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1 week ago | 
thetransitguy.substack.com | Hayden Clarkin
Picture it: a grassy tram gliding through a tree-lined median in a quiet but vibrant neighborhood. It’s the meme we’ve all seen—and for many of us, it looks like a better transit system than whatever city you’re reading this from. You can’t deny their beauty. In Downtown Portland, the introduction of the Portland Streetcar in the 2000s spurred $4.5 billion in new development and added 18,000 housing units.
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2 weeks ago | 
thetransitguy.substack.com | Hayden Clarkin
The Las Vegas Strip—and the city itself—has a pathetic transit system. It’s one of the most visited places in the world, yet the airport, which sits right next to the Strip, has no rail connection. Buses come roughly once an hour and barely connect to any meaningful destinations. And it’s not just me saying this.
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3 weeks ago | 
thetransitguy.substack.com | Hayden Clarkin
(First, I want to apologize for the delay in this article. I had a personal emergency and needed to focus on my family—what really matters in the end.)The fastest train in the continental United States, the Acela, reaches a maximum speed of 150 mph on very short segments of the Northeast Corridor. In contrast, Japanese Bullet Trains already achieved maximum speeds of 170 mph 33 years ago, during George H.W. Bush's presidency.
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1 month ago | 
thetransitguy.substack.com | Hayden Clarkin
The average driver sees an empty bike lane and thinks, "What a waste of space." But that same scrutiny is never applied to car infrastructure—where overbuilt highways, unused parking lots, and empty roads are rarely considered excessive. And yet, many freeways built over 50 years ago make little sense today. If anything, they should be rethought entirely. Take a look at the top 10 U.S. cities with the most highway miles per 1,000 people, as ranked by Streetsblog. The results?
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1 month ago | 
thetransitguy.substack.com | Hayden Clarkin
(Thumbnail image and logistical aspects come from Against the Compass. Please follow their great work)I love the creativity of world-building. The fantastical settings in Star Wars and Dune captivate me just as much as the stories themselves. They showcase how humans might live on other worlds—adapting to every imaginable landscape, wielding technology far beyond our reach. Yet, despite all this imagination, one thing always bothers me: where are the trains?
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1 month ago | 
thetransitguy.substack.com | Hayden Clarkin
The Manhattan street grid is remarkably intuitive. If you stand at the intersection of Third Avenue and 125th Street, you’re exactly 75 evenly spaced blocks north of Third Avenue and 50th Street. It’s like a game of Battleship—even visitors can navigate the grid within a day or two. Historically, pre-automobile street grids emerged in two ways: intentional planning and organic development. Some cities, like Washington, D.C., were meticulously designed.
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1 month ago | 
thetransitguy.substack.com | Hayden Clarkin
You're standing in the lobby of Lyon-Part-Dieu station, looking up at a departure board displaying 23 domestic and international train lines—routes that can take you to Paris, London, Frankfurt, Turin, and Barcelona without a transfer. If you're not looking for an intercity or high-speed train, you can still choose from 12 tram lines, four metro lines, and a network of local and regional buses. Now, compare that to Nashville, a city and metro area of similar size.
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1 month ago | 
thetransitguy.substack.com | Hayden Clarkin
“One more lane, bro—just one more lane."This meme perfectly encapsulates 70 years of North American highway expansions. Stuck in traffic? Just add another lane—problem solved, right? This car-brained logic has dominated traffic engineering in North America since the 1950s, when the Interstate Highway System was born. The prevailing wisdom? More traffic means more highway lanes, which means fewer red taillights in front of you. But take a look at I-5 in Santa Ana.
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2 months ago | 
thetransitguy.substack.com | Hayden Clarkin
There’s almost nothing that a vast majority of Americans agree on—except for their love of Dolly Parton (75%) and apple pie (78%). But one thing once had an even higher approval rating: in 1956, a proposal to extend BART over the Golden Gate Bridge into Marin County received an astounding 87.7% approval rating when the original five-county BART plan was under consideration.
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2 months ago | 
thetransitguy.substack.com | Hayden Clarkin
Over the past few years, the United States and much of the Anglosphere have seemingly reached a troubling consensus: we can’t build anything efficiently. Subways now cost over a billion dollars per mile, only a handful of naval ships are built annually, and highway construction costs have skyrocketed by 166% in just five years. Our infrastructure development has become synonymous with delays, inefficiency, and exorbitant costs.
