Austria has the most night trains in Europe. This one has “mini cabins” (bed capsules) as well as sleeper rooms and coach seats. (DW Planet A, Deutche Welle’s environmental channel)
The train is an ÖBB Nightjet, a set of overnight routes (in German, with map) serving Austria, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Croatia. EuroNight extends it via partner agencies to more cities in Croatia, Czechia, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia.
Soft-spoken bedtime story about a conductor on a night train from Vienna to Naples. (Stephen Dalton Sleep Stories)
This is an open thread.
“LA Metro is a Front Row Seat to LA’s Biggest Problems”
Excellent video. Many of his points are applicable to the Seattle area.
https://youtu.be/O6txggtXAzY
Thanks for posting it. Is there an overview anywhere about what’s good and what’s bad in LA transit? It’s easy to look at a few station areas and think everything is as car-dependent as that, but at the same time I hear a million people live in a core area that’s as dense as Capitol Hill. That sounds like a lot of people can live within that area and not have to go outside it that often, except maybe for work.
Near the end of the video he shows a walkable neighborhood with east Asian restaurants, and says there are many similar neighborhoods in LA. But is it on a metro station? Can I take the metro to it? Those are the kinds of things car-free people think about and want to know about. So what percent of LA is walkable vis non-walkable? What percent of station areas have a reasonable amount of housing? I imagine the Red Line does, since it’s the big expensive line, supposedly for the densest corridor.
Second, that plethora of surface parking lots and gas status, while depressing to be in and sad that it’s taken so long to reform them while life becomes unaffordable, are nevertheless vast opportunities for infill development that won’t displace anybody’s single-family house and generate the biggest NIMBY opposition.
So why are those parking lots and gas stations at metro stations still just parking lots and gas stations? Is that the maximum zoning in that location? Are those commercial lots eligible for the same almost-zero property tax rates that longtime homeowners have? Are the owners just obstinate? Or are they waiting to retire?
This video makes a ton of good observations on different transit topics!
As much as these topics also exist in Seattle, I don’t think most of them are as bad as they are in LA.
I see one common underlying lesson to it all:
Decisions around transit are not giving enough importance to valuable rider experience and insight. Elected officials usually aren’t riding transit every day. As Board members, they are making decisions based on whoever lobbies them instead — along with some idealistic vision of a well-behaved populace that they don’t associate with daily transit travel . They put way too much effort into building new shiny features for photo ops — but don’t see and thus ignore daily operational issues that can make transit use unattractive and sometimes scary.
One example, LA Metro is spending billions on planning new rail lines but continues to act like fixing the existing A/E surface junction problem at Flower and Washington is not as important. At least ST’s 1 Line/ 2 Line junction isn’t in a street median with traffic!
The one thing that LA Metro does have going for it is that they actually run their system. This is the area where I think Sound Transit in particular will struggle in years to come as they have now moved from mostly builder to mostly operator. Making systemic operational changes at Sound Transit will require a needless extra step that adds delay and cost until that institutional arrangement changes. ST should start running its own operations.
Finally, transit agencies should not have to be primarily accountable for resolving all of society’s urban challenges. A jurisdiction boundary is not the paid fare zone demarcation or future turnstile. I once heard a transit agency planner say off the record “when a citizen boards a transit vehicle, they cease to be a resident in (that city’s) eyes.” Police should be patrolling trains and buses like they do local streets. A lack of clean bathrooms is a community problem and not just a transit agency problem. Poor land use around an expensive rail station wasn’t created by the transit agency but instead created by the local jurisdiction (who often ironically will mobilize forces to argue that they deserve a station without a companion commitment to developing healthy ridership demand because they got it added in a referendum).
It angers me when a local jurisdiction blames a transit agency like ST or LA Metro for obnoxious drug use or crime on a train when it’s their own law enforcement that’s ultimately failing. Ideally, I think that that jurisdictions should colocate their police departments within a train station!
Am I the only one tired of the naloxone PSAs on Link? Carry naloxone so I can revive my friend when he ODs. Umm no my friends are functional adults, they have jobs and lives, they aren’t on fent. Most people on Link seem the same. Oooh look, a phone number I can call to have a volunteer stay on the line with me when I shoot up. What a delightful service!!
You know what I see on billboards when I drive my car? Ads for plumbers and insurance and Chipotle. Shit that normal people might buy, services that I might use.
What a sad take.
Bruce has a point – the naloxone PSAs help perpetuate the stereotype that transit is for poor people including druggies.
I haven’t seen nalaxone posters on Link, nor audio announcements about it. But I have seen billboards saying “Are your APIs ready for AI agents?”, marijuana ads, and ads where I can’t even tell what the product is or what I’d use it for.
I’ve seen all these and nalaxone posters too. I’m not sure whether the AI posters are more frequent or whether they just stick in my memory more.
There seems to be naloxone posters on many boarded up businesses downtown. Right next to the lime posters saying don’t ride scooters on the sidewalks. I i don’t really ride link that much these days so I can’t comment on that part.
New permits to debut for some Sound Transit Link park-and …
Paid permit parking coming to local Sound Transit Link …
Good addition.
Paid parking permits should’ve been done long back.
But they need to find a better enforcement for the free carpool permits.
Has anyone else noticed that CT Route 908 is now on Pantograph? I saw the website and it had the 908, according to the route map it will stop mid-route at UW Bothell (what!?). Route info is also on Ride Schedules but not on the official Community Transit website. According to Ride Schedules the route is starting June 15th which I find very weird…
SOMEONE PLEASE EXPLAIN WHAT IS HAPPENING!!!!
Also the 908 will have 5 trips in each direction peak.