Jake's blog
Jake's California and NY primary election endorsements, 2026
If you're reading this blog, you know that I care about two things above all else: transport and housing. Thus, California endorsements are first, then New York below. If you want to ask about other races in the comments, I can give hot takes, but these are the ones I feel comfortable talking about. CALIFORNIA (election day is June 2nd): Governor: Tom Steyer. Steyer is the only serious choice. His top two issues are "fix the housing crisis" and "tax the rich," which neatly encapsulate the problems that the state faces. I like Steyer's housing plans - they are basically sound...
I wrote a new article for Vital City, looking at why NYC's commuter rail is so much worse than Tokyo's.
Check it out here.
Let's talk about the California High Speed Rail Authority business plan.
NC3D on Flickr, cc-by-nd The California High Speed Rail Authority put out its 2026 business plan, which shows some pretty aggressive savings in the full line construction - $2 billion reduction for the initial Merced-Bakersfield segment, $10 billion reduction for the San Francisco-Gilroy segment, and huge cost reductions in Southern California by upgrading the existing Palmdale-Los Angeles commuter rail line instead of carving a new right of way. While the Merced-Bakersfield savings are accrued through better project management, the big savings between San Francisco and Gilroy are done by reducing the maximum speed from 220 MPH to 110 MPH. The same...
Don't fall into the trap of glamorizing rural life.
This is going to be a bit of a change from my usual urban posting. I want to talk about my trip back to visit my grandmother's tiny Kansas hometown, and why it's a bad idea to romanticize living in rural America. I've seen a lot of posts bouncing around the Internet talking about how people can should move to rural America, where land is cheap, cost of living is low, and so on. This post on Twitter is one of the species. You see this a lot, where influencers push young people struggling to make it in a major...
California has done the big stuff to fix the housing crisis. What comes next?
There's been a lot of progress to fix California's housing crisis, because the State Legislature has finally decided to fix things. Credit where credit is due. There's going to be two parts to this post. The first part will be a summary of what the Legislature has done to fix things; the second will be what the legislature needs to get done. You'll note that there's not a whole lot of local reforms in here. Some city councils have acted in good faith to do their part, like Sacramento, Oakland and Berkeley. But most, like LA, SF and San Jose,...