Josephine Roper @jroper@transportation.social

At #utsg2023 (a UK transport conference in Cardiff), and had one of the best and most relevant opening talks I’ve been to - from Lee Waters, Wales Deputy Minister for Climate Change and also Transport - because they've put transport under climate change.

Among other interesting things - they've just changed the default urban speed limit in Wales to 20mph rather than 30. Done a major review of road infrastructure investment.

(1/)

Saw a classic example of excessive turn radius / curb extensions needed today - corner of Queen Margaret Drive and Kelvin Drive, Glasgow.

Kelvin Drive is 20mph in both directions, so just a local road. But set up like people are trying to turn into it at 50. I was quite nervous to cross the first time, but eventually realised hardly anyone was turning in.

Found some plans to fix it as part of a bike lane project a few years ago, but not yet implemented.

@kleaders thank you! It seems to have worked ok.

Someone once told me that after you get a complex #Python environment working, you just keep that stable till the end of your PhD, don't fuck around with it.

Today I am fucking around. Wish me luck.

Took the train to Salzburg on the weekend to see a friend from Slovenia.

The historic centre of Salzburg is a pedestrian area controlled by bollards, but with some car access as you can see.

From what I can find: disabled people with a Euro-key can park inside, taxis can enter anytime (saw quite a few) and the bollards are down for deliveries before 11am. I guess before 11am the risk of confused/lazy tourists driving in is considered lower.

It seemed like a good balance.

@jakecoppinger you could do it with a sufficiently large medium density development, but yeah... definitely not the most efficient way we could be encouraging that

@Loukas thank you! I am one of the people who gets depressed, and gets a little sick of people preaching to the choir (eg. already convinced Mastodon followers) about how bad things are/becoming. Talking about action is much more difficult and controversial, as seen in replies, but necessary.

It's an example of how a suburb built within a 2.5km ring of a train station can easily be made very bikable, and this could be a great way to retrofit existing suburbs.

But it doesn't necessarily make it highly walkable, which is sometimes assumed or sortof glossed over ... the two things are really very different.

that reduces the walk from 30 mins to 15 mins. The bus comes every 20 mins. It goes to the train station - otherwise a 20 min walk from our place.

Normally those kind of distances would be fine for me, but I have a knee injury (from excessive rockclimbing) and am trying to rest it and feeling a bit trapped.

I really recommend leg injuries to walkability people, they always give you a new perspective!

🧵

Staying in Gilching, a sort of commuter village 30 mins outside Munich. I always find it interesting as a place that seems very bikable, but not that walkable.

First picture is the triplex we are staying in, middle building. Right is a duplex (I think), not sure about left. Sneaky density that looks like traditional houses.

Others show parts of my route to the climbing gym. On a bike it would be great - straight, flat and fast. On foot... eh, it's a little bit dull and far.

I took a bus 🧵

And then there was lightning, and now we are stuck. Germany!!!

Ed- underway on a new train, apparently will get to Munich an hour and a half late. Luckily it’s our last major train of the day.

Train of the day: Paris to Munich, ~8 hours including local connections

Train snack: cake salée with nettles and brie, from my belle-mère, coconut, from the station

French boyfriend complaints: the reduction in train speed after crossing the border. “Germans are *paying* to go this slow?”

And the Japanese speed limits almost deserve their own post. The following is from wikipedia, but seemed accurate:

* speed cannot be set higher than 60 km/h for any streets with an at-grade intersection, or where pedestrians or cyclists are permitted.
* speed limits of 30 km/h on residential streets and 40 km/h are common for urban two-lane roads.
* 20km/h may be set when there are many seniors, children, narrow etc

@ericireland@aus.social it's really interesting, particularly going straight from Japan to France with my partner doing most of the driving in both.

In Japan he was driving religiously to the very low speed limits, then back in his home village he drives like a maniac (IMO). Though the latter roads are very familiar to him, it seems to be about expectations, other drivers, culture, not just (or mostly) individual preferences.

Some pretty streets without street parking I've seen on this trip 😍

Though the Japanese ones are much more pleasant to walk or cycle than the French ones. Perhaps partly design - speed limits and the French street having a tiny footpath, implying that pedestrians should stay there, versus small Japanese streets often having either wide painted footpaths or no footpath - but a lot of it is just the driving culture.

@Transportist @ckent @dmoser in Bayside yes... ok ok you guys have cured me of my optimism

@dmoser I find it hard to conceive that the people in question wouldn't care if they understood how many people they are waking up/disturbing. Ie I often imagine someone could go to their house and explain the situation to them, perhaps with a petition from affected neighbours, rather than going straight to fines from the anonymous government apparatus.

But I may be projecting.... maybe they already know and they really don't care.

@mszll no, but you inspired me to work out whether I can turn off the new download interface (with the bubble in the top bar), which I really don't like. brave://flags/#download-bubble if anyone else is interested.