taras-grescoe.com
Author of Straphanger | Words NY Times Nat Geo Smithsonian WSJ | Latest book Lost Supper | Talks: http://taras-grescoe.com/contact
https://www.highspeed.blog (Transit, trains, bikes)
https://linktr.ee/tarasgrescoe
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*Brightline* is selling itself as HSR (ie, same category as a bullet train) in its marketing. This is misleading. True HSR is a system: fast trains running on safe, dedicated tracks. I write more about it in my feature in the Globe and Mail from last week:
www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/arti...
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You need zero, not “almost zero” for truly safe HSR operation. That’s why Japan has 0 deaths on shinkansen lines since 1964 and Brightline has 130 deaths since 2018.
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The issue is that freight and passenger are mixed on North American “high-speed” corridors. Not the case in Asia and much of Europe, which allows them to sterilize the lines with fences and other appropriate safety measures.
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Zero? www.youtube.com/watch?v=ChVM...
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CSX, Norfolk Southern, CSAO, Providence and Worcester, New York and Atlantic, and Canadian Pacific all operate local freight on the NEC. I agree that Brightline calling itself “high-speed” is just branding—which is a problem in itself.
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I take a long, hard look at this privately-funded (sort of!) service in my latest HIGH SPEED dispatch:
www.highspeed.blog/a-ride-on-fl...
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Sure, the ride is nice, the stations attractive, but tickets are expensive and Brightline jacks up prices at will; during the pandemic, they stopped service altogether (Amtrak kept its trains running!) leaving riders high and dry.
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It barely cracks 200 km/h (124 mph) on one short stretch west of Cocoa. Then there’s the fact that it’s deadly. 130+ deaths since 2018. That’s unacceptable. Japan’s shinkansen have carried 10 billion people since 1964 with 0 deaths. (Because they take safety seriously, and fence off the tracks.)
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Thank you to all of the sustainable commuters out there getting it done for Mother Nature!
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It all started 2 years ago with a small protest in the school yard. (The kids really got into it!)
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cc @tomflood.bsky.social @emmanuelspv.bsky.social @thewaroncars.bsky.social
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Build it and they will come…by bike, on foot, with badminton nets and rackets.
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In previous years in June, when car drop-offs were still allowed on this street, the racks weren’t nearly as full.
Here’s the lesson, for those fighting for safer streets for their kids (and everyone)…
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Then read the newsletter post, at the end of the thread.
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I write more about my experience riding #Florida ‘s Brightline from #Miami to #Orlando in this week’s HIGH SPEED dispatch:
www.highspeed.blog/a-ride-on-fl...
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I write more about my experience riding #Florida ‘s Brightline from #Miami to #Orlando in this week’s HIGH SPEED dispatch:
www.highspeed.blog/a-ride-on-fl...
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...making it North America's deadliest line. IMO, any rail is better than new freeways and runways. But there are some serious issues with privately-run rail, as currently being operated.
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...even thought that's what the publicity promises.
High-speed lines in Japan, and many in Europe, are fenced off to allow for safe operation. Not the case with Brightline, which has already killed 130+ people...
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How do we restore conviviality to city streets? It's simple. Remove the cars. (We’re working on it in our kids’ school in #Montreal !)
And in cities that have pulled off this feat, they started by taking away the parking.
I explore some examples here: www.highspeed.blog/why-cant-our...
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One year after his research on how cars erode real-life urban social networks, Donald Appleyard was killed by the driver of a car in #Athens. He was 54.
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"As the city filled with mobile strangers, even next-door neighbours became strangers. This is the story of the motorcar, and it has not much longer to run." —Marshall McLuhan, 1964, anticipating the results of Appleyard's research.
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"People have always lived on streets. They have been the places where children first learned about the world, where neighbors met, the social centers of towns and cities, the rallying points for revolts, the scenes of repression..." More here:
www.pps.org/article/dapp...
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That sums up complex research that showed how social interactions diminished on streets with more automobile traffic. (Appleyard focused on 3 residential streets in San Francisco in the 1960s)
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It all started 2 years ago with a small protest in the school yard. (The kids really got into it!)
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cc @tomflood.bsky.social @emmanuelspv.bsky.social @thewaroncars.bsky.social
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Build it and they will come…by bike, on foot, with badminton nets and rackets.
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In previous years in June, when car drop-offs were still allowed on this street, the racks weren’t nearly as full.
Here’s the lesson, for those fighting for safer streets for their kids (and everyone)…
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Not to worry: Straphanger is alive and well! I'll continue to post about transit, bicycles, and alternatives to car-based urbanism under the "Straphanger" tag.
Sign up by using the "Subscribe" button for dispatches in your mailbox. #railsky #trains
www.highspeed.blog
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High-speed rail, which has already transformed Europe and Asia, is coming to North America. But the newsletter's about more than bullet trains, shinkansens + TGVs.
I'll be posting dispatches about the latest in sleeper trains, budget services, + regional and inter-city rail around the world.
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Also: is that all he's got?
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Guess the ketamine wore off.
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But A.I. has its limits. In the case of most of the mystery scripts of antiquity, the issue is lack of data.
Cracking these codes is within our reach, but it's going to require a different approach, as I explain in this essay in the @longnow.org Foundation's Ideas:
longnow.org/ideas/the-co...
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And transformer models are actually helping us to fill in the blanks in damaged inscriptions, most famously in the scrolls of Herculaneum, which were encased in a pyroclastic flow after the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 CE.
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...there are hopes that we'll finally be able to read these scripts, which could open up the secrets of little-understood societies. (Below: the Phaistos disk, a one-of-a-kind, possibly 3,000 years old, from Minoan palace on Crete.)
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Thanks! But it’s not over. A lot of people are hopping mad about this (even if their kids are safer, and actually using the space to play)