Josephine Roper @jroper@transportation.social

Your correspondent taking 'walking' holidays at a young age.

(Mum is going through old photo albums).

So, just over 6 weeks to the referendum. My partner's citizenship was approved a few weeks ago, he will get 4 weeks notice of the citizenship ceremony at some undetermined point... what are the chances?

The jam is out of the national doughnut

- best description I've heard of Australia post Wednesday

reviewer 2, please come back to me, reviewer 2, I need you....

(4 months since submitting revisions, one reviewer came back, one has missed the deadline and who knows what's going on. I know this is not even long in the scheme of academia... got to be one of the worst things about it though)

Hadn't been to Burwood for ages, forgot how lively it is, there's about a year's worth of food I want to try on the main street.

But also forgot about these pedestrian fences, or are they new? Such an ugly solution to what should be a positive 'problem' (a popular town centre where lots of people are getting around on foot).

One problem with my new shared bike reparking hobby is the antitheft measures.

Lime bikes lock only the back wheel, so you can roll them on the front wheel.

Beam bikes are light enough to pick up entirely, but they make squawking noises about their antitheft mode being activated. I think this mode turns off again after a while and someone can re-use the bike - but I'm not sure. I don't want to disable the bike by reparking it, that really would make it useless junk.

Anyone know more?

Slowly building the group of friends who are willing to go #climbing by train :)

We get up to Blackheath a little later and theoretically miss out on some of this beautiful winter sunshine... but much more relaxed and enjoying the whole package of the day. And I still climb enough to be exhausted!

Visiting mum - got to be one of the nicest located bus stops in Sydney.

Ofc the bus only comes every half an hour and one of the neighbours has campaigned to remove it because they don't like the noise and hardly anyone gets on here (except mum). The vicious cycle of low frequency. But for now, it exists.

Social norms for new modes will be built gradually, partly by people unconsciously observing thousands of good examples, so I think creating good examples is helpful, in a small way.

That being said, some shared vehicles are badly parked. I've taken to stopping and moving them off the footpath, rather than just complaining/taking a photo/riding past. If a wheelchair user can't easily move a share bike out of the way, all the more reason for an able-bodied person who sees it to move it preemptively. Doesn't mean it has to be tipped over angrily either.

sustainable transport hot take of the day: people seeing any shared bike or scooter parked in public space as ugly litter are just reflecting preconceptions and prejudice against new modes.

Like seeing any graffiti as ugly. Some graffiti is ugly! Some of it's great. My life improved when I dropped those blinkers and started being able to think 'damn the bubble writing on that carriage is amazing' not 'graffiti on the train, just another reminder of the shittiness of humanity'.

Being internet friends with American rockclimbers is very, very fucking jarring as a sustainable transport person. I feel like I'm living on a different planet from people who drive 5+ hours every weekend to go to the best rocks in whatever surrounding state has the best weather at the time. Need to emotionally separate a bit... from my work and from the Americans both, probably

From Pete Dyson’s ‘Transport for Humans: Are we nearly there yet?’, which I haven’t yet read, but looked like a good read from the parts I flicked through at #utsg2023

Anyway, the current energy that appears to be in the Welsh government to pivot transport planning towards meeting access & climate goals rather than increasing mobility was impressive.

(5/5)

wouldn't have been able to get to Paris, from anywhere in Germany or Switzerland, the next day - it was a Friday in summer, and absolutely every high speed train that would get in by the time I needed to be there was fully booked.

So I did a 16 hour bus trip - not fun but seats were available, and I'm sure nearly always available, because the bus companies can scale demand up and down to the holidays quite easily. Perhaps this is possible in theory with trains but not in Europe right now?

(4/)

That one was interesting. I try to go everywhere by train in Europe (7000km, 98 hours over the past 2 months...) and I love having that opportunity compared to Australia, but you also start to see the issues, especially inflexibility to cope with problems or periods of increased demand.

Like I had a night train cancelled in Germany because of storms - doesn't happen to buses. I could get on another one a few hours later (an uncomfortable overnight seater not a sleeping bed) but then

(3/)