Fischer 🛠️🚇

@fischer.bsky.social

2397 Followers 1109 Following

full stack content engineer, portlander, t1d he/him

Most studies suggest that those portions of the transit subsidy pro- gram most benefiting the affluent are the least efficient at improving or augmenting transportation service. For example, the new rapid transit systems in San Francisco and Washington will have cost at least $8 billion when completed and fully operational. 2 Technical and economic assessments of the systems indicate that bus services could have easily handled realistic projections of passenger volumes at comparable speeds at only a small fraction of the cost of the rail systems.
chart showing aggregate transit operating deficits in the US between 1940 and 1976. starting in 1965 operating deficits drop off a cliff from ~0 to -1.8 billion in 1975
chart showing trimet getting $55 million in general fund, $63 million in bond funding, and $98 million in external grants for the 2027 capital improvement plan
photo of a clinebell ice machine
sky banner reading WHAT ARE YOU HIDING RELEASE YOUR PDF
chart of rent trends over time by building age in multnomah county
chart showing rent burden at each income quintile. most are basically flat, with a gentle increase for 20-40 and a decrease for 60-80. the bottom 20% increases dramatically between 2023 and 2024
ZHVI portland home values chart showing basically identical trends for top tier vs bottom tier homes
chart of asking rents in portland, the central city, and east portland. east portland has increasing rents while rents are flat or falling elsewhere
I am about to turn 80. For decades, I have paid property taxes on a Parkrose lot— bare land with one billboard. This year’s property tax bill was $2,327.49. I also pay liability insurance and a monthly fee to haul away the trash, needles, feces and debris left behind by the homelessness and drug crisis the city has not solved.
photo of a seattle dog
photo of some sliced onions, jalapeños, a cream cheese tub, and a pack of sausages
rockwell hot take painting
diagram showing RM2 vs DLCD setback rules, with 10' setbacks on a 50x100 lot forcing a hypothetical sixplex building into the middle of the lot instead of allowing it to more closely hug the lot line and leave open space in the rear
diagram of a couple different townhouse layouts showing how a 10' setback in R5 zones squishes units together and makes it hard to build good shared spaces
han E-408 @occultkyoong • 1d why mafia isn't a fucking aesthetic: a thread moeeze @seigfridge • 21h i cooka da pizza han E-408 @occultkyoong • 21h go fuck yourself, for real. i cant with these people anymore. i hate you all from the bottom of my heart. ignorant pieces of shit
chart showing highway funding vs non highway funding over time. non highway funding stays flat after the IIJA passes while highway spending rises
tall woman holds a short woman up against a wall
first person photo from a biketown scooter stopped at a traffic light
In the early 1920's, ninety trains moved in or out of the station daily, 52 steam trains and 38 electrics; a train would arrive or depart about every 11 minutes. Expansion of service at Union Station related to the Spokane, Portland and Seattle Railway line in 1920s required significant changes to the building and track, and at its peak period of operation in the late 1940s Union Station had as many as 30 separate tracks, continuing east to Front Avenue. Over time, freight rail became less utilized as some businesses turned to trucks instead of railroads for shipment of goods.|22]
a sort of oddly shiny and pink yglesias speaks into a podcast microphone
map showing OR3 losing $64.4 million in transit funding from the BUILD america 250 act
map showing portland multifamily zoning appearing mostly along arterial streets
3b. Single-family houses, detached and attached - Include all new privately-owned detached and attached single-family houses. Include attached single-family houses, known commonly as townhouses or row houses, where: (1) each unit is separated from adjoining units by a wall that extends from ground to roof, (2) no unit is above or below another unit, and (3) each unit has separate heating and separate utility meters.
historic photo of portland union station showing five shelters and a rail yard immediately adjacent to the platforms
lighting mcqueen says: to become the new flesh, you have to first kill the old flesh
bar chart showing permitting by different building sizes, with 1, 2, 3-4 and 5+ unit buckets. the biggest difference between 2025 and 2026 is that 5+ unit permits have doubled
chart showing cumulative housing permitting in portland in 2025 vs 2026. as of may 2026 portland has issued permits for 200 more units than in 2025
development notice for a 4 story building on 2616 SE 12th
Area D5, richmond Highlighted: This area contains the greatest Italian population in the city
guy in a trimet hat and a blue jumpsuit taking a selfie in a mirror
Kanal said he understood why people are skeptical about the developers’ plans for the area, and why the appellants asked the City Council to step in. “I think we’re being asked to ensure that capitalism and capitalists provide a social benefit, and that’s not realistic the way the law currently is,” he said. “We can have nice things, including an ice rink, and Portland deserves them. But it’s not going to be because large developers choose to build them altruistically, nor should it be. It’s our responsibility to either build requirements, knowing what limitations that that might create, or better yet, provide a public service as the government.”
Uncertainty looms over first open Oregon governor's race in two decades Tina Kotek, Betsy Johnson or Christine Drazan will be Oregon's next governor
Within China, the main axis of conflict is not left vs right, but top vs bottom: specifically, the CCP’s control over the Chinese population. Here it’s more plausible that AI is a stabilizing force, since it can be used for surveillance and censorship. However, there will also be many ways that widespread access to powerful AI could allow the Chinese population to express discontent with their government. In general, Chinese leaders are much more focused on stability than US leaders, and are much more capable of and willing to do long-term planning towards that end. So it seems likely that they will prefer to proceed cautiously.
tweet: they admonish democrats for talking about taxing the ultra rich, but the only tax on the ultra rich they polled was popular screenshots showing the report advising people not to talk about taxing the rich, contrasted with polling showing taxing the rich was net popular
save lloyd thanking tom sollit and john goldsmith for their support
jesse singal: 1am a little surprised at how surprised people are by how she handled this. It seems very human. This *isn't* one of those circa-2018 stories where it's like "We had drunken sex that I realized 3 years later was rape. After that we dated 8 more months."
chart of portland home sales over time. condo prices are consistently low, staying around $350k while detached homes top out at 550
stephen king tweets: Tell you what--if you knew the whole truth about everyone in the Senate and House of Reps, those chambers would be dead empty. Jesus said, "Let him without sin cast the first stone." Graham Platner may drop out. (I hope he doesn't, but.) Meanwhile, the Abuser in Chief just keeps on keepin' on.
wikipedia “list of people from maine”
wiki table of 2018 OR-GOV election polling showing R+5 in march, R+0 and R+3 in july and R+2 in september
misato finishes a beer
A more serious irony is that the automatic control system has been put in because it can do the job better than the operator, but yet the operator is being asked to monitor that it is working effectively. There are two types of problem with this. In complex modes of operation the monitor needs to know what the corrcct behaviour of the process should be, for example in batch processes where the variables have to follow a particular trajectory in time. Such knowledge requires either special training or special displays. The second problem is that if the decisions can be fully specified then a computer can make them more quickly, taking into account more dimensions and using more accurately specified criteria than a human operator can. There is therefore no way in which the h u m a n operator can check in real-time that the computer is following its rules correctly. One can therefore only expect the operator to monitor the computer's decisions at some meta-level, to decide whether the computer's decisions are 'acceptable', If the computer is being used to make the decisions because h u m a n judgement and intuitive reasoning are not adequate in this context, then which of the decisions is to be accepted ? The h u m a n monitor has been given an impossible task.
T-shaped firework explosions in washington DC
William Lloyd Garrison, the editor of the Boston weekly The Libera-tor, condemned the Constitution as a proslavery document, "null and void before God." Garrison insisted that principled foes of slavery could not in good conscience vote under such a system. Four years after the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, Garrison publicly burned a copy of the Constitution, calling it "a covenant with death and an agreement with hell." Many abolitionists, however,
table showing residential development capacity in the inner eastside under current zoning and a conceptual zoning plan that allowed apartments on most lots. 67% of zoned capacity was used under current planning, and only 28% under the conceptual zoning
trimet service change diagram showing the 70 turning west after crossing I-84 to stop at the rose quarter
'Israel today, Israel tomorrow, Israel forever,' Rep. Hakeem Jeffries says at NY rally
New Zoned Capacity: +18,982,318 homes
If we visualize the impacts of a relatively modest bus-oriented upzoning (allowing 30 du/acre within 1/4 mile of frequent bus stops) we can see how a similar policy change for transit zoning might take shape:
While Metro's legal authority to compel zoning changes is complicated, the state's is not: US states have plenary legal authority over zoning, and the state's ability to override local zoning is only restricted by state law. Morever, Oregon has new tools that fit this problem extremely well. In preparation for the new housing needs analysis process, the state has developed model codes for cities of different sizes with reasonable minimum specifications for multifamily zoning. With all the groundwork laid for statewide zoning standardization, a TOD zoning bill could simply allow developers to use the model multifamily code near frequent transit stations.