litchralee

The money quote:

VTA buses and light rail carried 30,000 people to and from Levi's Stadium, according to the agency. That was 5,000 more than they anticipated and "far surpassing" ridership records set when Taylor Swift played there in 2023.

As background from the Wikipedia page, the Anaheim Transit Network (ATN) was established as a city-sponsored non-profit in 1998 to operate bus lines around the Disneyland resort in California, with private funding from the various hotels in the area to run this public bus system. These hotels are obliged to operate or pay for shuttles to Disneyland as part of their development agreements with the city, presumably to avoid untold amounts of automobile traffic.

As the linked press release says, ATN will shutter its operations on 31 March 2026. The area will still be served by Orange County Transportation Authority (OCTA), the county-wide bus service, but looking at the bus lines near Disneyland, coverage seems non-optimal as a replacement to ATN's service.

Other reporting indicates that the City of Anaheim was unwilling to invest further into ATN (despite earlier indications), nor were the hotel operators.

What I find utterly inexplicable is that these stakeholders -- especially the city -- are not recognizing this fact: data from Q3 2025 shows that ATN fixed-buses moved 96,300 average daily riders. From the same document, the USA's heavy rail systems did not exceed that rate, except in the San Francisco, Washington DC, Atlanta, Chicago, Boston, and NY/NJ areas. Basically, ATN was moving metro rail levels of people on buses.

I shudder to imagine how bad this will be for Anaheim once the closure occurs, where workers, visitors, and all other former riders will need to figure out how to move around Anaheim. Ride share automobiles hardly have enough capacity to absorb even a fraction of the prior riders, let alone more automobiles, even if they all carpooled. And seeing as many visitors to Disneyland use the buses to stay at farther hotels to reduce costs, this is a negative attraction. The difficulty of car-seats on ride share made the buses particularly attractive to transport younger children safely.

Each individual hotel operator made an economic choice to not properly fund ATN, but together they will all lose out. Likewise, I don't see how the City of Anaheim is going to make up the transportation capacity around the Disneyland area. Disneyland itself isn't party to the agreement that funds ATN, but they do contract with ATN to shuttle visitors from a far-flung parking lot. But they too will be impacted if staff and guests can't afford to get to the park.

Everyone is going to be worse off, and no one is stepping up to the plate to keep the buses rolling, when it's clearly the obvious thing to do.

To make it easier for the haulers, I sort my flattened cardboard boxes by size, and then insert the smaller ones within the larger ones, rotated 90 degrees. That way, they can grab larger bundles at once.

To me, this is less effort than the Japanese approach of using twine to tie bundles of cardboard together.

Every so often, I think about how much electric power my house consumes at all hours, even when it's the dead of night and nothing is really being used. So this morning, I went out and flipped each breaker off, one by one slowly, while watching the instantaneous kilowatt reading on the electric meter and taking observations.

This took about 20 minutes for all circuits, and then I honed in on the suspicious circuits, the ones which don't have a known appliance like a fridge which should always be running. Years ago, when I moved into this house, I drew out a map which describes which outlets and appliances belong to which circuit.

The two suspicious circuits were the living room and bedroom circuits, and armed with a Kill-o-watt, I ended up finding that my very old Bose Companion 5 desktop speakers will draw 23 Watts doing absolutely zilch. And my 2018-era Roku TCL so-called "smart" TV draws 20 Watts when it's "off".

I've been meaning to replace the Bose speakers -- due to a separate issue where the mute button only works half the time, and horrific Linux support -- and a friend recently offered to sell me some reference speakers that I can pair with a Class D amplifier, one which has a physical on/off switch.

For the TV, I'm not exactly sure what to replace it with, since I was going to wait until it died and replace it with a commercial-spec display, one that has no remnants of "smart TV" anything. I don't allow my TV to even have a network connection or WiFi, so it really shouldn't be doing anything. So I guess in the meantime, I'll just pull the plug when I'm not watching; at least it's easy to reach.

EDIT: the TV is now showing inconsistent results. It will occasionally drop down to a more-reasonable 0.1 Watt. But it might also remain at the aforementioned 20 Watts. Not entirely sure what it's doing, whether just sitting there or staying on for a while after turning "off" the TV.

cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/50842014

When I moved into my home many years ago, there was this lock-box mounted to the water main on the side of the house. I figured it was one of those used by real-estate agents to store the house key for viewings, but months passed and it still remained there. No one from my buyer's agent's office had a clue what this was, and the seller of the house had already moved out-of-state.

Recently, I had some plumbing work done, and that also included replacing the main water valve for the house, allowing this lock box to come free from the plumbing. Now inspecting it up close, and looking up the model online, I realized that it has an alphabet wheel and uses a three-letter combination.

As it happens, Thanksgiving weekend was upon me, and since I was bored, I figured I'd try all the possible combinations. Just 17,576 possible combinations, how bad could it be?

The most immediate problem was that due to being out in the elements, the dial did not turn easily. It would move, but was rather rough. And since the knob is only ~1 cm diameter, this is an incredibly un-ergonomic endeavor. I had to stop after the first 100 tries, due to the finger exhaustion.

Knowing this would be untenable for the long-run, I decided to build my way out of this problem. Since a combo lock involves making rotations that almost go all the way around, I drew inspiration from rotary telephone dials, where one's finger starts with the intended number and then swivels the dial around.

But whereas a rotary telephone dial only needs 10 positions, I needed to fit 26 positions, one for each letter. I decided on each hole being 17 mm to comfortably fit any of my fingers, but that also dictated the overall diameter of the wheel. But that's good, since a larger diameter wheel means more leverage to overcome the rough lock movement. It also happens to be that this wheel has a diameter of 180 mm, which is just enough to fit in the 200 mm bed of my 3d printer.

Using FreeCAD, I designed this wheel so that it fits around the splines of the lockbox dial, which held remarkably well. I had thought I would need Blu Tack or something to keep it together.

Using this wheel, I'm able to "dial" combinations much quicker using one hand, while holding the lockbox with my other hand to press the lever down to test the combination. This should be good.

(note: some parts of this story were altered to not give away identifying details)

When I moved into my home many years ago, there was this lock-box mounted to the water main on the side of the house. I figured it was one of those used by real-estate agents to store the house key for viewings, but months passed and it still remained there. No one from my buyer's agent's office had a clue what this was, and the seller of the house had already moved out-of-state.

Recently, I had some plumbing work done, and that also included replacing the main water valve for the house, allowing this lock box to come free from the plumbing. Now inspecting it up close, and looking up the model online, I realized that it has an alphabet wheel and uses a three-letter combination.

As it happens, Thanksgiving weekend was upon me, and since I was bored, I figured I'd try all the possible combinations. Just 17,576 possible combinations, how bad could it be?

The most immediate problem was that due to being out in the elements, the dial did not turn easily. It would move, but was rather rough. And since the knob is only ~1 cm diameter, this is an incredibly un-ergonomic endeavor. I had to stop after the first 100 tries, due to the finger exhaustion.

Knowing this would be untenable for the long-run, I decided to build my way out of this problem. Since a combo lock involves making rotations that almost go all the way around, I drew inspiration from rotary telephone dials, where one's finger starts with the intended number and then swivels the dial around.

But whereas a rotary telephone dial only needs 10 positions, I needed to fit 26 positions, one for each letter. I decided on each hole being 17 mm to comfortably fit any of my fingers, but that also dictated the overall diameter of the wheel. But that's good, since a larger diameter wheel means more leverage to overcome the rough lock movement. It also happens to be that this wheel has a diameter of 180 mm, which is just enough to fit in the 200 mm bed of my 3d printer.

Using FreeCAD, I designed this wheel so that it fits around the splines of the lockbox dial, which held remarkably well. I had thought I would need Blu Tack or something to keep it together.

Using this wheel, I'm able to "dial" combinations much quicker using one hand, while holding the lockbox with my other hand to press the lever down to test the combination. This should be good.

(note: some parts of this story were altered to not give away identifying details)

Reposted from heckin_sick (on IG) after DMing him for permission.

FortNine as a YouTube channel mostly covers motorbikes but on-and-off will do some bicycle and ebike content. Being YouTube, the clickbait-esque title is customary but the video is a look at where the fastest, heaviest, not-strictly-legal "ebikes" blur into the low-end of motorbikes.

The specimen in question is, from all that was pointed out in the video, rather abysmal by motorbike standards but par for the course by consumer goods standards. This includes:

• An obnoxious startup introduction to remind you that their brand name is pronounced Aniioki
• Illogical rear suspension design
• Complete disregard for Canadian and British Columbian ebike classifications
• Questionable chain design that keeps falling off the chainring
• A throttle with huge delay before reacting
• And more!

But the paltry nature of this particular ebike wasn't my main takeaway. It's that ebikes at-large are filling a gap in the market, where young people want mobility without the expenses and licensure of motorbikes. Here in California, the chasm between legal ebikes and motorbikes is so wide that I would imagine the same statistics could be found here as FortNine found in Canada. And it makes perfect sense: cheaper, lighter, electric, nimble, and unencumbered by frivolities like highway roadworthiness. For getting around town or to work, it makes perfect sense.

That said, they also touched upon the very real problems faced by faster ebikes (legal or not) today. Motorists -- because let's face it, most problems of micromobility are caused in large part by automobiles -- might expect to see a motorbike doing the speed limit, but not an ebike doing 2/3 of the speed limit. A USA Class 3 ebike can legally do 45 kph (28 MPH) and while that's slower than typical speed limits here of 35 or 45 MPH, the problem arises when there's enough motor vehicle congestion that slows motorists to about the same speed. And that's where the conflict shows up, such as when a car enters the road from a driveway.

Do I think it's a bit silly to bring a 150+ lbs "ebike" onto the ferry, or dangerous to ride along a multi-use trail on the side of a bridge when there are also pedestrians? Absolutely! But again, I think the takeaway is that the times are changing and preparations must be made in anticipation.

The absolute worse-case would be if these overpowered two-wheelers unlawfully dressed up as ebikes were to proliferate to the point that it's total chaos on the roads. At that point, Pandora's Box cannot be closed. Thus, it behooves us to mitigate that situation by, among other things:

• Build actual infrastructure for riders on bikes and ebikes, that isn't doing double-duty as pedestrian or recreational paths
• Incentivize legal, battery-safe ebikes to stave off a glut of illegal, shoddily-made "ebikes"
• Make existing bikes more useful with destination improvements, like bike lockers or secure/valet bike parking
• Seize road space currently used for motor vehicles, and do anything else with it. Parklets, public toilets, bioswale, donut shop.
• Expand public transportation options, for anyone who can't/won't ride a bike, but also as range-extension for anyone who wants to do bus+bike

The premise of a well-built city is that it shouldn't require a two-ton automobile just to buy milk. I would further the sentiment with the opinion that a 160+ lbs two-wheeler also shouldn't be necessary to travel across Vancouver in a timely fashion. We can, in-fact, build our way out of this future problem but only by starting right now.

Hi! I've only posted here maybe once, but I'm looking to change that and have been working to improve my joinery.

Specifically, I recently had the geometric realization that adjusting the horizontal angle on my miter saw is one of the least precise adjustments I can make, when trying to make two cuts that add up to 90 degrees. So instead, I now set the angle for the smaller angle, make the first cut, then set the workpiece for the second piece using a square against the fence. Basically, I'm rotating the piece so it's 90 degrees to the saw fence, and that lets me cut the complementary angle without realigning the saw angle.

The new problem is that because I'm still using slightly-warped and slightly-twisty stock, the surfaces aren't terribly great for gluing up. In one case, I glued up one end of a diagonal brace but the other end was lifting up, off-plane. Hand sanding with a block helps, but more often than not, I end up rounding off the edges and glue leaks out. So I'm now seeking recommendations for a small hand plane, so that I can have better, flatter surfaces to glue together.

Is this the right approach? If I'm mostly working with narrow stock like 1x4-inch, is there a correct-sized hand plane to smooth out an end-grain on that small of stock? Apologies in advance for not really knowing all the right wood terminology. I'm still learning.

Ideally, I'd like to buy something that will be versatile and serviceable for a long time. So cost isn't too important, but ideally it'd be proportional to my (few) other tools. If I know what to look for, I'll keep my eye out for such a specimen while at the thrift store.

EDIT: To clarify, a use-case would be if I'm gluing a diagonal brace at mid-height of a post. If i had a plane, I could work the post so that it has a flat face, so that the brace won't deviate left/right. For the diagonal brace itself, I can mostly trust my miter saw to cut the angle reasonably plumb.

EDIT 2: Might I actually want a card scraper instead?

EDIT 3: y'all are awesome and I now have a fair number of suggestions to consider. I guess there goes all my disposable money for September, once I go visit the nearby woodworking shop.

I've put off the overhaul of my ebike's Bafang G510 mid-drive motor for so long that it has never actually been serviced since I bought it 3800 km ago. Over the past weeks, I slowly pulled the motor off the bike, carefully disassembled it, and found the rotor shaft gear in a poor state. Metal flecks were visible within the blackened grease, making a mess within the housing.

To get the sprockets off of the motor, I did have to obtain a deep-socket YC-29BB tool to remove the "spider" from the crank shaft. A standard wrench for the Bafang lock ring will not work, because the spider itself is in the way.

This motor has an all-metal gear arrangement, consisting of the primary gear axle which is coaxial with the cranks, a secondary gear axle, and a tertiary gear axle which is driven by the rotor shaft gear. It was the gears where the tertiary axle and rotor shafts meet which were substantially ground down, resulting in play between gears that causes additional wear every time the motor accelerates or decelerates.

Note: some references online say that the G510 pre-2023 had a nylon gear. I could not locate any images of this, and my motor appeared to have all-metal parts. So idk.

Part of the issue is that the tertiary axle used a gear which isn't as deep as the rotor shaft's gear, resulting in wasted gear-to-gear surface area. A newer gear design for both the rotor and tertiary axle came out in 2023, and can be swapped in but requires recalibration of the motor.

So with the motor half disassembled, I figured the only sensible way forward was to order both the new rotor shaft and new tertiary axle, plus the CAN bus-specific Bafang dealer tool to perform the recalibration. I purchased these from greenbikekit.com, which didn't have the most intuitive ordering process but they did deliver in the end.

Perhaps the most arduous process was cleaning out all the old grease, which requires some solvent to shift. And even then, some crevices were unreachable without a very long cotton swab. In any case, I then re-greased using Permatex 80345 white lithium grease, since this has a higher temperature rating than typical white lithium grease, according to its data sheet. I obtained this from the local auto parts store, and this was the best I could get locally; Mobilgrease 28 was not available near me.

For the recalibration procedure, I knew that I wouldn't have -- nor would want to register for -- the Bafang dealer software to use with the programmer tool. Also, I'm a believer in the right-to-repair and having to beg for software is antithetical to this notion. Fortunately, someone has a FOSS project that can control the programmer and issue the recalibration command, among other neat features.

After dealing with a file permissions issue for /dev/usbhid2, the programmer was able to issue the calibration and the motor was set for reinstallation into the frame. This was basically all the earlier steps in reverse.

During testing, it is notable how much the new gears add the characteristic "whirling" sound of an electric motor. However, because the play within the gears was reduced and with new grease added, I found that the overall noise signature of the motor is substantially reduced. Also appreciated is how much less current the motor draws when riding at speed, compared to before the overhaul.

While it did take a while to assemble the parts and procedure for this endeavor, I am pleased with the results and would suggest periodic re-greasing for ebikes in regular service.

After some 3000 km, this mid-drive motor is grossly overdue for some maintenance. I can see the specks of eroded metal mixed in the dark, gunky remains of whatever factory grease they used in here.

I don't know where locally to get the Mobilegrease 28 that everyone recommends, but I did find some high-temp white lithium from the auto store. But just removing the old grease has already consumed half a roll of paper towel. And I can't exactly dunk a motor into gasoline as degreaser.

I'll carry on wiping.

From my earlier post, y'all helped me fill my micromobility niche with a refurbished Segway Ninebot G30LP. So I wanted to give my first impressions after having it for a week.

To start, the scooter arrived in a fairly sizable box, some 100cm by 50 cm by 25 cm. There was a small hole in the cardboard box, but it looked like typical handling and broke into a void, rather than impacting the scooter.

Opening the carton, I removed the scooter itself, the charger, manual, Schrader valve extension tube, and the recall-related maintenance kit. The latter consisted of various sizes of hex wrenches and a rather-long screwdriver. As my first (electric) scooter, I figured I should RTFM before getting ahead of myself.

That's when I realized that I am missing some parts: the six screws needed to secure the handlebar component to the stem. So already, I could not perform the singular assembly step. Oh dear.

From the manual, I sent an email to Segway support with my scooter's model and serial, and they replied the next day for my mailing address. The day after, they had a tracking number for me for that parcel, which reached me three days later. So five days after writing to them, I had the screws in hand. Not bad at all.

That said, I did notice that these screws are slightly out of spec. From what I could gather online, the six screws for the stem should be countersunk M5 screws with length 16 mm. However, I measured these closer to 18 mm, and given the angle of how the screws insert, I think the extra length is causing the left-side screws to collide with the right-side screws.

While I could leave the screw protruding by about 1 mm, I figured I'd cut the screws to length, as that's within the capabilities of my metalworking. They did, after all, send me a pack of ten screws, so I could cut the four spares down. Now they sit flush with the stem.

Anyway, with the handlebars attached, I could continue through the manual, which basically had other advisements for safe operation. Separately, I had seen advice online that the air pressure for these tires should be closer to 40-50 psi (~3 bar), to avoid flats but would trade off some springyness. From the factory, I measured 37 psi, which is what the manual recommends. I tend to run my bicycle tires closer to the sidewall rating, so I wanted to shoot here for at around 45 psi.

The Schrader valves on these tires are quite something. The front is workable, but the rear has a very short stem, meaning only my digital air gauge could be attached to read out the existing pressure. But to add pressure with my manual floor pump for the rear tire, I needed the extension tube. Note: this tube does not have its own one-way valve. So once the tire is pressurized, some air will leak out when unscrewing the tube from the tire stem. And of course, it's a cramped position. But hey, at least I can check the air pressure without the extension hose.

Out of the box, the battery has a state of charge around 60%, so I was able to test basic operation by gliding around my driveway. But it does beep persistently, due to not being activated with the app. I personally don't like devices which must be chained to an app -- which might disappear one day -- so I was pleased to find that there's a community app that can do the same.

Using this app, I was able to activate the scooter and confirm other parameters about the its manufacturing, the battery pack, cell voltages, and the odometer reading, which is precise down to 0.01 km. What I couldn't figure out is how to commit the global or eco speed limits, as I have no need to run faster than 13 kph (8 MPH).

During testing around the neighborhood, I resolved to wear at least the same gear I would wear (helmet, goggles, gloves) for riding my acoustic and electric bikes, and found that with cruise set at 15 kph (9 MPH), this was a reasonable saunter through the quiet streets, with bumps amplified by the short wheelbase. But still manageable. Kinda like a brisk walk.

When discovering that switching from Eco mode to S mode permits the full 25 kph (15 MPH) limit, I decided to try the top speed after doing a few loops. But already at 22 kph, I stopped, being unable to understand how anyone can ride a scooter at this speed without 100% focus and both hands on the handlebars. And I've seen riders on shorter electric scooters with smaller, non-pneumaric tires. It's utterly terrifying, and I say that having negotiated 45 kph, lumbering ebikes through harrowing city traffic.

But my own sensibilities aside, it's fairly capable with large -- but still jarring -- dips in the road surface, and does not bottom-out at sidewalk ramps or turning into driveways.

Here in California, the laws on electric scooters are substantially nerfed, prohibiting sidewalk operation or even just making left turns in the street. They intend for electric scooters to operate in the bike lane, though most riders I see will use the sidewalk anyway. As a long-time bike rider, I fear the poor running surfaces of sidewalks and prefer the smoother asphalt surface of the bike lane. Though I grant you that the motor vehicle traffic whizzing by is not exactly totally comforting, especially when I intentionally operate at a lower speed.

But taking the scooter out for its first ride, it was mostly uneventful and I met up with a friend, who later took me and the scooter home in his car. It fit perfectly in the trunk, which proves the multi model credentials of this scooter. So far as I can tell, the odometer is fairly accurate and while I've only done 11 km so far, the app suggests a range of 40 km at my speed.

I'm still figuring out how to ride this safely, but seeing as my needs are very specific (see prior post), it's likely I can optimize to a high degree.