Michael Buda

Exec. Director of TransLink Mayors' Council. I like helping transit get built. I also like climbing, skiing, trail-running, but not in the same way. Tweets=mine

[Jarrett Walker @humantransit]

Zero emission buses that are too expensive or unreliable are worse for the environment than normal buses.

Because normal buses can actually be used.

[Brent Toderian @BrentToderian]

Vancouver’s #WorldCup hosting runs on public transit and walking. At the end of today’s #TeamCanada victory, fans walk the seawall from the stadium to the 2nd skytrain station (the closer one is limited access), trains are running with 2-3 minute headways, with 4-6 car trains.

[Jarrett Walker @humantransit]

I envy US transit agencies whose states didn’t require them to buy the first generation of zero-emission buses. The ones they buy later will better.

Sorry, inventors, but I advise transit agency clients never to buy version 1 of anything. The taxpayer is not your beta-tester.

[Stephen Gordon @stephenfgordon]

For reasons that are the subject of another discussion, the trend rate of growth of the Canadian economy has fallen, and is probably somewhere around zero.

I KNOW, I KNOW: THIS IS A PROBLEM.

1/2

[Jarrett Walker @humantransit]

High gas prices are not ALL it took to see public transit ridership come back in the US. It also took huge efforts by transit agencies to improve their service or at least not cut it.

Transit service cuts in many cites could throttle this growth.

[Michael Buda @mikebuda]

@iamkennethchan @robmackaydunn I agree with you but with one small correction: the province didn’t take over the Patulluo replacement from TransLink to “finally get it built.” They took it over because in the 2017 election, they eliminated tolling which was how TransLink was going to pay for the project.

[Reece Martin @RM_Transit]

Toronto is kind of crazy for not having a Translink or TFL style regionalized transit system. People who are into transit aggressively defend municipal control of the TTC (implying anything that disrupts it would be a big loss) but the system is clearly not well managed.

[Jarrett Walker @humantransit]

Great image of how nice bus service can be if we let go of our prejudice against buses.

Unlike trains, buses can serve trunk stations like this one but also continue onto local streets where that makes sense.

Buses can do almost anything, except …1/

[Ken Boessenkool @KenBoessenkool]

This is the most important, most brilliant, and most well written thing you could read today.

If you’re an Albertan, or a Canadian, and read nothing else, fine. Just read this.

Goodness me. Every word. https://t.co/TliiUbwj6H

[Andrew Coyne 🇺🇦🇮🇱🇬🇪🇲🇩 @acoyne]

They never do. Read The Morning After, by Chantal Hebert and Jean Lapierre. Twenty years after the 95 referendum, the major players *still* hadn’t figured out what they would have done in the event of a yes vote. It was all just bluff and improv.
But anyone who does try to game the thing out with any rigour pretty quickly comes to the conclusion that it can’t be done: not unilaterally/illegally, and not by negotiation/constitutionally.
That needs to be communicated to people. But what needs to be communicated even more is that the whole enterprise is illegitimate; that there is not, and cannot be, any such thing as a right to secede from a democratic country (which is why virtually no democratic country recognizes such a right); that threatening to do so to blackmail your fellow Canadians is as morally bankrupt as it is practically futile; that the attempt to invoke democratic principle in its defence is bogus — you cannot vote to help yourself to something that isn’t yours, namely the territory of Canada — while the right of self determination simply folds in on itself: if Albertans or Quebecers have a right to self determination, do Edmontonians or Montrealers? For that matter, do Canadians?
Or is the proposition that the vast majority of Canadians must simply stand mute while their country, which tens of millions have built over several centuries, is blown apart by a single vote on a single day by a small fraction of the population?
Even if either Alberta or Quebec had been sovereign states prior to entering the federation, that would not hold water: once you’ve dissolved your sovereignty in the larger entity, you can’t reconstitute it. It no longer exists. There’s nothing to reconstitute it with.
But it’s just gaga to make such claims with regard to a province that, like Alberta, was itself the creation of an Act of the Parliament of Canada, or like Quebec, of the Parliament of Great Britain — and then only the relatively minor rump that was carved out of the pre-existing Province of Canada at Confederation. Two thirds of the present-day territory of the province of Quebec was added after Confederation — again, by acts of the Parliament of Canada.
So there’s no actual likelihood of Canada breaking up, even if there is a referendum in either or both provinces, and even in the vanishingly unlikely event that either or both of them managed to win a “clear majority” on a “clear question.” What is possible is that either or both of them might land themselves in a ruinous, divisive, and possibly violent mess, whose costs would mostly be borne by their own citizens.
But we do not make that prospect more likely by rushing to make offers to dissuade them from leaving or going to great lengths to show “the federation works.” The committed hardliners regard such offers with contempt while the cynical blackmailers regard them as a baseline from which to make further demands. Neither is anything achieved by saying “fine, go.” Acquiescing in the theft of Canadian territory and the destruction of the federation hardy counts as a “tough” position.
No, the proper stance is to advertise, well in advance, that neither exercise will be regarded as conferring any right to secede of any kind; that whatever we might be willing to talk about afterward, it would not be secession. It might not even be as advantageous as the status quo.

[Dan Pfeiffer @danpfeiffer]

90% of politicians get this question and then stammer while vomiting up pablum

This is how you do it

[Trevor Tombe @trevortombe]

Our governments’ finances face a growth problem, not just a budget problem.

My latest for @TheHubCanada on why productivity changes everything: https://t.co/Ut7ahcVNNi #cdnecon #cdnpoli

[Jarrett Walker @humantransit]

Do you really believe that rail transit is permanent and buses aren’t?

Lots of US rail infrastructure was ripped out in the 20th century. And even some 1990s-2000s streetcars and light rail segments have been shut down.

1/. thread

[Jarrett Walker @humantransit]

San Francisco BART: The worst-case scenarios are actually worse than you've heard.

Good overview of why the Bay Area’s transit backbone is in such bad financial shape.

A lot can be blamed on 1960s-70s decisions. Still, here we are.
https://t.co/VWjZYw56AV

[Michael Buda @mikebuda]

@jahorne Really great piece. One additional thesis I would add: urban governance. Most US metro regions are very fragmented with hundreds of munis and dysfunctional or non-existent regional bodies. This makes decision making and project management slower, and more expensive.

[clara the urbanist @SlopHq]

a freeway costs $50-200 million per mile to build and we don't ask it to turn a profit. a train line proposes the same price tag and suddenly it needs to be self-funding by 2031. the infrastructure we subsidize reveals what we value and we have chosen the car every single time

[Jarrett Walker @humantransit]

If you're not a transit manager, it sounds so easy to fix the problem of crime and bad behavior on public transit. Even worse, it's easy to accuse transit managers of not caring if they don't solve it.

That's not fair. They do care. 1/🧵

[Michael Buda @mikebuda]

@RM_Transit The benefits of a rational regional plan that identified, incentivized (including by providing transit) and developed regional centres, like Surrey Centre. Metro Vancouver's regional planning framework - much derided at times, and not perfect - is a marvel and unique in NA.

[Ken Boessenkool @KenBoessenkool]

I hate populist bullshit like this so much.

These same people wonder why it’s so hard to recruit competent people to run public sector organizations.

You. You are the reason. Including shit posting like this.

[Jarrett Walker @humantransit]

Bogotá chose BRT over rail rapid transit 30 years ago. The debate still enrages people there today, but it’s true they could never have built as much rail as they have BRT.

(Teaser for my posts on Bogotá coming this weekend.)