Jake Berman
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lostsubways.com
Jake Berman
@lostsubways.com
Lawyer, historian, mapmaker. Transport + housing nerd. Californian living in New York.

Wrote and illustrated "The Lost Subways of North America". Order the book at: http://lostsubways.com
Reposted by Jake Berman
While NY is considering mandating two-person trains, the DC Metro not only already operates with one person, but recently reactivated its automatic train operation system.

Now, continuing to follow best practices, Metro has announced plans to move towards driverless trains.

tinyurl.com/yft73mru
November 26, 2025 at 6:40 PM
Reposted by Jake Berman
One weird trick to speed up your bus service.

Cost: $0
I completed my final count. Out of 10,511 bus stops, I found that 4,360 (41%) of them could be removed to align with national best practices of 1/4 mile spacing. Long-form explainer article and an interactive map are forthcoming. Green dots are removed stops, black are kept stops.
November 26, 2025 at 4:30 PM
If you see this, post an anime you love
November 26, 2025 at 2:41 PM
Reposted by Jake Berman
"Urbanism as a Field of Study:"

thefoxandthecity.com/articles/urb...
November 25, 2025 at 9:29 PM
The lesson: mandatory inclusionary zoning really has to be funded for it to work.
From 2017 - 2024, #PortlandOR’s inclusionary zoning program wasn’t working.

“The city had ordered that at least 10% of new apartments be affordable,” writes @andersem.bsky.social, “but it turned out that 10% of a small number was also a small number.”
Portland’s Inclusionary Zoning Program Is Finally Performing, New Data Suggests | Sightline Institute
Because for the first time, the city fully funded it.
www.sightline.org
November 25, 2025 at 4:57 PM
Reposted by Jake Berman
When did the New York Minute become the New York Decade? It shouldn't take as long as it does to implement busways, bus lanes, bike lanes, open streets, pedestrian plazas, day-lit intersections, red light cameras, speed cameras, outdoor dining sheds, etc.
OPINION: How to Fix the City’s Slothful Agencies - Streetsblog New York City
Curing our government of its ills does not require a lot of money but rather executive leadership and political courage.
buff.ly
November 25, 2025 at 4:25 PM
Hot take: SB79 did rezone Contra Costa County because they counted wrong. The law applies to counties with 15 or more passenger rail stations... and Contra Costa has 16, because the Legislature forgot to count the Tilden Park steam train.
November 24, 2025 at 9:25 PM
Good article by @stephenkb.bsky.social. Past and present, competent railways make real estate development a core part of their businesses, whether it's the Pacific Electric in LA in 1925 or the Hanshin Electric in Osaka in 2025.
Essentially the best way to run a railway is for it to be owned by a development corporation, and then frankly whether that corporation is state owned or privately owned is sort of a much of a muchness:
The missing piece in Labour’s rail renationalisation scheme
Whether trains are public or private is not the deal-breaker for a well-functioning service — it is about a better delivery model
www.ft.com
November 24, 2025 at 3:40 PM
Reposted by Jake Berman
As has been documented by @lostsubways.com in his book.
The issue isn’t cost. It’s that the entire infrastructure in this country has been put into cars. Parking lots everywhere and bus stations nowhere. Light rail that comes every half an hour and isn’t synchronized so it takes forever if you have to switch lines.
November 24, 2025 at 2:01 AM
Reposted by Jake Berman
SOURCE: Cal has fired head coach Justin Wilcox, @theathletic.com has learned.

The Bears are 6-5 and lost 31-10 to Stanford. (ESPN first reported)
November 23, 2025 at 11:19 PM
Reposted by Jake Berman
beauty and the beast all klingon production
October 25, 2025 at 3:31 PM
The Adeline St-Stanford Ave corridor in Berkeley/Oakland/Emeryville is a real missed opportunity. (I'm home for Thanksgiving.)

It should really be a linear park. 1/🧵
November 23, 2025 at 6:33 PM
Detroit's unholy regional soda has spread to the Bay Area. What fresh horrors will the Midwest inflict on us next, Malort?
November 23, 2025 at 6:26 PM
GO BEARS. Stanford's going down.
Fight for California
YouTube video by CalSpirit68
m.youtube.com
November 22, 2025 at 9:36 PM
The Bay Area needs this.
Today I discovered that since 2022 Lombardy has developed a manual for standardized wayfinding for the entire region's transit, notably for bus stops, with a unified design across operators

www.regione.lombardia.it/wps/portal/i...
November 22, 2025 at 9:27 PM
This is a prelude to an all-time Scorigami, one would hope
Notre Dame has elected to let the clock run out rather than attempt on third-and-goal to go up 42-0 in the first quarter
November 22, 2025 at 9:23 PM
not gonna lie, sacramento's city song is dorky as hell but also a total earworm
Freebadge Serenaders- Sacramento, Ca USA
YouTube video by saceats
www.youtube.com
November 22, 2025 at 4:09 AM
Reposted by Jake Berman
The Queens Daily Eagle remains undefeated.
Queens men meet — Queens Daily Eagle
The first man from Queens to be elected president and the first Queens resident to be elected mayor of New York City met for the first time in the Oval Office on Friday.
queenseagle.com
November 22, 2025 at 12:33 AM
Reposted by Jake Berman
November 22, 2025 at 2:13 AM
These guys yearn for a mythical past where America was exclusively by and for white Protestants. In doing so, they accidentally reinvented the platform of the 1920s KKK. 1/🧵
To understand JD Vance, you need to meet the “TheoBros.”

These extremely online young Christian men want to end the 19th Amendment, restore public flogging, and make America white again.
To understand JD Vance, you need to meet the “TheoBros”
These extremely online young Christian men want to end the 19th Amendment, restore public flogging, and make America white again.
www.motherjones.com
November 21, 2025 at 6:44 PM
Reposted by Jake Berman
Don’t want to @ the person and get into it but I’ve been thinking about the “Housing may be expensive in a lot of places but it’s not a national crisis” argument. It’s a bit like saying we don’t have a national opioid crisis because there are a lot of places where it’s not that much of a problem.
November 21, 2025 at 4:11 PM
I love Detroit.
The most important thing I've learned in 2025? Detroit is not a real place 😭😭😭

www.instagram.com/reel/DRLqn2a...
November 21, 2025 at 3:45 PM
Reposted by Jake Berman
Getting Crooted at the Crunk
tired: mike lombardi doesn't know how to recruit kids.

wired: mike lombardi recruits kids by getting their parents drunk at THE CRUNKLETON
November 21, 2025 at 3:28 PM
Reposted by Jake Berman
I always think it's funny that the US developed pretty much the optimal--by revealed preference--kind of suburb (close-in streetcar suburbs) in the early 20th century and then spent the rest of the century trying furiously to undo that good idea
as will notes, people tend to *say* they want suburban living. they want a big house and a big yard and etc. this is not however what is suggested by their actual purchasing practices, which invariably result in something like this:

raincitymaps.com/maps/inspect...
November 20, 2025 at 2:29 PM
The plans look great. But how on earth do these California Forever people expect 400,000 people to live in the middle of nowhere? Sacramento is 45 miles away. San Francisco is 70. San Jose is 90 miles away.
A City Is Broke. Can Billionaires’ Urbanist Dream Offer It a Last Chance?
www.nytimes.com
November 20, 2025 at 4:13 PM