The coffee shop mentioned is Weston's. And the Starbucks is on Lawrence and Central.

I did hear that the little Jewel believes at least half of its customer base walks to the store. This despite having a massive parking lot.

So did we outsource labor data to ADP since the BLS is no longer producing timely reports?

Meanwhile we have a standalone coffee shop and cafe right across from the train station that does just fine without a drive thru.

I forget how many millions of dollars in revenues, but it was something like 75% of their sales was anticipated through the drive thru. They couldn't see any other way.

Sadly, it was approved by the alderman, who was fearful the building would just continue to sit vacant.

I used to sit on a zoning advisory board and we had a Starbucks proposal in front of us. The community was clear they didn't want a drive thru, despite the fact that Starbucks was rehabilitating a former drive thru restaurant.

Starbucks told us they couldn't make money without that drive thru.

The new mass transit bill authorizes a rail expansion study of the Metra Electric down to Kankakee.

This is going to be the big tell next year - who stays on the existing boards and who goes. And what is done with the service board executive directors? I don't see reforms happening with all of the same people.

I forgot to mention my personal bugaboo stations. Nagle Blue Line and, for shits and giggles, I added a stop at Gladstone Park to register my complaint that this station is really underserved with only peak period service.

LOL, I also placed an infill station at Gladstone Park to register my complaint that this station needs far more than just peak period service.

Yes, and some fairly hefty investments in UP's Villa Grove plant.

Thank you for your work. I'll look forward to your analysis.

It may be worth revisiting whether RLE should extend all the way to 135th St. 115th seems more reasonable from a ridership perspective.

...would require a massive infusion of cash to make up for farebox revenues that Iowa City Transit just didn't have to deal with. Before the free fare pilot, ICT fares were $1.

Iowa City Transit can provide free transit based on its unique population and job market conditions, its urban form and its lack of capital infrastructure.

This can be replicated, but under very particular market conditions. Blanket free bus solutions, such as those advocated by Mamdani in NYC...

And it works in this context. The university employs over 30k people, which is about 1 in 3 jobs in the Iowa City MSA. Those jobs are mostly centralized in a fairly dense campus in the center of Iowa City.

Transit is uniquely suited to serve places like this.

Cambus delivers more than 1M more trips annually than Iowa City Transit, which is a department of the City of Iowa City.

Free transit can work particularly well in certain places. University towns are one of them. Iowa City transit is just doing what Cambus had been doing for decades.

First, how could the NYT fail to mention the university's bus system, Cambus? It's the third largest transit system in Iowa, by ridership (annual unlinked passenger trips).

Cambus is free. It is also the largest transit system by ridership in Iowa City, with 2.6M UPT.

Also means you avoid the yards that light rail would require at either end.

These buses must be scheduled to bunch for capacity enhancement reasons. I jumped on the second bus and both were jammed.