UMTA R&D spend from 1972-1989. The amounts in the 1980s appear to be overstated as a lot of those projects were commissioned in the 1970s and were finishing up. Dollars are not adjusted for inflation.

New spend by the late 80s was down to $13m/yr, $3m/yr of which went into 'privatization' =>

The standard—and not totally incorrect—narrative is that the US basically abandoned transit after WWII, but there was a real revival underway in the 1970s that stalled out by the mid-1980s as the political winds shifted. Things have improved since, but we've never fully recovered that ambition.

One could also argue HBLR is there in HudCo...

Especially with the headways on all the branches being like 2-3 tph. Very much feels like a tiny version of Melbourne or something not something like even Tyne and Wear

Suburban railway!

True!

Isn't one line of Athens' metro quite old?

Sioux City, Iowa, Baltimore, off the top of my head?

And Liverpool had an El!

Notably much smaller than Sydney or Melbourne, though. A city of that size in the UK that isn't London just isn't a thing

Sure, as I said nobody would build this today like this. There's little value in closing one of these two if you don't build a proper replacement

It would be a genuinely marginal speed improvement lol

I'm saying you'd build a new station with entrances at each end, such that one end is Beverley and the other is Cortelyou. Nobody loses service and the train's faster and more accessible

Okay yeah nobody would accept this compromise and frankly it would be a silly one to make (a new station between the two would easily cover both!)

Sure you'd never build it today that way. But also the costs of trying to fit a new, accessible station in such a constrained ROW would also surely outweigh the maintenance savings of closing one

Neither of those stations are even like in the top ten least used on the subway!

Both of the aforementioned stations get over a thousand daily boardings if not literally thousand(s).

NJT actually had quite a few stops without TVMs until the latest batch of machines showed up (now it's just Monmouth Park, which is understandable)

this is a dark day for california's many historic downtown parking lots and strip malls

I literally owe my career in transportation to TransportationCamp, and helping organize the revival of TransportationCamp DC is the least I can do. If you're interested too, please express your interest!

Chilly evening on the Babylon branch (that bright splotch is a quite scenic moonrise)

The Guardian: "The move is Trump’s latest effort to weaponize the Department of Justice to punish political rivals."

That, my friends, is how you do journalism in this era.

www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

CHI OSSE SAVE US
SAVE US CHI OSSE

Another feather in my cap about how losing the UMTA and its huge research arm was the true origin of the American inability to build transit at reasonable cost