Hi to whoever it was who was asked "please give me 1 word to describe the Conservative Party" and said "Conservative". (View Post)

Weirdly the things that make those French lines cheap also make it pretty unsuitable for high-speed rail. See Yglesias: https://www.slowboring.com/p/amtrak-should-build-a-good-train The counterpoint … (View Post)

Sunak is so weird, it's like he's trying to do Trumpism from a catalog. It doesn't work, to pull it off you need to be the kind of person who would call up a child at Christmas time an… (View Post)

The delay for the Japanese maglev is that they wanted to build it without putting a station in one of the prefectures it will pass through, and that prefecture has developed a totally scientific and … (View Post)

This. I'd add that even in Japan, where they do still have planning-related stuff under the control of local officials, they still manage to fuck it up. One example is that there's some pos… (View Post)