local newspapers, Yonah people obviously talking with you about it. So there’s actually some swell there because it does get so much attention and it is something that is on the radar and possibly moving forward. So I’m happy to be wrong. And so maybe that, that project alone deems my Prediction from last year incorrect.

Yonah Freemark (12m 19s):
So wait, can we make a, can we make a new guess based on that?

Jeff Wood (12m 22s):
Yeah, sure. If, you wanna put that on your next year’s predictions? Yeah.

Yonah Freemark (12m 24s):
I love thinking about Philadelphia, but what if, what if to be positive? We say that in 2024 Yonah guesses that there will be a federal planning grant awarded to study the Roosevelt Boulevard Subway.

Jeff Wood (12m 41s):
Okay. Yeah, that’s a good one. Okay. Four. Your fourth New York Subway ridership will have a day with 4 million rider in May and 4.5 million writers by the end of October. So I tried to look this up. It’s hard to find individual day kind of landmark ridership. Okay. But, but all I could find was the average paid ridership for May. And so this doesn’t include fair evasion. Yes. Was 3.84 million for May. So I’m guessing with fair evasion, ’cause it is a pretty substantial stack. And knowing that this is the average, not the highest day of that month, there’s likely a day that there were 4 million rider in the New York City Subway in May.

Jeff Wood (13m 22s):
Yeah. If the average is 3.84, there had to be a four in there somewhere.

Yonah Freemark (13m 26s):
I gotta be,

Jeff Wood (13m 28s):
I would think so I, I’m gonna give you that one. And then October, I couldn’t find a single day number, but there was a day in September with 4.2 million paid rides. Weekend writers was 2.7 million, which was 82% of pre pandemic numbers. So I don’t know about the 4.5 in in October, but I do know that the 4 million of May

Yonah Freemark (13m 46s):
Okay, that may have been too high. Well I’m also finding that on May 17th, the subways recorded 4.09 million paid rides. Oh,

Jeff Wood (13m 56s):
Okay. So there you go. Where’d you find that? So

Yonah Freemark (13m 60s):
I don’t know. MTA website. Oh, okay. Press release.

Jeff Wood (14m 4s):
Okay, well there you go. Perfect. I’m also interested kind of in how the Subway, like what causes some of these ebbs and flows. I think last year we mentioned in October, like maybe the Yankees would be in the World Series and that would cause a lot of Subway rides or something. I don’t know. But I’m interested in Yonah what the day, I know going back to school is a big thing, right? When kids start going back to school and teachers have to go back to school and all that stuff. That’s like summertime’s, probably a lull a little bit. There’s certain times probably in October and early November that are like the big ridership times for the year and then it lulls into December because people are off on vacation and things like that. But I’m always interested to see like what causes some of these ebbs and flows in transit agencies ridership and why that happens.

Yonah Freemark (14m 41s):
Yeah, so I ride the green line in DC almost days and it’s remarkable to see what happens when there’s just a game at the Nationals ballpark. Yeah. I mean this is like these wild fluctuations, the number of people, which is what well Yonah, it’s fantastic to see people are riding the train to the game. But yeah, I mean I suppose if you’re a transit agency, you’re probably at least hopefully keeping track of these so you can make sure to provide the service. Yeah.

Jeff Wood (15m 6s):
And there’s a whole bunch of discussion this last year too about like concerts, whether it’s like Beyonce or Taylor Swift Yonah, a lot of folks are going out and the transit agencies are adapting to that too, because there’s this huge flux of people that are going to these stadiums to enjoy some music too. So it’s not just ball games and stuff. It’s all kinds of cultural events, which is really interesting. Okay. My number three Bright Line will encourage more states to consider Inter City Rail. I think it’s probably not Bright Line, but the big pot of money that’s available from the infrastructure bill. How much is it? Like billion, hundreds of billions of dollars available for passenger rail expansion there. But I know Bright Line recently actually cut their passenger expectations for 20 20, 24 by 21%.

Jeff Wood (15m 48s):
So that’s something to watch too. But then there’s also been a lot of glowing pieces this last month about Bright Line too. But I feel like the pot of money is way more of an indicator than Bright Line itself.

Yonah Freemark (15m 57s):
That said, I mean Yonah, there’s been really strong support from Nevada to build the other Bright Line projects. Right? So maybe you won, maybe you’re right because I mean that’s a state government and that’s Yeah, that’s a new passenger

Jeff Wood (16m 10s):
Project that’s, and they just got some Build America bonds or something or business bonds of some sort. It just got approved. They also got some funding from the, another pot of money. So they’re gonna build that and it’s gonna go fast I imagine because it’s in the middle of the desert and down the center of a highway. That helps a lot. So, yeah. Yeah. Okay. I, I don’t know. I’ll go half right with that. Maybe 0.5, 0.5 on that one. So you’re number five was because of the fiscal cliff agencies are going to put out maps showing how they’re gonna cut service if it comes to pass.

Yonah Freemark (16m 39s):
I haven’t seen this. Have you?

Jeff Wood (16m 42s):
I haven’t really seen those maps either. I’ve heard discussions, but I haven’t seen maps that show like what’s not happening.

Yonah Freemark (16m 49s):
Yeah. I, I don’t know. I’m, I’m shocked, but I think I, I get no points for that.

Jeff Wood (16m 54s):
Ada didn’t like when they were announcing how much, they haven’t seen

Yonah Freemark (16m 57s):
A map. I haven’t seen a

Jeff Wood (16m 58s):
Maps. No maps. Okay. Well I guess I don’t know that half a point. ’cause there is, they are No, that’s

Yonah Freemark (17m 3s):
Zero points. They’re too positive.

Jeff Wood (17m 6s):
I’m trying to be too nice to you I guess. But they’re talking about cutting service, so there’s that happening. That’s true. Yonah Ada is talking about that AC transit, pushing that back a little bit about discussions about what lines are gonna be cut. There’s other agencies around the country that are talking about cuts. Kansas City for example, they, they have free transit and they were have a $50 million deficit. And so they were talking about whether they’re gonna put fair collection machinery back in their vehicles, but that’s gonna cost $8 million or something. $6 million. Yeah. So there’s like a whole bunch of stuff like that, but no maps that I’ve seen. So, okay. No dice on that one. That’s okay. And then the crazy idea that you had, that 2023 WMATA will commit to the 8,000 series trains being open gangway

Yonah Freemark (17m 43s):
OI don’t think so.

Jeff Wood (17m 46s):
I didn’t see any media items after February of last year talking about the 8,000 series trains at all. Like there’s no mention of them at all after there are open gangway discussions about them in February, but I did not see anything after that.

Yonah Freemark (17m 59s):
Yeah, that was, that’s zero. But

Jeff Wood (18m 1s):
That’s your crazy idea too. So I mean that’s Yonah, that’s hard to, okay. It was prefaced by, this is crazy. So it didn’t happen. So those are last year’s predictions, so I don’t know if we did so well this year. I think maybe you got a half a point or 1.5 I think. Okay. But Yonah, that’s part of the fun is being right and being wrong. Yes. It’s okay. Either way. It’s fun. Anyway, so now that, that said let’s do our predictions for next year. So your first Prediction is going to be that there will be funding or it will be in the projects for the Roosevelt Subway, right. That’s the Prediction that

Yonah Freemark (18m 33s):
There will be some federal grant for the Roosevelt Subway. So I, I think it would be a planning grant realistically. Okay. But some sort of federal endorsement through money for the project.

Jeff Wood (18m 45s):
Okay. And then my second Prediction for that is that it will be announced at the Impact Conference in Philadelphia in October.

Yonah Freemark (18m 53s):
Oh, there you go. There’s

Jeff Wood (18m 54s):
That for a Prediction. Love it. Love it, love it, love it. Okay, here’s my first Prediction and we’ll we’ll go kind of back and forth and then you’ll get the last word on on these. So there’s lots of ballot measures that are being pushed to 25, 26 or whatever. I know that Charlotte’s getting pushed back. The Bay Area is gonna do theirs hopefully in 26. There’s some stuff like that. And Nashville’s been agitating. They’ve got a Yonah. Fred O’Connell’s the new mayor, he’s a big transit advocate. He’s, he’s into it. He’s trying to get something on the ballot this year. I feel like because it’s a presidential election, they’re gonna get a lot of stuff. I’m gonna predict that Nashville won’t get there and they won’t have an election this year. A ballot measure for this year

Yonah Freemark (19m 30s):
For transit. Ooh. Wow. Harsh.

Jeff Wood (19m 34s):
I know. I felt that last night when I wrote this too. I was like, I’m being harsh, but I, I feel like in my gut this is what’s happening. How do you feel?

Yonah Freemark (19m 41s):
I, so we’re doing, we’re doing some work with Nashville right now at Urban Institute and they have a lot of folks that are really excited about like Transit oriented development. So I hope you’re wrong.

Jeff Wood (19m 53s):
This is my thing is I hope I am wrong because I’d love to see ’em do it. The interesting thing about this ballot measure too is that last time they crashed and burned trying to build a Subway in the middle of town doing light rail and bus rapid transit, I think that they had also scandals with their mayor, previous mayor who was a big champion and people were liking, but then they had to leave and that probably impacted it as well. And then you had all these kind of charlatans talking about the future is autonomous vehicles and this is not necessary anymore because we’ll have this amazing world of autonomous buses and things like that where this transit won’t be needed. So that’s kind of the framework for which this has grown out from previously. But I was kind of happy to hear that Mayor Freddy was talking about thinking about doing the small things.

Jeff Wood (20m 34s):
And so kind of going back to our discussion earlier about Yonah bus improvements and things like that. I think that that might be the way forward on this measure is not to promote some big pie in the sky Subway, which I would love to see, but I, I don’t think it’s politically realistic to do some of these smaller things, get some funding for frequency and things like that. Do the small important things that make the transit system go rather than the big things that might sell well on a ballot, but might find you some more detractors than it will supporters.

Yonah Freemark (21m 5s):
I gotta say though, it is quite disappointing to see a city like Nashville, not Nashville, should be a city. Listen, if we were back in the 1970s and 1980s, Nashville would be talking about building a metro system, right? Yeah. I mean it’d be like Atlanta or Miami or something. And it does say something about the way our expectations in the United States have changed a little bit for rapidly growing cities like that. And in a way it’s somewhat disappointing, right? Yeah. I mean, and that’s where the comparison with China really comes across most strongly. From my perspective. It’s like we are seeing cities with massive amounts of growth and we should be planning for that growth, but instead we’re frankly having to do a lot of half measures.

Jeff Wood (21m 49s):
Yeah, I was just thinking about reading your list and seeing my wife’s city in China building a Subway. And I was like, are you okay? Like, that feels like a Nashville to me along the same lines. So that’s like the polar opposite, right? Yeah. Is those two places thinking about them in different ways. And you’re right, I mean the sixties and seventies, all these cities, Austin and Nashville and these up and coming places would be thinking about doing metros, but they’re not. And it’s unfortunate. I mean, I, yeah, I’m not gonna go into Austin right now because that that would just depress me. Anyways. We’ll go. I do this every year and, and we, we have this discussion and I, I need to stop. So what’s your next Prediction then?

Yonah Freemark (22m 28s):
Okay, my next Prediction is going to be about, do I wanna say something negative or positive? I think is my main Oh, you

Jeff Wood (22m 37s):
Should do positive ’cause I just went negative.

Yonah Freemark (22m 39s):
Oh, should something positive. Okay. My positive Prediction Okay. Is that the Indiana bill to prevent bus lanes in Indianapolis will not pass. So right now, and again, this may change by the time this airs, but right now there’s an active bill in the Indiana state legislature to ban bus lanes in Indianapolis, even though they have a number of bus rapid transit lines planned. And it’s quite a disappointing bill and I, I sincerely hope it does not pass. So I’m gonna be positive and hope that it does not.

Jeff Wood (23m 14s):
So last night, as we’re talking today on the, today’s the 30th, is that right? Yes. As we’re talking today, it got outta the Senate and is going, I guess, to the Indiana House. Is that how their government works? I believe yes. Yes. I’m quite sure Indiana politics or the structure of their, of their state government. But so it’s a one year moratorium on and studying bus lanes, which is stupid because they’ve already cited them. But that’s the person who has been trying to, and it’s the same person every year, the last three years or so that’s been putting this bill together and it’s been getting killed somehow. They’ve been killing it, but maybe it’ll get killed again. And I would be all for that if it got killed again. ’cause this is so stupid. It’s basically like, just like doesn’t like transit. And I saw a quote from him in the local NPR Affiliate station saying basically he’s like, I’m not against transit, I’m not against buses.

Jeff Wood (23m 60s):
I just wanna learn Yonah. The, and I was like, you’ve been trying to do this for three years. You obviously hate it. Like there’s no other reason than you hate it to put this together. So don’t gimme that crap. And I wish that they would’ve pushed back on his quote. But it’s what he said, that person that I’m not even gonna name ’cause I don’t know his name ’cause I don’t wanna know his name in Indianapolis. And I think he’s a legislator from Indianapolis. He’s a Republican from that area. Yeah. So yeah. Okay. My second one I like, I like yours. I like yours by the way.

Yonah Freemark (24m 27s):
Okay. I love it. Pass.

Jeff Wood (24m 29s):
Yeah. So number two, I predict that congestion pricing in New York will suffer some delays opening due to all the dumb lawsuits they’re facing. That’s a negative and a positive at the same time. How,

Yonah Freemark (24m 39s):
How, how many delays do you think it will happen in 2024?

Jeff Wood (24m 43s):
It’s supposed to be May. Yeah,

Yonah Freemark (24m 44s):
I think so. Yeah,

Jeff Wood (24m 45s):
Supposedly the opening is in May I say October.

Yonah Freemark (24m 48s):
Okay, so you’re still, I’ll say October. So you’re still, you still think it will happen, but that like,

Jeff Wood (24m 52s):
I think it’ll just get pushed back ’cause of the dumb stuff that they have to deal with.

Yonah Freemark (24m 55s):
Okay.

Jeff Wood (24m 56s):
Is that positive or negative? I don’t know. That’s

Yonah Freemark (24m 58s):
Positive in my view that that’s positive given how long this has taken. I mean, remember when was it, it was like Michael Bloomberg and there was some story about Jeanette City con in a, like in a, in a police car with the sirens blazing going from New York City to Albany back in like 2009 or something, trying to get congestion pricing passed. I mean it it’s just wild.

Jeff Wood (25m 19s):
Yeah, she got in big trouble for that. Basically she tried to get up there real quick and so I guess they had the police escort and then the people up there got mad about it or something. And so yeah, I mean that’s a, it’s a political fapa I guess Totally. To do that for sure. But that’s what killed it is a crazy thing. But yeah, it wasn’t like Sheldon Silver still in there too. Like,

Yonah Freemark (25m 37s):
Oh God, what a corrupt who,

Jeff Wood (25m 39s):
I guess he passed away this last year, but he was in trouble for corruption charges.

Yonah Freemark (25m 43s):
Even people who pass away can be corrupt.

Jeff Wood (25m 45s):
Yes, they can. They can. But yes, I, I’m hoping that October will see something Yonah we’ll see a charge on somebody’s credit card.

Yonah Freemark (25m 52s):
Okay. I love it. I think I agree with you. Okay. Should I give another one? Yeah,

Jeff Wood (25m 56s):
Go for it.

Yonah Freemark (25m 58s):
Oh, I believe that this year Colorado will pass a statewide land use reform bill.

Jeff Wood (26m 5s):
Okay.

Yonah Freemark (26m 6s):
So we’ve seen a number of states do this recently. Yonah, Montana, Washington, Oregon, California, Massachusetts. I think it’s Colorado’s turn. They had a lot of trouble last year, but I’m gonna be positive about that this year.

Jeff Wood (26m 19s):
Yonah, what was interesting to me about that was the fighting between kind of the state league of cities and the legislature on that. Because the legislator that was trying to put this through this progressive person was fighting and, and I don’t think the League of Cities person’s a conservative or anything, but just like it was interesting to see that fight happening. The person who’s kind of in the city’s wheelhouse and defending them was saying, this isn’t right for Colorado, blah, blah blah. Which I don’t agree with. But it was interesting to see that fight happening and how the cities are kind of pushing back on land use changes at from the state level. And I feel like this is kind of the opposite of the story of preemption in a lot of other states. So like there’s a lot of states that there’s state preemption laws, they’re trying to keep the localities from doing stuff specifically in Texas and other places, but here and in California as well, where they have Yonah state level and even some of the ones that you mentioned, the states, you mentioned Montana, et cetera.

Jeff Wood (27m 8s):
There’s a preemption basically the other direction, which is like, let’s allow more things to happen versus tamping things down. And so there’s preemption on all sides, but it’s interesting how those two manifest themselves from that perspective.

Yonah Freemark (27m 19s):
Yeah, I I do wonder whether, yeah, there’s gonna be a similar opposition as in Arizona that I believe actually killed the bill there last year. We’ll see.

Jeff Wood (27m 29s):
Yeah. I like that Yonah. Somebody just put out a poll that said people like these ideas, the reforms in Colorado. So we’ll see. And I imagine it was probably a, somebody said it was a liberal leaning poll, but whatever, there’s a poll out there that people like the idea of changing land use patterns because I imagine that people are getting frustrated with the housing prices and things like that. Okay, my number three, I also predict that Bart to San Jose will lop off the segment from the airport Santa Clara. It shouldn’t have been there in the first place. And they’ve made a ton of mistakes on that line, such as deep board tunnels and redundant planning that Caltran could have fixed because they’re electrifying. I think that that segment gets lopped for cost and they only go to Dear Dawn Station.

Yonah Freemark (28m 8s):
Yeah. Yeah. That seems like a good Prediction. I it’s a, it is a hopeful Prediction too, because it seems like a waste of money. It really

Jeff Wood (28m 15s):
Is. It’s, I mean, I don’t, I never understood that little U thing that they were doing anyway because the Caltrain serves that same corridor and now it’s electrifying, it’s gonna be much faster, right? It’s not just gonna be the diesel engines. And so now you’re gonna have a trip from San Francisco to San Jose and under an hour maybe. And so that trip to Santa Clara is gonna be real quick and real short, and the, the frequency is gonna be much better too. They’re gonna have 15 minute Headways or better. So it seems silly to build billions of dollars of infrastructure you really don’t need, even if some folks are upset that it’s not Bart, it doesn’t make any sense. And so I feel like they’re gonna have to lop it off in the mayor who is a big proponent of the project has said that maybe that’s what they have to do. I know local advocates, some of them are upset about this, but I feel like it’s the right decision.

Jeff Wood (28m 56s):
I, I mean, honestly, they should have done a lot of other different things too. It’s really bad how they’ve gotten themselves into this problem.

Yonah Freemark (29m 3s):
Well, I was actually gonna ask, I mean, first of all, should there be a Subway in San Jose? Question number one. Hmm? Question number two, if there’s a Subway, should Caltrain have been extended instead of Bart in the opposite direction? Or is that nonsensical?

Jeff Wood (29m 17s):
No, because it goes south, right? So Caltrain is actually, they actually have a extension project that I think I saw on your list actually. It’s going to, oh, to Monterey, to Monterey area. Salinas Linas. And so they’re going down there. I don’t think that’s electrified segment. I think it’s gonna continue to be diesel train. So they’re going even south, they’re gonna Gilroy. And that’s where the high speed rail station’s gonna be the first one before it gets to San Jose. So there’s gonna be one there, and then people can connect there with Caltrain. And so I think that through running that Caltrain does through that south area, it’s good to keep that, I would like to see them have a Subway because I think that it can drive a lot of push for more downtown activities and things like that. I don’t know necessarily if they needed one or if they made the right decision on the corridor.

Jeff Wood (29m 57s):
Because what they did, the thing that Austin did too, which I, I told ’em myself, I wasn’t gonna talk about this, but they kind of went around all the population because they had a freight right of way or a right of way that already existed where they could just put the tracks and not worry about eminent domain or anything like that. And what they should have done is gone Yonah a little bit where the light rail line was and kind of follow where all the employment density was and the population density. And instead they kind of went around it and into downtown, which is good for people that are coming from the outside, but it’s not necessarily good for San Jose as a whole. And San Jose, the downtown Employment Corps doesn’t hold the percentage of San Jose jobs that say Oakland or San Francisco does. Right? Yeah. So it’s a really kind of low percentage of the total amount of jobs. A lot of the jobs are in these office parks in Silicon Valley and Yonah, the Apple Park and things like that.

Jeff Wood (30m 40s):
They’re out there in the in in the boonies for all intents and purposes. So was it a good thing to do? I don’t know. But they’re planning it now and it’s going through, I think they probably could have spent their six, seven, $8 billion a little bit better than that. And all that money is coming from the area and going to that single project, which might get 20, 30,000 writers. So that’s my take on it. Yeah, I know there’s lot of people that probably disagree with me on it, so that’s just my take from San Francisco, which take it or leave it as it is. But it’s frustrating because there’s gonna be a lot of money spent on this one project and hopefully it can be successful. But I don’t know how successful that might be.

Jeff Wood (31m 20s):
Do you have a final Prediction?

Yonah Freemark (31m 22s):
Yeah, I have a final Prediction about inner City Rail. So I believe that Bright Line will finalize their plans for their extension from Orlando to Tampa.

Jeff Wood (31m 33s):
Okay.

Yonah Freemark (31m 34s):
Yeah.

Jeff Wood (31m 34s):
So they’ll finalize from Orlando to Tampa

Yonah Freemark (31m 36s):
And they’ll get some funding for it. I don’t think it’ll start construction.

Jeff Wood (31m 40s):
I like the idea. Do you think that then people will start saying, that was good that the governor rejected that money for the Obama administration on that same corridor?

Yonah Freemark (31m 52s):
I don’t know what people will say, but in my view, that’s idiot. I mean, listen, bright Line is a private company, but they have received billions of dollars in low cost government loans, which are essentially public subsidies. Yeah. The Bright Line West Projects has received government grants, which is free money from the government. So Yonah, we can say all we wanna say about Yonah private versus public, but the reality is that most transportation in the United States, even if run by private enterprises, is publicly subsidized, at least to some degree. So I think it was an awful decision back in 2010 to reject the money to connect Orlando and Tampa. And we wouldn’t be talking about this 20 years later, no, 15 years later, about whether it’s possible they could have been operating that since 2015.

Yonah Freemark (32m 39s):
So it’s, it is a disappointing move.

Jeff Wood (32m 41s):
Yeah. Okay. Let’s see if it happens.

Yonah Freemark (32m 44s):
Yeah.

Jeff Wood (32m 44s):
And then this is my last fantastical one. I’m gonna do the crazy one this year that I wish would happen. And this is related to all the stuff we were talking about earlier. Some legislator is gonna put together a pot of money for smaller network bus improvements, whether that’s signal priority, queue jumping, pinch point management, et cetera, that can be accessed by transit agencies around the country.

Yonah Freemark (33m 5s):
Ooh.

Jeff Wood (33m 6s):
A pot of money just for those little tiny things that need to be done.

Yonah Freemark (33m 10s):
I love it. It’s kind of like a, it’s like a, a safe routes to school program, but for buses,

Jeff Wood (33m 17s):
Safe routes for buses, safe

Yonah Freemark (33m 19s):
Routes for buses. I love it.

Jeff Wood (33m 22s):
Oh, that’s awesome. Yeah, let’s do that. Let’s make it happen somehow. Call your legislators and ask them for this pot of money for small improvements. Make small bus improvements sexy again. That’s, that’s what we’re gonna, that’s how we’re gonna sell it. So we’re done with our predictions and we’ll get back to these next year, obviously. But where can folks find you in all of your amazing work, If you wish to be found?

Yonah Freemark (33m 45s):
Well, I’m on Blue Sky and Twitter at Y Freemark and in general I my work’s at urban.org, which is the website of the Urban Institute.

Jeff Wood (33m 54s):
Awesome. Well, Yonah, thanks for joining us once again. We really appreciate your time and we’ll see you next year.

Yonah Freemark (34m 1s):
Okay, cool. Thanks