To avoid congestion charges, I'm parking in Pennsylvania and taking a train in.
The interviews with clueless/entitled people are hilarious and usually end up with the same conclusion- guess I'll have to walk/take the train/subway instead.
- Rich guy in a multimillion house on Central Park mad he can't drive 18 blocks to see his kids without paying $9 each time.
- Woman who gets dropped off on 61st and now has to walk one block to her gym (reminds me of people who circle the lot for a closer spot outside their gym so they don't have to walk as far)
- Cop with a placard interviewed outside his double parked car saying how unfair it is, maybe he'll take the train and only drive when there's less traffic at night and it's cheaper
- Earnest one, electrician who does have to drive in realizes that an hour shorter commute is totally worth the $9
London has had congestion pricing since 2003, and I think for most people, you never even think about it. I've paid it (literally) twice, I think. Both times when I had to collect relatives from central London train stations who were unable to navigate the tube system.
People were absolutely furious--including a lot of people I know--when the local council introduced "low traffic neighbourhoods" during COVID,* but I literally never hear anyone complaining about congestion charges.
* I'm absolutely in favour, in principle, but they were very poorly implemented locally, and even as someone who mostly cycles and walks they had a distinctly negative impact on my life.
Apparently TikTokers are furious and are calling for a "boycott", defined as... taking the train or rideshare.
Beat the system!
I was just noting on Bluesky that almost certainly thanks to the congestion pricing, the center of London seemed far less full of cars than I would have expected for a megacity of its type. (And this was a hair before ULEZ!)
Absolutely love OP.3. Shared with my mother there, and she signed instantly. Though I don't think it would be light rail - that would be a little slow for this distance of service. (Light rail is pokey even for the 13 miles from Seatac to downtown Seattle.) Regular old heavy rail seems fine to me, interurban style, and is consistent with the petition language, which reasonably doesn't specify tech, just "fast, frequent, and reliable".
I was commuting in London every day by bike when the congestion charge zone was expanded westward to cover a chunk of my commuting route - the difference was amazing. Suddenly the roads had about half the traffic they had had the day before.
re: 5
Yeah. I think it's hard to say how much is congestion charging and how much isn't as London isn't generally very car friendly anyway as even fairly major thoroughfares in central London are quite small, congested and indirect compared to cities that got bigger later. But I'd bet that the congestion charging and ULEZ are keeping the lid on things, for sure.
London also has a very good transport network, especially after the Elizabeth line opened, so you are almost always quicker to use that network.
even fairly major thoroughfares in central London are quite small, congested and indirect compared to cities that got bigger later
Compare to anywhere in lower Manhattan in, well, my entire life.
I did see a funny line yesterday to the effect of, "New Yorkers be like 'If you can survive here, you can survive anywhere!' and then not know how to drive."
6: there was a moderate amount of momentum circa 2010-2014, and then something happened that made it fall apart, and now it's being resurrected.
It's such a bummer that it's so hard. There are existing rail lines on this whole stretch! You just need stations, trains, and general buy-in!
Plano had a nice little museum about their rail line with passenger service to Dallas. It was across the street from an extremely hipster shopping area.
Not quite the same but everyone at my local ski resort complains about the congestion pricing for parking but then decides to take the shuttle to avoid the canyon drive and the cost of parking. So, it works!
Congestion pricing is great and an example of a policy that is unpopular but really, truly does work well enough that it's worth the political backlash to put it in place.
I've mentioned our local rail fantasy before: https://www.bigskyrail.org/ Oh, I'd like taking a train to Helena. I go there 2 or 3 times a year, depending on my cases. But if it's going to be one train each way per day, or maybe 3 days a week, it's completely useless to me. It might matter to college kids going home on breaks, but not if they're from Great Falls. Or Havre, which is on the other rail line.
It's be great to have an Acela-like set-up -- not just speed but frequency. But that's just completely infeasible.
On the Texas one, I imagine that there would be some real work involved in getting the track up to passenger standards, not just freight, but what do I know.
15: I like it, but I just wish that the public transit in Boston hadn't been allowed to decay so much that that it's unreliable.
Also - it would be great if the trains were more frequent and North and South station were connected. As it is now, I go into Boston less often than I would like because of the hassle.
16: They already share with Amtrak, so at least some of those hurdles are covered.
13: That was a terrific little museum! And the people who ran it were cutely enthused. My better half talked trains with them and we wound up getting a fair amount of free swag.
Had hip pizza afterward which was, in fact, very good.
Sorry that I missed you! Guess I should have hung out longer.
We were there around Easter. In 2022.
That would be a lot of pizza.
17: Yeah, having reliable public transportation as an option is the other piece that makes congestion pricing work.
In theory the congestion charges can be used as a revenue source to improve the transit system, but in practice there's a timing issue there.
25: They can bond against the revenue and improve that timing (somewhat).
If they borrow precious metals, that's gold bond power.
On topic, because the Biden Administration is decongesting Guantanamo. It's a decent use of January 6.
31 is my thoughts exactly. Congratulations.
So glad to hear it, Charley.
Fuck. Seeing how Biden has used the office makes me wish we could have gotten two terms with him at full strength.
OP3: When my wife and I were figuring out where to live, I'd be commuting to Philadelphia, and she'd be commuting to Glassboro State College. We found a home a bike ride from a planned stop on the Glassboro-Camden line, which went straight to the college campus, so we could commute by light rail. The rail line existed and was in use for freight, and there were even some stations still in existence from an earlier era of train commuting.
That was 1991, and the line was scheduled to open in 1994. The plan was that she would drive to Glassboro, and I would drive to Camden and take the train in from there, for a few years until it opened.
She commuted by car for about 20 years until a job change. The rail line was visible from her office. I commuted by car and train for 28 years, when I got laid off and ended up working from home. This takes us to 2019.
Wikipedia says it's now scheduled to open in 2028. I'm not holding my breath.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glassboro%E2%80%93Camden_Line
A bunch of this stuff wouldn't have happened if a Democrat were the next president. He can do whatever he wants now and no one will remember in 4 years.
It was pretty funny that he gave Presidential Medals of Freedom to Hillary Clinton, Liz Cheney, and George Soros. But he could have made his feelings a little clearer if he also gave medals to Jean Carroll. and Stormy Daniels.
I can't stop thinking about how four years ago Trump had presided over a collapsing economy, massive corruption, covid, and a pathetic attempt at insurrection, and was about to walk off with the nations classified documents, and Biden let him walk.
That was it. Despite the decades of tactical and strategic fuck ups and betrayals by every Democratic faction we had a chance to decapitate the personalist movement.
Russia was never going to stop. Trump was never going to stop. The would be oligarchs who have been trying for over a century to dismember the US weren't going to stop.
Our party of timid institutionalists, devoted as they are to incumbent protection and elite impunity with a sideline in elder care otoh
40: what should Biden have done? (Assume for a moment that he's limited to actions that are legal)
The thing I keep coming down on is that Merrick Garland should have moved faster. The Jan 6 prosecution didn't legally fail, even with the Supreme Court insanity, Trump ran out the clock. Who could have made that happen? Hard to tell in detail for a complicated process, but Biden certainly had some level of influence, if only at the level of appointing someone different with a greater sense of urgency to begin with.
I have a link that summarizes how lucky Trump got across all the court cases that I've got in the queue, and one of the points is Garland waiting 22 fucking months to appoint Jack Smith. It's so fucking infuriating.
Alvin Bragg still the only one who laid a finger on him, and he didn't get to start working until two years into the Biden administration.
And that lack of urgency is a mistake I absolutely might have made in Biden's shoes -- I would not have guessed (did not guess) that Trump could recover electorally from a loss and then from the January 6 insurrection. Deciding to make everything look as measured and non-retaliatory as possible, even at the expense of getting a successful and timely prosecution, is a decision that makes sense to me. But in retrospect it was a terrible one.
Belatedly, I would like to apologise for an error in a previous comment which fell short of the expected standard. It would take a total of roughly eighty tonnes of pure alcohol (burned with cryogenic liquid oxygen) to deposit Taylor Swift, contained in a suitable spacecraft, on the surface of the moon. This is about 100,000 litres.
Americans collectively consume this much alcohol roughly every fifteen minutes, not (as previously stated) every eighteen seconds.
I apologise for my failing and will be sure to correct it.
45 exactly this which means the answer to 44 is not appoint Merrick Fucking Garland as a consolation prize
25 and 26: I mean, sure, but thus has been decades in the making and the T had been underfunded. They were saddled with Big Dig debt that went to build roads and a bridge and given revenue from the sales tax right about when tax free e-commerce took off.
I'm mostly just down about the lack of visionary investment in public transit. Plus more management. We have a really good manager now, but he has a big mess to clean up.
45, 48: Agree that most everyone thought T was done. Garland could really cement his negative reputation by sitting on the Jack Smith report.
52: indirectly yes; by living in a non-US country and doing his drinking there, Barry is helpfully not depleting the US alcohol supply.
I will have to run the numbers for sending Taylor Swift to Mars via ethalox rocket, because the concinnity of calling the mission "The Ares Tour" is just too good to miss.
I think a significantly complicating factor (but also one that should have increased the sense of urgency) was the significant support in portions of the FBI, DOJ, and other security services for Trump and J6.There was an article shortly after J6 (that I cannot find right now) that discussed a message board used by members of various security services on which there was a lot of cheering on of J6 while it was happening. And this resistance manifested itself in a lot of ways such as the internal resistance in the FBI for the Mar-A-Lago search.
Myself, I think there were ample grounds to shitcan Christopher Wray and I wish Biden had done it. Sometime early in 2021 Wray (and sadly a "non-political" deputy) briefed Congress on the FBI J6 preparation and response and the thing was a ludicrous mess of half-truths, deflections and defensive posturing. Ample grounds to replace him. Would it have made a difference? Who knows? Wray not a true believer of course, but I think overly protective and sympathetic to Rs.
In the end, I think there needed to be an impeachment conviction. A political solution to a political problem. But alas.
I am not sure if McConnell had whipped votes for it (or voted for it himself) if they would have gotten there given the cover of "not even in office anymore." At the time I gave Pelosi slack for not pursuing impeachment immediately given my assessment of her having generally good judgment* (but I think on legislation more than politics). But in retrospect I think they should have gone immediately into proceedings before the Rs could rally the troops and coerce around their story. The shock of J6 was such that Rs and their media were stumbling around trying to get a spin that would stick and were in actual disarray. Would it have succeeded? Probably not.
*I do wonder if part of the calculation was that the guy was still President and absent invoking the 25th who knew what he might do if there was an active and potentially successful impeachment (the first one was always doomed so T knew he could just wait that one out).
50: When Merrick Garland was appointed, I honestly thought it was good because he had strong reason to be personally righteously pissed off. I was wrong.
I was just reading this post arguing that Garland was not apathetic, he was wrestling with a slow process. I don't know how convincing it is, but worth reading: https://www.emptywheel.net/2024/12/30/the-opportunity-costs-of-conspiracy-theories-about-merrick-garland/
59: Yeah, Marcy--who I generally like in--has dug in way deep on defending Garland. She seems correct on many particulars, but I think she misses the forest for the trees on this one. really interested in what happens to this report. I suspect heavily redacted and/or significant portions withheld.
Speaking of useless reports, DOJ IG Horwitz(sp?) put out a completely stupid and relatively brief internal report on J6. More on him some other time--a guy held up in the feckless media as a bastion of professional nonpartisanship, but his work has been heavily slanted. Grassley a strong supporter is a hint.
Emptywheel is a diehard Garland and DOJ defender, I have a hard time taking her seriously on this
He'd still likely be elected president even if he had to campaign from jail. It's not like people were going to the rallies anyway.
61: Yes, she is not doing herself any favors on this one.
Having not followed Marcy's defense of Garland I appreciated that someone made the effort -- even if you think, on balance it's just a reason to raise you estimate of his performance from a 2 to a 4 (on a 10 point scale).
More chances for Garland to show himself as Judge Cannon attempts to block Smith's report from coming out.
Well, I just got back from the county Dems meeting. It didn't really crash and burn until somebody thought it would be a good idea for everyone to share their opinions about the election.
"Hey, I bet everyone's wondering if the three most toxic assholes in the room have opinions on this topic!"