Josephine Roper @jroper@transportation.social

Took the train to Salzburg on the weekend to see a friend from Slovenia.

The historic centre of Salzburg is a pedestrian area controlled by bollards, but with some car access as you can see.

From what I can find: disabled people with a Euro-key can park inside, taxis can enter anytime (saw quite a few) and the bollards are down for deliveries before 11am. I guess before 11am the risk of confused/lazy tourists driving in is considered lower.

It seemed like a good balance.

It's an example of how a suburb built within a 2.5km ring of a train station can easily be made very bikable, and this could be a great way to retrofit existing suburbs.

But it doesn't necessarily make it highly walkable, which is sometimes assumed or sortof glossed over ... the two things are really very different.

that reduces the walk from 30 mins to 15 mins. The bus comes every 20 mins. It goes to the train station - otherwise a 20 min walk from our place.

Normally those kind of distances would be fine for me, but I have a knee injury (from excessive rockclimbing) and am trying to rest it and feeling a bit trapped.

I really recommend leg injuries to walkability people, they always give you a new perspective!

🧵

Staying in Gilching, a sort of commuter village 30 mins outside Munich. I always find it interesting as a place that seems very bikable, but not that walkable.

First picture is the triplex we are staying in, middle building. Right is a duplex (I think), not sure about left. Sneaky density that looks like traditional houses.

Others show parts of my route to the climbing gym. On a bike it would be great - straight, flat and fast. On foot... eh, it's a little bit dull and far.

I took a bus 🧵

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