Infrastructure Weak
@infrastructureweak
Renter; bike and transit rider Construction project manager Posts about safe street design and transit projects Berkeley, CA
This leaves the question of the yard location for the Geary metro, which the initial study hoped to avoid by using BART trains (though that wouldn't actually work). A yard fits easily on one of San Francisco's 9 golf courses, which could even be restored on top of the yard after construction.
The focus of the coming alternatives analysis should therefore be on a downtown alignment which provides convenient transfers. Among many options that should be studied, a shallow crossing of the Market Street subway is promising for its ease of station access.
The Geary metro should provide excellent connections to BART and Caltrain East Bay service. However, trains from the Geary metro should not run across the Bay themselves. The design and operation of the Geary metro and the transbay tunnel will be optimized by keeping these their own projects.
It's not nearly the worst thing in here, but would these board-premeetings, to do the real discussions behind closed doors, even be legal?
This Part 1 discusses how we should run trains as frequently as technically possible on the Geary metro, and size platforms accordingly, to reduce station size and cost. That will help enable us to build the many stations the Geary corridor deserves, to maximize access. medium.com/@infrastruct...
The SFCTA has started plans for a Geary metro anew, completing a four-year preliminary study requested by Supervisor Melgar. We now need to motivate politicians to find $15 million for the next, more technical analysis. Getting this done now could pull the completion of the project forward by years.
A Geary metro is among the highest-ridership projects available to build in the US. Rapid transit on this route has been planned for 95 years but has never been built, as plans have repeatedly failed to secure funding.
Re: emergency braking for service headways: Trains don't use emergency braking for regular stops (hence the name), but the reason they can run as close together as they can is that, should it be needed, emergency braking is available at any time.
Yeah it's an unfortunate coincidence. No connection. "Network state" is a great term for what they're describing, but I wonder if we could come up with something as descriptive that isn't linguistically poisoned. dot.ca.gov/-/media/dot-...
- BART should just say "we don't like this idea," not cite nebulous "operational impacts." Would it be worth building platforms and adding 2 minutes to BART's runtime for three ACE trains a day? Absolutely not. Would it be worth it for 2-3 ACEs an hour? I think so!
- ACE trains at the hub would continue to San Jose. Chop 10 transfer minutes off these figures, and likely 5-10 more from nonstop service. - With a Shinn hub, twice as many ACE trains would connect to BART and twice as many ACE trains would continue to San Jose. That's nowhere in the analysis.
I do have nitpicks about the study itself, though. - Zoning is mutable. - Something industrial was always going to go here per zoning, with attendant construction impacts. - Rent increase from amenity effects does not belong in an amenity planning document; it belongs in a rent control policy.
The small Niles Canyon capacity increase project fell through, so the Union City hub is on hold anyway. A future, comprehensive program for the corridor could bring the Shinn Hub back, but this development will make the available space smaller.
This is a very clean and clear report, and although the numbers are focused on NYC, the principles are relevant to all cities.
It's so odd. I've boarded and alighted at West Glacier, and it's just a hand up to the baggage car like at staffed stations. If all that's needed is to check whether there's a walking pad at a reasonable height below the baggage car door, that should be straightforward to check.
Canada seems to be doing alright at this. dailyhive.com/vancouver/gn... dailyhive.com/vancouver/br...
I procrastinate public records requesting the 2009 Kiewit-Bombardier proposal, because I won't be able to handle it if it turns out it was cost-competitive and requested reasonable clarifications
Left NIMBY, it would appear, prefers a structural loss for our future taxation power over strategic compromise on transfer tax rates sfstandard.com/2026/06/25/b...
Everyone with a hand in replacing the bad all-in-one sink at the Powell BART restrooms with this nice commercial setup should be proud
I hope that the 13 new HAWK signals in Berkeley's bike plan update start to train drivers to comply with them. My pedestrian and bike experience with our two existing ones has been nervewracking, and I wish we could just hang three-color signals. They're at least better than RRFBs, on a bike.
There is a common white scaffold wrap product that is referred to as "shrink wrap." It comes off the roll pretty thin.
They have indeed broken ground. Here's a shot through the fence from last month. (Company personality-wise I could believe that the cost claim is exaggeration)
It's good that the Transbay Joint Powers Authority is deleting the DTX HSR platforms at 4th. The only reason for this stop was turning capacity at Transbay, which is moot with 2tph HSR in 2040 and future Link21 through-running. TJPA expects it will save $190M.
Looks like it, yes. Discussed in this other piece: www.railengineer.co.uk/next-steps-f...
Did y'all leave some junk test data in? Should be taken down promptly, to avoid influencing votes