aaronznj.bsky.social
Official home of the dork who decided to use my Urban Planning Master's Degree for the primary purpose of "make an alternate-history N Scale NJ Transit layout."
All opinions are mine (and you can't have them!), and they’re all wrong or your money back!
1,142 posts
219 followers
226 following
Getting Started
Active Commenter
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In fairness, I am conflating "good if clearly imperfect idea usually expressed in really bad & counterproductive ways" with "mostly bad idea" (you can probably figure out which is which), so it isn't quite an apples to apples comparison.
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How does it feel Nilo? Welcome to the “me everyone starts up Through-Running Discourse(tm)” experience.
Everyone really wants to go make toast in the bathtub and you have to convince them no, don’t electrocute yourself to death.
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I really hope it’s a bit…
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It’s a discussion that has been gone through numerous times, tbh.
I don’t think any of the people reading this thread are people who need to be *convinced* of some version of this stuff.
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Ok, well, clearly NY State’s legislature seems to disagree that they “need” to do that. And by proxy that means - if the bill in question passes - MTA regardless if they had wanted to automate will not be doing so.
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Like I’m genuinely not sure that just saying the thing you initially said is really responsive to the current situation.
You’re talking about operational efficiency and the crowd you’d have to convince really seems to not give that much weight.
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Ok, well, seeing as the state of New York is considering a literal law mandating 2pto, clearly the powers that be are at least leaning towards the conclusion that they would rather pay more.
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that's nice I guess your point here is "NYC is not a first-world city"?
ok. cool story.
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The whole point of 2x3 seating is to turn your entire commute into this deranged game theory exercise involving very precise estimations of how crowded the train will be and your relative risk of being within 1 foot of a fellow human which is worse than death itself.
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now you are committing the mortal sin of lowering the seat count and angry commuters are coming to burn your house down.
Never mind that not a single butt has ever touched half the middle seats…ever, they’re where you put your bags! (Note 1: the cars have luggage racks) (note 2: no one uses them).
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Sounds nice to live in a place like that.
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The 2x3 seating?
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Yes, that is at least somewhat my interpretation on “I fall asleep most nights thinking about transit expansion”. Though I am reading in that he used the expression in a similar way to it “keeping him up at night”
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This. I’m talking about this.
bsky.app/profile/rmtr...
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The one that Reece is describing?
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Ok. Go yell at politicians about how transit projects cost too much. Knock yourself out! Just do not be surprised when the outcome is “transit projects get cancelled and replaced by just not having those dollars or worse they got used to add lanes on a highway”.
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And what, posting on the internet about how much it costs to build a subway line is gonna make subway lines cheaper?
Within this analogy of yours, neither of us is actually doing anything about the cancer diagnosis besides commentating on it.
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Yeah well, my hobbies make me feel happy. If your hobby is frustrating, difficult, and stressful that’s not a hobby that’s a job.
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Are there problems in the way transit projects are funded, delivered, and built in the US/Canada? Yes. Emphatically so.
But going on social media and just being like “wow we sure do have a cost problem huh?” (Aka what triggered my comment that you quoted) Is just sloppy and counterproductive.
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You do realize that PragerU has literally cited Alon Levy (of Transit Costs Project fame)? Sean Duffy has used this exact argument to justify (so far, thankfully only threats of) defunding transit
this shit is actually a real phenomenon, that we ignore at our peril.
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Then you’re personally investing yourself in the topic too much.
Ultimately, the outcomes of transit spending are largely subject to much larger factors that aren’t up to us. So they either go well or they don’t, it’s how it goes.
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To be honest? I didn’t even know until you mentioned it in this thread that you stopped doing videos but that was basically the reasoning - “person who makes transit videos vs person who does not.”
But, as that’s no longer true, ok, it’s more than just NY and less than everywhere? We’re both wrong?
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So, let me get this straight: you’re saying I got a detail wrong as a defense of how you should be allowed to make sweeping generalizations?
Ok. Sure.
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How every fun conversation at parties starts…
bsky.app/profile/rmtr...
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I don’t make a point if I can’t make it correctly. Especially so if the point I’m making is a big one.
That means a lot of the time I don’t say a thing in the first place but you know, that’s the price you sometimes have to pay.
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That is sometimes true, but not when OP is literally a person who regularly makes commentary videos on the topic.
They are supposed to know stuff and inform their opinions, considering they want others to pay attention to those opinions.
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Of course!
The problem of cost vs. underinvestment vs. both/neither is really a local thing, and there are cases of costs being the problem!
But that’s not what Reece initially said.
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Yes, you fucking did. That was the original thing you said.
And now you’re trying to make up for your own imprecision and poor communication by retroactively claiming your original point was much narrower.
bsky.app/profile/rmtr...
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Reece didn’t make some local/regional distinction. They didn’t carve out the SEPTAs of the world. You’re not defending reece’s point you’re defending some better, less lazy argument that I…honestly don’t disagree with but it’s not the actual subject at hand.
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Sure.
But that is not what reece said and you neither have to nor should be lending them the benefit of making their own point better and more contextualized than they bothered to.
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They totally want to create some kind of parallel to the Six-Day war because Israel is obsessed with drawing those sorts of parallels. The problem is nobody actually knows the reference they’re trying to make so it just becomes nonsensical when hostilities (inevitably) continue.
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Someone has to go first; I’ll let someone else be that first every single time.
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I don’t think any of us should have to entertain an argument that I could see PragerU making as being anything other than explicitly anti-transit.
This kind of argument is precisely how things stay shitty or further deteriorate, which I guess is what Reece wants.
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Bad take is just bad.
I don’t actually have anything else to say really besides this id only the case in like, NYC and even then only really applies to a portion of MTA and specific projects at that.
It’s exactly the kind of thing you’d say if you did zero *actual* research.
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It’s a recipe for doing lots of things.
You just wait a bunch of time to actually do them. And it saves you the risk of having to do *two* things (install the new thing, then put back the old thing) in the event that the new technology doesn’t pan out.
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Like the true test isn't "can you withstand a 10x design load a few times" it's "can you keep working, over and over and over again for years, sitting out in the elements." If yes, great, seems like a cool idea.
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lmk if the cantilever is still up in idk 10 years on a busy main line.
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[Citation needed].
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Nope!
However despite being the state Capital, Trenton is in the Philadelphia MSA.
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The real issue with classing New Jersey as a city is that Jersey City is a city in New Jersey so we have cities inside cities that are parts of other cities, the whole thing is just too messy!
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Most of New Jersey is in either the New York City MSA or the Philly MSA.
The largest city in New Jersey that’s not in the metro statistical area of another state’s city is…Atlantic City (?).
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2020 Census has Connecticut at 3,605,944, and Los Angeles (city limits) at 3,898,747 so yes, Los Angeles has a slightly larger population than Connecticut.