Josephine Roper @jroper@transportation.social

Why do I think it won't be too hard to gain that trust - note I'm not talking about the technical side of identifying cyclists. I have no idea about that and how close we are.

I mean from the human side, why will I feel safe knowing autonomous cars are driving around me? Well, it's not like I get to make eye contact with every human driver and assess whether they seem sane, competent and calm, particularly drivers behind me. Some trust is already involved. I've cycled in countries where [...]

Random thoughts. I'm actually pretty optimistic about AVs as far as comfort for other people on the roads, especially cycling.

*If* we get to a point where I feel at least as much trust that the robot will see me as the average driver - and building this trust is probably easier than people imagine - I can cycle without worrying about abuse, harassment and unsafe passing from drivers who are irrationally upset by the presence of cyclists. Robots will have no such feelings :)

their vehicle, even when it's objectively expensive and inconvenient - and these people nowadays are overwhelmingly choosing these high-fronted SUVs and 'trucks'.

So we have streets where the parked cars, mostly used for occasional weekend trips, are a mix of smaller and older cars. But the vehicles actually passing me (as I stand at the bus stop musing) are on average larger.

Is this effect inevitable with any increase in sustainable mode share?

Thinking about the big cars/SUVs/utes in Sydney at the moment. I think there's probably an evaporative cooling effect (thanks https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/ZQG9cwKbct2LtmL3p/evaporative-cooling-of-group-beliefs) that makes things look even worse than they 'are', in areas like mine.

Erskineville has really high rates of people cycling, walking and taking public transport to work. So who's left in vehicles? People who need them - so genuine tradie utes, heavy vehicles, etc. And people whose identity is involved in driving and (...)

Seen on this street last night but I did not take a photo because it involved other people's children: groups of largish (10-12yo) kids doing trick or treating with high vis vests over their costumes 😞

Another Erskineville spring evening, in this photo:
- jacarandas
- a lovely bike cut-through creating a safe route home for me and
- streets so quiet that people are walking in the roadway, and
- a share bike, parked well out of the way (I think)
- a delivery cyclist wearing hi-vis clothing as is the law nowadays in NSW, because that's easier to impose on the poor souls than making more streets like this

Thanks for all the new follows ☺️ Always finding new interesting people here.

Here's a little window into (or rather out of) my life in Erskineville ❤️ always special in spring!

May still publish the hedonic side of it in the future (it became much too big to fit in this paper) but concentrating on writing that up as a chapter to get my thesis out the door right now.

• how to reconcile the catchiness of a '0-100' score while imposing less judgement on what 'full walkability' looks like: complicated, but the diminishing returns thing helps.

Surprising absolutely no one, Australian cities don't perform very well outside of the very centre, apart from good walking access to parks and some amenities like local cafés.

As part of a property price modelling project, I wanted to build an 'open Walkscore' using Pandana, as suggested in their original paper (https://onlinepubs.trb.org/onlinepubs/conferences/2012/4thITM/Papers-A/0117-000062.pdf).

This led to thinking about:
• what could be in a walkability index, answer: everything - which also means you can use the same design for other modes,
• how to incorporate people's desire to visit multiple places: incorporates infinite destinations, but with diminishing returns to increasing destination numbers, and

2/3

😊 One of my main PhD papers is out: 'Incorporating diminishing returns to opportunities in access: Development of an open-source walkability index based on multi-activity accessibility'.

https://jtlu.org/index.php/jtlu/article/view/2308

What it's about 🧵

Lovely weekend #rockclimbing around Mittagong by train and bike. Sent one of my projects (last picture).

It's a funny contrast bike camping in the land of cars though, and looking out over the sprawl between Mittagong and Bowral from Mt Gibraltar.

on family messages that had arrived overnight, which is quite a nice and efficient use of time.

I liked not getting messages when I was heading to meet people though. None of the 'I'm running late' etc shenanigans... I just had to turn up at the appointed place and time and hope they did the same.

No real conclusion here, was just interesting going 'back to the past'. Overall I prefer the future, if only because I can watch AFLW games on the long train back from climbing in the mountains :)

all the time. Turns out I don't really need to check google/NextThere and find out that a train is leaving in 5 minutes, I can make it if I rush, otherwise it's in 15 minutes, etc.... Most of the time I don't need to be in that much of a rush, I know roughly how to get home, I can just go to the station/stop and take what's there. For unusual/new trips I'd look them up on wifi and take screenshots beforehand.

Main negative was not being able to use my commute (20 minute bus) to catch up ...

Just had a couple of months with mobile data on my phone not working. (Fixed by Apple store guy in 20 seconds, after probably 10 hours on the phone with Boost/Telstra tech support, but that's by the by).

I wasn't too rushed about fixing it because I thought it would be an interesting experiment in living more disconnected. Wondered if I'd become more mindful, remember what life was like before smartphones, etc. But no, not really.

Main positive was breaking the reliance on using maps... (1/)