Yes, dispense with the pretty pictures, and things like an inane plan to turn the BQE into an autonomous self powered three lane Uber funded artisanal pod racing track or whatever that part said and build some fucking trains.
Not supertrains or hyperloop trains or complicated bullshit, straightforward European style trains that go from place to place fast and on time that we as a species figured out how to make work at least 20 years ago. Maybe 80 years ago.
Not fucking hanging trams across the Verazzano bridge. A train, on the ground or in a tunnel, with rails, and a place to sit, that goes fast, like every other fucking advanced country. An express train from the central business district to the airport. Seriously how fucking hard is this.
Here in NYC people actually like trains and will use them, they'll increase property values and bring more commerce and better quality of life. It's just an abject failure of our political system that we can't figure out how to build them in this region.
Instead, you should be like us Houstonians and spend a billion billion dollars moving main street 15 feet to the right and plop a 5mph tram on top of it. A tram that has to stop at red lights. A tram that gets stuck in intersections for 15+ minutes blocking other tram and car traffic. A tram that in downtown shares a lane with car traffic, which never causes accidents.
I feel similarly whenever I ride my bike in Mountain View. Awesome that we have bike lanes and all the lights here have sensors. Not so awesome that nobody realized bikes need to trip the sensors also.
Interestingly, Amsterdam has lots of street-level trams that share the road (without protective dividers in some of the busiest parts of the city) not just with cars but with millions of bicycles and pedestrians.
I'm kind of shocked that this would be allowed in Amsterdam, one of the most bike-friendly cities on the planet, considering how easy it is for bicycles to get their wheels stuck in the tram tracks while trying to cross them, and what a hazard trams are to bicycles and pedestrians.
The risk of injury is further aggravated by many of the pedestrians being drunk, stoned, or high on a large variety of substances easily available in the city, and many of them being tourists who are unfamiliar with the city and not used to expecting random trams popping out of the middle of nowhere while they're walking down an otherwise pedestrian- and bicycle-populated street.
Not supertrains or hyperloop trains or complicated bullshit, straightforward European style trains that go from place to place fast and on time that we as a species figured out how to make work at least 20 years ago. Maybe 80 years ago.
Not fucking hanging trams across the Verazzano bridge. A train, on the ground or in a tunnel, with rails, and a place to sit, that goes fast, like every other fucking advanced country. An express train from the central business district to the airport. Seriously how fucking hard is this.
Here in NYC people actually like trains and will use them, they'll increase property values and bring more commerce and better quality of life. It's just an abject failure of our political system that we can't figure out how to build them in this region.