my local park is full of hundreds of snow sculptures and someone has been adding museum labels
24.02.2026 19:42
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my local park is full of hundreds of snow sculptures and someone has been adding museum labels
New York-ass staff never been to the damn desert
I like to remind people that one of the final impetuses to building the subway was the Blizzard of 1888.
The storm was bad enough that power lines fell and even the els had trouble running.
As a result, NY began moving power and eventually transport underground, so the city can keep functioning.
So we’ve partnered with Morgan Freeman’s production company. No biggie. Details below. ⬇️
open.substack.com/pub/jasonher...
Abstract for Transportation for the Abundant Society: A growing chorus known as the abundance movement seeks to overcome artificial scarcity in the built environment—especially housing. Yet this movement’s signature goal of increasing housing production collides with a central driver of scarcity: development restrictions rooted in traffic concerns. Advocates often assume that building more housing will generate support for needed transportation reform. Experience suggests otherwise. In auto-dependent regions, adding housing without reconfiguring transportation tends to reinforce the logic of restriction. Unlocking abundance’s promised feedback loops requires re-grounding transportation policy in its relationship to land use. This Article makes two contributions. First, it introduces into legal analysis a core urban-planning framework: transportation accessibility, which evaluates system performance by users’ ability to reach destinations. Though facially modest, anchoring policy in accessibility would depart sharply from a century of practice, with significant implications across state and local government law. Second, drawing on 13 original interviews with current and former transportation officials, the Article develops a novel account of institutional barriers to reform. Far from the marble corridors and mahogany courtrooms where law is articulated, transportation policy is functionally made in the unglamorous offices of state and local government. We call this institutional crucible—shaped by agency culture and industry convention as well as hard law—“transportation policy linoleum.” It helps explain why proven, seemingly unobjectionable reforms routinely wither. The Article closes with a policy playbook designed to help accessibility break through the linoleum and deliver abundance.
Table of Contents CONTENTS INTRODUCTION 3 I. ABUNDANCE AND TRANSPORTATION POLICY 6 A. The Rise of Abundance 7 B. Transportation as a Binding Constraint 10 II. THE PURPOSE OF TRANSPORTATION POLICY 17 A. What Counts as Success? 18 B. From Mobility to Access 20 C. Transportation Policy Spillovers 24 1. Housing affordability 24 2. Climate mitigation 28 3. Roadway safety 29 III. OPERATIONAL BARRIERS TO REFORM 32 A. Network Effects and System Interdependence 33 B. Operational Complexity and Risk 34 IV. LEGAL BARRIERS TO REFORM 36 A. NEPA and the Dawn of Conservation Primacy 36 B. Judges as Planners: California’s CEQA Regime 40 C. Judges as Planners Around the Country 44 1. Minnesota and comprehensive planning 44 2. Washington, D.C. and density review 46 3. Montana and constitutional penumbra 46 V. TRANSPORTATION POLICY LINOLEUM 48 A. Policy “In Books” and “In Action”: 13 Interviews 48 B. Fragmentation and Coordination Failures 49 C. Path Dependence and Institutional Lock-In 53 D. Legal Risk and Defensive Administration 55 VI. A POLICY PLAYBOOK FOR ACCESS 57 A. Behavioral Data as Participation 57 1. Ex ante participation 58 2. Ex post participation 59 B. Realistic Alternatives Modeling 59 C. A More Honest Cost-Benefit Analysis 60 1. Requiring cost-benefit discipline 61 2. Accounting for opportunity costs and externalities 63 CONCLUSION 64
ToC continued, plus first bit of text from article: A central claim of the emerging “abundance agenda” is that in the physical world, more is more: more housing, more clean energy, and more infrastructure to support both. Abundance brings the American promise of plenty into policy, arguing that government should expand capacity—so that individuals can access the good life and society can advance climate goals, scientific discovery, and prosperity. In both its academic and popular expressions, the ideologically diverse movement contends that law has created artificial scarcity and that the remedy is to loosen outdated constraints and rebuild state capacity so government can build and approve major projects—housing, transportation, energy, health—more quickly and reliably. Abundance draws on a substantial literature diagnosing law-made supply constraints in American public policy. Its core question is pragmatic: how to clear regulatory blockages to enable more building. Scholars have long identified such blockages at the intersection of land use and transportation, from highways to high-speed rail. Yet even improved megaprojects would not meet most Americans’ daily transportation needs. And the connection between transportation policy and abundance remains underdeveloped, even as political interest grows.
✨ introducing… ✨
🌇 Transportation for the Abundant Society 🚅
"Abundance" says our problem is artificial scarcity—especially housing. But you can’t build your way out if transportation policy still treats traffic flow as sacred.
Transportation is the binding constraint. ssrn.com/abstract=538...
Everybody knows about the great Irish famine. TIL that the share of the 1845 potato harvest that was lost in Belgium (90%) was 3 times higher in Ireland - but the plague lasted much longer in Ireland. One of the numerous aspects of the plague that is hard to imagine for the modern mind, /
This thread about people showing up at the Surprise, AZ council meeting to oppose the recent DHS purchase of a warehouse to use as a camp is worthwhile reading. This guy’s comments are wonderful.
I enjoyed this piece. One thing I'd like to add to the "moonshot" agenda that really feels very achievable: there should be a federal program to support really good service on key corridors in smaller cities. Something I wrote about years ago. itineranturbanist.wordpress.com/2017/08/13/b...
My better half (who is not on BlueSky) wrote this moving essay about the social service center for immigrants that her mom founded in MN--now at the epicenter of the MAGA attack on Minneapolis's Somali-American community.
mariemyungoklee.substack.com/p/my-mother-...
One downside of reducing enviro/climate conversations to either dollars and cents or tons of CO2 is that the potential for clean energy to fundamentally transform our relationships and experience of the world is pushed out of the picture.
A young Claudette Colvin circa 1950s
A photo of Claudette Colvin in her 80s in black and a vibrant lime green and black floral top
"I knew then and I know now, when it comes to justice, there is no easy way to get it. You can't sugarcoat it. You have to take a stand and say, 'This is not right.' And I did."
Rest in power, Ms. Claudette Colvin.
The fight for equality continues.
❤️
Civil rights pioneer Claudette Colvin has died. She was 86. Her 1955 arrest for refusing to give up her seat on a segregated Montgomery bus helped spark the modern civil rights movement. n.pr/4bhqaK7
"Colvin, who died on Jan. 13 at the age of 86, was for decades an unsung hero...she became one of the plaintiffs in Browder v Gayle, the landmark 1956 U.S. Supreme Court case that declared segregation on public transportation unconstitutional" @capitalb.bsky.social
capitalbnews.org/claudette-co...
Are you a PhD student working on a dissertation that engages with the history of the city or metropolitan planning (anytime or place)? Apply to participate in the inaugural Alison Isenberg Dissertation Colloquium at the SACRPH Conference in Cincinnati on Oct 15! Please repost and share offline.
A Waymo drove onto the light rail tracks in Phoenix and the passenger had to abandon ship. The rails are curb separated throughout, other than intersections. This is incredibly dangerous for everyone.
Today is the 150th anniversary of the birth of Carter G. Woodson.
Woodson was born December 19, 1875, in New Canton, Virginia, 35 miles south of my home.
In my work as a historian, no historian’s example has served me better than Woodson’s. ...
My book, The Uncommon Knowledge of Elinor Ostrom, and all @islandpress.bsky.social e-books, is on sale for $6.99 through 12/19.
Ostrom's groundbreaking ideas showed that the "tragedy of the commons" is not inevitable. Communities can sustain their shared resources through collective action. 1/2
This is going to be a fun event where—unlike at the @nationalacademies.org Transportation Research Board—we're going to actually talk about issues of equity, justice, and mobility. Register if you can make it to DC in January!
Free public registration is now open for the Crossroads Convening on Transportation Equity and Justice, 1/15/26 at the MLK Library in DC.
Registration is free. We've got three sessions across four tracks. Confirmed speakers include Robert Bullard, Anna Zivarts, Naomi Doerner, and Gretchen Goldman.
A magazine cover, with a single illustration covering the entire page, and no headlines over the top. A hand illustration -- perhaps watercolors -- shows a snowy day and an empty road heading towards the viewer. In the distance, a cozy christmas tree store surrounded by green trees, some cut and some still standing, with a cozy cabin behind. In the foreground, a jaunty woman with hat and sunglasses and scarf bicycles toward us, with a christmas tree horizontally held on the front rack of her bike and a black scotty dog running alongside. She and the shop and the cabin are all in pastels; pinks and purples and white. Her white scarf and hat match the white snow on the store and cabin. It is a cheerful, jaunty, undaunted tone, and evenly spaced big snowflakes float down over it all. At the top the magazine name, The New Yorker, the date Dec. 19, 1942, and the Price: 15 cents. At the bottom is the signature of the artist, Garrett Price https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garrett_Price
It's time once again for my annual #treebybike post. This is the 12/19/42 cover of @newyorker.com, so one full year after the attack on Pearl Harbor. This would be the first real Christmas alone, or without a family member, for millions in the US. Gas and tire rationing had begun earlier that year.🗃️
You can help Bolts continue to provide crucial coverage of local elections. Here's how:
- Repost this = I donate $1.
- Follow @boltsmag.org = I donate $1.
- Donate (link below) + tell me how much = I match your donation.
(Donate monthly = I match a year's worth)
NEW: Epstein survivors release the most powerful PSA I have ever seen.
Make this go viral so every member of the House of Representatives sees it.
Thinking about picking up my book? Do it this week! all @islandpress.bsky.social print titles are 50% off until 11/16!
islandpress.org/books/when-d...
also lots of other great books to grab as well -- thread below with some links of my favorites
Rail entrance with enormous line symbols
BRT (line J) entrance with microscopic sign hidden among trees
Heavy rail wayfinding vs BRT wayfinding. Union Station, Los Angeles
five months after a driver hit me and my dog, MCDOT has again refused to install a stop sign at the intersection, calling it “unwarranted.” they will build a crosswalk, which should already have been there! it took a month to get this response. i am furious and, frankly, defeated
First day of #WeekWithoutDriving 2025, are you ready? disabilityrightswa.org/how-would-yo...
Only an administration intent on committing war crimes in the present and future would stoop to calling Wounded Knee a "battle" rather than what it truly was: a massacre of over 250 Lakotas, mainly women, children, and the elderly. 1/
Breaking character: Ken White has a fantastic post about how "free speech culture" undermines free speech. It's something I've thought about a lot before, but Ken knows way more about it than I do and explains it really well.
www.popehat.com/p/how-free-s...
Belated congratulations to Anna Zivarts @nondriver.bsky.social on her book When Driving is Not an Option from @islandpress.bsky.social !
Her book sparked some thoughts about building a transportation system that works for everyone.
islandpress.org/books/when-d...
As a needs assessment, her list benefits all. Most drivers don’t drive all the time, and most drivers will experience times when they or family members are nondrivers. Hurdles abound these days to inclusive transport, but there is little to stop transport insiders from adopting her outline of needs.
