Transit Projects Are About to Get Much, Much Easier in California

SAN FRANCISCO—The report that Michael Schwartz sets down on the table is truly enormous. It looks like it has eaten several smaller reports and laughed as they tried to run away screaming. The document is some 700-pages long and several inches thick; that's not counting the second volume or the thousands of pages of technical supplements. Schwartz has posted a photo series showing his newborn son alongside the report on the door of his office at the San Francisco County Transportation Authority. "I finished this two weeks before he was born," says Schwartz, with a look of tired pride. The baby doesn't appear markedly bigger than the document until the photo labeled "five months."

The photo series is titled "BRT Baby." It's not immediately clear whether the name refers to the child or the report. It's safe to say both required significant labor.