Darnell Grisby

Urbanist. Advocate for upward mobility, environment, and democracy. Chair @california_CTC; SVP @BeneficialStFdn

[Aakash Gupta @aakashgupta]

BART spent $90 million on new fare gates. They're recovering about $10 million a year in fares.

That's a 9-year payback on paper. The actual return hit in six months.

Embarcadero station went from 112 hours of corrective maintenance in the six months before installation to 2 hours after. Daly City saved 109. Balboa Park saved 75. Across the system, 961 hours of cleanup work disappeared. Corrective maintenance is the term BART uses for graffiti, heavy soiling, vandalism, the damage that needs a crew not a janitor. At several stations it dropped to zero.

Crime fell 41% year over year. Riders who reported seeing fare evasion on their trip dropped from 22% to 10%. Citations issued by BART police went from 2,200 in January to under 1,000 in July, because there was nothing to cite.

The gates were a filtering project disguised as a revenue project.

Old BART gates were waist-high orange fins designed in the 1970s. You could hop them in under a second. That made the station effectively a public space, and the rider mix reflected that. The new gates are 72 inches of polycarbonate with 3D sensors that detect tailgating. You either pay or you don't enter. Once you don't enter, you also don't smoke on the platform, sleep in the elevator, or harass other riders.

BART tried hiring more police for years. Blitz operations at high-traffic stations. Increased patrols. Dedicated transit cops. None of it moved the numbers the way six feet of polycarbonate did.

The $10 million in recovered fares is the smallest line in the return. Fare revenue used to cover 70% of BART operations. After the pandemic it collapsed to 22%. The gates won't fix that gap directly. They fix the precondition for fixing it: a system that office workers, families, and tourists are willing to use again. Ridership growth at stations with new gates outpaced ungated ones before the rollout finished.

A $400 million annual deficit is heading to voters in November as a sales tax measure. Voters don't approve sales taxes for transit agencies they don't feel safe in. The $90 million on gates is buying BART the right to ask the public for more money.

That's the real return on six feet of polycarbonate.

[Jason Walls @walls_jason1]

Yesterday Mark Cuban reposted my work, DM'd me, and told me to keep telling my story.

So here it is.

I'm a Master Electrician. IBEW Local 369. 15 years pulling wire in Kentucky. Zero coding background. I didn't go to Stanford. I went to trade school.

Every week I'd show up to a home where someone just bought a Tesla or a Rivian. And every time, someone had already told them they needed a $3,000-$5,000 panel upgrade to install a charger.

70% of the time? They didn't need it.

The math is in the NEC — Section 220.82. Load calculations. But nobody was doing them for homeowners. Electricians upsell. Dealers don't know. And the homeowner just pays.

I got angry enough to build something about it.

I found @claudeai. No coding experience. I just started talking to it like I'd explain a job to an apprentice. "Here's how load calcs work. Here's the NEC code. Now help me build a tool that does this."

6 months later — @ChargeRight is live. Real software. Stripe payments. PDF reports. NEC 220.82 calculations automated. $12.99 instead of a $500 truck roll.

I'm still pulling wire. I still take service calls. I wake up at 5:05 AM for work.

But something shifted.

Yesterday @vivilinsv published my story as Claude Builder Spotlight #1. Mark Cuban saw it. The Claude community showed up. And for the first time, I felt like this thing I built in my kitchen might actually matter.

I'm not a tech founder. I'm a dad who wants to coach little league and be home for dinner. I just happened to build something that helps people.

If you're in the trades and thinking about using AI — do it. The barrier isn't technical skill. It's believing you're allowed to try.

https://t.co/cDVdY5mcLv

[UCLA ITS @ucla_its]

In the 1950s & '60s, a new route of the Foothill Freeway (I-210) displaced nearly 3,000 predominantly Black residents in Pasadena’s northwest neighborhoods — while an alternate route that would have impacted far fewer people was rejected. Storymap here https://t.co/r0o6sCJIOq

[Governor Newsom Press Office @GovPressOffice]

NEW: While Trump is asleep at the wheel on upgrading our nation’s infrastructure, the @California_CTC approved $1.1 billion to expand zero-emission transit, repair storm-damaged highways, and improve safety on local roadways.

These investments advance @CAGovernor Gavin Newsom’s Build More, Faster – For All agenda to make communities safer and more climate resilient.

[Jasmine Crockett @JasmineForUS]

There are so many reasons that this picture & this song are the vibe for today. VP @kamalaharris was more than enough, just as she is! I worked my ass off on behalf of the American people to make sure that we didn’t fumble the bag… but we did, so here we are preparing to take to the streets & say what should be obvious in America “NO KINGS.” We could’ve had class, compassion, rule of law, intellect, respect, fairness, and well DEMOCRACY, BUT so many chose to critique her & ignore him… all to our collective detriment. Let today be a reminder that we are all in the same sinking ship & it’s important to stand united for Progress instead of being divided with or by PETTY.

[Leaders 𝕏 Junction @LeadersJunction]

Here's how you know someone is highly intelligent✅

[Manu Raju @mkraju]

New — Asked Speaker Johnson about placing conditions on aid to California, and he tells us: “I think there should be conditions on that aid.” Said that’s his personal view before talking with the conference.

Also says “there’s some discussion” within the House GOP about tying the debt limit increase to the aid “but we will see how it goes.”

Aid to rebuild after natural disasters often is approved without any conditions and with significant bipartisan support. But there could be a big fight over the California aid in the coming weeks.

[Senator Scott Wiener @Scott_Wiener]

Dems need to embrace making it easier & faster to produce the things people need — e.g., housing, clean energy, child care, transit — & move away from government-created scarcity.

An abundance approach lowers cost of living.

Dems need to lean into being the Party of abundance.

[Senator Scott Wiener @Scott_Wiener]

Muni is making strong progress to adapt to a post-pandemic world.

New data show customer satisfaction among Muni riders is the highest in 20 yrs. 72% of Muni riders rate service “good” or “excellent,” the highest rating the system has received since surveys began in 2001.🧵

[KQED News @KQEDnews]

Turning SF’s Great Highway Into a Park Will Have Major Ecological Benefits, Report Says https://t.co/qINHZc6h7x

[Brandon Richards 🐻 @BrandonRichards]

Strong, forceful pushback by @KamalaHarris on these topics & framing. Refreshing.

This most recent media swing, voters are seeing the Vice President's comms skills tactfully deployed--showing she knows each audience and host very well.

It's not the same conversation each time

[chris evans @notcapnamerica]

GOP pollster Frank Luntz

“I’m trying to do a focus group tonight with undecided voters under the age of 27 for a major news outlet. And I can’t recruit young women to this, because they don’t exist.”

The people who are ‘undecided’ have all collapsed towards Harris.”

[Senator Scott Wiener @Scott_Wiener]

It used to be pretty lonely to be a YIMBY elected official. That era is over.

Kamala: “There’s a serious housing shortage. It’s too difficult to build & it’s driving prices up. We’ll take down barriers & cut red tape including at the state & local levels”

[Brandon Richards 🐻 @BrandonRichards]

Since I know there are a folks extra interested in crowd size…

Let’s take a look at this week’s @KamalaHarris & @Tim_Walz events👇🏻

[Doug Thompson @NWADoug]

A Black woman president, endowed with immunity from prosecution by the US Supreme Court is apparently not a possibility MAGA considered.

[Max Dubler 🏳️‍🌈 @maxdubler]

A fun SF thought experiment: would a dozen gay bars have been allowed to open in the working class Irish-American neighborhood of Eureka Valley (now known as the Castro) if there had been a Robust Community Outreach Process for liquor licenses in the 1960s and 70s?

[Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesias]

Two cursed things in NY politics:

— Burning political capital on bail reform rather than congestion pricing, which is known to *become* popular once it is implemented.

— Doing a huge court fight over redistricting and then not actually gerrymandering!

[Darnell Grisby @darnellgrisby]

I witness this frequently as well.

[The Parking Professional @kerbyside]

The far right lane of the @MTCBATA Bay Bridge is supposed to be reserved for busses on weekends, and yet hundreds of cars per minute use the lane w no enforcement. This clogs the metering lights, delaying the rule abiding drivers.

[Christof Spieler @christofspieler]

Miami’s Brickell might be one of the most dramatic examples of transit-oriented (or at least transit-adjacent) development in the US. The Miami Metromover made it there in 1992, and now it’s surrounded by high-rises and a huge mall directly connected to one of the stations.

[Tara Viswanathan @TaraViswanathan]

In grad school, I worked part time at @lululemon (retail, not corporate).

I learned more about business from that part time job folding & selling yoga pants than any other job I had. ❤️

Here’s what they did differently: