Josephine Roper @jroper@transportation.social

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?”

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.

At least the interminable Eurostar line has a pleasant view of Gare du Nord

Aside: you can play spot the dog here, and compare to the number of humans waiting. Whenever the topic of pets on public transport comes up in Sydney, people seem to imagine every carriage full of fur. But in places it’s allowed, I usually see proportions like this - perhaps 1-2% of people with a pet. And this is off peak - long distance lines at 11am on a Thursday. I imagine on commuter services it’s even lower.

One of the food ones (they are chosen at random from a list of half a dozen or so, it appears).

Translation: For your health, practice a physical activity regularly. www.[eatingmoving].fr

Something surprising for me: French TV showing sustainable transport messages below car ads! No idea if this actually does anything, but certainly a different government mindset, can’t imagine it in Australia.

Also they only appear for 3 seconds so they’re hard to photograph, sorry for the blur. Unlike the equivalent food ones (in reply) which appear for the duration of the ad.

Translation: For short journeys, privilege walking or cycling. #GetAroundPollutingLess

was the greenhouse-like roof rooms attached to the top level apartments (via internal staircases). Apparently they're too cold in winter and too hot in summer to really be used for anything except keeping gardening tools, which is not too surprising as they're all glass.

The location is 5 minutes walk from the shops, 8 minutes from the train station, 1 stop to Rennes then 1.5 hour TGV to Paris.

Visited a friend in an interesting deck-access/breezeway-type building near Rennes yesterday, 'Utopia', Bruz.

Some English description: https://www.stirworld.com/see-features-bruz-utopia-housing-by-champenois-architectes-explores-idyllic-community-living

The courtyard seems quite dominated by the footbridges at first, but there was plenty of light at the base when we visited. Probably lets more light to the internal windows on the ground floor than a conventional corridor design. Will be interesting to see how the plants are doing in a few years.

Only flaw my friends said...
(1/2)

- either they think they're a very important content producer and that just resharing my survey to their many followers will surely be helpful. Or they're just looking for easily-digested entertainment, which my survey is not, beyond just whacking a 'like' on the general idea of it. On the plus side, Linkedin maintains visibility of something for much longer - responses are still trickling in, whereas the Mastodon & Twitter responses came very rapidly before disappearing off people's feeds.

Recent experience of posting a research survey on Mastodon & Twitter vs Linkedin: far more likes and shares/reposts on Linkedin, but more actual survey responses from Mastodon & Twitter. Unfortunately I didn't include a precise question on origin so I can't differentiate those two, but I'd be willing to bet that more are from Mastodon. I think it illustrates the more participatory mindset on Mastodon - vs Linkedin where people are participating with a producer/consumer mindset (cont)

We have so few wide bike paths in Sydney that I always notice them as an absolute luxury overseas. It’s so good to be able to ride next to someone and talk to them. It’s so normal - it’s what you expect walking, if you take a tram together or drive together.

The fish knows how to live

On the left, my partner’s grandpa’s place. On the right, the best bakery in Les Sables d’Olonne. Having found peak walkability, I can stop now.

That’s it for trains today, here’s a lemon ramen

Got the Shinkansen for one stop back to Nagasaki, as we have JR passes so it’s the same price. 8 minutes vs 24 minutes on the Seaside Liner. Speed doesn’t look that different out the windows but it spends a lot more of the distance in tunnels. Shows how that kind of straightening, and not having stops, contributes to the effective speed of high speed rail. (The driving time would be similar to the slow train).

Sadly, they are building a new freeway next to the train line, instead of perhaps upgrading it from a single track, once an hour service…

On the way back we took the train from Aino to Isahaya, which is basically a glorified bus, 1 car. Apparently the most expensive train to maintain per passenger in the world? Or was it Japan? Latter seems more possible (I have not verified this at all)

A walk in Aino (non train interlude)

Bikes at Isahaya station. Have seen very few locked bikes in Japan!