Martha Lauren 🇵🇸
@NQRW
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Following
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Railway worker, point access block appreciator, designer of maps and map accessories
London
Joined October 2008
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Last Seen Profiles
Pinned Tweet
dystopian au where you have to pay someone half your income or they'll throw you out of your house
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American men are absolutely fuming whenever they spot someone living free of the insecure masculinity that's got them indentured to the local Dodge dealership
Ten years ago this guy rode his fixie to the coffee shop. Now he drives his Japanese toy truck to the Home Depot. The eternal hipster, always eager to pay more for less utility to avoid the horrible fate of being mistaken for a normal person.
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Britain's railway has a systemic problem of treating well-intentioned passengers like criminals rather than encouraging a little discretion
It's terrible customer relations, and only worsened by rail staff spending their free time going 'well, rules are rules' in the replies
it would literally be so easy for these sour cunts to provide emergency charging facilities lmao
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That walking has been designed out of everyday life to the point that the median suburbanite conceptualises a mile as a long distance is, in public health terms, a real doozy
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Why do people complain rent is too high when they could simply move to a place with no jobs where they have no support network
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Always impressed by the North American ability to take the features of modern transit vehicles and make them just a little shitter
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Sometimes bike twitter feels a little unhinged, but then I remember that they're facing daily attempts on their life for the crime of travelling from A to B using the most simple and affordable conveyance and like, fair play to them
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Remember when interstate highways started to turn a profit
But wait, there's more! China's HSR is the most used system in history and it is an albatross. The system has racked up almost a trillion dollars in debt and its only profit came last year and could barely pay the debt service. Now, rates are rising fast.
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Electric rail's main environmental benefit doesn't come from eliminating diesel trains, but rather taking cars off the road by means of faster and more frequent service
Due to electrification, Caltrain's local service will now take 75 minutes from end to end instead of 100.
That's a time savings of 25% simply by switching to electric. If you want faster regional rail in every metro, electrification is a massive start.
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Can someone please, for the love of god, explain to Amtrak how trains work
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I hate the American attitude to dogs on transit. It's taking the considerable proportion of the population who have a dog, and demanding that they drive.
The sensible thing is to allow dogs, and institute serious penalties for any owner who fails to keep theirs under control.
Got scolded by an old woman today for bringing Willie (the most polite dog in the world) on the blue line.
Lady, there’s a dude 25 feet away lighting a crack pipe, a woman having a convo on speakerphone & the goddamn bucket boys at the end of the car.
Willie’s fine.
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I've said it before and I'll say it again: The government should not subsidise a second, shittier national transport network, but rather fund Amtrak to expand capacity, offer affordable fares, and run more connecting bus service.
ALLEGEDLY: Coach USA, the operator of a lot of suburban NJT bus routes and the owner of Megabus might be nearing bankruptcy. We need Amtrak or a national agency to begin operating intercity bus routes, because potentially losing an entire network is devastating.
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Quirky bike racks are the transportation equivalent of getting served your burger on a roof tile
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@the_transit_guy
@sdw
Trick question, the driver of the small truck won't hit your loved ones because they can actually see what's in front of them
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The reason North America's big cities are uniquely shabby for a rich country really isn't that difficult to discern.
It's because the nation spent a century cutting off its nose to spite black people!
It gutted its economic powerhouses because African Americans lived in them!
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The European Union has unveiled an agreement wherein the core network of the 27 countries must have rail systems capable of speeds of 160 kph (99 mph) or faster by 2040. The economy of the US is $10 trillion larger. This country really needs to step it up.
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What's really frustrating is that North American conversations about transit and equity fail to grasp a very basic point:
Transit's core mission—getting people from A to B at such scale that a modest fare is sufficient—advances equity and alleviates poverty in and of itself.
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idk who needs to hear this but that highway down the middle of your city doesn't need to be there at all
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There's this idea in Britain that being northern is synonymous with being working class
This is singlehandedly debunked by the existence of Booths, a store exclusive to Lancashire and neighbouring countries that's even fancier than Waitrose
@MysteriosoX
Kindly provided by their website, I didn't realise that the one I grew up with was their southernmost.
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The real avocado toast was cars all along
The thing I always notice about stuff like this is, the people talking about how big their car payments are always seem secretly proud, like spending that much on a car is a flex, rather than evidence that they’ve been utterly brainwashed by slick marketing and peer pressure
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I'm so ['sickos' guy] about first nations using their exemption from local zoning codes to singlehandedly increase housing supply in Vancouver proper
The First Nations-led Jericho Lands project in Vancouver being a gorgeous high-density and walkable redevelopment of a military reserve is *chef's kiss*
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Wartime Kyiv managing double the frequency of peacetime Boston
Due to the war, metro frequency is reduced; trains currently only come every 6-7 minutes off-peak.
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Oh no
is that
a comic sans destination display??
Bologna has finalized the purchase of its first 21 articulated 18m electric buses from the Turkish company Kersan.
For the first time, non-trolleybus electric service will be deployed on a trunk frequent line, even though the less frequent one (8 min at peak, 10 min off-peak)
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The simplicity of Copenhagen's deep level metro stations is beautiful.
Each one is a 60m by 20m box, just enough for the platforms, dug out from a pre-existing square or other open space.
All station facilities and vertical circulation are located within that box.
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Can we please accept that British trains aren't wide enough for 2+3 seating?
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All conversations about car dependence:
Transit advocates: We should enact policies that mean people don't need a car
Drivers: But I need a car
(repeat)
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Yesterday I was in LA and convinced that North American urbanism is irredeemable, today I'm in SF and convinced that North American cities only need a few policy tweaks to be great places. In conclusion America is a land of contrasts
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tbh though, ability to plan weeks in advance shouldn't be a condition of affordable rail travel. If three-figure fares are necessary to manage capacity, then it's right and good to demand more trains.
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London to Edinburgh is four hours and the market is split about 50-50 between air and rail. A good quality 4hr rail connection can and does prevent another two dozen environmentally catastrophic flights from taking off every day.
It pains me to say this, but I struggle to see a 4hr Sydney-Melbourne train getting substantial mode share off airlines.
Likely slower door to door than flying and almost certainly more expensive.
Can-Syd-Newy however can stack up for proper HSR if we build it at Euro costs
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To those asking why London can't cope with a couple inches of snow, the answer's the same as last year.
Equipment to remove or cope with snow is expensive. In the Stockholms of the world, it's worth the money. In London, it's cheaper to accept a few days of reduced productivity.
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tfw you've spent years being a weird crank, talking about how just electrifying cars rather than a major shift onto public transport would run up against power grids' capacity to charge a big, heavy vehicle for each commuter
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Did you know: It's possible to build railways at surface level
India's first bullet train project is being built between
#Mumbai
and
#Ahmedabad
, on which the train speed will be 320 kilometers per hour. Under this, a
#bullettrain
station will also be built in
#Surat
. Whose construction work is being done rapidly. Click on the given link
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Saving the environment by providing less train service, causing rail users to drive instead
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@AntonioHayes40
@SenatorMcCray
@jillpcarter
@BmoreCityDOT
Residents of low income black neighborhoods are less likely than average to drive, and more likely to walk, cycle and take transit
They're also disproportionately killed and injured by traffic violence, often beneath the wheels of suburbanites driving though their neighborhoods
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I love when people phase their fantasy maps. Gotta have some routes labelled 'future lines' so your five thousand mile international maglev system doesn't seem over-ambitious
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Fun fact: Everything in this photograph, except a few square metres of trees here and there, is an industrial landscape.
It's all been cleared of Britain's natural woodland and dug up. A little for homes and transportation, the rest for industrial agriculture.
I like how he’s taken a photo of this from what is presumably a small aircraft on a hugely polluting domestic flight.
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@AndrewCarlon
@thatjameskirk
@yourpalcrawf
@edzitron
@postervegas
Mollifying. Your wife is upset that you slept with a colleague on your business trip, so you buy her a designer handbag
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The fundamental point about private cars is this:
They appear to increase freedom of movement, but what they actually do is redistribute freedom of movement less equally across society.
As the car owner sees their freedom increased, the non-car owner sees it diminished.
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The inverse of BRT creep is LRT creep. This is where segments of a light rail in planning become grade separated to avoid annoying local residents or drivers, until you end up building 90% of the infrastructure of a full metro line for 50% of its capacity.
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That train interior tells me she's going to Luton Airport, where there are an abundance of flights within Europe for £10-20.
Whenever she goes, there are probably hostel dorms for about two hours of local minimum wage. Her health insurance in the EU will be like £10 a week.
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It's fun how some people seem to honestly believe that taking transit is dangerous for women, whereas getting in a car with some guy who downloaded a ridehail app and sent in a photo of his license is perfectly safe
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Seems especially ghoulish to make threats over a common scenario that everyone's experienced at some point
And there are easy fixes: In many countries either the conductor can look up the passenger's details, or a fine can be waived if the passenger sends in their ticket later
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I cannot emphasise enough how unnecessary the gigantic new underground cavern under Grand Central was.
Grand Central Terminal is less than half full. The new LIRR terminal was built only because one MTA railroad refused to share its toys with another MTA railroad.
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Don't do 2+3 on a fucking intercity trains. This isn't Japanese loading gauge and you're not Ryanair. Jesus Christ
it absolutely blows that the old generation of Acela will be the last HSR trainset in the country to have decent padded seats with recline. Trend of removing padding and copying euro designs sucks
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Predictably Americans are telling me that NYC is very special and I couldn't possibly understand and it needs to look like that
Sure, but it costs almost nothing to pay attention to detail when designing the interiors of railcars in which New Yorkers spend a chunk of their day
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@northhibernian
@nikicaga
The only position we can be certain of is that she objects to the new housing development in town because it's just not in keeping
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As ever, the problem with free fares, is that transit riders tend to need better service more than they need to save on already modest fares
Zeroing out fare revenue makes transit agencies completely dependent on politicians allocating additional funding to improve anything
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@Noahpinion
There's something so violently American about casting the ability to walk from A to B without getting hit by a car as something radical requiring debate, rather than a basic right
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One thing to note when people say "cars are good because disabled people":
The fact it's simpler to get around in a 1.5 tonne car than a 10kg wheelchair is a ridiculous result of extremely skewed infrastructure priorities.
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A cool thing about Detroit's really wide avenues is that you could build an excellent regional BRT system in like a week, with little more than paint and plastic boarding platforms
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Small diameter tunnels with vehicles running along concrete beams with guide wheels
Muskey boi just reinvented the Glasgow Subway (1896) and the Essen Guideway (1980)
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Many activists frame equity as a separate goal from efficient transit, met by diverting resources to interventions targeting specific groups.
In reality, transit most powerfully benefits marginalized communities by providing frequent service a whole lot of riders can rely on.
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Me: *sobbing* you can't just turn everything into a car park
Malta: *points at the capital city's ancient fortifications* car park
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@TechBurritoUno
Not only ubiquitous the world over, but also a poor substitute for proper level boarding.
Level boarding requires no manual ramp and therefore allows disabled passengers to freely travel as they will. Here's an example in London.
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Gateshead, in North Eastern England, is remarkable for having been more comprehensively torn down than any other large town in the UK (though like plenty in the US).
Here's Bottle Bank, looking towards the Tyne, 1920 and 2019
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Kingston, Ontario deserves some kind of award for land use next to an intercity rail station
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@SustainableTall
One really cannot emphasise enough how squalid and overcrowded working class life was before European cities embarked on postwar social housing programs, using modern construction methods that tradarch guys hate
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@BrandonLBradfor
It's always that with useless boyfriends, "why didn't you ask?", meaning I expect you to project manage all domestic chores while I sit on my ass until given some precise instructions
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Periodic reminder that intercity buses aren't actually cheaper to operate than trains. They just appear that way because they don't pay for the road infrastructure.
Buses competing with trains that could otherwise add cars and/or add frequency is a really inefficient status quo!
The problem: intercity bus service is all about offloading costs onto the public to keep prices as low as possible. The natural conclusion of this was of course forcibly socializing the cost of waiting.
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The Philadelphian mind cannot comprehend this running more than once an hour
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I decided SEPTA could maybe do with a less visually offensive rail map
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It's cool how the USA's whole thing is having a bunch of urban streets wide enough to build a cut and cover subway, but also a political system where the owners of KFC franchises have veto power over any infrastructure project in their neighborhood
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Love to cross six lanes of motor traffic to reach the light rail platform
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Scotrail went for both end gangways and aerodynamics on its two new EMU types and ended up with two of the goofiest-looking trains ever created
i still can't get over how much of a crime against aerodynamics the new septa bilevels are
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She may well be rich, many backpackers are. Still, this is something Americans often don't understand:
Europe's baseline cost of existing is relatively low thanks to sensible healthcare, decent transit, cheap produce &c.
So someone without dependents can get by on casual work.
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Approaching network expansion based on historic routes is both a bizarre way to do it, and exactly the nostalgia based approach I expect from US rail
The sensible way would be to analyse cities that ought to be connected, and routes that ought to have additional schedules
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Because when transit isn't frequent and dependable, those who can't afford a car have fewer hours in the day than those who can.
All the more so when resources are diverted away from the task of pulling vehicles out of the garage every morning.
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Thing about Booths right, it's expensive, maybe more so than Waitrose
But it's not just expensive because it's marketed to posh people, it's expensive because the sausages come from a farmer ten miles down the road who can tell you the name of the pig
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Other countries: We use appropriate barriers and warnings in order to reduce the risk of level crossing incidents to a low as reasonably practicable level
North America: HOOOOOOOOONK HOOOOOOONK HONK HOOOOOOONK
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I think it's pathetic that it's 2021 and passengers still have to climb rickety steps to board the train
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Why are ten car trains not normal on a route that's pricing riders off rail and onto road
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I love when Americans pretend there's something particularly intuitive about fahrenheit beyond the fact it's what they're used to
my most american take is that fahrenheit is actually superior to celsius in a practical, human sense.
like 100 is hot and 0 is cold, that’s so straightforward. if it’s a nice day it’s essentially 65%-70% hot out. like duh it just makes sense
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Seems to me that if one mode emits under 50g of carbon per head, and the other mode emits over 1,500g of carbon per head, it's the business of governments to subside the former and tax the latter rather than leaving this calculus to chance
From today's Sunday Times: "I took a train to the Alps — and it worked out cheaper than flying"
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Honestly the boarding procedures aren't the only thing that's jarring coming from any other country
There's also the herding passengers into particular cars because apparently it takes three conductors to open one door
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Controversial opinion: Rail doesn't need to be time-competitive with air.
Reasonably quick intercity trains should be available and affordable, while short haul air travel should be taxed in line with its climate impact.
From there, the market can work itself out.
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Here's a large part of why HS2 appears more expensive per mile than its European peers: 🧵
Cities like Paris, Frankfurt and Milan created underground lines across the city centre for suburban trains
This allows high speed trains to serve their existing main line terminals
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“the system was being abused by those in the youth bracket who were using Uber at $3 to go to Starbucks... then go back to school or meet their friends.”
Abusing their city's transit system by (checks notes) paying their fare and riding it.
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@AntonioHayes40
@SenatorMcCray
@jillpcarter
@BmoreCityDOT
Does that mean you'll be supporting a road diet on Edmondson Avenue and redirecting truck traffic off Edmondson and North Avenues in conjunction with the Red Line project?
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My favourite thing is when you propose a meaningful measure to reduce car dependence and all the progressive types pop up to be like "clean air, decent transit and fewer children being hit by cars FOR WHOMST??"
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I love contemplating how much extra carbon NYC-Boston flights pump into the atmosphere on account of Metro-North not being arsed to signal its New Haven inner tracks for high speeds, adding half an hour to the Acela journey time
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This just looks so much better than all the weird blocky façades
Another cool thing about housing in Spokane is that we don’t require façade articulation and seven different types of material.
That means new buildings in our city can utilize more classic, timeless design.
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In Ontario, GO Transit's microtransit pilot has proved extremely popular
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So here's a thing. The climate is changing in increasingly deadly ways. We all agree on that, yeah?
Well, then, perhaps we ought to be reconsidering technocratic statements about how high speed rail isn't worth advocating for if it'll take any longer than flying
Every flight between cities within this circle is a policy failure.
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I know appeals to common sense aren't useful policy, appropriate safety measures are, but with that said
How the fuck are Florida drivers just so dumb about railroad crossings, how did any of them survive long enough to be of driving age in the first place
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