Liam 2d ago
In today’s lesson about integrating public transport, new technologies and private providers, and accessibility in urban design, here are two pictures: one is a kerb bus stop and the other is a major pedestrian underpass
Show threadLiam 2d ago

All transport modes impose some kind of externality. Trains need marshalling yards and a permanent way, and have a really serious ongoing maintenance budget. For public modes that’s planned in: bus routes get more roadwork, stops get isolated from parking, it’s accounted for.

For *private* modes like these there’s every incentive for companies to offload the externality (parking) onto the public, and specifically the spaces of the people least likely to be able to step over a tangle of bicycles.

Show threadLiam 2d ago
The more desirable and economically useful a space is the more likely there are to be real and probably irreconcilable tensions between parties that want to use it. That’s why there need to be planners about this kind of stuff, because otherwise the most bloody minded party always wins
Show threadGus

@liamvhogan Shanghai did a massive crack-down in around 2018 after it got ridiculous, kilometres of bikes blocking every subway entrance.

Bikes parked outside of designated share bike areas (painted yellow squares) got loaded en masse into trucks sent by the city and immediately scrapped, and IIRC they also fined the companies for each of them.

I don't know how it looks there now, but it felt like the appropriate level of bloody-mindedness.

Mar 25 at 11:58pmWeb