.jpg)
Transit Tangents
The Podcast where we discuss all things transit. Join us as we dive into transit systems across the US, bring you interviews with experts and advocates, and engage in some fun and exciting challenges along the way.
Transit Tangents
Ep. 53: Top 10 Transit Projects in 2025
This episode highlights the top 10 public transportation projects set to launch in 2025, showcasing significant innovations across the United States that promise improved connectivity and efficiency. From modernization initiatives in Chicago and Boston to exciting new lines in Dallas and LA, these projects aim to enhance the commuting experience for all.
• Chicago’s Red and Purple Line modernization for reliability and accessibility
• Boston MBTA's elimination of slow zones for increased capacity and speed
• MTA congestion pricing set to address traffic and fund transit
• Amtrak's revival of New Orleans to Mobile rail service post-Katrina
• Dallas Silver Line completion enhances suburban connectivity
• Austin’s rapid bus lines are part of the broader Project Connect initiative
• LA's metro extensions driven by Olympic preparations and strategic planning
• Honolulu's Skyway Phase Two raises questions about effective transit design
• Kansas City’s streetcar extensions aim to revive historic transit forms
• Phoenix Light Rail expansion demonstrates successful proactive planning
Doors are closing. Public transit that's my way to roll On the metro. I'm taking control. Bus stops, train tracks it's my daily grind. Public transit it's the rhythm of my life. On this episode of Transit Tangents, we cover the top 10 public transportation projects opening in 2025. From new bus routes to subway extensions, light rail, street car, people, movers and a whole lot more, all across the United States, coming up on this final episode of 2024. Hey everybody, and welcome to this episode of Transit Tangents. My name's Lewis, I'm Chris, and happy New Year's Eve or New Year's Day, depending on when you're watching this.
Speaker 1:It's been quite a year and we are releasing this just as 2024 comes to a close. Yeah, absolutely, and it's almost the one-year anniversary of this podcast starting, so thank you for coming along for the ride with us. If you've been along for the ride with us and if you're new, we're just as happy that you're here Today. We figured it would be fun to kind of take a look forward into 2025 and try another top 10 list of the top 10 transit projects to look forward to in the US in 2025. These are in no particular order so everybody watching?
Speaker 2:we're not ranking your project above anybody else's, we're not saying one is more important than the others.
Speaker 1:Yeah, this afternoon I thought about doing that and I was like nah, it's a slippery slope. And along the way, if any of these pique your interest and you want to see a full episode on it, definitely let us know in the comments below. But without further ado we will start with number 10 on the list, again in no particular order, is a transit project in the great city of Chicago. In the great city of Chicago, I actually put out a request in the Patreon-only Discord server for ideas for this episode and this first one actually came from Brian on Patreon. Chicago is modernizing a couple sections of their red and purple lines. This is one that is kind of less sexy, if you will. It's not like a new transit line. It's not new stations necessarily. It is modernizing existing lines that have been there for a long time and really needed some help, I think some of this project is pretty sexy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's fair. You're increasing reliability in transit times, which we'll talk about in a second. I definitely think that there's some sexiness to it, totally, yeah, yeah, yeah, as sexy as a transit line can be.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so there's kind of two sections to this, and I'm probably going to butcher the name of the first one here, so the Lawrence to Bern Mar modernization project and then the Red and Purple Bypass. So these are kind of in the same area north of downtown Chicago, the Red and purple bypass. We can start by explaining that. So these are two lines that kind of run along the same rail line, currently north of downtown, but the purple line will extend significantly further out, and then, once it kind of meets up with the red line, the purple line seemingly acts more as like an express route, skipping stations along the way, and you're saying the existing system.
Speaker 2:Now, basically the purple gets to where the train lines merge and it gets stuck behind red trains.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's what it sounds like happens, right. So you know if you're imagining, if the trains get slightly off schedule, the red lines in front of the purple line. The red line has to stop at every station, but there's nowhere for the purple line to pass. This project makes it so that now the purple line will have plenty of places to pass along the way it looks like in some cases it's going to, you know, kind of go out and around stations. In some cases there might be a widening of tracks there, but this is essentially making it so that both the purple and the red line trains can run more smoothly and eliminate delays for folks riding on the train, which is really nice yeah, it's awesome, and I do think, uh, this definitely warrants a trip to chicago, totally, yes, yeah one.
Speaker 2:I love chicago, so I'd love to go up there I've really barely been.
Speaker 1:I've been, but like barely. We're talking just like a couple days here and there. So, um, yeah, then the other half of this, too, um, is modernizing a lot of the stations in this same area. So we're seeing, you know, some stations that look in rough shape today, you know, being brought into the 2020s and, with that coming, some important steps as far as accessibility goes. You know, elevators wide enough platforms for folks to be able to navigate around easily, all sorts of stuff like that, which is super important.
Speaker 2:Yeah, good to see Moving into 2025, faster trains, better accessibility and Chicago's on the right track. Speaking of that modernization, if we're moving into the next one on our list, that is the Boston MBTA. I have ridden on a couple of trains in Boston and I haven't had enough experience to really know exactly how the trains run, but from what I understand, there have up to now been a lot of really slow parts of the train tracks Absolutely.
Speaker 1:And I mean over the last few years too, there's just been like a lot of issues plaguing the system in Boston with its age, I mean you'll remember, like orange line trains catching on fire and people like getting out in the middle of it, and the red line has had significant. Actually many of the lines have had significant what MBTA refers to as slow zones over the last several years and it had been kind of just been getting kicked down the road. No one's doing anything about it. No one's doing anything about it. Been getting kicked down the road, no one's doing anything about it, no one's doing anything about it. The current CEO of the MBTA, though, philip Eng, has seemingly made it his mission to eliminate slow zones from the MBTA.
Speaker 1:Just as of November 25th, the red line had its last slow zone removed, which is really impressive. They had to close a section of the line for a month. So it's not an easy thing to necessarily do to decide to close a subway line for a month or a big portion of it to make it happen. But go in, make these track repairs, and the comparison of the before and after is pretty significant. So a year ago, the average speed of a red line train, and this includes the stops and everything. It may sound slow, but was 13 miles per hour train, and this includes the stops and everything. It may sound slow, but was 13 miles per hour. Today it is 19 miles per hour and that made it so that the daily number of trips that could happen per day on the red line jumped from 123 before to 183 today, just by fixing the tracks that jump from 13 to 19 at first doesn't sound like that much.
Speaker 2:honestly, like you're, you're eliminating slow zones. My first thought is, oh, there must be going like 30 miles an hour now or something. But the impact is huge, right, absolutely huge, when you look at the actual performance of MBTA after this change.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. And I mean, like you know, if you think about it in the sense of like, okay, they're able to run more trains, so that means you're waiting for the train less, and then when you get on the train, the train is going faster. So that could save an average commuter, you know, somewhere along the lines of 10 to 15 minutes in each direction every single day. Let's, let's use 15 as an example. It's a half an hour a day. Add that up and you're saving a couple hours per week, um, in in travel time along this and in travel time along this. And they're not stopping with the red line. So you know, the orange line had been done previously, then it was the red line, the blue line currently has none and now we're just down to the green line. Now the green line does have quite a few slow zones on it still, but MBTA is saying by the end of this year even, which is today, but more than likely it's going to be a couple days into January, I would imagine.
Speaker 1:All of the speed restrictions on the green line will be done as well, making the entire network of the MBTA's subway lines not having slow zones, which is impressive. Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah, with that, we'll move on to a topic we have visited many times here.
Speaker 2:Many, many times. If you watched our 50th episode, we did a recap of this and we were talking about the MTA congestion pricing. We have drug Governor Kathy Hochul through the mud a little bit over this one, I think deservedly so yes, deservedly so. She was on our top 10 transit villains for single-handedly killing this MTA congestion pricing project back in June of 2024. Now here we are, right at the beginning of 2025, and this will take effect in five days, so on January 5th, MTA congestion pricing is back.
Speaker 1:Yep, and it will be starting off at $9 per vehicle entering into the congestion zone. Initially it was going to be $15. Right now the plan is to have it scaled to $15 over a couple of years, not until the 2030s, but yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Nonetheless, I'm interested to see what sort of effect it has. I'm honestly not sure if $9 is going to be enough to have a dramatic. I'm curious. Honestly, I think $9 is better than nothing in the sense of increasing funding to the MBTA. I don't know that it's going to have the desired congestion effects at that price point.
Speaker 2:So the funding mechanism. It'll generate about $500 million worth of funding for the MBTA, I think, every year. It was initially expected to generate about $1 billion. So now we're looking at about half of what they originally thought they were going to raise with this project Traffic projections they originally thought they'd remove about 17% of vehicle traffic from that zone in Manhattan. Now it's looking like 10% is the estimate. So this does have an impact on the actual performance of the overall congestion pricing system that they designed. And what I'm actually more curious about above anything else is how the Trump administration will if they will fight this congestion pricing project, because he's already come out and said that this was the wrong decision and that New York should have scrapped this plan entirely. His previous administration also was not in favor of this and they did not give the federal approvals that new york needed. So now new york is scrambling to get this done and it may not matter after january 20th so we'll see.
Speaker 1:We'll see more on the topic if you go back, uh, to our 50th episode, as well as our congestion pricing episode in the past, which we will make sure are linked here. Um With that, let's move on to the next one, which is near and dear to Chris's heart. Amtrak is restarting train service between New Orleans and Mobile.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I am very, very excited for this. I always wanted to take a train from just away from Mobile. My dad and I used to talk about taking a train from Mobile to Atlanta. That was before we really knew how trains worked. There was no train from Mobile to Atlanta, which is wild to me, but then the idea was okay, we'll take a train from Mobile to New Orleans. We know that works.
Speaker 2:Then Hurricane Katrina came and we'll find some videos or photos at least of downtown Mobile during Katrina, but the city was under multiple feet of water. It completely destroyed the downtown train station and it knocked out bridges that carried the trains from Mobile to New Orleans. The hardest hit areas were definitely Mississippi, but this is sort of one of the last items on the checklist post-Hurricane Katrina to check off, to say, okay, now this region is completely rebuilt. It has been that long and, for those who don't remember, hurricane Katrina was in 2005. So it has been way, way overdue and I'm very excited to see it.
Speaker 2:There's also this really great video that the USDOT put out, with Pete Buttigieg meeting with the mayor of Mobile in a little bar and they cheers to transit and the mayor, sandy Simpson, even says that transit infrastructure should not be a partisan thing, that if transportation is not bipartisan, then we have no hope. What is Exactly? But it's a beautiful little video, but I am very, very excited for this and to see that connection between Mobile and New Orleans. I have one thing I'm bitter about, and that is Amtrak has announced a rough schedule and there will be more trains going between Mobile and New Orleans than we currently have between Austin and San Antonio.
Speaker 1:How many a day is it? It's like four trains a day. Oh my God, that's great.
Speaker 2:I mean that's great that that's happening.
Speaker 1:Even if it's three, it's great that that's happening. Yeah the fact that there is one train a day between Austin and San Antonio is absolutely insane. And that's a shorter distance, it's just and bigger cities Anyway, and the tracks did not disappear in a hurricane.
Speaker 2:No, yeah, yeah, yeah, but we'll continue to follow this one. As Lewis said, it's near and dear to my heart. Well, definitely even if Lewis isn't with Ernie. I also hear Pete Buttigieg may be there, so it's a good chance to try to pitch.
Speaker 1:He's going to meet. He's not going to have much else going on.
Speaker 2:I don't think Super, super excited about this and we will keep you up to date, absolutely.
Speaker 1:This next one comes from a Patreon subscriber Mary, thank you for supporting us on Patreon. We very much appreciate it. This one is also kind of close to home for us. We went and chatted with folks in dallas about this uh, but the extension or the completion of the brand new silver line uh in the city of dallas, um, this one is uh significant for a couple of reasons, I think. First off, uh, this is essentially connecting plano, which is kind of a northern suburb, if you will, of dallas, technically its own city, but it kind of a northern suburb, if you will, of Dallas, technically it's own city.
Speaker 2:It's like their largest suburban city.
Speaker 1:And it kind of connects Plano, which is on the northern end kind of of the DART system.
Speaker 2:Sorry, let me rephrase my statement. It is the largest of the Dallas suburbs that has transit.
Speaker 1:Gotcha, okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, and it's kind of on the northern end of the dart system as it stands right now, um, and it kind of just connects out to the airport, uh, not being like a downtown route. So this is kind of the first, uh section of what could be kind of like an, an exterior uh what's the word I'm looking for like a, like a ring route or a circulator, just a non-centralized train line.
Speaker 2:What you see in the US and many, many cities because it makes sense is that all train lines funnel into a downtown core. That makes sense for a lot of different reasons, but it's pretty awesome to see that now Dart has sort of expanded in the spider web way out. Now we have the first time we're seeing a line that is not connecting a centralized place. Right, I mean dfw is kind of centralized, but yeah but it's still, it's, it's, uh, it's not going to a downtown yeah, it's bridging.
Speaker 1:It's bridging across, like several north south train lines along the way, making it easier if you're trying to get from kind of suburb to suburb or suburb to the airport. You don't first have to get on a train into dallas, then go from Dallas back out.
Speaker 2:Even if you're trying to go from Plano to, let's say, Fort Worth, you can catch the Trinity at DFW. So, it's also continuing to expand the regional network.
Speaker 1:It's not just getting you to the airport Totally and in a city like Dallas, where it is just like one of the most car-centric places that exists, it's really positive to see these steps.
Speaker 2:I mean, we're talking about a metro area that is larger than the state of Connecticut, yeah, so yes, it's a huge step in continuing that connectivity in one of the largest metro areas in the country.
Speaker 1:Totally, and it just also hammers home the point the importance of work from groups like Data, who we did an interview with a couple weeks back, to kind of make sure that transit in Dallas continues to be funded properly in the future. We'll make sure we have a link there and know that there will be more Dallas content coming soon and I believe we have a date for an event coming up in Dallas.
Speaker 2:We do, if we're ready to announce it. We are going to be meeting with Data in Dallas on February 1st. This is a meeting that's open to anybody and it will be a panel discussion about transit in Texas Gotcha so more details to come on that. Absolutely Entering the second half of our list, this one is also close to home Actually, it is at home and that is the new Cap Metro rapid bus lines that are opening up as part of Project Connect, and this one's actually a pretty exciting one because it is the first of our rapid bus lines that is also not centralized to downtown and that's going to be a huge step for Austin too.
Speaker 1:I think Totally. And that one's going to be the Pleasant Valley line and it kind of runs a north-south route along the east side of downtown. It connects with several bus routes that are some of the more busy ones in the city. Frankly, in the future, once Project Connect is built, it's also going to offer really great connections into the light rail, potential connections to the airport, connecting all sorts of different communities, which is really important. And then there's also another one that does kind of funnel directly into downtown, which is the Expo Line. That one kind of funnels in from northeast Austin in a bit of a windy route but meandering its way downtown.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that one originates at the Expo Center, travis County Exposition Center, which is the home of the Texas Fair, or sorry, the Austin Fair. It has the rodeo and it also has Roller Derby. I'd like to either name this the Roller Derby line, the Roller Derby Rapid Line or the Rodeo Rapid Line.
Speaker 1:Yeah, One interesting thing with. That'd be funny. But one interesting thing with these that I'm curious to see if we see happen. Both of these routes run through Mueller, which is kind of a slightly higher-end neighborhood, if you will. That was a converted airport At some point. It could be an interesting episode to just talk about the development of Mueller at some point.
Speaker 1:But I'm really curious to see if having these Metro Rapid buses which CapMetro really tries to brand these as being a nicer, more convenient experience if it kind of gets any folks from Mueller out of their cars and using transit especially having the one seat ride to downtown now on a rapid bus is going to be convenient. One note on these is that in the beginning of this launch the buses will actually not be running at their full frequencies. For upwards of a year they'll be on slightly lower frequencies. We'll be talking every 20 minutes or so instead of every 10 minutes while CapMetro navigates purchasing more buses. But very positive, I'm glad that they are starting the service at all. I'm glad that they're starting the service versus waiting for it to be perfect just to get the ball rolling.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's better than nothing to get the like you said get the ball rolling, get the buses rolling down the street. But it's better than nothing to get the like you said get the ball rolling, get the buses rolling down the street. But it's also exciting to see the expansion of the bus network and I think we talk about how buses have sort of a stigma. I think the rapid routes you're more likely to capture people who have this idea of transit being a train. I think you have more chances of capturing those people on a rapid bus line like this one and how it's designed than on the standard bus routes.
Speaker 1:So excited, very excited to see it. Uh. The next one here is uh, we we've kind of we haven't done an episode about this at all absolutely deserve, uh it deserves multiple episodes, frankly uh, we talked a little bit about this in the olympics episode. Okay, true, true, true, um, still not. We haven't, we haven't even scratched the surface of like half of what the city of Los Angeles is doing. La is getting several metro extensions over that will be opening in 2025, more opening in 2026, more opening in 2027.
Speaker 2:And actually as far as cities in the US go, la is doing the most with rail expansion in the country right now.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah, and you wouldn't think so based on the kind of like what you have in your mind of LA people driving everywhere. I mean, it's no different than like the stigma you might think about in Dallas or something, the difference being that there is political will in Los Angeles at the moment to spend the money to do this stuff the right way.
Speaker 2:They're also under a bit of a deadline for the 2028 Olympics, which are coming up really quickly, yeah.
Speaker 1:I will say though, too. I mean, even beyond the 2028 Olympics. A lot of their plans go significantly beyond what will be done then too. So we're going to kind of skim through some of these a little bit. But the LA Metro A line, the blue line I'm not sure what folks in LA refer to them as, if I'm being totally honest, extension to Pomona is opening, I think most people in LA say what train line.
Speaker 2:Yes, exactly.
Speaker 1:You mean the whatever?
Speaker 2:highway, yeah, the 405?.
Speaker 1:Yeah, with that extension we're getting a 9.1 mile extension with six new stations on the LA Metro A line. We've got another one on the LA Metro D line that's going to open three new stations covering four miles this year and it's going to have even more coming in 2026 and in 2027. And this one is like a full-on subway, they're like underground, which is really impressive. Are there other subways being built in the US? Right now Not many.
Speaker 2:If anything, it's short segments, but nothing that's really expanded like this and as far out as this is expanding, because if you've been to LA, it is just sort of city sprawl for as far as you can see and what you imagine a neighborhood in LA would look like, you would imagine like a light rail going down the middle of the street for cost reasons. So the fact that this is completely underground, like you said, pretty amazing.
Speaker 1:Totally. And then the last section of this which is really important is LAX is being connected to a new LAX transit center via a people mover that is going to essentially shuttle people between terminals at the airport to rental car facilities, as well as now to this transit center, which will connect folks to both the K line and the C line.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so think, if you've ever flown through JFK on your way through New York, a very similar system to that where you jump on a people mover that then takes you to the nearest transit stop.
Speaker 1:Right, yep, which, with so many people going to visit places like this like if you can visit a place, get from the airport to wherever you're going on a train. I mean, the likelihood of folks renting cars and getting every one of those visitor cars off the road is important for not needing to deal with folks who live there having their cars parked at the airport. I mean, there's there's all sorts of things I don't think airport and also the amount of people who work at the airport, uh, it's another thing. If, like, all of your airport employees can now reliably get to the airport via transit, I mean you're, you can potentially remove a lot of cars from the road so exciting things coming for la LA and we are definitely due for a trip out there as well.
Speaker 1:Totally, totally, Next one's kind of an interesting one. This is just like a project that it's not done the way that I would. I don't know if it's an interesting one. The Honolulu Skyway the next phase is going to be opening in 2025.
Speaker 2:Well, and a little bit of background on this. As you mentioned before we started filming, it's a transit system that was built backwards, yeah, meaning they started the rail out in the suburban cities well away from Honolulu and connected those cities first built the main rail operations center out there, phase two connected the suburbs to Pearl Harbor and to the airport, and then phase three finally gets into the actual, like city of honolulu right, so it is very much in reverse order right and right now it's literally just phase one open, which is just like I mean I've scrolled around on it on google maps before and I mean there is some transit oriented development happening out there.
Speaker 1:There's like I think there's a community college or a couple things, but like it almost looks rural, like parts of it look rural, um, and it just connected these areas and like there was like kind of no main hub, like I, and the ridership is not good because it doesn't yeah, it doesn't connect to places that people are actually going to.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and to me I see something like that and I'm like, oh man, like this is going to be so easy to point at and be like look at this boondoggle, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. No one's riding it. Why are we going to spend any money to extend it? Now, at least, we're going to be adding a couple more destinations along the line connecting to the airport and places, but we're still not getting to downtown, no-transcript. So, and that is if the funding does not get turned off.
Speaker 2:So you know, we're sending best wishes to our friends in Honolulu, but If you're in Hawaii and you are following this project, we'd love to hear your thoughts on it. Please leave a comment. Absolutely. The next one that we have on here is the KC Streetcar Extension, and this one's also pretty exciting because we are definitely doing a trip to Kansas City and I know I mentioned a lot of oh, we should travel here. Yeah, this one's happening.
Speaker 1:Kansas City is happening.
Speaker 2:We don't have dates yet, but we're working on them. We have a couple of things to do in Kansas City, one of those being seeing a traffic management control center, another is chatting with somebody who knows all about the transit in Kansas City. And Kansas City is going to be one of the host cities for the FIFA World Cup. Fifa, fifa, fifa.
Speaker 1:The FIFA World Cup when I see it in my brain.
Speaker 2:I always think FIFA, Like FIFA, goes west.
Speaker 1:We'll see. I mean, we don't have dates for this yet, but if you're from the Kansas City area and you want to try to get involved, we'll probably try to do some sort of event of some sort there. So definitely reach out to us. Absolutely, yeah, the Kansas City streetcar is getting two extensions. First, we're going to see the Main Street extension, which adds three and a half miles to the streetcar in one direction. The streetcar in one direction, um, and the riverfront extension, which extends it's shorter but 0.7 miles in the other direction, but to the soccer stadium. To the soccer stadium, exactly, um.
Speaker 1:And along the riverfront extension too, there's some nice like transit oriented development. Look like, uh, look, looking like it is taking shape, uh, some newer things like that, um, and I believe the stadium is new, or or it may be open open now, but it's on the newer end as well and both of these lines will be opening in 2025. Another notable thing on the Main Street extension is that a good portion of it is actually going to have its own kind of transit-dedicated lanes. It's not as stringent of lanes as we might like to see. In a lot of cases, a lot of it might look more like a bus lane, where it's also a shared right turn lane. You could do better for a streetcar, in my opinion, but I'm happy to see it being extended, because in some cases I feel like streetcars are for show and no one rides them and there's no money put into extending them. I don't know.
Speaker 2:It's good to see the extension. It's also good to see sort of this historical correction in Kansas City, because if you look at old photos of Kansas City, I know every city in the US had a lot of streetcar network. Kansas City had a lot of streetcar network, so it's cool to like see some of this coming back and to see the expansion of it. For sure, totally and with all that. The last one on our list is in Phoenix, arizona, and that is the Phoenix Light Rail Extension. Phoenix, a city that you also don't generally think of as like a very transit-heavy city. Maybe it is. It's one that we haven't been to. I don't think either of us have really spent any time in Phoenix before.
Speaker 1:I've visited, but it's been a long time, yeah.
Speaker 2:I have never been to Phoenix, so I'd definitely like to check it out.
Speaker 1:I've definitely not seen their light rail yeah.
Speaker 2:But their extension. It's going to be 5.5 miles of light rail. It includes eight stations moving through the southern part of Phoenix, so a huge, huge expansion. And you had a pretty amazing fact about this that you never hear yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1:So originally, this extension was scheduled to open in 2034, 2034, as in like 10 years from now but in 2016, the Phoenix City Council decided screw it, why should we wait? Let's fund it now. So, because the 2016 City Council and Phoenix decided to do that, folks in Phoenix are going to get to take advantage of this starting in 2025, which is pretty amazing. I love it. If anything, the main lesson that I've gotten from this list is that you've got to build something first, Because this list is essentially a bunch of extensions and upgrades, and not to always bring back to Austin, but Austin's got to start building Project Connect.
Speaker 1:We're almost there. Bring back to Austin, but like Austin's got to start building project connects, like I don't know, we're almost there, we're all, we're almost yeah, but there are. I'm going to knock on wood. There's a lot of hurdles. There are a lot of hurdles, a lot of potential things, and it's just like, if you can get it started, I feel really confident about the future of of what things could look like here, just like in a lot of again, like Phoenix adding almost six miles to their light rail LA is adding tons of things everywhere.
Speaker 2:Well, such a huge part of it is that you then have the expertise once you already have a system that you're operating and it builds a little bit. Yes, there's a lot of efficiencies that come with already operating the system, you get better and better at it yeah, so cities like phoenix maybe not honolulu, but other cities, uh and and what they're doing with their transit systems, so that we can kind of be on the same page and get these things deployed?
Speaker 1:and I hadn't even thought about that. But, on a positive note, I do know that a couple of our austin city council members visited phoenix to go check out and their light rail and talk to city council members there. So, uh, with all that being said, um, thank you all so much for watching us. All of 2024, yeah, yeah we have loved doing this.
Speaker 2:We mentioned it on our 50th episode as well, but we never expected this to really go on as long as it did because we weren't sure how we were going to do this or if we were going to enjoy it, but it's been a year now and I have thoroughly enjoyed the time I've spent with you. Lewis and the time I've spent with all of you Wow.
Speaker 1:Likewise, likewise, yes, no, it's been great.
Speaker 2:I love that this started from an idea at a happy hour and we're still going.
Speaker 1:Yeah, with all that being said, if you haven't liked the video, please go ahead and do so. Share this with your friends, leave a comment. We'd love hearing from you, and if you want to help support the show directly, patreon is the best place, so you get access to early episodes when we get them done on time, some bonus content, all sorts of things like that. Uh, with all that being said, though, thank you all so much for watching and enjoy the rest of your transit tangents tuesday yeah, I'm saving that dough public transit watch me go.