Building the Pronunciation Layer of AI (projectsapiens.xyz)
1 points by tonymarks 12m ago 0 comments
Gateway Plaza Revitalizes and Future Proofs (indyweek.com)
1 points by janandonly 40m ago 0 comments
NYC MTA scavenges for parts on eBay to maintain subway system
18 fortran77 17 5/26/2025, 10:19:58 PM wsj.com ↗
Politicians focused on spending as a win (jobs) rather than the outcome of a well run transit system.
Shiny object syndrome funding unneeded cavernous mezzanines in the handful of new stations on new lines we do build, each custom designed instead of cookie cutter.
Multi state regional agency run on political patronage operating our biggest transit system with funding coming from a variety of unreliable sources.
List goes on.
In Europe the biggest suppliers of public transportation vehicles and equipment are Siemens (Germany), Alstom (France), Solaris (Poland), Hitachi Rail and Iveco (Italy), CAF (Spain). Each of these companies export products worldwide, and they have mature supply chains with the majority of parts sourced from Europe.
Plus Europe just has a lot more demand, meaning more experience in how to do it right. In the US there are maybe 25 cities with trams or light rail, in Europe there are over 300.
Car brain that causes people to resist investments in transit. Failure to recognize how much transit and especially the subway contributes to the city’s function as an economic engine.
I'm certain that there are cities in Europe and China that struggle just as much with corruption and graft as NYC does and there are also cities in the US that have substantially less corruption and graft than NYC. It's just that it's vogue right now to cherry pick American problems and European/Chinese successes rather than the other way around.
I am actually baffled that this is even up for debate... Have you seen/smelled the NYC subway? Yes, it's NYC's most used public utility other than perhaps water and electricity, but people use it despite its qualities.
I'm all for questioning why NYC's subway is worse than London's. I just think that questioning why "cities in Europe and China can afford all this stuff and we (Americans) can’t" is a bad framing: it's so general as to be meaningless and perpetuates misleading stereotypes about both sides of the pond.
The fact at hand is that NYC specifically is a deeply corrupt and extremely filthy city by any standard, European or American.
At some point, the rot in institutions can not be covered by dumping more money onto it. Luckily, NYC is not there yet, but also I don't think we have a good recipe on how to reset these kinds of institutions back to excellency
Europe still has a weak ‘federal’ government, and China has a very strong ‘federal’ government either can work but what we’re doing falls flat when basically every layer of government can interfere with projects.