"In a quality city, a person should be able to live their entire life without a car, and not feel deprived."
โPaul Bedford
"In a quality city, a person should be able to live their entire life without a car, and not feel deprived."
โPaul Bedford
More wisdom from Jan:
"#Copenhagen took away 3% of inner city parking every year. If you do it slowly enough, nobody notices."
โJan Gehl, quoted in #Straphanger.
The Strรธget, 1950s and today.
"Sometimes, a shop owner claims his business
was ruined because the city removed 4 parking spaces. With our surveys, our mayor can say: โ6,000 more people
pass your shop a day thanks to a new bike lane. Are you sure youโre a good businessman?โโ
โ Jan Gehl, quoted in #Straphanger #Copenhagen
1. Pittsburgh streetcar map in 2D.
2. Pittsburgh streetcar map in 3D.
(#2 is a 1910 model, submitted to Mayor's office, showing the actual elevation of streetcar lines in #Pittsburgh, that city of inclines.)
1: #Tokyo metro map in 2D.
2: The same map in 3D.
How one school made a street safer for kids.
Not a full-on "School Street," where all cars are banned, but a big improvement for health and safety of children.
Before/After.
This is crazy!
As of Jan 1 2024, 94% of #India's rail lines have been electrified. Up from 45% in 2015.
๐งต
"Dependence on foreign oil imports to power diesel locomotives led the country to move towards 100% electric trains, goal of net zero by 2030."
"Yeah, but how are you going carry a real load with a damn bicycle? That's why we'll always need trucks in cities."
#Hamburg: We see your beer-keg delivery, #London, and raise you a refrigerator. Or three.
#Paris has got your last rites taken care of.
A small funeral home called โLe Ciel et La Terreโ (The Sky and the Earth) uses a bicycle-hearse called โCorbicyclette.โ
"Bicycles offer advantages in express delivery: they can bypass traffic and make up to 2x as many stops per hour as a truck. Total cost of ownership over lifetime is less than half of a van. And they generate zero emissions."
โCEO of DHL Express
They say big trucks are just a reality if you want to make deliveries in the city.
I say there's other ways to solve the "last-mile" problem...
There's your beer kegsโsorted.
๐งต
"There's no machine known that is more efficient than a human on a bicycle. Bowl of oatmeal, thirty miles. You can't come close to that."
โNot surprising that Bill Nye, the Science Guy, has known about the efficiency of the bicycle for a long time.
"Bicycles let people move with greater speed without taking up significant amounts of scarce space, energy, or time...Cyclists become masters of their own movements without blocking those of their fellows."
This is a map of western part of the network of just one Canadian passenger railway in 1955.
You could really go a lot of places by train then.
And fast: 71 hours, 10 minutes from #Montreal to #Vancouver. (It's 94 hours, if you're lucky, from Toronto to Vancouver today.)
๐ค๏ธ๐งต
This #Paris mรฉtro station is a steampunk masterpiece.
Designed by Belgian comics artist Franรงois Schuiten, to call to mind one of Jules Verne's submarines or airships.
Where else can you find secrets of the mรฉtro?
๐ผ๐๐งต
Watch out for "stations fantรดmes," now closed, but which you can see flashing past on some lines. I got to visit St. Martin, which still has beautiful tile ads from the 1950s.
Also try to spot the original รฉdicules, designed by Art Nouveau master Guimard.
This one's at Abbesses mรฉtro station, deepest in the city, in Montmartre.
Pro tip: contrรดleurs like to trap people at the bottom or the top of the spiral staircase, so make sure you've paid your fare!
UK STUDY:
Fit amateur bicycle-riders aged 55-79 have immune systems comparable to those of 20 year olds.
A century ago, Play Streets were common in NYC, closed to cars by order of the police.
๐๐๐๐๐ ๐ถ๐๐๐๐๐๐ ๐
Nulla dies sine linea.Author of Straphanger: Saving Our Cities and Ourselves from the Automobile. Advocate for bicycles, transit, walking, alternatives to the car...and great cities.Words in The New York Times, The Guardian, National Geographic, Smithsonian, L'actualitรฉ, The New Yorker, Wall Street Journal.The Lost Supper: Searching for the Future of Food in the Flavors of the Past now out from Greystone. www.lostsupper.blog
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