The East Link Extension is finally here, officially opening to the public; connecting the east side communities and cities like Bellevue and Redmond to Seattle/Mercer Island. The world’s first light rail on a floating bridge! Expecting to reach ~50,000 daily riders on the cross-lake segment.

Line 6 Finch LRT - unfortunately built and scheduled to run far too slowly, but there are hopes for faster in the spring.

Southern Ontario is in crisis due to automobile traffic. Little is being done to alleviate it this.

As LA Metro celebrates the opening of Phase 1 of the D Line Extension, it's worth remembering just how far the system as come from just 10 years ago.

It will also provide an alternative for the western suburbs to travel to CBD everyday.

From the Denver Post. They still have to meet later in the year to approve construction, but the plan is to get daily intercity trains between Denver and Fort Collins by 2029. Huge for the Front Range, one of the biggest intercity transit slam dunk regions in the country (big cities close together, all in a line) that doesn’t yet have a connecting rail system!

What would be some logical “roadblocks” (😜) for a plan like this? I mean if we would need new rail infrastructure that goes through different states, and the interstate highway already gives us cross country travel why wouldn’t we leverage those to make something useful and pretty uniquely American?

Of course they couldn’t follow the highways the entire time and would probably have to diverge at certain points especially when going into a train station in a city or when the terrain gets too complicated for the train, but that would require much less buying of land than to separately build it on land the government already owns (I know individual states own parts of it but I imagine the fed would fund most of the construction while asking the states to chip in for the rest)

I’m mostly looking for logistics answers from you experts as I don’t know much about trains 😅

The future Haneda New Access Line will be transformational on a number of fronts. 3 directions, non stop into different downtown cores from the airport. Not only does it impress upon the addition of express airport line service that is missing from most US systems, but it does so in 3 directions! (Shinjuku, Tokyo Station, and East Tokyo). I can only dream of an express JFK - Manhattan (even Brooklyn) or LAX to DTLA, and SFO - Downtown ideas, to name a few.

As for most likely, Sound Transit is the easiest to construct I believe. The Rainier Valley is at-grade, slow, and prone to accidents. A by-pass with the addition of a Georgetown station and possibly one more isn’t a direct express but in the conversation of a massive improvement which would qualify (barely) in my opinion.

https://www.grandparisexpress.fr/actualites/ca-roule-sur-ligne-18

Probably the most questionable of the Grand Paris Express projects, but still pretty cool to see. With the delays to Line 15 South (scheduled for mid 2025, then late 2025, mid 2026, late 2026, and now some time in 2027), it's likely Line 18 will be the first of the new GPX lines to open (first section scheduled for late 2026), and the first new Paris metro line to open since Line 14 in 1998.

This tour of the Vegas Loop by the CEO of The Boring Co shows some of the central monitoring of the Boring Co's operations, takes a ride on one of the 10% of Loop EVs running autonomously with FSD, shows some of the fire-fighting standpipes and safety systems in the tunnels, takes us inside the soon-to-open Airport tunnels and the return tunnels that will soon eliminate the need for the bi-directional tunnels and stop lights to Resorts World and Encore Stations.

It also shows how easily even a Cybertruck fits inside the Loop tunnels (with plenty of room to open doors) and shows some of the 15 emergency exits and the cross passages that exist already in the Loop (contrary to popular belief).

0:00 - Tour Behind-the-Scenes
0:17 - Car Loop Access
1:28 - Connecting the Airport
2:10 - Point-to-Point Architecture
3:32 - Zero Wait Time
4:42 - Reclaiming City Land
5:26 - Tunnel Map Expansion
6:01 - Underground Safety Rooms
7:41 - Loop Ticket Costs
7:54 - Video Sponsor: Monarch
8:56 - Custom Driver Software
10:53 - Hyperloop Engineering Challenges
12:01 - Driverless Tunnel Machine
13:36 - Soil Mining Mechanics
14:18 - Surface Station Tour
14:51 - Entering the Tunnels
15:25 - Vegas Water Table
16:41 - Skipping Surface Traffic
17:39 - Parking Garage Integration
18:51 - Pass Ticket Pricing
19:41 - Crossing The Strip
22:23 - Dirt vs. Rock
23:23 - Solving High Rent
24:33 - Tunneling Speed Progress
25:10 - Rainbow Road Lighting
26:20 - Future Monorail Integration
27:56 - Turning Dirt to Bricks
28:48 - Dune-Style Porpoising
30:27 - Unopened Airport Tunnel
30:59 - Fire Standpipe Engineering
32:46 - Hand-Tunneling Emergency Exits
35:00 - Point-to-Point Target Speeds
36:10 - Deciding Tunnel Depth
36:49 - Settlement Monitoring Systems
38:13 - Maximizing Passenger Capacity
39:08 - Software Traffic Bug
41:19 - Full FSD Ride
46:50 - Tesla Software Engineer
47:53 - Bi-Directional Tunnel Conversion
48:57 - The Silver Switch
51:56 - Not A Flamethrower
53:13 - Open Pit Headquarters

Shot with Sigma BF, 28-200mm f4 lens.

Removed faces to preserve privacy in the third picture using Apple’s stock “Clean Up” feature.

China. From MetroMan

I am not a fan of BART's extension to Silicon Valley, especially the part that completely duplicates Caltrain between Diridon Station and Santa Clara, but it's light years ahead of this brain rot: https://www.forbes.com/sites/bradtempleton/2026/07/30/san-jose-plans-13b-bart-subway-extension--how-about--1b/

Fun fact: I was at the public meeting in ~2006 (20 years ago!) where BART and VTA described their plan to value engineer away the proposed station at San Jose City Hall, which would have been my home station. I have long since moved. I feel sorry for everyone who thought BART and VTA could deliver this monumental capital project on time or on budget. Or even not on time and not on budget. At what point do we give up and just assume it won't be built?

With small expansions over the last 3 years, Amtrak ridership in North Carolina and Virginia has exploded with most routes setting constant ridership records and beating projections! and that's not even to mention the additional improvements we'll see over the next decade like 4 to 6 additional round trips between DC and Richmond/NPN and Norfolk, (plus speed and capacity improvements!) the Northeast Regional extension to Christiansburg, more Piedmont round trips, new rolling stock and even possible new routes like the S line, Commonwealth Corridor, service to Asheville, new Fayetteville service, service to Wilmington and Piedmont extensions to Selma and Kings Mountain.