Josephine Roper @jroper@transportation.social

I’ve got so used to living on a high frequency non-timetabled bus route, it’s great. Today I’m on a normal bus and we’re just sitting here at a stop because it’s running early. Let’s go faster! Let’s go home! But no.

Anyone else get really curious about where each individual car on the road is going? I mean not during peak hour, then you can fit them into the societal narrative of workdays, I mean like 10am on a Friday in a random suburb, 6am on a Sunday, where is everyone going?

Same when I go past a café in a residential area on a weekday that's full of people. What are your stories? What are you all up to?

The world is so complex, and what I know is so limited.

spent two days getting a webscraper working that isn't related to my phd in any way, shape or form. Stupidity, yet eventual elation.

oh and in the name of #openscience I'm trying to put more of my scribbles online, this can be found here:

https://github.com/JosephineRoper/Access-visualisations/blob/master/Wimbo%20Park%20LR%20stop.ipynb

These close stops here and in the CBD would make more sense if the light rail was faster - long dwell times and slow acceleration seem to be the main causes which could potentially be improved.

But I haven't done an end-to-end access analysis which would help really understand how useful or not the stop is.

Petition for another light rail stop in Surry Hills: https://www.teamclover.com.au/wimbolightrail

I've signed mostly because I don't like the argument that stops would be too close together because of a fixed '400m catchment', which is outdated and not representative of mode choice decisions & experience for shorter trips.

Having registered my opposition to catchment analyses... here's a rough one anyway.

copilot trick of the day: providing (good) translations into other languages.

I have a website with a small amount of text, and a series of separate JS files with the text in different languages. If I add text for a new tooltip in the English one, I can go to the Persian one and Copilot suggests the same thing in the same spot, translated.

Ofc chatgpt is a decent translator, but the integration with the structure of my project is just amazing, and saves some tedious work.

Totally irrelevant but I'm just really proud of my little sister

Though I'm disappointed she didn't include my contribution to her degree, which was listening to long voice messages about stats problems, translating them to paper, and sending her help 😅

https://hds-hub.cbdrh.med.unsw.edu.au/posts/2023-03-01-studying-hds-as-a-junior-doctor/

Went out of my way just to enjoy this nice new #bike crossing on Mitchell Road.

Still some awkwardness where the two-way cycling becomes one-way (behind the pedestrians) but it’s a very quiet street over there so it’s probably ok.

A more complex but interesting example:

https://mstdn.social/@FuckCarsReddit/109779515346865729

I used to live in a deck-access flat in Port Macquarie, it was really nice propping the front/deck door open to get the breeze or sitting out in the afternoon sun once it was on that side of the building. Now I'm in a single frontage apartment with a nice orientation but no cross-ventilation, and I miss it.

The idea that an outdoor corridor can be good is related to the idea that walking or cycling - travel exposed to the elements - can be good, I think. Both involve not living in an indoors - garage - car - indoors bubble.

https://www.architectsjournal.co.uk/news/opinion/forget-the-tired-stereotype-deck-access-homes-make-sense