traingang

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/25657780

Hey folks,

As I mentioned in a previous post, I'm starting an urbanism newsletter with links to content from around the world to inspire local change. It's a bit of self promotion but I think it's quite relevant to the community here.

If you have any articles (especially outside the US/Euro realm) you think are worth sharing please let me know! Also, would love if there are any short story fiction writings that you can recommend that are related.

Thanks!

The NYT pretends the move is "puzzling" and puts a reason in the second half of the article.

Prioritizing areas with higher birthrates would, however, send more federal funding to Republican states. South Dakota, Alaska, Nebraska, North Dakota and Texas are among the states with the highest fertility rates, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. States that have the lowest fertility rates include Vermont, Oregon, Rhode Island and New Hampshire, none of which voted for Mr. Trump in the 2024 election.

“Clearly this is helping red states,” said Phillip Levine, an economics professor at Wellesley College who has studied the topic of falling U.S. birthrates.

The other reason is this is Trump making the fascists and fundies happy by mentioning birthrates in red states. I'm actually surprised Trump didn't have his transportation secretary stooge simply say "The more you vote for Trump - the more we help you."

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/03/opinion/home-values-insurance-climate.html

This is a really interesting study on the psychogeography of car infrastructure and how they flatten space and time in a postmodern way. It's otherwise paywalled so the source is the Masaryk University in Brno, Still-Czechoslovakia.

Abstract:

The social sciences have generally ignored the motor car and its awesome consequences for social life, especially in their analysis of the urban. Urban studies in particular has failed to consider the overwhelming impact of the automobile in transforming the time-space ‘scapes’ of the modern urban/suburban dweller. Focusing on forms of mobility into, across and through the city, we consider how the car reconfigures urban life, involving distinct ways of dwelling, travelling and socializing in, and through, an automobilized time-space. We trace urban sociology's paradoxical resistance to cultures of mobility, and argue that civil society should be reconceptualized as a ‘civil society of automobility’. We then explore how automobility makes instantaneous time and the negotiation of extensive space central to how social life is configured. As people dwell in and socially interact through their cars, they become hyphenated car-drivers: at home in movement, transcending distance to complete a series of activities within fragmented moments of time. Urban social life has always entailed various mobilities but the car transforms these in a distinct combination of flexibility and coercion. Automobility is a complex amalgam of interlocking machines, social practices and ways of dwelling which have reshaped citizenship and the public sphere via the mobilization of modern civil societies. In the conclusion we trace a vision of an evolved automobility for the cities of tomorrow in which public space might again be made ‘public’.

Hey folks,

I wanted to share here that I started a weekly urbanism newsletter. The second issue is out now.

There's more info in the first announcement post but the general idea is to bring urbanism news from around the world to inspire local change. Why? In any urban studies/planning/etc in school you learn a lot of cases from around the world that make you go "wow why don't we do that?" But once you're out of school (or if you're an activist / concerned citizen) you don't really see this much unless you really go looking (or spend hours a week on social media). So here we have a weekly newsletter of news in a digestible form.

I don't plan to write original content. Just lite commentary on the links.

Anyway, I hope you check it out. I'd love to hear what news sources you get urbanism content from (especially outside US/Euro news). Or any particular articles you've liked recently.

PS: I don't plan to put it behind a paywall. We're just starting with Substack because of the ease of getting started and not being totally subject to algos of big social media. Right now it's more of a passion project to fill a gap in the field while learning a lot.

Cheers!

Funao is a train station on the Gotōji Line of JR Kyushu on the Japanese railway network. The line was originally built to serve the gravel mine and it still serves the gravel mine

...with passenger trains only.

All sidings were removed and freight service was discontinued.

The only one that remains seems to serve as a spur for maintenance of way equipment

Today the only way freight leaves is via truck

While it's good that the mine has a passenger station for mineworkers, the lack of freight service is a stunning failure of logistics and is a symptom of the larger way that freight is moved in Japan.

Aggregates are an ideal commodity for freight rail. They are very heavy but are not that valuable per ton, making rail the cheapest and most effective way to move the product over land. This is an easy economic decision that even most capitalists understand, and therefore most heavy industry has rail access.

Except in Japan. In Japan, the railways have the opposite problem that American trains have. In America, passenger rail is almost entirely sidelined for profitable oil and coal trains, because the freight companies control the railroads. In Japan, the passenger train companies control the railroads, and they have de-prioritized freight nearly entirely except for container trains. The railroads closed down almost all of the freight railyards, an essential component of freight service. They have stopped basically all door to door freight service, with the demolition of many sidings and spurs, and the JR companies continue to rip up more freight track every year.

This is partially mitigated by a lot of freight traveling by sea, but that still is worse for the environment vs electrified freight trains. The use of container trains is a creative solution to the problem (which is worth another post in its own right) but is not enough to solve the problems posed by a near complete abandonment of freight rail.

The worst part about all this is that by embracing freight it might be possible to save more rural lines. With a shrinking rural population many rural train lines are closing down because of lack of passengers. If those lines had good freight service, it might be a good way to keep those lines open and in the black. Japan is shooting its own economy in the foot by trying to rely on trucks and ships for everything.

Note: When I am talking about door to door freight service, I am talking about carload freight. I made a megathread explaining how carload freight works here a couple years ago.