(Unedited) Podcast Transcript 568: The Year in Transit with Yonah Freemark Part 1

This week we’re joined once again by Yonah Freemark to discuss the state of transit in the US and around the world. In Part 1, we talk about the longer term impacts of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, improving TOD, what the future of transportation should look like, and discuss updates to Transit Explorer.

Listen to this episode at Streetsblog USA or find it in our hosting archive.

Below is a full, unedited AI generated transcript of this week’s episode:

It’s like, seriously, I get emails every year is like, when’s Yoo coming back on? When? When is the prediction show? So it’s definitely one of the most popular ones and people are super excited for you to come back and for folks interested in going back in time and listening to some of those shows from the past.

You can start with episode number six. We’re on 566 now. Or just go to streets blog.libson.com and then in the search bar at that page, you can type in Yona and you’ll get all the episodes that Yona has been a part of. It’s more than 13 though. ’cause I think you were on with Harriet one time talking about some stuff there.

So

But in general, I’m doing fine.

People’s heating isn’t as good as it needs to be. Every, everybody’s home is designed for air conditioning, and then when you have, you know, a month of very cold temperatures, everybody freaks out and with good reason.

It’s crazy.

So it’s like nice and, and toasty. Now. When we had our daughter, it’s like, you know, you need to actually have a good temperature. But over there we had actually let it go until it was like in the fifties in our house. And like wear extra sheets or blankets or whatever. But it is the youth thing. I, I couldn’t do that today.

I’m just like, I’m too old for this man. I’m too old for this.

I want to ask you about the TOD work that’s always near and dear to my heart, obviously. One report is on the financial feasibility of TOD, and one is one of the things that I’ve always been frustrated by is the way that we put kind of too much on TOD as a solution to everything. Mm-hmm. Uh, we demand too much of it.

I’m curious your thoughts based on the report, but also in general in this phenomenon of asking TOD to do so much.

So mostly the Seattle region, but also Spokane and Vancouver, which is right across the river from Portland. And I, I think I agree with you that. We have a tendency to, to think of TOD as sort of this catchall solution where we expect how affordability, we expect access to transportation, but not just transit, also walking and biking.

We expect, you know, access to stores and all these things. And so we put everything into a TOD pot. As the thing that we’re doing. You know, I think there’s an opportunity there though because it does give legislators and other policy makers the ability to say, well, at least one thing we can do is try to work for creating livable communities in these areas around the transit stations.

And even if, you know, we can’t do that everywhere, we can try to achieve that in some places. And I, I, I do think that’s what the folks in Washington state are trying to do.

Um, I’m curious how much that is like kind of bleeding into that discussion as well.

I mean, certainly. We want to make sure that after having spent billions of dollars on light rail in the Seattle region, we’re not, you know, having parking lots around it, which unfortunately we are in some cases still. So, you know, I think there’s an opportunity there. And we’re also seeing some movement on that front in places like, uh, the Chicago region, where the state legislature just passed a major law that essentially changes parking requirements and such around transit.

But I also think it’s worth emphasizing that in many cases, in a lot of US cities, we had higher population densities, you know, a hundred years ago than we have now in these places, even without better transit. And so in some ways we’re, we’re still playing catch up on an old legacy of, you know, redlining and lack of investment in center cities that has something to do with transit access, but not.

All to do with transit access and so I, I don’t know. I, I think it’s possible to sort of walk and chew gum at the same time when it comes to this. We can try to improve the quality of development near transit, but also try to improve it elsewhere.

For example, in LA right now, it seems like they’re scared of it and for different reasons. Obviously, you know, SB 79 got passed. Scott Wiener’s bill to densify near transit. Now la the city council and also like the metro board, has been trying to tell the state like, Hey, back up on this bill because of a, a report from their staff saying people are gonna oppose transit projects because they wanna oppose housing.

And for me it’s frustrating because I’m like, you’re, you’re already disarming before. For, they’ve even opposed something. You say they’re, they’re gonna do it, but they haven’t done it yet. So why are you backing away from this? So that’s been frustrating, I think, here in California at least, is like, we have these bills that are passing, you know, left and right, but it seems like the implementation is hard because local officials don’t want to get on board.

At the same time, it is also true that you wanna make sure that communities can’t use that as a justification to prevent access via transit. So you don’t want communities to create exclusion from them by saying, we don’t want density and therefore we’re not gonna have transit. I think that that could end up with a really negative outcome of saying, you know, certain especially rich communities that don’t want new apartments, don’t want, you know, poor people taking transit into their areas can essentially say, well, we’re, we’re just going to wash our hands of that.

So I do think that is why having state. Initiatives on these fronts can be quite useful to have the state say simply, you know what, Los Angeles, uh, we don’t really care what you’re gonna, what you’re gonna say. Ultimately, if you’re gonna have a transit system, you’re going to be zoning for adequate density.

And in the case of California, you know, with the re rules, you know, these higher income jurisdictions do have to accept more housing in some way or another, and the best way for them to do it is with transit access. So, you know, maybe there’s a compromise there, but I, I think it’s gonna be hard and continue to be hard.

So there’s just like a frustration there, I think on my end. Anyways, just so many people locally would be all about this except for. The people that are in power or the people who have lots of money, have the ability to oppose it, and so they make this loud noise and the transit agency gets spooked.

And so even if you were to say, well, higher levels of government should be the ones that are taking power and deciding what should be done, the lower level, which is sort of the approach that is. Recognized as as potentially more valuable, you’re still gonna have the local governments saying to their elected representatives at the state level, we don’t want you interfering.

And so you, you have to be inclusive in some way of the local elected officials, the local politicians, and even the residents. And so, you know, in my view, it just means continuous negotiation. I think that’s the truth. That is, that is society we live in.

About the French experience and, and yeah. How that works. Yeah.

Aware of the fact that the local level is still gonna be important, and finding ways to make sure that their needs are addressed and that their concerns are addressed is, is really key. And so I think, I mean, honestly, people like us going around essentially demonstrating the value of these type of investments, showing that TOD is not scary, showing that housing development is actually good for your community, showing that transit can be a positive resource.

I think that it’s. That messaging that can help get local folks on board. Ultimately, there are always gonna be, you know, a few people who hate one thing or another, but if the messaging in the general public, in the atmosphere is positive about these things, I think people ultimately will come around to it.

And, you know, frankly, even in our working lives, I, I, you know, at this point, I think we’re old enough to be able to say we have a working life. Uh, you know. Yeah. I think we’ve seen a transition. I think there’s a lot more acceptance of the benefits of TOD of the benefits of transit than there was 20 years ago.

So I, I think we can just continue pushing our message.

There was a great YouTube video by Flying Moose. Which is a YouTuber, I think he’s in Hong Kong. And he kind of explained the whole system. I don’t know if you saw this, this video, but it’s basically like a 45 minute explainer of how it works. And it was really fascinating because, I mean, I’d heard about it before and I’d understood kind of how it works, but he went into the details about how they build the lines and all of the, you know, institutional capital that’s needed to like continue doing this year after year.

’cause they can’t do it just one time. They have to continue doing it. And then all the expertise that’s kept to design the rail lines, to build the rail lines, to build the properties, to do all the sign-offs and everything, uh, the engineers that are needed, then, you know, you can’t just build one line and then that’s it.

You have to continue because this expertise and the subject matter benefits are, are huge over that lifetime. So 30 years of doing this. Has really gotten them to a place where they’re doing some really cool stuff. Basically buying property at cost or below cost in the area where you know that you’re gonna put a rail line, then building, you know, a neighborhood for 30 to 40, 50,000 people.

And then using some of that value to build the line. I mean, we talk about value captur in the United States. It’s just like pennies on the dollar compared to what you know they’re able to do there. And then also, like from what we found from our research when I was at reconnecting Americas that. You know, you can do value capture.

If we, we did a study for like H Street Streetcar back in the day, and you could do value capture, but you really need like huge parcels to actually make it pay off. You need like a huge development area to make it actually capture any value, because if you do a parcel by parcel, it’s really not, like I said before, as pennies on the dollar.

So if you can do it in this way that you can actually build along this corridor ahead of time or concurrently with the transit project, it would make a world of difference.

That in theory is going to give the transit agencies a lot more power to acquire land and supervise or manage development projects on those parcels. If Chicago got its act together, which you should never assume will happen, but if the folks there got their act together, I think there, there’s an opportunity for Chicago to do some of that on the ground there.

I’m excited.

So if places like Chicago can get their act together, like you said, there’s a lot of value to be captured, but also there’s a lot of, like, we’re suffering at the moment. You know, transit agencies are suffering and so. This isn’t gonna be all the pie. Mm-hmm. In terms of fundraising, obviously we need the ballot measures and things like that, but this can be part of it.

It can be part of it if you do it right and have, you know, those large projects, large programs that can actually put together not just a couple projects, but a bunch of projects along the corridor.

Um, if you think back to when the bill was passed, do you think that the results for what we’re seeing now reflect the feeling towards the bill at the time that it was passed? You know, whether they were positive or negative.

And one of the things that we’re finding, which is pretty depressing, is that when you adjust for inflation and when you adjust for construction costs, increases. This huge law that we’ve passed in 2021, which Joe Biden said was, was the biggest law for public transit. Ever and was this enormous investment in inner city rail, for example, ultimately panned out to have very minimal effects, if any, on those areas.

There has been somewhat of an increase in highway construction,

And I think there are a few different things going on. One is that construction costs have just gone up a ton, so you get a lot less for your dollar. A second thing is that I think that states and localities have essentially substituted out their own donations or their own funding for projects with federal dollars, so that the ultimate end amount that’s being spent on projects is.

The same or lower than what it was before because the states and localities are not spending as much on these types of things. And then the third issue is that fundamentally there was perhaps a just sort of a general chilling in the transit investment world on new projects that continues up to this day where I think we used to have a lot more interest, for example, in new light rail lines around the country.

And that has in many ways, ground to the halt.

You know, that’s not even particularly long in Seattle. You know, the cost for some of the extensions they’re talking about now are over $10 billion. And so I think when you have a situation like that, there’s just a sort of a general chilling effect. A lot of ambitions about what you could buy 10 years ago, no longer seems so obvious, and frankly, transit is exposed to that.

Greater degree than highway projects. But it’s not just transit. I mean, if you look at the crossing between Portland, Oregon and Vancouver, Washington going over the Columbia River, that project’s cost has, I think is like tripled over the last few years and nobody knows how they’re gonna pay for it. And that’s primarily a highway project.

And so I think we’re, we’re facing this all over the country.

And then they never really do the value engineerings necessary, but also like the capacity, the local capacity is disappearing too. Like the amount of people who know how to do this stuff locally. And I think Seattle has been doing better at that. But it’s still frustrating, I think around the country where, and this is, goes back to that Hong Kong example I gave, right?

They have developed engineers over the last 30 years to design and build these projects, and they have all that institutional knowledge from building those projects line by line because they’re continuing to go and do more. They can keep that in-house and so they’re able to keep on going forward. And so there’s a benefit from that.

And it’s not just the property thing, but it’s also the institutional knowledge. There was a paper, I think it was last year or the year before by Zach Ow at Yale, and he found like basically the institutional capacity, this is for highway projects could reduce project costs by 14%. And that’s just because of the bidding and how much you know about what it should cost and those types of things.

So. I think that’s one of those things where we just need to like have a school or something for developing engineers to like think hard about how we build these projects and then, you know, have the knowledge to be able to put it. ’cause I don’t even think the engineering companies have this knowledge.

And so I feel like there’s a mismatch there too.

Yeah. To know how to build subways, and then you build all on that over time. Realistically, most cities. Do not probably have the ability to keep up construction on a project over and over over time. But I do wonder, is there a role for a federal agency to maintain that sort of expertise in-house or something of that sort?

Should a federal agency be the one that maintains that knowledge of how to build a project effectively on time, on budget? And go out across the country and, and make projects happen. I don’t know. I questioned the current system where we, we sort of have farmed things out to every city working on its own, trying to figure out how to make things work, starting a new every time.

I, I don’t think it’s very functional.

How the folks, the, um, sort of provincial savings bank essentially managed the project, the REM and

But clearly there’s a, there is a model there.

So there’s arguments out there, kind of along the same vein, they’re discussing that. The other interesting thing from that report that you wrote was like, we’re basically stuck at $250 billion for highways, like spending the same thing. It’s like we said we’re gonna have more money, but then we’re going back and you know, it’s kind of a curvy wave and the amount of money we’re spending, but I feel like it’s not really worth the squeeze anymore to spend that money on highway expansion.

Oh yeah. The amount of economic development or economic impact of that is just like disappearing. And I, and I wonder if. We’ve hit a wall in terms of the network that we’ve built. And so we need to go and do something else. And I’ve been saying this a lot lately, but I’ve just got back from China this fall.

I went to go visit again with my wife and see her family, and we took high-speed rail twice. Uh, there’s 48,000 miles of high-speed rail now. And again, we can quibble with the government systems and how they’re different from the United States, et cetera. But 48,000 miles is 48,000 miles of rail.

And so I’m wondering like in the United States, if we’ve. Basically run out of economic development activity that’s related to the highway development. Maybe we should go and do our high-speed rail network. There’s a place to spend that money and make a serious dent in creating jobs and connections, and not just like a physical connection, but like the idea that people will have closer connections to their family.

They’ll have closer business connections. They’ll be able to go places and do tourism. That’s a huge thing in China now is tourism. People are going to all these places they never went before. And I talked to a, a woman on the podcast a couple months ago who lives in China and she does social media work for different brands and companies, and she basically went to 30 cities in like 50 days, 60 days or something like that, to do all this local research because of the high-speed rail network.

And so you have this like very. Intense economic development mechanism that we’re not even tapping into yet. Whereas like places like China, they built out their system. They have the benefits of that high-speed rail system, but they’re also building out the road network as well. So it’s not just the high-speed rail, they’re building a lot of infrastructure.

But if we’re gonna like take that $250 billion that we’re spending on highways that that’s not worth the money anymore, we should be spending it on something that connects everywhere. Right.

Mm-hmm. Which is going to be another five years of spending. We’d be extremely lucky to get the same amount of money on inner city rail as was in the previous law. I mean, just being entirely honest and it’s like how do you convince members of Congress who can only see the protection of the status quo as their job to fundamentally change their perspective?

I, I don’t know. I, there’s something about the American psyche in Congress that results in an inability to sort of have a vision for the future. And I think that if you don’t have that vision for the future, it’s hard to see how high speed rail fits in with that.

She’s actually originally from Oregon, but she’s been there for almost a decade now. And we talked about this and like, I feel like if you go there, it’s nothing like what everybody’s told you. It’s nothing like what the media tells you. And it’s amazing. It’s sparkling and shining and there’s issues, right?

Obviously like everywhere has in the United States has issues. Uh, Switzerland has issues, et cetera, but it’s amazing how much the narrative of what’s there versus what is actually there is distorted. And so when I went, I was just like, this is crazy amazing. Like the amount of stuff here. We went to Beijing this year.

You know, it’s the largest subway network in the world, and you can get anywhere in the city. You can get anywhere in the region as well. And so the connections between smaller cities is bigger. I saw people on the platforms in the smaller cities when we’re going between cities bringing shopping bags because they went shopping in Beijing.

But those folks in Congress that have this. Existing understanding of what they think the future might be, which is they don’t have an imagination. I feel like if some of them, and some of them are irredeemable, but some of them, if they went and saw what was happening and the amount of technology that exists, it would be blowing people’s mind seriously.

Like, are we, are we just being bamboozled by that kind of. Fake futurism or something.

I think people want stuff to work too, right? And so if you go to somewhere, and of course it’s the vacation fallacy too. Like I’m there for a month and I’m actually living there and

And so I went downstairs, I got on the subway and I went one stop and I went to a noodle shop and I came back and it cost me less than $2. The noodles from

That

Right. And I just want it to be that easy for everybody in the United States. I want people to be able to go and do their errands that easily. Right, right. Have access to stuff. And I think that that’s like the thing that we’re missing and, and here in San Francisco, I have that to a certain extent. Tent.

But if I had a subway here in San Francisco and I could get to anywhere in the city to get lunch, that would open up the world of economic development. Right. And that’s what I’m thinking about from a national perspective, from a local perspective, the accessibility of getting places easier, and that is what the future I feel like should look like.

Yeah. It’s not futuristic in the sense that like we’re going to space or we’re building like a hyper drive that takes us to Jupyter or whatever it is, but it’s just. Life is easier. The quality of life is better. And so I think that that’s something that we should strive for ultimately, and that’s what our future should look like.

And we, we get sold these fantastical things, but sometimes those fantastical things are just for like the upper echelons of society. This stuff is easy for everybody,

It makes easier overall. Yeah. So actually that trip and congestion pricing throughout the, all this doom and gloom around the country right now that we’re witnessing what’s happening in Minnesota. Mm-hmm. What’s happening, uh, everywhere in Chicago and places with ice and whatnot. I just feel like it gave me some hope because I see what could happen if you actually do this stuff.

And the same with New York and congestion pricing. Like it actually works. There’s less noise, there’s less pollution, there’s more funding for transit policy that works, works, and it makes people’s lives better. And so there’s value in that. And so talking with you the last 13 years, we’ve always talked every year about like, what’s coming next?

What’s coming next? What’s coming next?

Transportation policy that has accomplished the goals that were put up for it and I is succeeding. It’s amazing. I mean, this is the kind of thing that you don’t get enough. You can’t say that for many highway projects, you can’t say that many highway projects actually improve people’s lives. So when it comes to congestion pricing, it’s a story we should be proud of to say that, oh look, we can actually make positive change in our society.

Region is becoming more and more connected in a way that is tangible for people’s lives. I mean, just to give you two examples, the last time I was there in December, I was able to ride, uh, they have a new aerial tramway. Mm-hmm. In the south eastern suburbs. That is not a touristic area at all. Oh my gosh.

You know, it is not super well off. But it’s incredible. You go there and you, you know, you get off the end of the metro line eight, and then there’s this aerial tram that takes you through a sort of interesting mix of industrial zones and new urban development around these stations, and it’s like, oh, it feels like the region is expanding in new and different ways to give you access to new places and give people a new experience.

Then, you know, I also got to experience just recently they, they extended the line 14 metro down to the Orley airport in the south, and it’s like, now you can get from the center of Paris to Orley Airport in, you know, 20 minutes or something. And it’s, it’s just an incredible transformation in terms of how you’re able to get there.

And what’s great about that. Is that you see it over the years and you see how people’s lives can change for the better through these types of investments. And it’s something that is really tangible, you know? Yeah. People in those places that are getting that access can actually improve lives as a result of that access.

So that’s fun to see. And it’s not something unfortunately that I get to see very much in the DC region, though it’s probably better than most places in the us.

And even just like repaving, like they repaved our streets recently and I was like, that’s a good job. Like they did a good job doing that. Just like little things like that. Like we do do stuff well if we know how to do it, and we’re systematic about it, but it’s the bigger things that are harder.

Yeah.

One is that you have places like Houston where you have local. The mayor who has actively like destroyed

I mean. Tribe, borough Express project in New York City is a really cool project, uh, that’s gonna link the boroughs, Brooklyn, and Queens. Uh, but it’s gonna take a decade to happen, and I think we just have this slow speed of action. And to make matters worse, the Trump administration, you know, we’re, we just had this recent research come out at Urban, basically showing that the first year of the Trump administration is the first.

Administration’s first year in 30 years, at least since the beginning of the Clinton administration, that has not approved a contract for a single large new transit project. So we have a problem, which is that our Department of Transportation on the federal end has simply decided to stop funding big transit projects, and at the same time, they’re putting on pause other transit projects.

You have the gateway tunnel. The Second Avenue subway, the red line extension in Chicago, they are putting blocks in front of actually getting things done. And so you have a problem with the federal agencies are literally making it impossible to get projects done. It’s, it’s a terrible partner if you’re a state or local agency.

So that’s been frustrating with North Star disappearing. I’m wondering what your feelings are about, I mean, obviously if they’re blocking all the transit lines, nothing’s getting built. I’m curious what your thoughts are like on the viability of commuter rail anymore, or passenger rail that’s not urban.

And St. Cloud is not a giant city, but it is a population center that would’ve made this type of service attractive. And frankly, the folks in the region just never got their act together. To extend the project, that meant that it never really was able to attract riders. And the fact that it had pretty terrible service, uh, throughout most of the day made matters worse.

And so, you know, I think that sort of old school commuter rail has very little future. You had places like Nashville opening sort of crappy lines too, the Music Star expressed, or Music City star. Yeah. Uh, those are not projects that are gonna attract many writers that even have much local support. They don’t have the benefits that people can see, and I think in some ways that’s not a bad thing.

There’s been a lot more interest in trying to change commuter rail towards like a regional rail model where you have frequent service. But the negative outcome related to that is that you have to pick services that, you know, are able to attract enough riders for frequent service all day. So the, you know, a, a Minneapolis to St Cloud service is probably not gonna be that.

It’s like, why do you, why is everybody have to carry their power with them? Why can’t we just electrify everything? I mean, there’s movement here in California to try to electrify. Um, not from internally, but externally. Push Metrolink to electrify the network there. And we’ve learned from what happened with Caltrain that it’s like an amazing service.

Uh, if you can actually fix it, that makes the trains go faster. The ridership has gone up 47% and so there’s nothing we can do with c commuter rail that exists now that make it better. And then if you propose it in the future, it needs to be a little bit different, I think, than what people think it is now.

And I think the pandemic really like stuck a fork in it because, you know, the, the way that people are commuting now and, and the amount of like, work from home and the travel patterns that have changed, it just doesn’t make sense to build those lines. I, I don’t know if it made sense ever to build those lines, but even more now than before.

Has maybe. Two or three services a day. But that’s okay. I think there’s an opportunity here to think about inner City Rail as an intermediate step towards better service between different cities. And you know, I think you’re right. I mean, if you look at the ridership in the Borealis service, but also in places like Virginia and North Carolina, Amtrak is doing amazing ridership for the US context.

Yeah, yeah. Uh, in those places and. I’m feeling pretty optimistic about inner city Rail in the us assuming that Congress finds ways to continue supporting Amtrak.

So what’s the point? Like I don’t get it. Some of these design decisions that are happening.

Um, they are trying to improve transit and you know, I really hope those projects turn out well. I will say that. The speed continues to be a shocking Yeah, problem. The speed of execution. I mean, this project in Chapel Hill, this north South BRT project has been being planned for like a decade and we’re mostly talking about reserved lanes.

Yeah, like painted lanes on the street. We’re doing something fundamentally wrong in the United States that we can’t get this stuff done much more quickly. It should not be a big deal.

’cause they couldn’t get a contractor. That’s right. They finally got one. But it took ’em forever to bid. And some of it apparently was because of what was happening in Asheville after the hurricane because of construction companies and stuff. But I think it’s wild that none of these companies that are making their money off of road construction expansion are interested in doing these projects because it’s basically just a road project.

It’s not even building anything special. There’s no overhead wires, there’s no track stuff that needs to be done. It’s just road and paint.

But frankly, guys, like maybe for now we should just be buying off the rack bus shelters and sticking them on these platforms. I, I just, we have to be able to move these things forward more quickly because it’s just not worth it. You know, we’re depriving people of access for literally 10 years because of the fact that these things are so expensive and turn into sort of engineering marvels for no reason.

And it’s like the estimates are 60 million people, I think 60 to 65 million people. And so just for reference, California is like almost 40 million people. So think about like one region that has all of California in it, right? Like it’s insane. And they’re building like Madcap Subways, inner city passenger rail, high speeded rail between like Hong Kong.

It’s like, it’s crazy how much is going on there.

It is also true that, yeah, Chinese cities and regions are extremely populated. So in many ways, you know, I think we’re seeing regions. Giving people the connections that they deserve given their populations.

And you know, there, there, there were some standouts there that I would not have expected. Places like Stockholm and Hamburg that. Do not have particularly extensive metro networks, but for their populations they have very extensive metro networks. So, you know, I think we have to acknowledge the fact that, of course, Chinese cities are very large.

You know, Japan, Tokyo, and the SAI region around Osaka, but almost all are in China. And so, you know, we have a very different world than we were living in in 1990.

Even in South America, there’s some stuff going on. So it’s really fascinating to see kind of like around the world what’s kind of happening.

And one thing they actually have done since I wrote this, is also chosen to invest in seven high-speed rail lines made actually the commitment to making those connections. So you’re gonna see in India a lot of what we’ve already seen in China happening, you know, 10 or 20 years later.

What can we learn from them? We should be pulling these Indians in to hear from them and get them to run our inner city rail networks. Frankly, I I

Asia just feels like it’s, you know, more places are starting to think because of the congestion, right? I mean, Vietnam is actually talking about creating congestion zones in the city, even getting rid of. Gas powered motorcycles and things like that, just like trying to reduce the amount of impact that they have on their citizens.

It’s really impressive to see what’s going on. I mean, there’s places that are doing pricing. There’s places that are doing expansions of transit networks, and it’s mostly because of the just extreme congestion that’s been happening for so long. Right. And now people are like, I’m tired of this. It feels like even in African cities there are starting to talk about this too.

So it’s a really big deal.

And basically says that greenhouse gases are a pollutant and they can be regulated by the EPA. And so the Trump administration’s trying to get rid of this thing called the endangerment finding, which is. I think it’s pretty solid science and anyways, yeah, it’s,

I mean, it’s very depressing, of course.

This is happening basically everywhere except for the US. So, you know, I. I think the, the reality is the US is what only 5% of the world’s population. So, you know, the US may be horrible, but we’re holding everybody

You know, today’s podcast that we released was with Dr. Lawrence Frank, and he wrote the book in 2004, built Environment and Public Health with two other amazing authors. And since then we’ve proved so many times how much the emissions and the things that are problematic about our transportation system, uh, harm us.

In so many ways and especially economically. And so his work is actually the basis for walk score. Oh, okay. The ability to walk and stuff. And so, you know, we tend to externalize all the impacts of our transportation system when we’re doing all these analysis and stuff. And he’s actually done so much work to prove that.

We should be internalizing it. We should be making it a part of the calculation when we talk about the benefits and the cost benefit analysis, but we don’t. And so it’s frustrating to release that episode on this day where they’re trying to kill the endangerment finding. Now the endangerment finding still it’s court related and I have a feeling it’s got a very strong case because of what we know, but.

They’re just trying to rip everything down. It’s basically a, so to the industrial, you know, complex. Yeah. And it’s frustrating because we see, like you said, all this stuff happening around the world that’s beneficial and good, and so I, I imagine at some point we’ll get back there. I do hold out hope for that.

And you know it’s happening in the US too. I mean, I have solar panels on my roof. We, I got heat pumps because of the inflation reduction act. People are seeing that it can actually benefit you. My bills are way lower now than they were before. And so in the pocketbook, which is, you know, my geography professor in college, uh, Dr.

Shane Davies, he was always like, all this stuff you talk about doesn’t matter. Hit ’em in the pocketbook.

Mm-hmm. But if I did, I’d be looking at, you know, trying to put up those solar panels on the side of the balcony roof,

Make the regional entity have more powers over service provision and decisions related to that. But I, I’m frankly, most excited about what this will do in terms of just daily operations for the transit system. I mean, Chicago, this is sort of wild from my perspective, but Chicago used to have the same per capita transit use as New York City.

Okay. So people who lived in Chicago used transit as much as people in New York City as recently, I believe as like the nineties. That is not true at all anymore. People in New York City use transit like twice as much as Chicago and, and there are two reasons for that. One is people in New York City use transit more, and the other is people in Chicago use transit less.

I’m hopeful. I’m very hopeful that with the. Investment in improved service on the CTA, on metro and on pace. We’re gonna have a lot more people using transit in Chicago. ’cause frankly, the city’s built for transit maybe more than anywhere else in the us. It has this huge center, hundreds of thousands of jobs.

It has pretty good rail transit systems, it has a grid of buses. If these have adequate service, they’re running a lot. I can see their transit ridership exploding. So I’m really looking forward to that.

And in addition to congestion pricing and some other stuff that’s happened lately, it’s a positive that I wanna take with us. Okay, so that wraps up part one. Join us next week for part two where we’ll get to our predictions from last year and make some new ones for next year. We’ll see you next week.