u/Soft_Introduction437

Montreal having to pull a quarter of their articulated buses sounds to me like a disaster waiting to happen bc many routes are already overcrowded, and they don't have any new ones on order (I have a hunch that this is because Nova doesn't manufacture articulated electrics, even though New Flyer does, but STM refuses to buy from any manufacturer other than Nova because they're stubborn)

i've got 6 credits left in my degree and they can be for anything. are there any electives that some of you would reccomend (major in urban studies/minor in human environment)?

I've been asking around as to why the STM doesn't have bike racks, and a lot of the reasons I was told sounded more like excuses to me. The four i've heard the most are:

-Not enough room in garages

-Drivers' view being obstructed

-Narrow lanes on the older streets

-Costs 1000$ to install per bus

These are not genuine reasons, to me, they sound like excuses. Here's why:

-Not enough room in garages - What do you mean? A folded rack takes up an extra what, 6 inches? The way they park their buses in individual spots rather than stacking them like trains (as seen on satellite images and street view) means that they can get away with fitting each bus with a bike rack. First excuse, BUSTED.

-Driver's view being obstructed - What? What? It's not like this hasn't been tried before. Buses across the continent have fitted racks, and the bus drivers don't seem to have any obstruction issues. Even if the drivers here in MTL make the excuse that they don't drive New Flyer buses or whatever, guess what! In far away Laval, which uses the EXACT SAME buses as MTL, HAS ALL THEIR BUSES FITTED WITH BIKE RACKS!!! I don't get it - does Montreal have some sort of disease that infects bus drivers' line of sight, but it never reached Laval? Second excuse, BUSTED.

-Narrow lanes on the older streets - I assume that this is a reference to the streets of Old Montreal, which are narrower. However, they are so narrow that they can't even fit ANY buses, with or without bike racks. As far as I know, only 2 bus lines pass through Old Town - 50 and 55, the former of which goes around Old Town, and the latter of which stops short of Old Town at Champ-de-Mars metro. Line 50 especially would be a great line for bike racks, since it ends at an elevation much higher than any nearby metro stations and would prevent users from having to bike up such a steep hill (line 50 also doesn't have great frequencies but that's a story for another day). Anyway, most roads in Montreal have highway-sized lanes, because, you know, North America. Third excuse, BUSTED.

-Costs 1000$ to install per bus - I'm not sure if that's the exact cost, that's just an estimate. The STM has an annual budget of $1.8 billion and close to 2000 buses. If the STM were to fit all their buses with racks, it would cost them a total of $2 million (which is a very conservative number because they already have some buses that are fitted with racks), which is just over 1% of their annual budget. Fourth excuse, BUSTED.

Montreal is a very bike-friendly city, with hundreds of kilometres of high-quality bike paths, Bixi, and an overall very liberal bike culture. How is it that other cities, with less cyclists overall, have most (or all) of their buses fitted with bike racks? For me, this isn't about doing a bike/bus combo from the plateau to downtown. I get it, that's time-consuming. But this stupid system means that I can't even, for example, take my bike on line 68 from the new AAO REM station to the beach at Cap-St-Jacques, a distance I don't really want to walk. I just...I don't get it. What's going on here? Why is it like this?

I've been wondering, is there a reason why the planners of the project chose to not follow the SR14 alignment from Palmdale to the LA basin? Would almost certainly be cheaper than building a shiteload of tunnels and there is enough space on the highway for median HSR tracks and 2 lanes of car traffic per direction? The highway also seems reasonably straight, without many sharp curves, so a high speed train could probably comfortably reach 100mph or so on that corridor

TL;DR - parted ways with a crush (likely for good) and i'm having a harder time coming to terms with it than expected. Tested for limerence and it's probably not the *full* cause.

A couple days ago, I parted ways with a crush I had for about a year or so (bear in mind this is one I had two dates with). Up until that point, I had been seeing her rather intermittently and had gotten used to it, but for some reason, after leaving her a few days ago, this time it felt much more like a void, like something may have been sucked out of me. The thing is, I knew I was leaving her, more than likely for good, and we did end on good terms - I even gave her a hug! What is this situation, and how do I move past it? (Btw i did do an online test for limerence, to which the result came back with a score of 55%).

Additional notes: Both dates were in the first few months that I'd known her. I did eventually realize I wasn't going to have a romantic relationship with her, and that was that. I didn't see her for another 8 months or so afterwards, but somehow I was still missing her. Fast-forward to January of this year, where we have a class together. I interact with her as a close acquaintance rather than a friend, or I guess, a romantic partner, and that was fine. Up until a few days ago, when I left, possibly to never see her again.

A couple days ago, I parted ways with a crush I had for about a year or so (bear in mind this is one I had two dates with). Up until that point, I had been seeing her rather intermittently and had gotten used to it, but for some reason, after leaving her a few days ago, this time it felt much more like a void, like something may have been sucked out of me. The thing is, I knew I was leaving her, more than likely for good, and we did end on good terms - I even gave her a hug! What is this situation, and how do I move past it? (Btw i did do an online test for limerence, to which the result came back with a score of 55%).

Additional notes: Both dates were in the first few months that I'd known her. I did eventually realize I wasn't going to have a romantic relationship with her, and that was that. I didn't see her for another 8 months or so afterwards, but somehow I was still missing her. Fast-forward to January of this year, where we have a class together. I interact with her as a close acquaintance rather than a friend, or I guess, a romantic partner, and that was fine. Up until a few days ago, when I left, possibly to never see her again.

With the success of Caltrain electrification, I started wondering if there are any other improvements that can be made to service both on the main line and elsewhere, especially with the impending arrival of CAHSR.

Here are a few of my hopes, be they realistic or not:

- Main line - speed and signalling improvements. I keep hearing that Caltrain will eventually bump up track speeds to 110 mph, but I think they should go beyond that. Between San Jose and Sunnyvale, the line is fully grade separated and i would argue has room for 4 tracks along the whole thing. With that, track improvements could be made, and the top speed could be increased not just to 110mph, but 125mph (although I imagine this would be most useful to the CAHSR when that's finished, right before the sun explodes). Signalling should be improved to European standards this way the trains run more smoothly (although that may not work as long as UP still uses the Peninsula sub)

- New branch lines - 2 branch lines I think Caltrain should serve - (would probably be rush-hours only depending on demand and how Union Pacific feels about it) - Oakland-San Jose via the Warm Springs sub, which would complement BART service, and a second branch line to Cupertino (although i would rather VTA does something with that, but Caltrain could as well)

-South County Branch - this one might be the biggest challenge because, despite their best interests, Union Pacific refuses to sell the branch to the state of California, and I honestly have no idea why. They use it so little compared to the Fresno Sub that they may as well be losing money on it. Especially with the arrival of the high-speed train, whatever improvements be necessary should be made to upgrade the line, Union Pacific be damned. Things like increased grade separation, full double-tracking, and of course, electrification should already be on the drawing board.