@jroper@transportation.social
@jroper@transportation.social avatar

jroper

@jroper@transportation.social

PhD student at UNSW City Futures Research Centre. Committee member of WalkSydney (https://walksydney.org/). Interested in access, walkability, sustainable transport in general, open source urban analytics. Transport cyclist, climber, plant based.

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jroper, to random
@jroper@transportation.social avatar

Impressive commitment from someone so young. Shame this kind of thing doesn't make the mainstream news. https://www.crikey.com.au/2023/01/27/innes-fitzgerald-runner-greta-thunberg-australia/

ajsadauskas, to sydney
@ajsadauskas@aus.social avatar

Sydney has opened up consultation on a strategy to reduce car traffic and make the city more walkable

"Driving in central Sydney will become harder under a plan to make the city more comfortable for pedestrians.

"The City of Sydney wants to narrow roads for wider footpaths and push for lower speed limits to discourage drivers from the CBD and transform Sydney into a walkable city.

"The council will also install more pedestrian crossings and prioritise people over cars... five times more pedestrians than motorists on the average street, yet just 40 per cent of road space is allocated to footpaths."

https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/greener-safer-calmer-the-plan-to-discourage-drivers-from-central-sydney-20240312-p5fbr7.html

Some key points of the strategy are:

We will ensure that there is sufficient space for people to walk.

We will improve connectivity for people walking by ensuring there are frequent street crossings that give people priority and that align with people’s walking routes.

We will ensure that footpaths and crossings are accessible so that everyone can use them.

We will plan our city based on 10-minute neighbourhoods so that people are able to meet their daily needs easily by walking.

We will make it safer for people to walk by reducing vehicle speeds.

We will reduce traffic volumes on surface streets and manage through-traffic in residential neighbourhood streets to improve both safety and experience for people walking.

We will work to make all people feel safer while walking around our city.

We will work to improve compliance with road rules, especially the lesser-known rules that benefit people walking.

We will make our streets and public spaces comfortable and inviting by ensuring that they
are green and cool.

We will make sure that there are frequent opportunities for people to stop and rest, use the toilet or have a drink of water.

We will make our city more pleasant to walk in by reducing noise and air pollution from
traffic.

We will make all streets interesting to walk along by ensuring that built form has active, permeable frontages that invite engagement and curiosity.

We will use design, activations and installations to create neighbourhood-based community and encourage people to interact with their streets.

Full details here: https://www.cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au/policy-planning-changes/your-feedback-walking-strategy-action-plan#strategy

Unfortunately, the car-brained leader of the local business lobby isn't on board:

"Business Sydney executive director Paul Nicolaou welcomed efforts to make the city pedestrian-friendly... But Nicolaou said it was difficult to see how making Sydney a predominantly walking city would benefit businesses such as retailers."

(Worth repeating that 80% of people on an average city street are pedestrians, so it already is a predominantly walking city.)

Anyway, if you think the plan's a good idea, make sure you let the Sydney City Council know by emailing sydneyyoursay@cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au

#urbanism #UrbanPlanning #Sydney @fuck_cars #walking #walk #walkability #nswpol #auspol #nsw #planning #cities #UrbanGreening #city #cities #australia

jroper,
@jroper@transportation.social avatar

@ajsadauskas @fuck_cars Most positive spin I can give Business Sydney is that they are concerned about difficulty operating genuine commercial vehicles (deliveries to shops etc) in the CBD, which is fair, delivering in the CBD already looks like a difficult job. But they should be onboard with ways to filter out the private traffic and keep the commercial... cordons and congestion charges being most obvious to me.

jroper, to random
@jroper@transportation.social avatar

#ClimateDiary - Writing research plans for postdoc applications -> anxiety and guilt about whether I am working on climate change to the extent that I could be.

Only real reassuring thing is remembering I am just one part of a whole community of people who care about this, especially on here. Thankful for that.

jroper,
@jroper@transportation.social avatar

@bikepedantic Thank you, all that is needed is good to hear. It's just hard to reconcile the long timelines of academic work with the urgency of the situation.

njtierney, to random
@njtierney@aus.social avatar

New post: "How to get good with R", where I ramble on some ideas on getting better with R - keen to hear what people think I've missed and discuss the topic!

https://www.njtierney.com/post/2023/11/10/how-to-get-good-with-r/

#rstats

jroper,
@jroper@transportation.social avatar

@njtierney "If you’ve found yourself copying the internals of a function over to another script and hard coding the arguments at the top of the script and running the code line by line, then this is especially for you."

I feel like I do this more in Python than in R, any tips for that?

jroper, to random
@jroper@transportation.social avatar

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
jroper, to random
@jroper@transportation.social avatar

😊 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 🧵

jroper,
@jroper@transportation.social avatar

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

jroper,
@jroper@transportation.social avatar

• 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.

jroper,
@jroper@transportation.social avatar

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.

jon, to random
@jon@gruene.social avatar

Welcome to #CrossBorderRail Autumn 2023 Day 14, 29 Sep, Brugge - Hasselt - Maastricht - Roermond - Mönchengladbach - Köln – Berlin

Today I’m crossing these borders
Lanaken 🇧🇪 - Maastricht 🇳🇱
Dalheim 🇩🇪 - Vlodrop 🇳🇱

Map of today’s route
https://umap.openstreetmap.fr/en/map/crossborderrail-political-tour-autumn-2023_933893#9/51.0564/5.9085

Today’s Live Blog
https://crossborderrail.trainsforeurope.eu/live-blog-autumn-2023-day-14/

jroper,
@jroper@transportation.social avatar

@jon my life improved when I started appreciating good graffiti, it's just one less thing to be annoyed about. This is really nice work - imagine producing those sharp edges, gradients and textures with a spraycan. If it's not racist or offensive slogans, why does it matter? It's way more creative and human than an advertising wrap.

jroper, to random
@jroper@transportation.social avatar

So, just over 6 weeks to the referendum. My partner's citizenship was approved a few weeks ago, he will get 4 weeks notice of the citizenship ceremony at some undetermined point... what are the chances?

jroper,
@jroper@transportation.social avatar

@timrichards You don't become a citizen officially until the ceremony, despite approval. To enrol to vote you need a 'citizenship number' which I guess is on the certificate they give you at the ceremony.

europlus, to random

Two days late, I’ve hit #T00t! Finally! Nice seeing how the “Donald Went Down to Georgia” story played out towards the end of the catch up. If I didn’t know better, I might even feel like there’s hope for American democracy after all!

jroper,
@jroper@transportation.social avatar

@europlus oh gosh I just read your #T00t posts, sounds exhausting. I gave up on T00t a while ago, except for a high priority list. Lists are good, I recommend them!

Alon, to random
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

Pedestrian Observations: Quick Note on Ecotourism and Climate https://pedestrianobservations.com/2023/08/14/quick-note-on-ecotourism-and-climate/

jroper,
@jroper@transportation.social avatar

@herbert_tiemens @Alon Lol yes was surprised by some of the wording - caught a lot of very full long-distance trains this European summer and can't imagine everyone on them was 'hardcore greens'. I guess it depends on the trip. Paris to Berlin is pretty easy; Paris to Goteborg was on the masochistic side.

mekkaokereke, to random
@mekkaokereke@hachyderm.io avatar

"Computer Science students should be required to take courses and lectures in ethics! That would fix everything!"

But who is teaching the courses and lectures?

https://stanforddaily.com/2023/08/13/s-b-f-is-leaving-campus-but-stanfords-ties-to-his-case-are-deeper-than-previously-known/

jroper,
@jroper@transportation.social avatar

@mekkaokereke Depressing thread so feel I should also say I did a very good 'Engineering Ethics' course in my masters, and later TA'd it. Unfortunately it was mostly the work of one inspired academic who has since retired. This paper gives some idea of his style: https://www.ceem.unsw.edu.au/sites/default/files/uploads/publications/16skinner.pdf

Definitely hard to do well... but it can be done

jroper, to random
@jroper@transportation.social avatar

One problem with my new shared bike reparking hobby is the antitheft measures.

Lime bikes lock only the back wheel, so you can roll them on the front wheel.

Beam bikes are light enough to pick up entirely, but they make squawking noises about their antitheft mode being activated. I think this mode turns off again after a while and someone can re-use the bike - but I'm not sure. I don't want to disable the bike by reparking it, that really would make it useless junk.

Anyone know more?

jroper,
@jroper@transportation.social avatar

@europlus They seem to get upset just at being lifted or moved while locked. I don't think they know if they're on private property (until someone else comes to rent the bike and reports they can't get to it).

jroper, to random
@jroper@transportation.social avatar

sustainable transport hot take of the day: people seeing any shared bike or scooter parked in public space as ugly litter are just reflecting preconceptions and prejudice against new modes.

Like seeing any graffiti as ugly. Some graffiti is ugly! Some of it's great. My life improved when I dropped those blinkers and started being able to think 'damn the bubble writing on that carriage is amazing' not 'graffiti on the train, just another reminder of the shittiness of humanity'.

jroper,
@jroper@transportation.social avatar

That being said, some shared vehicles are badly parked. I've taken to stopping and moving them off the footpath, rather than just complaining/taking a photo/riding past. If a wheelchair user can't easily move a share bike out of the way, all the more reason for an able-bodied person who sees it to move it preemptively. Doesn't mean it has to be tipped over angrily either.

jroper,
@jroper@transportation.social avatar

Social norms for new modes will be built gradually, partly by people unconsciously observing thousands of good examples, so I think creating good examples is helpful, in a small way.

dmoser, to random
@dmoser@mastodon.social avatar

A single tuned car 🚗in the middle of the night can easily wake up 10,000 people.

Anti-noise radars help- Berlin 🇩🇪 is now installing its first anti-noise radar.

jroper,
@jroper@transportation.social avatar

@dmoser I find it hard to conceive that the people in question wouldn't care if they understood how many people they are waking up/disturbing. Ie I often imagine someone could go to their house and explain the situation to them, perhaps with a petition from affected neighbours, rather than going straight to fines from the anonymous government apparatus.

But I may be projecting.... maybe they already know and they really don't care.

jroper, to random
@jroper@transportation.social avatar

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)

Same courtyard from above. The top level (4th) is a flat roof with gardens and no footbridges between them. Beyond the building are distant views of some other buildings and hills with trees. The lower footbridges have a red coating. A lift can be seen next to the stairs in the centre.
Looking from inside the staircase, which is heavily grilled, at the courtyard, plants below and roof above.
Another view from the ground level showing dappled sunlight on the bushy plants. The tallest are taller than the first level of footbridges and almost reach above the handrail of the second level.

jroper,
@jroper@transportation.social avatar

@jrefior The scale of the courtyard relative to the building felt pretty normal to me, compared to other courtyard buildings and apartment complexes set around open areas. My photos don't really capture the width of the building/walls itself well.

I wonder if it'll be a bit dark once the trees grow in and they still have all the footbridges.

jroper, to random
@jroper@transportation.social avatar

In Nagasaki, these red dots count down from the top to show how long pedestrians have to wait (and same on the green).

Obviously I’m lapping up one of the great national public transport systems, JR pass and endless snacks in hand, but it’s the little things too :)

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