Samad
@samadran
Followers
212
Following
41K
Media
79
Statuses
3K
Train and Walkable City Enjoyer | UNC Alum | All opinions are mine
Carrboro, NC
Joined January 2022
This is a good question. The answer is: REGULATORY COSTS ARE ENTRY BARRIERS. When getting a permit, or hiring workers, or renovating a space is difficult and expensive, ONLY BIG COMPANIES CAN AFFORD IT, so small businesses get priced out! Abundance offers LOWER ENTRY BARRIERS.
What does Abundance have to offer community pharmacists who have to shut down because the market is so concentrated and manipulated they can’t make it work anymore? What does it have to offer the thousands of communities that lost pharmacies when a third shut down between 2010
20
97
919
If we were a serious country, we would be talking about radical governance reform in Los Angeles, e.g. metropolitan amalgamation and a hard reset on all local/county agencies. Seemingly radical, but quite common in other developed countries. Instead...
34
60
775
There's no such thing as free parking: drivers pay for it in the form of (a) time wasted searching for it and (b) the traffic caused by others doing the same, and the public pays for it in lost possible revenue.
44
59
835
Do good things and people will come around. We need electeds to start testing things and getting feedback on the results instead of trying to design perfect policy that accommodates contradictory preferences and asking people to approve of it in the abstract before implementing.
@admcrlsn voters said they want no tax increases, less traffic, MTA funding, and no congestion pricing. these preferences are inherently contradictory! that’s why good politicians must be able to build a narrative, and push for polices that will age well & increase in popularity
0
0
0
Further evidence that we can in fact just do things
"Here on Boylston St., 11% of all traffic is made up of bicyclists. That's an 84% increase ever since the City of Boston began it's bike lane project two years ago." 🎥 @JamesRojasNews
0
0
0
"Public meetings aren’t going anywhere, and citizen input will always have a place. But there have to be limits — and the views of nearby homeowners who show up for meetings can’t be the last word on whether Massachusetts gets the housing it needs."
13
57
635
It’s very strange that we ask residents to look at a design on a poster and give feedback as if they’re policy experts. I think it’s likely we need less engagement but for it to more directed. Let people experience what a design feels like to be in and then gather feedback.
0
0
0
Periodic reminder that housing cannot be both affordable and a means of building wealth. Those two concepts are diametrically opposed to each other. If you're going to make housing affordable for young people it's going to reduce the wealth of the Boomers.
228
823
8K
Being infantilized until you can drive is bad, actually.
@musharbash_b Cultural change, increase in helicopter parenting. Zoning forcing every single new school to be further away on sprawling campuses. Wealth effect. Growth in suburban areas being far more children as a % than urban.
0
8
61
It really can be so simple (and inexpensive).
Hoboken, NJ deserves some love. They eliminated roadway fatalities for 7 years by basically doing this at every intersection.
6
41
477
Wrote about this a while back! https://t.co/Gh8spv0IYb
carolinaforward.org
Trump's tariffs and trade wars also hurt farmers in his first term, leading to a similar multi-billion-dollar bailout Last month I spoke with a Wilson County farmer who said he lost $3 million because of those earlier trade wars, and only got $50-60k back from the bailout #ncpol
0
0
0
This is the last week of 2025 that parents have to endure the man-made horror of the car-rider line. Our children and parents deserve better than this.
100
27
552
Just another car accident is how these are treated. People have a right to kill in this country so long as they buy a car first. You don't even need to register it in many cases and can cover all your identification in broad daylight with zero repercussions.
The killer had 100 prior arrests and 40 traffic citations. She hit multiple objects before killing a man walking his dogs.
9
167
2K
40,000 people are going to die on American roads this year
Gyms are coming to airports… I had the privilege of spending time with @SecKennedy and @SecDuffy as the DOT announced a new initiative to bring gyms into U.S. airports. This is a $1B grant program that airports across the country can apply for to build real spaces for people
0
0
1
40,000 people die annually and millions are injured by cars in this country, but we're told the world’s largest economy shouldn’t have public transit just because of a few mentally ill people on trains (whose healthcare we have no plans to address).
People are always talking about lunatics on public transit. But what about the millions of lunatics on our roads? This kind of shit happens every day without ever making the news.
56
962
8K
It is so unfathomable now to imagine living through a government project like this in real-time. Like, imagine an entirely new transit system just appears over a decade to completely remake a major city. People don't even pretend it's possible anymore. They'll make a light rail
On this day, 44 years ago in 1981… The Red Line extension to Van Ness-UDC opened! Extending from Dupont Circle, the 2.1 new miles of track included Woodley Park-Zoo, Cleveland Park, & Van Ness-UDC.
43
254
4K
Demanding society solve crime before investing in transit is saying we shouldn’t invest in transit. People will take transit if we make it as fast and reliable as driving it’s really that simple
I want high-speed rail. I want public transit. But when you live in a country where a violent criminal is released 72 times, no one will ever be willing to take that transportation, so we will never invest in it. And that’s fair. Address antisocial behavior first, then build.
1
0
2
The biggest problem with cars is that they mean each new neighbor directly takes away from your quality of life, and a lot of very nasty politics directly follow once you internalize that
94
2K
34K
This is how you drive transit ridership. Not fares, not gimmicks like wi-fi. Speed matters. Probably just as much as frequency.
Amazing things are happening in Montreal it's so much more real than any of these other fraud cities
31
171
3K