There are a few examples of rail projects that fail in a way that poisons the entire idea among decisionmakers. The failures can be total, to the point that the project isn’t built and nobody tries it again. Or the outcome can be a mixed blessing: an open project with some ridership, but not enough […]| Pedestrian Observations
Dutch high-speed rail is the original case of premature commitment and lock-in. A decision was made in 1991 that the Netherlands needed 300 km/h high-speed rail, imitating the TGV, which at that po…| Pedestrian Observations
A new high-speed line (NBS) between Hamburg and Hanover has received the approval of the government, and will go up for a Bundestag vote shortly. The line has been proposed and planned in various f…| Pedestrian Observations
I’m sitting on a EuroCity train from Copenhagen back to Germany. It’s timetabled to take 4:45 to do 520 km, an average speed of 110 km/h, and the train departed 25 minutes late because …| Pedestrian Observations
A few hours ago, the MTA presented on the latest of Second Avenue Subway Phase 2. The presentation includes information about the engineering and construction of the three stations – 106th, 1…| Pedestrian Observations
A Telegraph 'expert', pictured yesterday Like Clive Bates who has blogged about this today in an article entitled "Anti-vaping activists pitch unscientific fringe positions to a national newspaper", I also saw an email detailing how the Telegraph is planning on publishing a massive load of bullshit about vaping tomorrow (Feb 29th apparently) in one of "a series of articles". "We have spoken to the experts listed below and sought their views on the following topics: the medical concerns surrou...| Dick Puddlecote
The Regional Plan Association ran an event 2.5 days ago about New York commuter rail improvements and Penn Station, defending the $16.7 billion Penn Station Expansion proposal as necessary for capa…| Pedestrian Observations
Overestimation happens constantly and oftentimes we are unaware of this bias. Luckily for us and everyone around us, it is possible to overcome this phenomenon called the Dunning-Kruger effect. We humans often think we behave in a most rational and logical way. When presented with a particularly hard question we could even come up with […] This post What is the Dunning-Kruger effect, and how to overcome it? is published on Neurofied.| Neurofied