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some important descriptive statistics which more people in transit should be aware of
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wait this is so totally not real, wtf
Per several members: Some of the House Democrats who missed the Hegseth impeachment vote were on their way back from an Elect Democratic Women event at a venue about 1.5 miles down Pennsylvania Ave but got caught in a bumper-to-bumper traffic jam on Independence Ave. (the road on the House side of the Capitol complex).
Some members found other ways to get back to the Capitol because their cars were effectively stopped on the road. One got out and walked. Another got dropped off on the Senate side to avoid the traffic.
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Lucas Pombo (aka Lib Development) retweeted
Today is a BIG day for autonomous vehicles in America. DC will be taking a vote on their av bill.
The bill is one vote shy of being approved by the transportation committee. Please support this legislation that’ll give the leaders of America access to av tech they’re supposed to be informed about to legislative.
Action item: contact Council Member Zach Parker or Council Member to vote yes or abstain from the committee vote to keep the bill alive. Contact info: Council Member Silverman (202) 724-7772 & Council Member Parker (202) 724-8028 (main number doesn’t work so this is the communication director).
Meeting starts at 4pm (3pm central)
The Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) makes it illegal to operate a train faster than 110mph, unless the route is "grade separated", ie, has no level crossings between trains and cars. This requirement was one of the big reasons California's high speed train was doomed.
California has built a surprising amount of bullet-train related things. (Cynic though I am, I too would be surprised if they had managed to spend $13 billion on *literally nothing*.) However, people don't realize anything has been built because the things are, in practice, 92 overpasses which have to be finished before they can install track on them.
The 110mph rule is ostensibly for safety, but in practice has negligible apparent benefits. Furthermore, instead of looking for ways to safely raise this speed limit, the FRA has instead tried to lower speed limits for otherwise-compliant infrastructure hosting Acela operations on the Northeast Corridor.
My personal assessment, for what it's worth, is that if all crossings are protected by quad gates, grade crossings are *probably* safe up until at least 150mph. But ultimately, we can't really know what safe speeds are until we investigate, perhaps by crash-testing the retiring Acela trainsets. Since the FRA has expressed near-zero willingness to do so, we may never know.
For a more thorough treatment of this subject, I've written about this before, here: developmentalism.substack.co…
India, growth-wise, is where China was in approximately March 2008. I think it's fairly consensus at this point that the US was way more dovish on China than we should have been at that point.
It blows my mind, therefore, that we are not thinking about India the same way.
India's poverty reduction is the second biggest in world history, just behind China's. India is now growing at around 6.5%, which is about the same as China in 2014. Manufacturing is growing right along side services.
More people should pay attention.
noahpinion.blog/p/india-is-q…
theme of this century's politics, i know, but *chinese* officials clearly seem to understand what's going on here and have acted decisively in a way that americans have not
siiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiigh
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One thing that's underrated about New York City is that they're just an insanely bad regional actor. Doing some construction in the middle of 42nd and 9th without trying to mitigate resulting NJ traffic is one of a truly extraordinary list of examples.
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I still think it's insane that congestion pricing charges the same $9 to brooklyn drivers crossing toll-free bridges as they do the lincoln tunnel drivers paying $15 at peak already
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a fascinating index.
College rankings are broken.
We're doing it the right way.
Introducing: City Journal's 2026 College Rankings! collegerankings.city-journal…