Josephine Roper @jroper@transportation.social

Well this was very successful for finding new interesting people to follow! Sorry if I missed anyone that liked it, I'm sure we'll cross paths again. Thanks for all the boosts.

I am now following a brass band from Yorkshire, because naturally.

It's so friendly here I sometimes feel awkward following people - like I should introduce myself - so a general #introduction. Also, hashtags.

I research #transport #access in #Sydney, Australia, using a lot of GIS, #python, #rstats, #OSM.

I probably followed you because I liked your thoughts about Australian #urbanism, #bikepacking, #ebikes, #choralmusic or #rockclimbing, or you work at #UNSW too and seem cool.

Je suis aussi capable de toot un peu de l'#urbanisme, #vélo et j'aime suivre ça.

Thoughtful interview with one of UNSW's academic integrity experts on Chat-GPT and student assessment
~~
https://youtu.be/FpevM_kdhjg

minor leagues #carryshitolympics - my partner is recovering from knee surgery with the aid of his new e-bike conversion. He brings the crutch to work because he still has trouble with stairs and getting up from seats.

Nicely presented for those of us who like floorplans.

The 'inside' studios of the large floor plate conversion look pretty grim to me, but at some point in my life they would have been acceptable as a way to eg. live cheaply near uni and hardly ever be home.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/03/11/upshot/office-conversions.html

And it’s a shame if it continues perceptions of car dominance, because parts of Adelaide are great to cycle!

Here we are heading in to the Fringe Festival through the parklands 🥰🥰

(it’s pretty ridiculous to have to wear helmets for something you can do wearing a summer dress, carrying a handbag, and in my sister’s case, heavily pregnant. But that’s another post).

How the sheer size of cars makes them seem more important than they are.

I’m visiting my sister in Adelaide and riding on many quiet streets like this. Often there are also other people on bikes, like that guy up ahead. Take the parked cars out of this streetscape and it’s ‘wow, everyone cycles in Adelaide’. But with them, they dominate the image of the street, even though there’s only 4 of them and 3 of us…

‘Fun’ fact: long distance train travel times haven’t improved in Australia since the 1970s.

Still enjoyed my train to Melbourne, the bus a bit less so, but it would have so much more appeal to more people if, say, Sydney to Adelaide was 12 hours total travelling instead of 21 (+2 hour connection in Melbourne).

Starting the slow trip to Adelaide!

Booked a day train and first class hoping to get some work done, but forgot these trains are too old to have power at the seats… hopefully can find some somewhere.

A classic Sydney ‘shared path’ (legalised footpath) and excessive advertising combo. If it were glass you could at least see if anyone was waiting at the bus shelter or riding the other way, as it is you have to ride at walking speed to negotiate this. (The road is 70km/hr death.)

The problem is not so much that these shared paths exist - I’d rather ride them than nothing - but that they’re counted in our kms of cycling infrastructure.

(2) "From the perspective of bitcreep, attempts at making peace by bending over backwards to improve modularization and try to support multiple ecosystems in parallel are nothing but self-sabotaging folly"

- helping to write a WalkSydney submission on a new motorway project, and this may be an all-too-accurate description of the project's attempts to shoehorn in an 'active transport corrider' and our attempts to improve said ATC - in parallel with 4 extra lanes of road...

Technology Holy Wars are Coordination Problems - https://gwern.net/holy-war

Reread this by chance, noticed a clear analogy can be drawn to battles over transport technologies, not just software. My choice of bicycle and yours of an SUV are not independent choices - one of our ecosystems becoming dominant will make life harder for the other's choice. The conflict for space, and why the stakes are so high, is more obvious in the transport sphere. But gives an interesting new perspective.

Another map of Sydney with another view of the National Art School. This 1879 'Supplement to the Illustrated Sydney News' hangs upstairs in UNSW's Old Main Building. It's almost 2m tall and it needs to be, with the level of detail shown.

(Went on a campus walk with the People & Place cluster, checking out UNSW's oldest buildings - that is to say, from the 1950s - and many pieces of art I'd never stopped to look at before.)