Koji
@kojisposts
Lib, laugh, love - the sequel Progress, positivity, point plotting, piano performance, political parties, panel programmes, particular Pennsylvanian pop princess, public ptransit
To combine the stone-pavement-makes-things-better thread and the too-many-new-neighbourhoods-are-colourless thread: putting bright red stone pavement in these areas would really restore a bit of visual balance, I think
Just purely from looking at the map, it does look like large chunks of Bourgogne and Champagne (basically the whole Seine/Marne basin) point to Paris more than Strasbourg/Dijon. But I guess this would go against the spirit of regional decentralization
Very clear regions for Toulouse, Bordeaux, Aix-Marseille, Lyon, Lille, Strasbourg + two regions with obvious identities in Bretagne and Normandie. Having 2 Loire regions is awkward; Bourgogne-Franche-Comté has no metro but is apparently a coherent linguistic unit at least?
On the topic of redrawing regional maps, I am a lot less miffed about the new larger French regions than before - they're hobbled by ludicrous names but the thought process is clear. France has few secondary population centres; the new regions were drawn to represent their catchment areas
@hankgreen.bsky.social 's and my notions of difficulty are so close yet so far away.
Three polls in the last month put the Nova Scotia NDP at first, second, or third, all by sizeable margins
The thing about this Taylor Swift lyric is that it's not correct English grammar but it is correct German grammar
Oh thank god, a bit of colour-coding to impose some order on the spaghetti. Will start off from this and do some further sorting I think content.tfl.gov.uk/strategic-ca...
Wanted to know how certain components of the Paris rail network fit together so I just cooked this up. Where are tramways deployed relative to heavy rail (and which of those were tram-trains), and what gaps in the network the Grand Paris Express are meant to fill
(Population wise, Toronto+Hamilton+Oshawa comes here) 10. Atlanta. A proper 2-trunk Great Society metro, but with 2 stations built in my lifetime; recent expansion has focused on LRT/BRT (not appearing to bear fruit yet). Again, ROW map for reference
9. Philadelphia. I've tried wrapping my head around this system so many times and I still have no intuition for it. There are 3 rapid transit lines and 1 is an extension of another (+ also there's Mirror Image PATH)? There's a regional rail tunnel but a bunch of lines feed into the wrong end of it?
8. Houston. The LRT as a whole dates from 2004; they have two downtown trunks (street-running) and they're expanding. I wish them the best (Another ROW map for reference)
7. Bawston. I get that the North-South link has been discoursed to death across decades, but man, the regional rail has so much potential relative to the relatively sparse metro
6. Dallas. Somehow I had it in my head that this was a Great Society metro that nobody took, but it's actually a more recent LRT; a new circumferential line opened just last year. The 4 services run through a downtown transit mall (which is suboptimal) (Also a map of all ROWs for reference)
5. Bay Area. Caltrain electrification was good. BART to San Jose is apparently a quagmire. I gather San Jose has increasing weight within the region but VTA doesn't appear to have much ridership
4. Chicago. Most Metra appear to be all-day two-way already, StarLine is a plan to achieve through-running. I get the Loop is iconic but I don't know if 5 lines sharing tracks with level crossings is optimal
3. Washington-Baltimore. Love the Metro but there's still a lot of area left to cover. IAD extension was great for coverage, though there's a tendency to spam new services serving the same 3 downtown tunnels. Commuter rail is bad, sparse, & thru-running is hard www.youtube.com/watch?v=636r...
2. Los Angeles. LA Metro's continuing buildout is impressive but they have a *lot* of catching up left. Metrolink has good coverage but just offers peak-hour service
1. New York. Honestly quite good coverage (with glaring exceptions). Commuter networks are all-day. Through-running at Penn + a GCT connection are the ideal next steps for connectivity www.etany.org/modernizing-...
For the most part, in Western Europe elections are fought between unitary parties, while CEE has "lists" so various microparties can glom onto a major party (or each other) Exceptions: France + Italy have "list"-based elections, lists are uncommon in Czechia and Slovakia
Koji reads about the Japanese economy, a thread. I have indeed wondered many times why the Abe full-employment economy didn't lead to wage growth. Low rates of job switching would explain it (and good to see how much higher it got so quickly) richardkatz.substack.com/p/why-hasnt-...
It does look like Paris-Berlin is getting an hour faster. But overall, a conspicuous Germany-shaped hole in the middle of Western Europe transport.ec.europa.eu/news-events/...
Fwiw I think slab buildings > pencil towers any day. Too many of identical ones in a row isn't great, sure, but that's true of all housing types
Huge fan of this building on Dundas btw. Funky but also unassuming in a way. Small local storefronts
I do feel like the UI for button-automated doors (especially bathroom doors) has gotten really out of hand. Multiple buttons scattered about, text instead of symbols I've also included the UI for the washrooms in the new VIA trainset, which I thought is a better alternative
Going building-by-building. I find that for the building on the left, there's no way for that shade of white (of the balconies) to look anything but plasticky. Love the building on the right. Black isn't a classic "natural" material, but this is matte (vs shiny) and an accent colour used sparingly
In terms of high-rise rather than mid-rise, I do like the aesthetics of the Entertainment District. - ground-floor retail by default - short blocks mean cars can't speed - even if the high-rises themselves have meh architecture, there are enough beautiful buildings to draw the eye