City Rail Link opening date revealed as 13 September
City Rail Link opening date revealed as 13 September
Thirty-nine days.
rnz.co.nz
Evan Roberts
@evanrobertsnz.bsky.social
Social, demographic, & economic history @UMNews HMED & Population Studies. Coffee, photos, Dylan, urban & transit fan, road & trail runner. Constructive, loving critic of where I live (Minneapolis) and where I'm from (Wellington) @evanrobertsnz most places
Could hardly hear the monthly Awooo because there was an ambulance outside my office that seemingly had its reversing beep on for ~15 minutes while not actually going anywhere. 😥
American political spending is even more inefficient than its infrastructure spending, which is saying something.
#StupidSuez@diplomatofnight.com · 12h agoUnfathomable
I mean in fact air travel has gotten a lot better since 1986 because it is both more affordable and you are much less likely to die in a plane crash
Constantine@ajaxsinger.bsky.social · 17h agoFood, man. Food is so much better than it was in 1986. All of it. Poor-people food, restaurant food, fresh food, frozen food. Food is just a hell of a lot better.
My feelings about the Loons are now similar to how I feel about age group teams I support. They're struggling, they're trying to work it out. There's some talent, but also some issues. They'll get it together. Maybe. Someday. #mnufc
Remember everyone: if MNUFC wins Leagues Cup it’s a legitimate trophy and if another team wins Leagues Cup it’s a Mickey Mouse tournament
Got a new paper out today... "Urban areas with lower commute mode share by car and, to a lesser extent, lower VMT are most strongly associated with lower per capita transportation fatality rates." (and it's open access if you are the type of person who wants to read a research paper)
What drives urban transportation safety? Exploring the role of modal composition and travel exposure
Purpose. Past urban transportation safety efforts have largely focused on controlling road user behavior through tactics such as speed management and separating users in space and time. This research ...
doi.org
St. Paul literally falling apart, and one of the city's best bike trails (Swede Hollow) out of commission indefinitely.
Not buying that lol. I would buy a small dip in prices but these effects are waaay to large and it's not even in the rental market
Evan Roberts@evanrobertsnz.bsky.social · 22h agoPublished version of this article on the Minneapolis 2040 plan on house prices now out: headline result "15%−23% reduction in mid‐tier house price growth" compared to the counterfactual of "experiencing the same house price growth as similar cities (not falls) onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
Published version of this article on the Minneapolis 2040 plan on house prices now out: headline result "15%−23% reduction in mid‐tier house price growth" compared to the counterfactual of "experiencing the same house price growth as similar cities (not falls) onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
Effects of the Minneapolis 2040 Plan on House Prices
The Minneapolis 2040 Plan, which came into effect in January 2020, introduced sweeping reforms to housing regulations. One of the most significant aspects of the Plan is the relaxation of zoning regu...
onlinelibrary.wiley.com
That has been known since the Unitary Plan days of 2013-2016 Yes the Panmure set need to be removed to get the entire Tamaki area to its full potential around the Panmure and G.I stations (6 storey mixed use)
BusinessDesk@businessdesknz.bsky.social · 23h agoRemoving maunga viewshaft restrictions could lower aggregate land values across Auckland by $67 billion and reduce citywide house prices, resulting in improved household welfare and a more compact, denser city, a new report says.
If you're in any way involved in teaching people about making sense of possible patterns in data, just go read this. Fall semester is nearly upon us [in the Northern Hemisphere]
Darren Dahly@statsepi.bsky.social · yesterdayStop trying to explain what a p-value is in a single sentence (ICYMI) statsepi.substack.com/p/no-you-can...
This plot "has hung around long past its expiration date and has since become a staple of climate denial. I think it’s time to reconsider what the plot actually tells us." by @andrewdessler.com www.realclearscience.com/2026/08/04/f...
Fixing One of Climate's Worst Plots
The plot covers the continental U.S., and it dramatically shows that temperatures in the 1930s were more extreme than those of the present period. The metric plotted, the heat wave index, is construct
realclearscience.com
When you get two cats, how do they decide which one will have a tiny chirp like a pixie’s doorbell and which one will wail like the ghost of a jilted bride?
I received a recent question about the closure of the bridge over Minnehaha Creek near the Minnesota Veterans Home, and so I'm sharing for broader awareness this statement from the Minnesota Department of Veterans Affairs about this and the next steps. Please share if you see this topic come up:
Zoning in places like North Carolina's Triangle makes it illegal to build the most naturally affordable type of apartments, and jacks up minimum lot sizes so that it's impossible to build starter homes. No wonder prices are rising. Let's fix it! www.newsobserver.com/news/busines...
Demographers —The PAA call for papers is now open! There are TWO qualitative sessions this year, including one that I’m organizing. If you do any qualitative demography or demography-adjacent work, please submit an extended abstract! paa_acgi.informz.net/z/cjUucD9taT...
Knocked Out Loaded was the first Dylan album I owned, given to me by a friend of my dads for my 12th birthday. I've always had to defend my love of this one beyond "it was my first Dylan album". But this is right: both "his creative nadir" and it "contained the kernels of his next renaissance."
Elizabeth Nelson@paranoiacs.bsky.social · 3w ago"Dylan had famously struggled to adjust to the evolving recording techniques of the digital age, a struggle clearly abetted by the additional problem that he simply didn’t give a shit." On my substack, recalling the miasmic charm of "Knocked Out Loaded". theparanoidstyle.substack.com/p/driftin-to...
Personally I am very much looking forward to seeing what the 2020s-30s California small lot apartment building and townhouse vernaculars look like.
Alt Bureau of Labor Statistics@domesticshoggoth.bsky.social · 2d agoThere's something to be said for designs which are mass-produced within a region but distinct to that region. The issue is, you'll never get a distinct regional design without a mass build-out of housing in your region that can sustain that design.
Now they've certified the 737 Max 7 my niche achievement of having flown every major 737 variant has been taken away from me again ... Guess I'm going to have to find some Southwest flight in 2027 to regain this ... terribly niche achievement thepointsguy.com/news/boeing-...
FAA certifies Boeing 737 MAX 7 after years of delays - The Points Guy
The FAA approved Boeing's smallest 737 MAX variant after years of delays. Southwest will take delivery of the first 737 MAX 7 as the launch customer.
thepointsguy.com
Gearing up to [slightly] revise my slides and content for Public Health Surveillance this fall to reflect the public health outbreak du jour, I found value in thinking through these two quite different threads about the cyclospora outbreak
Arrianna Marie Planey, PhD MA@arrianna-planey.bsky.social · 2d agoSo. This "underlying health conditions" / "pre-existing health conditions" framing is understandably upsetting b/c amid the COVID public health emergency, it became a way of discounting the morbidity or mortality of chronically ill & disabled people. The people behind MAHA leveraged this framing.
I said: “The 1950s family could not even reproduce itself for one generation. They couldn’t even convince their children that this was the right way to arrange their lives. So it failed immediately.”
The Great Romance Slump
Why are so few young people finding love?
theatlantic.com
Half of the people see too much subtext all of the time Some of the people read the subtext right part of the time But all of the people can't read all of the text and subtext right all of the time I think Abraham Lincoln said that
One of my nichely controversial takes is that front garages can be done well, and are a decent tradeoff in low(ish) density residential areas. But the details matter. The snout house is an iconic example of doing it wrong. This, slightly unusual approach, seems better. Worth repeating in fact.
There was, however, one exception to this: Minneapolis-St Paul. There, a finance bro, the mob, and a crooked lawyer really did buy the trains and sell them for scrap - but that was the exception, not the rule. 12/12
How a Lawyer, a Businessman, and the Mafia Destroyed Public Transit in the Twin Cities
There is a common folk theory that the North American streetcar disappeared because of a conspiracy. Allegedly, industrialists connected with the auto and motor bus industries bought up North Ameri…
lithub.com
this is not true. there was no conspiracy. it didn't matter whether the streetcars were publicly owned (seattle, detroit) or private (los angeles, atlanta). a thread (because i wrote a whole-ass book on this): 1/?
David Ho@davidho.bsky.social · 3d agoIs everyone aware of the General Motors streetcar conspiracy? In the mid-20th century, auto and oil interests bought up electric streetcar systems across the US and systematically replaced them with bus routes and paved roads, funneling commuters toward private cars.
But normally this is how Australians ascend to leadership positions?! | Nine.com.au share.google/1jLk3onIL0In...
