Well There‘s Your Problem - Episode 130: The Silver Line

Episode Date: May 11, 2023

When you get to hell, tell em 'yay liam' Our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/wtyppod/ Send us stuff! our address: Well There's Your Podcasting Company PO Box 26929 Philadelphia, PA 19134 DO NOT SEND US LETTER BOMBS thanks in advance

Happy Cinco de Mayo. No, it's the Cinco de Mayo. Yes. Yes. Every year you make that fucking joke at every year. I think about coming back over to your apartment, moving in and slowly poisoning you with arsenic, just so I don't have to hear that fucking joke next year. We commemorate the destruction of a large French supply vessel filled with egg yolks and oil today, which turned the tide of the war as French soldiers were unable

to continue the battle without their with such dry, flavorless sand. When you do this, it makes me so mad, which is why we call it the Cinco de Mayo. That is what we do. Yeah. All right. Great. Mexico and Fendaste as well as September the 6th. This is the Battle of Puebla, right? Yes. Yes, it is. Yeah, you just go go look at Google Maps in any town in Mexico and it'll be like Avenue Avenue and then some date.

Avenue Avenue. September 16. Oh, yeah, sure. We're doing cultural dialogue here. That's like we're doing it very badly. Yeah. We are, well, you know, what can you say other than, you know, we have the best taco bowls here?

Well, that is your problem. I love this. We had an excellent Mexican guest to talk about a Mexican disaster literally. It's you, dickhead. Sorry, Emma. Yeah, I apologize. Yeah, yeah, I will say I think it would be very funny to do a live show from Mexico City.

Yes, I really want to do that. I'd love to go to. Yeah, yeah, me too. I have friends who have been to Mexico City. I love, well, I was in San Diego last year and I was just like, all right, now what we need to do is simply launch ourselves, order over the fence. And we will be, you know, it was so funny. There was no one on the American passport.

Yeah, but this, but my you don't have to do it illegally. Would you let me fucking finish my story? And it was so funny because in the on the American side, it's like as a part. It's like, yeah, here's the border. Like fuck you on the Mexico side. There's a bunch of people hanging out and playing music and just living life. And I'm like, I want to be in Mexico. I want to go to there.

It's a better country. I believe that truly. And I would love to do a CDM show. Yeah, yeah, 100 percent. All right. Well, now that we've insulted our listeners. Yes. Also, the thing is, if you do a show in Mexico City for like an American British podcast in English, you're going to get an audience of like all of the tech

people who moved to Mexico City because it was cheaper, speak hardly any Spanish and who everyone else in Mexico City hates. We will we will fill steady study. What is the study as Teco? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, the big one. I don't know. Doing great. Doing great.

Like live, live Spanish interpreters. Yes, yes, yes. Stadio as Teca, I was not that far off. I was just amused at the thought of us feeling like any stadium for any reason. Yes, W2YP Stadium tour, opening for Luke Bryant for some reason. Hello, and welcome to Well, There's Your Problem. It's a podcast about engineering disasters with slides and linguistic

disasters and cultural disasters. Yes, I'm Justin Rosniak. I'm the first who is talking right now. My pronouns are he and him. All right, go. May I'm Alice Kodalkele. My pronouns are she and her. And I guess what are she and her in Spanish?

Fucking not a damn clue. But I studied French. Fine, whatever. Jameco Leop. Yeah, like at the Beaver Leop. Yeah, Leop Beaver Leop. Hi, I'm William Anderson. My pronouns are he and him.

And what's very funny is that my fiance is on a work call right now, but I didn't shut my door. So probably get up and do that. No, not doing it. OK, she could shut the door. Yeah, we're so good at this after what? Like what feels like eight years of doing this and it's probably been like one. It's been two or three, actually, I think.

Year three. Yeah. Yeah. Well, what's crazy is that we haven't gotten any better at it. No, no, if anything was worse, worse, arguably, you know, what's funny is I was I was volunteering at the food bank Thursday, which is why I couldn't record. And I was talking to the well, we'll discuss details, but there will be some sort of fundraiser that we're going to do for Lutheran Settlement House because, yeah, they need money.

And we are a good place to bully our listeners into giving them money. That's true. And she was like, oh, that's like so exciting. I would love to listen to your podcast. And I'm just like, no, you fucking wouldn't. I promise you, you wouldn't. And like Corinne's manager was like, oh, what's this podcast about? Like, I'll definitely check it out, which sounds it's like I cannot emphasize enough. You would not listen to this podcast.

Give us your money and then just leave it at like 30 percent volume while you work as the, you know, like live in cesspit security guard. You know, I will say that people do love the bonus episode on the poop plane. Oh, well, I'm so glad. Yeah, yeah. Uh, yeah, let's talk about my beloved city of Boston, Massachusetts, and why they're bad at shit. This is this is a rather innocuous picture. You know, that doesn't look a lot like this.

No, I did not take this because we've been to this exact station. Yeah, we have been to the station. But the this this rather innocuous innocuous looking photo is actually masking, I think, one of the worst public transit disasters of the 21st century. The automobile, they were going to talk about Boston's silver line. Oh, OK. Yeah. It's a public transit. It's it's a it's a trolley bus episode.

I think that's a form of transit we've never done. Oh, it's only partly a trolley bus, though. Oh, my God. Yeah. OK. It's a lot of things. It's a it's a cesspit. Yes. Lots of dreams. OK. Yeah. Yes. Liam, close your door. Oh, fuck me. OK. One second.

No, because I knew Dev would kill me if I didn't say. Get up and close your door right now. This is the thing. This we've been sort of like the soul drive towards professionalism. The soul thing that has gotten better is our editor, Devon, pronouns. They them. I, Devon. Yes. I, Devon, I, Devon, my my beloved colleague and inserter of sandwiches into our slideshows.

Oh, absolutely. But before we talk about the silver line, we have to do the goddamn news. Oh, man, jarring shift in tone. I was about to say, yeah, that is a jarring shift in tone. We were having a nice time and then we had to be reminded of one of the latest in a series of horrible things that happened. Collapse of society. Yes. Yeah. Yes. I, I, I can I just take this one?

Yeah, go for it. Yeah, go ahead. So Jordan Neely, who is a homeless man, not that it fucking matters, was choked to death by a 24 year old Marine veteran. I do we have the the the Marines name because we Daniel Penney. I should fucking say it. I'm not sure if like it's something that the media have been very hesitant to say. I'm not sure why I can't imagine a real liability issue. Well, yeah, I do know why, but we should say it.

So yeah, as far as anyone knows, his name is Daniel Penney. So this is Jordan Neely, who is a subway performer who was having what I can't even describe as a psychotic episode more close to it. He was just having a bad time. He was like a bad day and he died for it. And I want to talk about mental health. I want to talk about the fact that I as at this point by any conceivable standard of world health am very, you know, I am I am in a position

where I can afford my medications. I do struggle with hallucinations and psychoses. And I am not it is not lost on me. Not to make it about me that I am I am at any given point two weeks away from this happening to me as well. Although I'm white, so we all know why this happened. It's that people believe now that they should be able to kill people who bother them with impunity, especially black people.

It's fucking gruesome. It's fucking evil. You are I I do want to say to our listeners, not to pat you people on the back because you disgust me. You are better than this. If you see something like this, you absolutely fucking intervene, even if it comes out of danger to yourself to prevent some some guy from dying on the subway for no fucking reason.

This was a straight up prolonged murder over the course of about 15 minutes in full public view. Nobody did shit other than to assist its commission. Right. I thought from one of the pictures that at least someone tried to intervene. No, they were they were they were not helping. They were helping restrain him. Oh, I see. I see. Yeah. And if you're a Marine, you enter a chokehold knowing that your intent is to kill someone.

Yeah, absolutely. And especially to hold it for like anything longer than fucking a minute, let alone 15. And the other thing I think is I think about this in terms of the way everyone talks about San Francisco, for instance, where, for instance, we had a guy who was attacked by a homeless person and then it emerged at trial that he had just been walking around macing homeless people, including the guy who attacked him, unprovoked, totally unprovoked and like walking away from it.

And I feel like there is like this sadistic element in every city in America that wants to do this. And then a much larger element that's like, not only do they have a right to do this, but I have a right never to be frightened or affronted in any way. And the penalty for those things is death. Right. Right. And it's like that's that is no way for anyone to live. And then you have the thing going on now where people are just shooting people

for ringing their doorbells. Right. Exactly. You know, that's absolutely fucking absurd. I cannot emphasize enough that you will be uncomfortable at society. That is the price you pay. Fucking live with it. You're going to be all right. We're all going to be all right. Fucking live with it.

I don't learn to control yourself. It's not that fucking hard. Like I we found some junk files. Thank you, C. Cleeter, really. I try to get rid of that. Really, really trying to get rid of that thing. It won't go away. I know. I should also say about the the the photo here is the guy that he killed

nearly was like a by all accounts, extremely talented dancer and Michael Jackson impersonator. Right. And we'll never know the fruits of his life because. Yeah, yeah, was was like widely beloved. His like this whole community of impersonators and dancers was like out looking for him for years because he just dropped off the map. After, by the way, his mother was murdered by his stepfather and he had to like give evidence against him face to face in court.

I mean, it's a nightmare scenario. The like, yeah, I want to say one specific thing. If I hear any fucking thing, one more thing about oh, he's been arrested for these these times. Yeah, I could still be going to be homeless. Shut the fuck up and it doesn't deprive a man of his right to dignity in life. No, I'm like it never will. I don't really get emotional on the show anymore, like I said,

but this one just hit me in the gut. I just I really struggle with the fact that people can be this evil. People can be this. You know, I don't give a shit that I'm watching a man be murdered in front of me. I I do say and I will say it again. I'll say it a million fucking times that is your duty as a human being. Yeah, the penalty. Sorry, sorry, any of this shit, like assault, anything like that.

The penalty is not and should not be you are killed by a vigilante. No, it is a vigilante. It's fully like this the sign of like social fabric being like deliberately ripped apart by political decisions. This is like, you know, I'm fucking in the 80s. You have Bernard gets like shoot four people for like maybe attempting to rob him, maybe just try to talk to him. And we're just we're back again.

Right, exactly. That was the same thought I had. And it's just like I I very rarely come to tears on the show. Obviously, I don't know about Paul, but I just. I I I've seen a lot of gruesome shit in my life. I've seen a lot of gruesome shit on the show. But I just you thought it absolutely fucking unbelievable. Totally fucking needless.

The guy who killed him is an evil fucking heinous human being. I'll pay for the gates of hell if there is one. Is the guy being prosecuted? They're discussing it. No, no, he's not going to be him. They've like they've they've like interviewed him. And then Eric Adams is pleading for patience. And to which I say, and you'll have to bleep this.

Mayor Adams, I mean, it's worse than that because Kathy Huckle said and then she revised it. It was pure fucking her first statement was like this is, you know, it's bad or whatever. But actions have consequences, you know, and I just I can't put myself in the mindset of like someone who would write that about this. I it doesn't seem like we're even living on the same planet. Like I don't I know I I just I don't see the purpose

in going out and being that angry that I'm a pretty pissed off person. But like I if you're if you're that unwilling to live in society, I employ to go out in the mountains and then just live there and shut the fuck up. And it's part of this like constructed narrative, right, that our inner cities are incredibly dangerous. People are looking around every corner to steal your television. You know, and it's all made up.

It's all fake, like three quarters of the stuff you hear about crime in the cities is like they made it up on local news because they didn't have anything else to talk about. But you know, and also like this, if you're worried about violent crime, you should be worried that the people who are most likely to be victimized by it are people like this, like the people who are most likely to suffer from violent crime are the same people. You are worried about committing it to you.

And there's like my thing is my thing is I get being uncomfortable on the subway. I specifically on the L right now, just because it's a it's a wallace, a social shithole because they fucking like all I'm saying is don't smoke on the fucking cars. Stop smoking on the fucking cars. But like if a homeless person or someone in need asks me for money, if I have cash, I just give it to them. Yeah, I'm not going to be a man. I understand that there's, you know, there's there's that in play.

But like I understand that I'm also like a big boy and I can defend myself. Like, you know, I you that even if you just get off the fucking just get off the fucking subway. Well, here's the thing, right? I'm not going to be one of those people who like says that, you know, these things are like nice or that good places to feel that people's fear isn't real. Right. Right. It's not that. And I think the thing is, if you are afraid in these situations, it's that you should like understand that that is happening because of a political

system that creates, that puts people in those situations and whose only response is more violence and like more tension instead of less in a way that really exacerbates it and does nothing to help. But what really strikes me is, you know, I mean, I'm a trans woman, right? I'm fucking terrified all the time in public. But the threshold for violence, for a lot of these people, when they respond with it is, I mean, it's nothing, it's absolutely nothing. A guy yelled at you one time, maybe he threw something near you.

That is absolutely nothing. And it's always the people who are the least reason to be threatened. I mean, like it's the same with the shootings. It's like, if you are armed, if you are carrying a firearm on you, there is a high threshold for what makes it acceptable for you to like ever feel like your life is in danger. And it's just a hair trigger with these people. And it's because everything in the culture is like convincing them that they're

about to be killed by like this guy who was in Antifa and he was going to like inject vaccines into you to make you gay or whatever the fuck. Yes, like. Pure fucking able. It's the only way for it. Yeah, absolutely. People got to, you know, grow a backbone. You got to have a thicker skin.

You got to like not let, you know, I, I, I, you can't be on these sorts of, you know, hair triggers like this. It's like, it's, it's just stupid. It's, it's a stupid way to live your life. Absolutely right. It's miserable. Yeah. And you, again, not to put too far to put on it.

Like, if that's your fucking first reaction to some guy throwing his coat down, I don't know what to tell you other than you fucking get a grip. Yeah, like, yeah. Like, you don't have any ability to like just deescalate this. Right. Not in a way that you had to be trained to do it, but just as a fucking human being, you know, like. And like the reason why, the reason why he was having a bad time was

because he was starving. Right. And he hadn't, he didn't have anything to eat. He had nothing to drink. He was starving these people on purpose. Yeah. Yeah. I want to talk about one thing that, that kind of deeply affected me since

we're all using this as group therapy now, which is that yesterday I was working, like I said, at the food pantry and we had, we were down to our last few eggplants. We didn't get the chicken, the canned food that we normally get because COVID's over and therefore people aren't starving anymore. So this is, this is me telling you right now to donate to your local food bank girl, come to your house and be shoes. And I, I, a woman, elderly woman was talking to her, her granddaughter.

She comes to me and she says, how many? We had unlimited apples for the day because we had like six cases of apples. And this woman crossed herself. I told her, sorry. When I told her how many she could take and it was just like, that's the fucking baseline. Like that's like you owe dignity and respect to your fellow human being.

People don't deserve to be choked out on the fucking subway for having a bad day. People deserve to have a fucking food. They don't have fucking food. They have a fucking roof over the heads. We're going to do everything in our power as a podcast to like help Luther and set up an house. I'm just tired of watching society degrade to a point where like this

kid's looking for her lost kitten and you think you're going to what, shoot the child because you're such a fucking tough guy. Like, shut the fuck, just shut the fuck up with that. And I don't, I don't know how it's fine. I don't know how like we go from here other than to help each other. But exactly. We can only help each other. And if you see someone being strangled to death on the subway, it is your,

that can't believe I have to say this. It's your duty as a human being to a guy who's doing the choke hold times until he gets the point. Yeah. At least say, hey, cut that out. Fucking doing that. I would like to not witness a murder. I can eat home please.

Exactly. Yeah. Fucking dickhead. Yeah. Yeah. We're nearly. That's his name. And he deserved a lot better than they fucking got.

Yeah. We'll do. Yeah. All right. What's next now that I've cried. Yeah. False flag. False flag.

I'm going full conspiracy things. It's a false flag. Come on. It's a watch. I'd watch the video of this. This is the Kremlin got donked by this drone and it just sort of like passes by one of the domes on one of the buildings. And it kind of, you know, it just kind of runs into it.

Like I don't. Russian media is like this is an assassination attack. No, it's not. Like don't hit the flagpole on top of that's the Senate House there. It missed. These are the guys that put that bomb in that statue of the guy and then gave it to the guy. Oh, the assassination thing.

They're going to be this fucking un-precise. Try to take out Vladimir Putin. No. Yeah. Yeah. This is a false flag. Kremlin, I don't think that makes it a false flag. Exactly.

I think it puts the light. I mean, Russia is of course saying, oh, this is the U.S. It's like, no, the U.S. would do better. Come on. Yeah. We send a piece. We send a piecekeeper through your fucking mailbox. Find out why we don't have free healthcare.

It's like a lame firecracker is what it looked like. I don't know. Yeah. I mean, honestly, this, this to me smacks of like some guy, right? This is a douche. No way. Like Russian, Russian air defense. Air defense is something Russians are pretty good at.

I guess not directly here, but like this isn't something you want to fly from Ukraine. This is something you want to like launch close. That's what they said. Right. Exactly. I'll buy you some guy theory, like a dissident or something. The reason, yeah. Like for the Goshen or something, the reason why I don't think it's a false flag in the

sense of like the Russian government doing it is because it makes the Russian government look dumb as hell and they're panicking. Right now in Moscow, they have like, they're spoofing all of the GPS. Yeah. I saw that. Yeah. You can't use one of those little like, like rental bikes because the GPS thing thinks that it's outside of Moscow now.

You can't get a cab because the map says that all of the cabs are in the river. The river. I saw that. It's actually pretty funny. Yeah. All right. Well, congratulations. Welcome to our new, our new taxi boat fleet.

The joke that I made on Twitter was that the special military operation is going so well, we're training the Moscow taxi drivers to have an amphibious landing capability. Yeah. It's going to come in handy. But this is of course all in the lead up to Victory Day, May the 9th, where there ordinarily would be the massive parade through Red Square with the military. That's going to be closed to the public. The Russians also do this thing called the immortal regiment, which is actually a pretty

cool idea, which is where you like walk around with a like a portrait of your ancestor who died in the war. And the reason why they, they canceled that the thinking is, is because there will be a lot of people walking around with like very recent photos and would sort of like lead to some questions, you know. So yeah, right now Russia is like sort of extremely paranoid about this, but also they have no meaningful way to escalate other than like the real psycho shit, which I still don't think they're going to do.

So there's going to be a lot of sound and fury about how are we going to take the fucking gloves off, but like they don't have any gloves left. I was about to say, yeah, they've been taken off layers and layers of gloves and now you're down to, okay, are we going to nuke someone? I don't think we're going to do that. I don't think so. Yeah. Tell the weird guy pretending to be the air command that we're not going to do that.

Fucking freak. But Prugoshan said that they're taking Wagner out of Bakhmut because they don't have ammunition for them. I don't know if that's true or not or whether he's going to stand by it or not, but the sort of the power struggle going on between Prugoshan and Chogu and Garasimov is like, that's interesting. I'm not sure which way that's going to go other than to view it as a kind of like all of these guys are fighting to be the first one on top when Putin dies, whenever that

is. Never, never. He's absolutely immortal. We need a more clever assassination attempt. You know, I mean, you know, this is kind of boring. Oh yeah. What you got to do is like find it. Is there anything that like Putin likes?

Does he have like hobbies? Judo. Judo. He likes Judo. He's pretty good at it, right? Okay. Yeah. He's like a pretty good Judo guy.

He's pretty good at like fishing as well. Semtex fish. Done. Oh, the only thing I really know about Vladimir Putin's martial arts is that Benjamin fucking Gwinnis like disputes it because he's like, there's no video of it. I've seen video of Putin doing Judo, but I just think that's that's the funniest shit I've ever heard. Like, like you fucking like a lawfare blog or never just being like the truth about Vladimir

Putin's Judo qualifications unmasked. So it's like Trump has small hands, you know, it's like he didn't. We're going to try and make him like insecure about this. And it's like, no, this is just a thing he just straight up does. But yeah, so this speaks very poorly for Russia's prospects. Post-Putin, which I am led to believe will happen some year or another. But yeah, I don't know. Worry about it then.

In the meantime, the counter offensive is coming sort of like probably two weeks for him, and we'll see how that goes. Assuming assuming no sort of like reservist E twos in the US aren't leaking shit to their discord. Yeah. Yeah. Well, the other news. All right, we got to talk about the mayor election.

Welcome to the only city in the world. Yeah, the only the only important, the only important city. Stop making me do this. So this is what happened is they just a lot of people decided to run for mayor and almost all of them are bad. Most of them are identical. I can see that there's a disparity here in the sort of like quality of the pictures people said Jimmy De Leon sent a very low resolution very, very pixelated here.

Delta Gray has like four pixels in her hair, which I don't think is also a cop as far as I know. Okay, cool. The only candidates you should legitimately consider voting for are Jeff Brown and Alan Dom. Next section, please. No, no, no. Next segment, please.

Next segment, please. Helen Gimm, Rebecca Reinhardt, the basically identical. Those are basically the two candidates to vote for. Of course, you know, we have two progressive candidates to split the vote so that Alan Dom wins. Nah, I'm not fucking away. Or Jeff Brown. Jeff Brown is busy suicide bombing himself out of the race.

I, you know, I dropped me to a missile and fire me at the Kremlin. The office of the mayor of Philadelphia has historically at least as long as I lived here. And he's the guy who takes orders from Daryl Clark, the council president. But, you know, the thing is that Daryl Clark is retiring next year. So the office of the mayor might actually mean something. He's not on your own poosin. Yeah, we do have our own. I fucking hate Daryl Clark.

Well, the funny thing is, I guess, I guess the part there only one person ran a bunch of people tried to run to replace him. But the one guy who was supposed to be sort of coronated as his successor got lazy, didn't get enough signatures and is not on the ballot. That kind of complacency works very well for us. I mean, that's how AOC got elected. And I think the one guy who is running to replace him is extremely homophobic, which is a hell of a strategy for a Democrat in 2023.

Like major city. Yeah. I understand that you have homosexuality in Philadelphia. They made a whole movie about it with Tom Hanks. Yeah. We have the Gabor hood. And you can go to Voyeur if you want, or you can be an idiot. What's the bar I hate, Roz?

That's a lot of bars. Are we racing Liam Gables here? What's the I have to go to Google Maps? I have to do this on the show because Roz doesn't know the name of the bar. Are you talking about Howl at the Moon? No, no, I hate Howl at the Moon too, but for entirely different reasons. Yeah. No, the one on 12th, the Woody's.

Woody's. Oh, yeah. Because it was owned by a fucking racist. Yeah. I mean, that's really your options. Are we going to have the homophobic guy? You want a racist guy, but there's no racist and homophobic guy. I'm sure we could come up with one.

We would probably come up with one. Yeah. That's progress. You know, that's incremental progress. This is where liberalism was gotten. She split the vote enough times. You get like, you can get a guy who's racist, you can get a guy who's homophobic, but not both.

Yeah. It's a real tragedy. That's a joke. Yeah. Wait, I recognize a name here too, because I remember a little sort of a bat noir here. I remember you bitching about David O before. Yeah. He's the one Republican running.

He is going to lose my 900 million points. He gave up his seat on city council, the safest seat in the city to run because it's mandated in the city charter that there have to be two non-democrats on city council and he was one of them. The other one is still a leftist home. Yeah. The other one's working families party. Working families.

There we go. Yeah. Then we have Jeff Brown here. He runs what? Shoprite? Shoprite. And once the brain is sort of brand or local regional grocery store chain fascism to Philadelphia. Oh, one of those guys.

Cool. Real piece of shit. He has no chance. Alan Dom is a real estate developer who went to American university. He has profited as real estate developer despite being on city council because we live in a shithole city. No. I'm in Brown owed $30,000 in taxes and is kind of a skiffy dude.

Cheryl Parker's a cop. What else we got? Yeah. That's basically it. She grays a cop. That's so many cops. Yeah. Well, Cheryl Parker is actually a city.

Is she on city council or she resigned her seat, right? But she was. You do have to. You do have to resign your seat to run, which is not a not a great system. Yeah, she was. She was on city council. But she's not now and she wants to hire a bunch more cops. I will say to hold my own candidate responsible.

Rebecca Reinhart's first ad that I ever saw was her at K and a surrounded by homeless people and people in active addiction. And it was just like this stop fucking using people in shitty circumstances to propagate to perpetuate your bid for Ramirez. That's a bad and evil thing to do. Yeah. Helen Gimm may have done some opiate profiteering, but she is. Yeah.

As of now, the consensus socialist progressive candidate. Unless you're me. Yeah. Unless you're Liam, who is going to vote for the Elizabeth Warren of this race. Yep. The better candidate than Bernie all down that hell. Oh, yeah. You ready for that one?

Yeah. You ready for that one? Let's read it again. Let's do it. Seven years later. Let's do it. Oh, you motherfucker. So vote again.

Unless you're Liam. Yeah. And then vote Reinhart. Yeah, I will. I am split. I am genuinely split that even between the two. It'll just be what my gut tells me. Helen Gimm would be a perfectly good mayor.

I tend to like Reinhart a little bit better, but I think that Helen Gimm also opened a charter school, which I really don't like weird. And I view as very hypocritical now. But I also understand that people evolve. And you know, I think you, you, you, you'd be in good hands to either Gimm or Reinhart. I just, I do think that we should talk about the 2016 election. I'm voting with the big block. I'm hoping we can turn the socialist progressive movement in Philly into a sort of Tammany Hall

type situation. Hopefully. I'm going to vote as I'm going to vote as ordered. And I'm not going to think about it. You're going to come back. You're going to put on a fake beard. You're going to vote again. Yeah.

You're going to vote a third time. I will say, and I'm going to, I'm going to call them out right now. Don't listen to a goddamn thing Philly DSA has to say. Keep that in the fucking episode. Bold it. I don't know shit about Philly DSA. So like whatever. Philly DSA was about to recommend Mindy Esther's voting guide.

You can listen to Mindy. She's nice. So another thing is our landlord stooges. So another thing that I would say about the election is you're going to look at the ballot. There's going to be this whole long list of judges you have to vote for. Don't worry. You don't know anything about them or what they do. They're all corrupt.

I was just going to say, if you need a reason to vote for one of them, there's a friend of a friend, Jessica Brown, running for judge vote for her because you have one reason to now, which is your pals on the podcast know her through a friend. Is she, is she good? Is she a good judge? I believe so. She worked for the Department of Labor, which was actually pretty cool. Oh, that's pretty good.

Okay. She was a union lawyer. So yeah. Union thugs. All right. Cool. Yeah. Yeah.

We got a union thug here. She does. She does enjoy running for recreation, which gives me pause. Psycho shit. That is like social behavior. Get a bicycle. Get a bicycle. It's so much easier.

Get a bicycle. It's so much easier. Get a bicycle. Get a bicycle. Get a bicycle. Get a bicycle. Get a bicycle. Get a bicycle.

Get a bicycle. Get a bicycle. Get a bicycle. Get somebody to ride. Get a bicycle. Get a bicycle. Get a bicycle. Get a bicycle.

So like physical support. Yeah. Jessica Brown for judge. Ah, Jim or Ryan Hart for mayor? Yeah. Probably. Probably. Jim.

I'm Yeah. The Reinhardt's fine, too. Yeah. Yeah, Jim's got the Bernie endorsement now and the, uh, who was, um, Hobig, Big sluice. A lot of people. There's a lot of people coalescing around her.

Yeah. She's, she's good. Profiteering gives me some pause as somebody who has recovered from opioid addiction, but that's my hang up not yours Oh, man. All right, let's turn it away. You could vote for Alan Dom Again, I will come to your house and beat you with your own shoes. The existence of an Alan Dom implies the existence of an Alan sub That's a good point. Yeah We're like Alan Dumb We should get to the subject of the episode 37 minutes

This is not this is a spot. This is not this is not Yeah Though this is several cities because I wanted to start here by talking about a transportation concept Which is the pre-war elevated railroad the L, right? It's a cool idea. Have a train wrestle right past your windows. What up? Yeah, exactly as people can look in and see what you're doing But you can look out and see what they're doing You can all spy on each other. Yeah, exactly. So So question why do you elevate a railroad because it's already a road under it and you want to like

Yeah, yeah, and the road's full of horses and streetcars. Everything's slow. There's carts everywhere, right? You know, it's like you have to get like cowboys to run in front of the locomotive to like clear all the shit away from it Like yeah, you can't go very fast, right? You know, you can't stop for the horses and if you can't stop for the horses Then you run them over and then you got to clean the horse of this row off the train, right? That's very expensive and time-consuming So you yeah, you elevate the railroad, right? Very hard to pull us up onto an elevated rail I actually have a question about elevating the roads. Do they do this? I know that some Trans systems were built with freight in mind. Is that another?

Consideration or some of the L's some of the L's did carry freight notably the Chicago L carried right until 1972 Was that a consideration in elevating them or no? It was one of the considerations. It was not like the primary Okay. Yeah, it was initially for rapid transit Yeah, a lot of these a lot of these pre-war L's there on these they have a few things in common They're on these sort of spindly, you know steel structures, right? With wooden ties directly on the girders These even steel on the top right here. They look like wrought iron like

That was probably steel. Yeah, yeah, you know But back then the material cost was a significant factor So you used like complicated lattice girders and stuff as opposed to today where you use a solid steel girder Hmm, you know, so look is good. Yeah, the the newer ones definitely do not look as good So they also sort of closely follow the route of existing streets, they were often very close to existing buildings these were almost all privately built and They were very loud because wooden ties directly on steel girders does not dampen vibrations very well Yeah, you'd have to like blues brothers seen with the the L train going past

Yes, exactly how fast does it how often does the train come by so often you won't even notice it? So the earliest ones were steam powered you can see the steam engine on a bowery in New York City here Nearly all of them are electrified by 1910 or so the first city to electrify their L the first city to Electrify their L entirely was of all places Sioux City, Iowa 92 a thriving metropolis of Sioux City, Iowa. Yeah, how big was their system? We have they had one line Yeah, okay. Yeah pretty easy to like for five on yes And by modern standards in terms of rapid transit these pre-war L's they had a lot of quirks, but they're very high performance

Right, they move a lot of people very quickly Your trains would operate under line of sight rules, right? So there's no like train signals You just need to keep a reasonable distance from the guy in front of you And you do that by looking with your eyes watch the road, you know, yeah, exactly That meant you could have very very high train frequencies, right? The train would come every 90 or even every 60 seconds Wow Which is something we can't do anymore the best like communication-based train control systems in like London and like Moscow can only do 120 seconds between trains I think Moscow might actually be a little bit better than 120 seconds, but I don't I don't remember offhand

Well, we just what we what you're saying is we need to abolish some more safety procedures Obviously, I just get rid of the wild. It's harder to do line of sight and tunnels is the thing Yeah This was it also a dangerous system like it's the collisions were not unheard of So usually eventually installed some kind of signaling system and you know lost some train frequency Now these systems were privately owned they're owned by companies that also ran the street cars So they were usually pretty heavily integrated into the streetcar network. You have stuff like time transfers There's elaborate transfer stations. We'll look at one later

Integrated ticketing you buy the streetcar and the L ticket one, right? But this is also a problem because there's usually three or four trolley companies, especially in place like New York City So you have three or four different Ticketed systems and three or four blob. You know, you had to you had to think about taking these things a lot more and this was before the invention of the the great American tradition of Stealing rides on trains. Mm-hmm Yeah, I mean you could still fair dodge Dodging that's the thing that I wanted. Yeah

That's a couple others right train theft was A train theft, yeah stealing the whole train, yeah taking it for a one-two-three, right? Yeah Well like in 1892 One of the things you get more tracks than modern systems, right? You might have a three or four track else. You get local and express trains The trains are smaller the stations are shorter, but the trains come so often. It doesn't matter The top speed is pretty low. The equipment is very light You know lots of the early L's you could only really take trains made of wood

but Again, you know the the top speed doesn't matter so much in an urban area if you're doing 25 30 miles an hour That's perfectly fine for going like 15 blocks Now since there's lots of trains, there's lots of routes You know, so sort of today we think of rapid transit in terms of lines, you know or or like, you know So New York City you got like a bc D e f blah blah blah number trains on self-worth. They all and then Britain we have an arcane system of madness runes in London Yes, you have to be either like born with or learn

Yeah, and then and then like these early L's because they're running so many trains. They just decide all right We need to run at least one train for every possible origin and destination and you're just sort of expected to Be able to look at the destination board and figure out what the root of the train is So, you know complete chaos right in terms of like where trains went You know, but they're they're faster than buses. They're faster than street cars. They're faster than regular cars at this point They're convenient. They're cheap

What happens to these things right? and the answer is To make the long story short these L's had three problems in the eyes of certain influential people, right? Which was they're loud they make the street darker and they were a blight Right, which is the sort of meaningless word for something you personally find offensive, right? You know You know people who had these complaints tend to live directly adjacent to the L or they had a business next to the L or they own property next to the L and A lot of times these are people who did not ride the L

Or stop but they formed civic groups and say hey, we got to get these things replaced with a subway and Replacing them with a subway generally a good idea well received by everyone But often reality intervened, right? So a lot of these L's no longer exist and they they went three ways, right? They either got replaced with the subway they got modernized or they were just straight up demolished You know so like in New York City pretty common you had replacement, right? You just replace the thing one one for one with a subway the L is gone But you still the public transportation everyone's happy

Especially in Manhattan this happened mostly on the west side You know some parts of Brooklyn had subways built But you know they also tried to replace the L in Chicago with a subway it turned out to be inadequate So they kept the L's nice, and then you know here in Philly RL was only converted to a subway for Like 15 blocks in the 1950s. Yeah One of the other things they might do is you'd relocate the whole thing into a highway median as they did in Chicago and Boston Which we're gonna talk about in a bit You know another thing is modernization

If you're in like Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, most of Chicago you strengthen the structures to take heavier modern trains I might just fell off at stand Yeah, I was like did you die? No, my bike literally came unfastened from the stand Liam's house just exploded. Yeah, sorry I'll put myself on mute just for a second while I get this thing back screwed in. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah See you in a second So if you're you do modernization you're strengthening these structures to take heavier modern trains

You're building new and quieter trains. You're installing You know dampers and like rubber gas but gaskets on the structures to reduce vibrations In case of Philly, you know curious how bad it is to like have to like live next to a modern one of these Well, you can ask Liam, but he's muted cuz he lives next to the L I mean, he manages to record a podcast with I mean the audio quality isn't bad in that sense Dev, you need to cut that. Dev, you need to cut that No, I guess it's fine. That's fine. You can leave it. Yeah. Yeah, hi. I'll be right back. God damn it Our whole elevated

railroad was essentially rebuilt from scratch scratch in the 2000s they installed a bunch of stuff to Reduce noise, right, but it's not like it's not crazy quiet. It's not like silent, but it's not that loud You know, it's kind of whatever But The most common solution is outright demolition, right? I have a public service when you could have no public service when you could just not do that. Yeah

A lot of times there's this sort of bait and switch involved, right? Which is the L would be replaced by a subway soon, but we got to get rid of the blight now Right. Mm-hmm. Sure So this is the story of like the 3rd Avenue L in Manhattan It was kept open to supplement the Lexington Avenue subway until the 2nd Avenue subway could be finished, right? But by 1950 these real estate interests are complaining Complaining very loudly because their property values were dropping which they assumed was because of the L So the 3rd Avenue L was taken down in sections over 20 years

Somehow property values didn't budge because you know, it was New York City in the 60s and 70s Yeah, yeah, third add not to have anything to do with the L But uh, you know just a blameless victim that they've decided. Okay. Yeah This is a sacrifice. We have to Have to we've cut the house out of the L city and knife. Yes in hopes the property values will go up Let the blood spill all the way down to the financial district Hey, you know, they took down this 3rd Avenue L and the Lexington Avenue line got overcrowded and after 70 years of no transit on the east side You know all those people who tore it down who insisted it be torn down and are old and dead in the ground and the second

Avenue subway has a whopping three stations now a lot with it. Hi, I Actually have another question. Yeah, is there any notable subway construction between sort of this like initial rust initial rush sort of between like let's say 1890 and 1930 and then nothing until like Relatively recently at least on the east coast. So you have you really have on the east coast Things is pretty stagnant. I mean New York City did not build a lot of new subways after like the 40s You know, but then you had let's say the you know, the great society subways, right? Like the Washington Metro Marta in Atlanta

Miami Metro What else Barton San Francisco? There are a couple big systems that were built Starting in the Lyndon Johnson administration But you know, they are not they they they are much more, you know modern than These old-fashioned L's I would say you're sort of pre-war New York City style subway is a very different animal to You know something like the Washington Metro or something like Bart's or you know, so thank you It's kind of a it's you know, cuz these things are Chicago L these things were built a lot more for the city of

1910 or so The stops are closer together. The the trains are more frequent, you know, you you don't really think about the suburbs at all In terms of service patterns And then some instances more modern systems have been grafted on to these old systems, but they're they're not That necessarily there is very it's like it's designed for you to like a live like I don't know like five blocks From where you work or to like get to the gang war that's happening across town Like yeah, okay fine And so is that something I noticed when I was

Watching the Sopranos for the first time it's like damn a lot of these people wouldn't it would have been a lot harder to murder If they took public transit and not driving You know like the gangs of New York thing, you know, that's walkable gangsterism Where exactly is like sort of private transport private vehicle-based? Not sure there's really like a public transport I mean, I guess if you get into like stuff like like gang controlled bus lines and stuff maybe but yeah Yeah, you don't really get like a train system of gang warfare, which is a shame because they'll be assessing someone to do like a tabletop role-playing game Yeah, some against full control of the Jersey Central

Yeah, give me fucking Gangs of New York on on like trains. Yeah, yes So there's also some other factors to play for early L teardowns most often the company going bankrupt, right? But the mmm the big L teardowns are usually after a system had gone into municipal ownership, right? I guess our takeaway here is these L's are very good for their time perfectly serviceable with modernization Very difficult to replace once they're gone But you know short-sighted sightedness and inpatience means a lot of people in neighborhoods which used to have good rapid transit Don't anymore classic a classic story for us. Yeah Yeah, you just had to sort of do the maintenance and the stuff would be good

You know so like I like the way that they look I like the way that an elevator train looks I like being like under them. It feels nice, you know I mean, I especially like the old ones where the light sort of filters down through the ties You know, yeah, you don't get that on a modern concrete structure But but you compare that they really did the album filly. They actually they filled the whole thing up with concrete. It's impressive Yeah, a little little less nice. I mean again, it's like it's maintenance. It's all it's all maintenance decisions Right, like you compare that to sort of like the yeah film set in the 70s in New York like the Warriors or whatever It's all fucking like looming under these big like L train tracks and arches

And it's just like what doesn't have to be that way, you know You Could like a fucking if we if we I would accept some Santiago Calatrava ass design Where it all looks like it's made out of render, right? And it's all very sort of like pencil and twisty and stuff and you get a lot of light through it in this context But like no one wants to spend that money. So so anyway Nowhere is better at these L teardowns than Boston Um

Greatest city in the world Boston strong. Yes Spencer confidential Third thing something about molasses. Let's go Matt Go Bruins go Celtics park the car in Harvard Yard Oh, yeah, it's not him fucking Boston. It's in Cambridge So in Boston

There was the Boston Elevated Railway which eventually sort of owned what we now call the orange line, right? They had a couple L's in downtown Boston. There was the Atlantic Avenue L and Boston's had a couple L's The Atlantic Avenue L that was demolished in that replace the Charlestown L was Relocated about a million miles from its original location when they modernized it. I think I have something for this but Today we're gonna talk. Yeah, I do Today we're talking about the Washington Street Elevated, right? Sort of opens in 1901 it runs from

The Essex station here To Forest Hills down here Essex is now Chinatown Forest Hills is now Forest Hills It passes through the south end neighborhood and Roxbury, right But it skips over a lot of the south end because those guys are close to downtown. They can take the trolley in right It's built with the sort of single-minded purpose, right? You take the trolley to the L The L station is set up in such a way that you can quickly get off the trolley and onto the L As fast as humanly possible and the L whisk used at downtown in mere minutes You can see the sign at Dudley Square here rapid transit eight minutes to Summer Street

Yes These stations are very elaborate This is the Dudley Square station This is the most advanced rapid transit station I've ever seen But basically, you know the streetcar comes in It goes up this ramp. It stops you get off the streetcar you walk five feet you get on the L and go And it does that on both sides And then on the way back. Oh, that is really really really good

But it's you know, it's very efficient on the way back you stop over here and you have a much longer walk But on the way back the the loads are different. The passenger loads are different So it makes sense to to have the To do it a different way there, right Sure. Yeah, so it's like a great commuter station Yes, it is it is designed for the single-minded purpose of getting you off the trolley and onto the rapid transit train as quickly as possible You know and and we're gonna save you time as much time as possible Funnily enough this building still exists

But they sort of cut the top off and lowered it 20 feet and now it's a crappy bus terminal How So at least I thought what you're gonna tell me it's like like escape rooms and bars now and I was gonna kill myself like Yeah, this is like axe throwing You too can play in decaying Empire. So it's it's like an L themed There is a L themed gas station nearby there I believe Yeah, so anyway, so The South End and Roxbury they have this great L right this fantastic rapid transit system

But we are we are also entering this sort of era of road construction in Boston, right? We got to talk about the central artery in the freeway refolks So Boston did not have a Robert Moses what they had was a William F. Callahan, right? More of a planner everything's got to be Say he's more of a planner than a politics guy a lot of times backfired on him, right? yeah He put together the city's master highway plan in 1948 and the city just sort of sat there with no one doing anything about it, right? There's a whole bunch of time best thing to do. Yes, you know, it's a whole bunch of time for Tom reduction

Yes, actually it's a whole lot of time for like opposition to his projects to materialize but you know he was He was not he was not in the mold of Robert Moses who could do a lot of behind-the-scenes Politicking when he did it. It kind of he screwed it up like so for instance, he had a Secret meeting was wearing a bow tie anti-social personality Textbook one might say what example is he had a secret meeting with Alfred Perlman of the New York Central Railroad? May have heard of them before on this podcast

he's trying to acquire the Boston and Albany right of way into Boston for the mass bike in 1956 and and that meeting was instantly leaked to the press and Basically every single town along the rig was like no, we don't want to do this now. They eventually still But Callahan's most infamous projects this meeting two of us were at I'm like, well, I didn't leak Yeah, how about this other guy? I assume he's fine. Callahan's most infamous project was the central artery, right? Which is this massive highway through the very center of Boston. They condemned blocks of buildings starting in 1951 The highway made this slow but steady march of construction from the Charles River towards South Station, right? You know

So in New York City, there's this widespread opposition to highways which Robert Moses steam-grilled through with a combination of charm Charisma and extreme nastiness and pettiness, right? Yeah, racism things of this nature Callahan did not really have this force of character, right? And in early it was not racist enough apparently Yeah, in 1956 the whole thing started looking like a mistake before it was even finished Callahan and Matt the Massachusetts Department of Transportation Relented the final half mile of the central artery would be built at great expense in a tunnel you know, so they they finally finished the central artery in

1959 and by 1960 it was already over capacity and there's massive traffic jams every day Yeah, so history of every word You know, it's just this huge thing that cuts through downtown Boston. It was so big and so ugly People started calling it the other green monster That's pretty good. Yeah, the green monster, of course being the big wall at Fenway Um, thank you, Ross. Yes. Well, oh, we don't have any sport. Yeah, some people might not know that I don't know. You should know that that should be deeply deeply in your right Fenway Park, of course Fenway Park, of course home of the mouse

I Alice can you Alice can you DM me your home address for no specific reason, please? Yeah, it's fantastic Um It's fine. We'll just beep all of that. Let's go with the the passage of the federal highway act in 1956 though The playing field changes, right? The feds are gonna pick what up 90 cents for every 10 cents of local spending So you imagine that sort of spending on like transit now No, anything anything else. Yeah, imagine that, you know, they could finally make the 15 a subway. Yes

So at this point Boston can't afford not to build They got all this traffic from this one highway. Obviously the solution to traffic problems is to build additional highways, right? And we'll just ignore the fact that all those highways lead into the central artery, which is over capacity One more line. Yeah, one more line more line, bro. I swear one more line, bro. Bro. Bro. Bro. This time This time. Yeah, bro. So planning was complete. It was time to start construction on The southwest corridor highway Which is yeah, so I can never get my fucking like junctions to look this good and so do skyline

So I have to get them off the workshop and they never line up properly. I feel their pain, you know So sort of the idea here is we're going to build the southwest corridor It's along the right of way the Boston and Providence Railroad um To build a southwest the Providence This is going to be an eight lane multimodal corridor, right

directly linking i-95 with the massachusetts turnpike Providing a more direct route downtown Um, now what was multimodal about is they were going to relocate The washington street elevated the orange line into the median of the highway, right? Ah, yeah, that spring garden station clean air we love. Yes It's unclear what was going to happen to the boston and providence railroad I think they were just going to use a different approach into south station that already existed because that was

That is what is now m tracks northeast corridor um so One of the tricks of getting these projects done is to move as quickly as possible, which callahan did right? Well, the central artery was failing miserably Uh, they started condemning buildings Uh wrecking balls got to work. There was vocal community opposition, but the damage was done before that could really You know sort of take root, right?

The city owned the corridor and come heller high water. This thing was going to get built But the cost started soaring political will waned callahan died in 1964 No one wants is not a good move if you're trying to get shit done Yeah, not a great move uh for for a lot of things uh in life going to the fact that you would be your dad, um You know, so you get them ross You in a lot of ways. Yeah, so uh, no one wanted this freeway, but the right of way had been cleared and seemed like well What else are you gonna do with it, right? Um

Build a train so that the community opposition to this freeway expansion also growing in other parts of the Boston area Particularly in the path of the interloop freeway Uh, which would have been this guy here Um, you know all uh, you know, uh, particularly in the city of Cambridge, which is where all the harvard people go to harvard, right? Um, yeah, it's what they park the car. Yeah. Yeah um So in 1970 governor frances sergeant ordered a moratorium on freeway construction inside route 128 Which finally killed off the southwest corridor

Except the corridor still existed, right? It was just a a swath of land with no buildings on it that the state owned Oh for one more So what do you do with it? Um build a train build a train build a train. I guess what they do dummy. Yeah Hi, it's Justin Uh, so this is a commercial for the podcast that you're already listening to People are annoyed by these so let me get to the point We have this thing called patreon, right?

The deal is you give us two bucks a month and we give you an extra episode once a month Uh, sometimes it's a little inconsistent, but you know, it's two bucks. You get what you pay for Um, it also gets you our full back catalog of bonus episodes So you can learn about exciting topics like guns pickup trucks or pickup trucks with guns on them The money we raise through patreon goes to making sure that the only ad you hear on this podcast is this one Anyway, that's something to consider if you have two bucks to spare each month Join at patreon.com forward slash

Wtyp pod Do it if you want or don't it's your decision and we respect that Back to the show So the federal highway act of 1973 signed by another than none other than Richard Nixon Recognized how unpopular these urban freeways were and for the first time states and municipalities could actually trade in their unspent highway dollars for mass transit dollars right Uh, the southwest you could use like three slurp juices on a single ape and as a result you could get like a train

out of that ape, yeah so The southwest corridor would rise again as this five track rail corridor two tracks for a new Relocated orange line and three for what is now m tracks northeast corridor and it would also feature a linear park Wow Yeah This is I mean first of all Neon bcfo destroyed second of all. This is what we like. This is what we want to see, right?

That's a good idea. Yes. Um, you know, this is uh, It is by all metrics a good project except for somewhere about to talk about Um construction is completed in 1987 You know, all right brand new rapid transit Time to tear down that ugly old elevated railway, right? Uh, everyone's gonna be happy. There's gonna be light on the street again. The commutes would be faster blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah Folks living along washington street and in roxbury started to realize. Ooh There are some issues here

Oh, no So if you look here, um This purple line here Should be orange, but this is the root Of the orange line, right? Um, now this red line here Is the root of the old elevated

And this distance here Is about half a mile Oh Oh, you don't want to walk half a mile to get on half a mile. Yeah, I don't want to walk any miles Exactly. I don't want to walk at all. Yeah, I won't I want to get on the train that was right there um Yeah, so this new line is about half a mile away in most areas Uh, it ran through less densely populated areas. So it was less useful

And uh, you know surprisingly for a highway project the neighborhoods it ran through were generally whiter and more affluent and uh Then the surrounding neighborhood shoes on the other foot Once again, we were right. Callahan wasn't racist enough. Is he a bit more racist? Jesus Christ Well, then he would have run it straight through Roxbury. Yeah. Yeah, uh, no more to make a plane. Yep So, you know, that's probably one of the reasons why it was canceled. Yeah um What's more, you know, transit in general was deteriorating

The new stations didn't really help, you know While this washington street l was configured with the express purpose of connecting with street cars The new stations were not so well integrated in the bus network Uh, MBTA was rapidly cutting back on street car service with most of those street cars gone by the 70s Um, this is fucking GM's That's the whole other episode. Yeah, let me let me have my conspiracy theory So another blow to the neighborhood served by the orange line was the temporary suspension of the green line e branch to forest hills in 1985

um That is still suspended Um Oh, so it's like a state of emergency and like You can sort of see here at the new forest hills station. They built these new street car tracks Uh, never used Um, terrific. Thanks boys. Yeah Yeah, so

new This is uh, this this this is uh, there's there's a lot of degradation to transit going on here and folks in Roxbury especially Uh, are like we we should keep this l until there is some adequate replacement for it They love keeping an L in Boston go Bruins And uh, and and uh, what MBTA says is no and they demolish it You can walk bitch. That's just what the side says So

Luckily the people of Boston famously don't ever get like a chip on the shoulder about anything So that's why Tom Brady has seven super balls. Yeah Yeah, yeah, yeah, and and so I assume they're all very positive about these developments This begins a classic elevated railway story We're gonna provide an adequate service later But in the meantime, you know, there's these five people complaining about pressing right, you know There's five people complaining as depressing property values and three small business owners complained about noise So we're going to tear it down now. Um

You know So as I mentioned, these things are hard to replace Uh, but you know, they they they are because they're just a superior form of transit because they're grades separated and everything, right? right so during U.S. Department of Transportation study for replacement they they promised uh We're going to provide equal or better service

through the neighborhood Washington street is going to be just as good. It's going to be just as good What you're going to get a guy from the neighborhood who's going to call you a slur and then just sort of push you up a hill Yeah, donnie donnie. Yeah, he's gonna do some anti-asian crimes or was that mark walberg that did that? All right, yeah You're amazing bud. So the initial plan here We're going to extend the existing light rail system, you know, the green line So that there would be frequency transit as least as far as nubian square

I just I just I just like that. It's not exclusive because we've already talked about We set one episode in boston and now Nubian square used to be dudley square uh How do people feel about the name like well dudley, uh, legalized slavery Uh, uh was Okay, they call it 1641 Hmm

Yeah, guy was a real piece of shit So the idea here you're gonna extend the green line through the disused pleasant street portal Right, uh, and then that would go down Washington street Uh What what is the pleasant street portal? It sounds like some fucking control. So there was you have the green line It goes in a tunnel through downtown boston The green line is a bunch of

Former streetcar routes that all ran through the same tunnel But there were a couple more that came in a separate ramp that was the pleasant street portal Then all the existing lines do that was disused at some point. I forget when exactly Uh, because all those lines were uh converted to buses So they had just this this entire streetcar tunnel. It's about a thousand feet long That was just not in use. It's still there as well Um, cool. Yeah, and that would join the core green line Uh, this is a system that would make a lot of sense, which is why the feds refused to fund it

um Because You know the feds just funded this huge rapid transit To uh line Um, and it's kind of you know, their internal justification here is well, I don't know that we should be funding something That's almost adjacent to what we just funded Um, so so that doesn't happen, right? Um, this this this idea does not happen um

So MBTA comes up with a second idea We're gonna cheap out and you have a trolley bus system Oh We love half-measures and the trolley bus is the awesome half-measures. This is just Hilary Clinton running the bus system stocks They were still gonna try and send the buses into the pleasant street portal And like pave over. Yeah, they were gonna pave over

Part of the Tremont street subway. So your streetcars and buses could use it, right? Uh, what a stupid fucking so you want to be a subway bus driver? Yeah Yes, you want to never see in a subway tunnel. You know that that uh Song coal town road by the baron mcneels. Yes, we never see the sun down the coal town road. It's like that but for buses Are you are you having trouble with the darkness bus? I'm having trouble with the idea of being at like a subway platform and imagining a bus rocking up I Yep, you wait. Yeah

So wrong this feels so right. It's like socks and sandals. It's like you don't belong down there What are you doing here? You don't know darkness bus darkness bus. I don't want to get the darkness bus I don't want to get the darkness bus darkness bus I don't want to get the sisters of mercy bus. I don't want to do it So commutes from deadly square was still deadly square at this point. It wouldn't be renamed renamed to nubian for a while Um, or these were advertised to be only 12 20 minutes, right? It's renamed attributes of brand nubian

Yeah, so this was 12 minutes slower than the l could do But that's the price of progress, right? Um, yeah, that's what this is Yeah, but this was further scaled back when mbta realized MBTA is the massachusetts bay transit authority by the way folks Um, they realized something that was surprisingly obvious Uh, which is buses don't run on tracks So it would take superhuman skill to steer them properly in the tunnels

Uh, if they fit at all, that's why it's so weird. Yeah, like I just imagine the sides scraping against the town Yeah, yeah, it's it's it's bad. It's bad folks Not a good idea So folks who lived around washington street were forced to settle for much longer walks Or taking the new route 49 bus which went on the same route as the old l While mbta sat on its hands for a while Hmm. Oh, did they that's crazy. I I can't imagine them doing that, especially now Now in the meantime

In a completely separate area of boston The face of global shipping was changing right folks were putting stuff into these big things called containers I knew you were gonna tell people to read the box again Yeah, and that meant that you know traditional stevedoring Warehousing so on they're all in decline, right, which meant boston seaport district was in decline Uh, most the most year atlantic shipping had consolidated at the port of new york and new jersey And the small container terminal was all that they really needed in boston Um, and this was happening at the same time as the ongoing big dig project with the central artery underground

Which is its own Probably series of episodes 10 williams you son of a bitch. Yeah, you can see you can see the ted william tunnels under construction here um When you ever in when you ross when you were a kid your parents ever take you into the boston, uh, the children's museum Oh the first time i went to boston was with you. Oh really? Okay. Yeah, I'll never mind then They used to have a whole exhibit on the big dig when I was a kid I didn't know if you had seen it all right moving on I just wanted to go see the big dig happening and then uh, no they they didn't want to go to boston

They finished it Yeah, it's great It's great to have justin rosniak yelling at you trying to navigate Through the the big dig and you're just like wow I could really use a beer and then you don't and you guys end up at the fucking airport There's a whole bunch of vacant land here where there were rail yards, right? uh, that's a lot of land for someone to grab right

and The question is you know should the city do something about this should they have have some kind of value add here because they want this place to develop Maybe you add some kind of public transportation, right? That's time to do the dlr boston edition right like yeah, uh, oh boy So This area is a little awkward to serve with public transit given the existing system You know ideally what you would not want to have is like let's say some kind of silly stub end system That goes into the seaport district and then just stops that would be probably not the right way to do it

um So there's this developer proposes building like a monorail out to the seaport district in the mid 80s Me i'm just like you're reclaiming a dockland district. You'd fucking build the dlr again. I guess you build uh Yeah, it's fun. It's gonna work this time You can you can sit at the front and pretend you're driving the train and then uh when it starts raining Because they can't turn the windscreen wipers on remotely So a guy has to come in Ask you to get up open the front with a key

Turn the thing close the front again and let you sit back down and you can pretend you're driving it again Like it's great when I I I did that when I was in london and 13. Yeah Yeah, not not uh open the panel but pretend I was driving the train. It's fun to children of any age like yes So mbta takes over the project right after an extensive wide ranging environmental impact study They recommend a quote a transit way unquote as the best option. What the fuck is that? It could link downtown boston to the logan airport via the tunnel or through the seaport district And you know take advantage of the new highway infrastructure being built for the big dig. What is it?

It's a transit way It's a way with transit There's transit on the way And it's gonna be great furthermore They determined it could connect with the new Uh the new transit on washington uh washington street somehow Which would be worked out in phase three

but Bus rapid transit was coming to boston it's it's a bus It's a bus. It's a bus. Bus rapid transit drt burt

burt burt burt burt burt Burt Burt Burt

No one wants to talk about urney No Okay, bus rapid transit What is it? What does it do at the scam? Here it looks like a bus lane like yes So buses have problems, right? They get stuck in traffic. They get stuck at stoplights. Yeah, they stop too often People take a long time to board the bus because they're squeezing in through one door and fiddling with fares I don't take a long time to board the bus. I'm fucking great at boarding a bus

I'm like probably one percent in the world at boarding a bus Um Yeah, yeah, I'm not fucking around. I like look up on my phone what I need to do with tickets and stuff I'm just like there. I'm just on it, you know, and I get very mad when people aren't I wish I wish I wish we could say the same about everyone else. We need we need uh We need rigorous program of bus training. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. I mean people always say, you know You leave high school not knowing how to like balance the budget or whatever But you leave high school knowing not knowing how to get on a bus. That's that's

That's because they don't make the kids they don't make the kids pay fares when they get on the school bus I know An arcade system of fares in order to like really, you know, fucking around so they they get it, you know Yeah, you give them like tokens, but you have to use a specific one You know, I don't think they should have to pay money, but they should have to pay a fare Yeah in the form of a token that they get at the school Um, anyway, you know, sometimes buses have very circuitous routes Right, especially in the suburbs where you got to like drive to the front door of every shopping center

um, you know generally this These sorts of things degrade the experience of riding on the bus And increases the amount of time a bus needs to go from point a to point b. So I Showed here. This is set the route 89 right, which goes uh it goes Around a very silly route very silly round it goes nine and a half miles to go three and a half miles

um This is what you might call a coverage route because it's the idea is okay There's no public transit in some of these areas or there's not very much So we just run the bus. We'll give them a bus right. Yeah, it's a pity bus. Yes, exactly And it's like not especially useful especially end-to-end. There's certainly people who ride it, you know from Part of the route to part of the route where it makes sense I mean certainly down on like Aramingo Avenue here that makes sense But doesn't make sense to go farther than that. This is sort of um, you know and because it has this long

Weird route. It's going to be unreliable. It's going to you know get stuck in traffic You know the bus is not going to show up when you expect it to um You know and and because of stuff like this um, you know people Will say hey buses are great because they're flexible, right? They're easy to reroute or detour

or to um, you know make changes to routes, but this is uh, I think really a big flaw in buses, right? And because of this sort of thing, you know buses in major cities are very very slow Like in new york city the average speed of a bus is nine miles an hour Yeah, free electric. They're just sitting there idling a big diesel engine for all of this Oh, yeah, yeah, or or even if it's electric. You still might be idling a big diesel engine um, you know You look at even if even if you're not it's still wasting a lot of energy

Yeah, I saw in in in moscow, right? um The current mayor is an insane man Who decided to die? I'm not sure if it's that guy. I forget exactly who started this campaign But he was like we're going to get rid of all the trolleybuses in moscow and replace them with battery buses In fairness in fairness moscow trolleybuses were grim, but um, yeah, so the thing is moscow so is sub-yanan

Moscow gets very cold It does and one of the big energy expenses in a bus Is heating the bus? Yeah, sure. In fact to the point where it's more energy than moving the bus So all these new moscow battery buses that replace the all-electric trolleybuses Have diesel heaters on them Great, perfect. Yeah, fantastic. Diesel cigarettes progress. Yes. Yeah So anyway, some of these flaws I mentioned about buses are corrected through bus rapid transit, right? The idea is you have dedicated lanes. The cars can't drive in them

You get priority at traffic signals. The the light goes green when the bus approaches Right, the bus stops are spaced widely apart. So, you know, it's more like rapid transit than it's like You know a bus that stops at every corner, but they're not so widely a part that you can't walk between them, right? um Passengers pay their fare before they get on the bus so everyone can board more quickly you can use all doors to board the bus Um The bus routes are very direct. There are long major corridors where lots of people want to go You get rid of unnecessary turns and deviations from the route

So and so forth not to be a supremacist about this But you make a bus better by making it more like a train and eliminating more of the features of a bus and adding more Of the features of a train Yes, yes What if you made it longer too? What if you just joined a couple of like separate vehicle bodies together through some kind of like flexible coupling? Oh, that's on the next slide The first system the first system opens in

Runcorn, England in 1971 as part of a new town development Which is essentially just a dedicated bus road completely with a few elevated segments But I think the one we really look at is something uh In brazil the uh curatiba, uh bus system. I'm not sure if that's how you pronounce that Um, yeah, sure. It's fine. Oh, no, you did all right. We're gonna care about Mexico today brazil can get fox until whatever day it is Yeah, exactly not brazil day. It's Mexico day. Mm-hmm. That's right So you look at the this is like the gold standard for bus rapid transit here You got really big really fast buses. They're in lanes, which are physically separated from traffic, right?

Um, you have air conditioned stations with off-board fare payment You have level boarding, right? So nice people who are disabled can use it very easily and that also means you board the bus faster, right? Uh traffic signal priority all the stuff they have on the system, right? And these sorts of bus rapid transit systems do not perform quite as well as the metro But they certainly give something like light rail a run for its money ow We need assistance by a cop. Was that was that was milkshake getting on my shoulder. Yeah um

so Theoretically, these are cheaper and easier to implement than metro or light rail, but there's a problem Uh, these buses are flexible, right? Not not in terms of uh, you know flexible in that you can see here This is a double articulated A double articulated bendy bus here. Love a bendy bus milkshake will get out of my way. Um, anyway, so No You know these buses like they can travel outside of the dedicated lanes and on regular roads So there's always rooms for cost savings, right?

Even when the cost saving is blatantly false economies that'll harm the project This is called brt creep but creep Bert creep. Yeah So, we'll look at a few examples here, um, one very fucking nypd. Yes police department in america One very common example of brt creep is the location of the bus lanes, right? Center running bus lanes require islands in the street for station

Stations which cost money and takes up space. So instead you just move the bus lane to the curb Now what happens would you park there and and eat an unarmed person to death? Not even just the cops like any asshole who has who has a can print a block just feels like it, right? Yes. Yeah Yes, this this attracts cops the cops park the car there and delivery trucks who also idle there, right? Which means the person is the lane tracks cops like they're a kind of like mold, you know, yes, they are They are So it's grown cops on it. Okay. Yeah So another cost saving strategy is maybe we merge the bus lane with the turn lanes at each intersection, right?

um Where you wind up with a situation where Let's say like a quarter of each block is just mixed traffic lanes with paint on them Yeah, or you can do one of the things we've done in philly Uh, where you do have center running lanes. This is the route 15 trolley But you merge it with the left turn lane which means at every intersection the trolley is delayed by Vehicles which spend the most time at every intersection which are left turning vehicles

Uh, which of course because you know, they got us a lot of times you sit through multiple light cycles to turn left So that actually you have dedicated lanes which are slower than general traffic lanes Um, yeah Huge huge waste I've timed this it is actually much slower on the dedicated lanes than it is further down where it's mixed traffic It's brutal So some of this stuff is done for cost or space constraints, right? Drivers get mad when you take away their lanes or their parking spots even if traffic flow

objectively and measurably improves Um, small business owners, especially get mad when you take away their street parking spots Even if those parking spots are like all occupied by you know, a 1993 corolla with flat tires and expired tags Um, you know hasn't moved since 2007 Uh, but if you get rid of that we're gonna work on it, you know at some point maybe maybe So a lot of times these these projects you wind up with discontinuous bus lanes or you eliminate them entirely Uh, then other parts start to go

Signal priority irritates drivers and is expensive Off-board fare collection creates expensive security problems that the machines accept cash Um, all-door boarding makes fare evasion easier, right? And even really simple innovate interventions like moving bus stops to the far side of the intersection Sometimes that'll get cut. I can I can solve two of these problems at a stroke by like funding it by tax and making like Fares free Oh, yeah, obviously free fares wouldn't help speed up buses. Yes. Um, you know, but but uh, we're cost-cutting here We're not

Sorry I came into that. I came into the sort of like austerity meeting with ideas of how to make the service work better Nope um After all this you wind up with something like in the worst case something like the septa boulevard direct bus where they have Fancy paint and nicer stations and that's it uh

Worth it, you know Yeah So because of the wide variety and quality of systems that are marketed as brt The institute for transportation and development policy Some big ngo thing created the brt standard which is a points baked Points based ranking system to assess the quality of brt systems around the world I don't feel comfortable medicalizing these things. I think that if you are not identifiers of brt You should be able to do that without somebody like

Demanding that you can form with a certain instead of practices if you can pass as brt Now these are ranked as uh, you know basic brt or a bronze silver or gold brt Um, the first gold standard brt in the united states opened in albuquerque new mexico in 2019 which Is some foreshadowing here? Oh, no Yeah, so let's look at the silver line as built that So terrible logo. Yeah. Yeah

Yeah, this grand scheme is unveiled at 1998 a new bus rapid transit silver line to right historical wrongs and finally provide residents Along washington street with the transit they deserved while also stimulating growth in the post industrial wastelands of the seaport district Phase one would run along washington street phase two would be the tunnel through the seaport district Phase three would link the two lines into one Go just okay. Let's do it. Yes. Yeah Construction on washington street started in 2001 and finished in 2002. It went very very quickly It went very very quickly because it delivered almost nothing So the concept was

To run buses in dedicated lanes from nubian square Which was then dudley square to boston south station, right? And downtown crossing, I believe This was quickly scaled back into providing dedicated lanes where practical right Which meant removing these bus lanes From the project where the line was most congested. Oh, cool. So you can only have them where you don't need them Yes, yes, exactly So downtown boston. No bus lanes near nubian square. No bus lanes

Now boston is an old city with short blocks, right? Here at washington and massachusetts avenue. We can see sort of a typical configuration, right? We have the parking lane the bus lane Two travel lanes the other bus lane and a parking lane right But we're also merging the bus lane with the turn lane so

For about half of this block The bus lane is a general traffic lane um This is a typical configuration Um, this is a mass Yeah, yes How is no one supposed to go anywhere, man? Uh Well, the bus pulls into the general traffic lane

Because this is also a setup that encourages double parking I'm gonna get a fucking share in a like a highway paint company Yeah You know, so yeah, this is this is a setup that really encourages double parking Also, if you're parallel parking, you're gonna go through the bus lane, right? But you know, this is Uh, it's okay because buses aren't for real people after all. It's fine for the poor if I can block the bus lane for a second right So, you know the the the the silver line buses here they they frequently have to you know

Go into general traffic lanes to get around some jag off, right? Um, so You'd think though, okay, the lanes themselves are not very good. You'd have some other brt features though, right? But no, uh, they don't Um, so like fares are paid on board like a regular bus Some of the bus stations are nicer, but some of them are worse than average. Like this is at Worcester Square Uh, there's not even a shelter Um, cool Stand in the rain. Fuck you

Um, I think four intersections had signal priority, but they waited until 2006 to turn that on And they got rid of the trolley bus idea. They these buses run entirely on compressed natural gas Oh for fuck's sake like They're not even like electric like gas, but okay. Yeah. Yeah. Fuck you Well, it's like some like you'll get like like stepping stones. We tripped over on the way to electric power So it's like, oh, yeah I Incidentally, you know, someone crashes into the bus now

It's like venting gas out of the top mushroom cloud. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, no, this is slow traffic Yeah, have you seen uh, like a hydrogen bus that like Flip the fucking safety valves. It literally it looks like a flamethrower in three directions at the same time I have never seen that. I want to see that. No, look at it. Look it up on youtube. It's a great time Maybe we can get definitely like in bed some some photos or some video But like it fully like has because you gotta have as many different Like vents as possible So it will probably just like shoot flame out of the top and the sides and you'll see it like burning the paint off of cars

The side of it Just use electricity, dude, it's from the fucking like it comes as it comes sort of wire. You can get We'll get we'll get to that Um, yeah, so, you know, the small nuclear reactor in every vehicle No, the silver line has more ridership than the former 49 bus. I believe that doubled the ridership like 14 000 people a day Um, but this has also caused its own problems, you know at every station the dwell times are very high like over a minute Um, so this has made the silver line bus rapid transit one of the slowest buses on the mbta With an average speed of eight miles an hour. Yeah beating new york everywhere, baby

Does it on on on the like uh transmedicalist spectrum does this write a silver medal? Is the silver line a silver brt? It doesn't even fucking podium I believe the what's it the institute for transportation policy, whatever it's called. Uh, yeah rank this as not brt Not even podium Not even podium incredible dnf. Yeah, like yeah gorgeous not even a participation medal. Uh-huh. Yeah They fully just call this thing a brick It goes to show There are some problems that can't be solved with paint on the street

I've never believed that especially now that i'm buying shares very strongly in and paint bike Yeah, we're vested very strongly for those of you who uh, are not watching the podcast what you see here It's part of washington street with bus lanes Then a further part of washington street also on the silver line, which has black lives matter painted on it Does that count as a bus lane? I you see like um transflight crosswalks in london too and i'm like, okay Okay. Yeah, thanks. I guess. Yeah. Thanks. I Do Yeah, exactly. Hmm. Yeah

So, you know, this is this is actually one of the greatest i've walked into do nothing at all. Obviously. That's true I Sort of appreciate the sassy making an effort to make me feel welcome. I think there are other things you probably Fucking else is right. Yeah, exactly that too. Yeah You could have put bus lanes in this section No, we give what the city of london the alice lane This is right next to this is you goes only 60 miles an hour you just have to repurpose all of the like olympic vip lanes

And it's just like you must be driving a silly little car the low like roundel for is a trebant Yes, uh trebant a you go Yeah, the uh dictated of course by alice caldwell kelly to determine what is appropriate to drive in the alice lane Yep. Yep. Yep. You gave a little car lane Gave a little car lane big fan big fan Now for all its faults, this project was at least very cheap About I bet it wasn't as fucking do anything Yeah

Some parts of a road we bought a bus. We painted a road. Okay. Yes, uh, this came in at about 27.3 billion dollars Um, yeah, almost nothing, you know a chump change chump change And if I had 27.3 million dollars, I wouldn't even be able to buy Like a loaf of bread they spit in your face for anything less than 30 million dollars So like they did pretty well on the money here Let's let's we can't say the same thing though about phase two. Oh god. I don't know phases. Um, yeah Okay Phase two of the silver line was undertaken concurrently and oh boy. Um

The idea is we're have a tunnel connecting south station to silver line way Right, which is the station right next to the ted williams tunnel Uh services would radiate from there to the airport the design district and city point Right. So, you know down here trade center up over there. That's in the wrong city Oh, yeah, it's up here. It's weird You know the the the the tunnel would travel under both the uh, Fort point channel and several historic buildings, right? And to reduce the cost of the tunnel and avoid costly ventilation systems

The buses would be dual mode trolley buses Electric in the tunnel and diesel on surface streets Oh, you know, you know, it's fucked when you have to have like dual power modes. It's the same thing as like, um What's now hs1 where it's like a fabishment has to change from like, um, like a catenary to um a third rail Or it's like Guys for fuck's sake, please. I'm begging you I didn't know that I thought it was a overhead line the whole way now Uh, it may be now. I'm basing this entirely out of knowledge from train simulator folks

But I do it does mean that I know the procedure to change over from like pantograph to to like third wheel At least you can do that in motion um I don't think you I don't think on those you could even like I think you have to like stop at favecham. Okay Yeah So, you know, they didn't have battery buses at the time. We barely have battery buses now Um, you know, so that they start construction in 1996. I believe

um Have a big chunk of problems with construction The underwater portion of the tunnel was to be an immersed tube, right? Which is you you dig a trench you bring in the tunnel segments on a barge You sink those tunnel segments then you fill in the trench Right, but they found a boulder the size of a large boulder in the right of way And and it took a full year to remove and redesign the tunnel Or remove the boulder and they had to do some redesigns of the tunnel to account for it

I don't understand how that worked. But that was a whole year delay The city of boston was defeated by a rock for a year. Yes. That's all right Yeah The tunnel passed underneath the foundation of the historic russia warf buildings, right? That's these guys here Um, you know, so to preserve these historic buildings The soil beneath them had to be frozen and stabilized. They had to build new foundation structures while holding the buildings up There was a huge massive amount at present massive effort at preservation And two years later developer a developer came in and facotomized them, you know, essentially gotten

Gutted the buildings entirely so they could put a tower on top. So that was useless Um, cool Yeah They built these two jaw droppingly enormous stations, right? At courthouse and the world trade center. These are enormous underground bus stops It's really difficult to get the sense of scale here Because I know liam and I have been in there once in the courthouse station and it's so big It's a cavern dude. It's enormous

Did you guys beat the challenges or? Uh, no. Nope. I had to go to boston prison You've heard boston charlie now get ready for boston justin. Yeah, I got stuck in there for I got like three days lacked Up for saying something positive about manhattan clam chowder There's just tomato soup with clams in it Fuck you, dude It's a shower hole each shit So these these things are palatial they spared no expense on these the tunnels were a different matter

They were they spared some expenses They were built for a design speed of a whopping 25 miles an hour But in practice the buses usually go 15 miles an hour Because they're restricted by the driver's ability to steer the bus in the tiny tunnel No, you motherfucker you made the darkness bus again Yeah This is this is the elan musk loop well before the elan musk loop But like I know why though it's because you could cut the ribbon on a station

But not on a tunnel and so they were like Check this shit out fancy station This is the way the future like five of the lights and the ceiling are already out and no one's changed them Which is like funny, uh, but like What what the real the real kicker here is though Once you get through the tunnel and go to the silver line way station here This is where they take down the trolley poles and turn on the diesel bus right

This is where the buses radiate out into various lines So you come out of the tunnel here You stop here You take the trolley pole down and then Let's say I want to go to the design district. Well, I go out over here. Okay, easy enough You come back roughly the same way If you're on a city point, I believe you turn south somewhere over here. Let's say I want to go to the airport

Now the airport is through the ted williams You don't want to go to the airport. Yeah, anyway, anyway up a logan man If you want to go this one 9 11 star says folks I like if you want to go to logan airport You got to go through the ted williams tunnels here I don't want to look at the silver silver line way does not connect to those tunnels so after You take the trolley pole down You go out silver line way

You go down the whole road here You backtrack you backtrack you backtrack Um, I believe you get off somewhere around here and then you loop around and then you come back and then you go all the way out here Mm-hmm. What kind of fucking just speedrun bullshit half a press transit connection is that? Yes Now on a way back, it's worse. Yeah, go roads. Yeah because on a way back You may notice you've backtracked about

A third of the length of the transit tunnel On a way back you actually come through the tunnel You exit onto a surface street And then this is just about where the world trade center station is so the bus actually stops at the world trade center station on the surface Then goes down congress street goes back on a silver line way Goes underneath and then it stops at the world trade center underground a second time, you know Uh, just for a good measure

Great, perfect. Yeah Um, at least the fucking Elon Musk loop is just a loop right now Yeah, this is actually several loops in a small area Um, now there is you may notice this ramp here Uh, but only the police use that the police that won't let anyone use that until 2019 No buses can sometimes use it. I love how the police have like Taken their enemies to be all forms of public transport. Yeah, you know, but they've taken their enemy to be the public I'm about that too. Yeah. Yeah

So You look at a system like this and this is why the flexibility of buses is sometimes bad because someone will look at this and say Yeah, that's fine There's fucking like tangled like not of spaghetti Yeah I I also one thing about this slide by the way is I don't want to go to Legal seafoods harborside. Oh, it's good It's good, but but the name the name. Yeah, don't worry about that. Yeah legal seafood legal seafoods is good

They had a test kitchen out there too for a while enough. It's still there. You're not gonna have illegal seafood I mean, I Know but like it's good. I promise it's good Right. So raising a lot of questions that are answered by the name of my restaurant, you know, exactly. Yeah Well, legal seafoods is supposed to be very good. I've never been there Anyway, the final cost of this turd Was 624 million dollars in 2004 dollars or about 1.1 billion dollars today Oh, yeah, I know I know the 2008 financial crisis was bad and everything

But man, it's always a shock to me when everything was like 2004 Which you think of sort of is like, I don't know like a year ago or something. Yeah money was worth like Twice as much then So we have these two separate silver lines The seaport district silver line And the Washington street silver line. We're supposed to join them up in phase three Okay three Oh boy. Yeah, so it goes from South station to Boylston on the green line

Down to the New England Medical Center, you know, and this is the thing that's going to join these two together It's gonna finally make the investment worth it. You're gonna have a lot more ridership You're gonna have this new tunnel through downtown Boston. It's gonna be everyone's gonna be happy, right? Yeah, that's what they're gonna be in Boston is happy Dad you would be able to get you'd be able to get rid of some of the worst mixed traffic sections of phase one While simultaneously linking to more subway and trolley services despite the slow speeds This is still going to be faster than surface traffic. Blah blah blah blah I'm really unlocked the potential of both ends of the silver line even though both ends are extremely flawed

So they canceled it Fuck you. What? Yeah Walk Alice walk. Oh, okay Yeah, you specifically you walk Okay, fine. The mbta go socks, baby. Fucking walk everywhere Go walks The mbta was moving full steam ahead in 2002 trying to get the thing funded

But you know, there's complications, right? Some of the route went under Boston Common And some people were concerned that that might damage it. Yeah, like America's buried under there Yeah, well it ruins the ducks. Yeah Um Some of the stations were redesigned and realigned. Uh, some of the god they fucking did this dude Yeah, I have a nom flashbacks to this shit Residents were Concerned about impacts to the park the city had built on top of the Pleasant Street incline

Because you know, you'd have to get rid of the park in order to use the incline Uh, you know, maybe you shouldn't have built the park there on useful transit infrastructure Um, you can't use logic with these people rose. Yeah So by 2005 the completion date had been moved back to 2013 Costs were still storing people who were calling it the little dig um I've read Liam jokalov. Yeah I remember all of this

It's lots of this hem highing and her ump thing little redesigns little realignments over the next four years Two years, none of it goes anywhere costs keep going up in 2009 The fta made a decision not to fund the project as it was no longer cost effective effectively killing phase three And that's where we are today Um, fuck you Right motherfucker. Fuck you. You could have you could have done the like the monorail idea and it would have been better than You could have done fucking anything. You could have bought, you know You could have bought a bullpen for the socks. I'll tell you that. Yeah

So There's nothing you'd like it you'll get nothing you'd like it Since then, uh, the mbta is occupied itself with other pursuits. Um, like ruining the green line Yeah, uh, the green line extension that was mandated as part of environmental mitigation for the big dig Um, you know, which is just wrapped up recently Another thing they've started to do is get rid of all their trolley buses and replace them with diesel buses for the environment but

The but that's bad. That's the opposite of what they're sort of assuming that a reliable battery bus will exist soon Uh, and won't wait let's take uh, well in The problem with boston is it gets cold much like moscow um, which means when you get rid of the trolley buses For a hypothetical future battery bus um You may wind up with a diesel heater

Uh Incredible, but they have just been running diesel buses on their former trolley bus routes Um, including into like underground bus terminals and stuff like that So so boston less less functional more corrupted a government than moscow Not as bad as providence though Yeah, I I I mean, I they're going down the same route boston and moscow, um, you know, which is as get rid of the trolley buses because Weird drones Yeah, it's sort of Vladimir Putin. You got Tommy from Quincy

Yeah, coming in from Quincy has flown a drone Into the boston courthouse Tommy from Quincy has has has a lot of opinions both on the socks bullpen and not race relations You don't want to hear either How good is he at judo though? He's very bad. I'll let you count and getting into fights at a dot tavern may at rest in peace Can't wait to close that fucking bar dude. That was a good bar Um, there's no plans to connect the two silver lines There's no plans to fix any of these obvious problems

You don't get nothing and like it Yeah, the the mbta is still saddled with a whole bunch of debt from the big dig I don't fully understand how that works, but they just wound up taking on a bunch of the debt Um, and there are now several streets in boston with bus lanes equal to or better than the silver line bus lanes Like actually really good bus lanes. Um, you know, so this is an embarrassment. I think I it's it's It's just a bizarre You know set of circumstances here where it's like, all right, we're gonna do bus rapid transit And we made the bus worse

I think the only thing that really and they close dot cavern I think the only thing that really, you know made this bus line improve ridership was they added it to the subway map You know other than that it's kind of like This is a hunk of shit Incredible stuff. Yeah So What did we learn nothing absolutely nothing absolutely nothing. Yeah, like if anything we love kind of the opposite

Better things aren't possible. Yeah only worse things Worst things are possible darkness bus. That's right. This is this is uh, the whole Ordeal is just it from the beginning to the end Just stupidity bad decisions half-assed efforts You know, go socks, baby Yeah So, uh, yeah

Citizens of boston this could happen to you I have one thing that uh, I did record a boston theme episode and tonight is game three Versus the sixers in seltex and crinn is looming over me. No. No go seltex No, seltex go seltex Seltex and six. Thank you He's lying. Oh, we saw that All right Uh, no if we if uh charlie on the empty area is a copyright like yeah, I'm still getting married although she's storming out of the room

uh-huh This time of year it's difficult All right, we have a segment on this podcast called safety third We're like safety third Oh, it feels so good. Oh, I hope you're happy Oh, it's like those old morgan stanley issues where they'd be like either you put morgan stanley at the top or not at all I am an architect Several years ago, I was tasked with converting a warehouse built in 1914 into a warehouse district style

mixed-use building I feel less less happy now. I'll tell you that A team consisting of me a structural engineer and two representatives of the general contracting firm Did an initial inspection tour of the vacant building And found it to be a nice but unremarkable reinforced concrete frame structure with brick infill I use this as an example. This is actually the bud factory in philly, but you know reinforced concrete frame brick infill panels This is very common warehouse structure in the united states. I I quite like them actually is this is one of my favorite types of yeah

so anyway It was a decent shape apart from some spalling of the concrete at the underside of each floor slab Uh interesting side note is that rebar was not a common item in 1914 and rail stock was frequently used for the concrete reinforcing Um, yeah, but the final part of our inspection was to scope out the roof This is the point where the shaking hands with danger part of the story begins The only access to the roof was via a ladder that was located inside the giant elevator shaft that formed the center of the building The ladder was made out of one inch diameter steel bar stock and had anchor posts made of the same bar stock projecting off the back of the verticals The posts were embedded in the concrete of the shaft and there was a pair of them every six rungs or so

The climb to the roof from the uppermost floor of the building was about 35 feet One by one we stepped off the edge of the shaft and swung out onto the ladder You can imagine this, uh Ladder just on the side of the shaft and you gotta like okay. Oh, yeah, three points of contact here Um, at least I was first the structural engineers started second the contractors followed As soon as one person has started up the ladder the next started right behind with just a rung or two between them Note that no embarrassing safety harnesses or other such items were in use

Of course, I mean in fairness. Well, we used to cure them to like the ladder When I was fairly near the roof hatch with the three guys right behind me I felt the entire ladder pull away from the shaft wall and bow out by about eight inches I Looked down and could see that the posts embedded in the concrete at my knee level had pulled completely out of the wall And concrete debris had rained down on the head of the structural engineer below I could also see that the post embedments were completely smooth without any Neurling end flaring or any other texture that could provide a mechanical bond with the concrete

Oh, cool. So they don't put it in there when it was soft and then just waited Yeah They'd only been embedded in the concrete by about one and a half inches not that far into the concrete either I froze for a second, but then heard the structural engineer and the contractors give a small laugh They looked up at me as though this was no big deal. So out of sheer peer pressure I kept heading for the roof as did we all Least peer pressured architects. Yeah, like Architects don't fear death. They fear being laughed at by structural engineers and contractors. Yes

We made it to the top took a look at the roof and found that it was unremarkable Since the only way back down was via the same ladder and since we were all supposed to be manly construction types We started to head down without comment I made sure to wait to be the last person down though and hung back a bit to see if the whole ladder would rip free With the weight of three guys on it before taking my chances. Oh dear The total fall height if this had happened would have been about 80 feet straight into the pit at the basement Which was partially filled with murky water and miscellaneous steel components Just like yeah, I go down this broken ladder over the pit of spikes and

pit of spikes and disgusting water It's a literal pungy pit They made it successfully so I started down as I passed the initial failure point I could see the whole ladder by this time it deformed outward by about a foot And I could feel a pronounced flexing of the ladder as well as seeing concrete dust from the subsequent post angers as I passed each pair After a very long a very long seeming climb downward. I made it to the landing. We all started making nervous dad jokes about the incident Looking upward after the incident shaking the ladder a bit We believe that only the top pair of anchors was still completely embedded in the concrete by the time I made it off the ladder

whoo Yeah, it's fine. You only need the ladder only needs to be secured to the wall by like two things. That's fine Yeah, I that ladder worked fan fantastic twice I mean hey held up for like a hundred years. So like that's a good point. Yeah The building in austin texas now houses a hipster brew pub and a lot of partially empty tech office space of course My my lesson from this incident was that personal visual inspection of a roof by an architect is unnecessary And other more specialized consultants can do this job better This no this one really troubles me. Um, I I would not be doing this

I would not climb that ladder call me a pussy. I don't care like this used to be my job Um, you know, it's the the the you know, you you you wind up on some weird ladders What you're doing structural inspections like you were the more specialized consultant who could do this job? Yeah, it would have been me. It would have been me. Yeah. Thank thank you for sending me out there. Um I figure it'd be very difficult for this guy to get fired from his job. So I'll just say it Thank you for your service scott specht founding principal specht architects Thank you. Yeah, I hope your boss doesn't have like a strong word with you for submitting a thing I don't think he has a boss

This is my this is my job. Exactly. Yeah. Well, if we if we need a building, we know who to call In in austin texas specifically. Yeah. All right. No, I checked. They got a new york office too. Yeah Okay, I mean my thinking is austin texas. We could get you occupy some of that like empty tech office space Oh, that's a good point. Yeah, you know, we're technically a tech company. Uh, we we work on a computer We are a tech we could go up the ladder to Spotify. Yeah Should I okay? Well, uh, yeah Yeah, because I was like, I don't know what what what category we fit in. So when we started the podcast I was just like, well, there's not an engineering. There's no engineering category

It's all standardized. That means we're we're the top of it, you know, we're number one Well, we were like number three or something for like a week or so ago Yeah, we're gonna get there suck that shit wired. Yeah, it's a big the podcast is getting bigger Um, I guess we're closing in on a hundred thousand subscribers. We got to update the um, uh, Little commercial with the new post office box, but other than that Um, I was gonna do that yesterday and then didn't do it. I I badly want a hundred thousand subscribers I want the plaque please subscribe to the thing. Please. Please. Please listen to this long subscribe button and hit the bell icon Yeah, that's what the youtubers say, right? For your girl. Um, yeah, we have one of these days

We'll do like we'll do like seo or something, you know, or not doing seo. I'm tired of looking at the spam emails I have little shorts on tiktok. You know, it's like more and more people Yeah, I'll be wearing the little shorts more and more people like email us to be like, please We can help you be even slightly professional and we look down and we answer no Yeah Well that was safety third Shake hands for danger

Our next episode will be on Chernobyl. Does anyone have any commercials before we go? Yeah for us We have a patreon. You can subscribe to it. You get extra bonus episodes. You too can listen about the poop plane Yeah, people thought it was really funny apparently. So yeah, check it out. Uh, and the next one give us two dollars We're hoping to do the next one. Give us two dollars subscribe to the thing. Uh, bye Yeah, I'll be the zen