Organisers of today’s pro-Palestine protest in Sydney have successfully addressed Premier Minns’ ‘concerns’ about the impact it would have on traffic, by seemingly getting the whole city off the roads and marching along side them.

“Turns out roughly a hundred thousand people wanted to cross the bridge at the time of the march,” said one organiser, “which would have been the worst traffic Sydney has ever seen, but luckily they were all protesters walking around so it was fine.”

The peaceful protest, which Minns wanted to have police break-up by force, has potentially broken records both in terms of protest size, and lack of car accidents in Sydney on a rainy day.

[...]

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/33591374

Vietnam has build working towards some serious transit upgrades lately. The HSR line between the major cities, and starting to ban gas powered vehicles on a very accelerated time scale both show a nation wanting to modernize and build needed resources for their people.

France and Vietnam relations have come a long way since the 1960's... building relationships and resources is good work.

Huge fire trucks are a real problem for cities. Requiring roads to be huge so emergency vehicles can move through them is locking streets into being big for unnecessary reasons.

I lived in a tiny town for a few years. They wanted to build a road out to some spread out houses, but couldn't afford it. The reason? The fire department bought a new huge truck and demanded the road be wide enough for them to turn the truck around anywhere they liked.

The result was part of the city being cut off for decades as the city council fought the firefighters. All because anyone of 1800 people bought a hook and ladder truck capable of handling skyscraper fires. The tallest building in town is three stories and it still burned down, even with the oversized truck on hand.

For context, Water Street in Vancouver looks like it was taken straight out of Paris or Amsterdam. It's one of the oldest parts of the city and one of the few streets that were developed before cars. It should be an absolute no brainier to make it car free permanently, but carbrained North American city council gonna carbrain. This is less than the bare minimum and is absolutely not praiseworthy.

More importantly, they're proposing it to be car free on the day with the least transit service and what little there is randomly gets delayed or cancelled without notice. Great idea!

Seriously, as someone who exclusively uses transit in Vancouver, the weekend service is infuriating and basically unusable if you're under any sort of time pressure. You show up at a bus station, transit app says the next one is in 30 minutes when it would be 5-10 minutes on weekdays. So you resign yourself to a 30 minute wait only for the bus to not show up with zero announcements, even though they're pretty good at notifying you of these things on weekdays. So now you have to wait for the next one in an hour, which might not show up either, and when it does, it's packed to the brim because it's carrying three buses worth of passengers and the driver puts on the "sorry bus full" sign and refuses to let you on even when several people get off at the same stop. It's genuinely like they want you to drive on the weekend.

Calling it now: when car free Sundays inevitably flop because no one wants to bother with the shitty weekend transit, city council will go "see? car free streets never work!" And it will be used to shoot down every subsequent car free initiative. Wonder if that was their plan in the first place.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.bestiver.se/post/443781

Comments

Not the first time this has happened either, here's another similar case in Atlanta: https://abcnews.go.com/US/mother-boy-killed-hit-run-driver-probation-community/story?id=14158040

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/5034764

from the latest NotJustBikes video: https://youtu.be/wqGxqxePihE

https://pacersbikeshare.org/ (Indianapolis, Indiana)

Muscle Bike $2 + $0.20/min Electric Bike $5 + $0.25/min

That's $14 for an hour long ride and $26 or even $40 for a long ride and a short ride.

https://www.carmel.in.gov/our-city/experience/attractions/bike-carmel/bike-share-program

Similarly located, more walkable urbanism focused but less urban Carmel, Indiana has a more reasonable rate:

Muscle Bike $1.50 per half hour to rent with a cap of $24 for up to a 24-hour period.

Can anyone explain to me why this difference is so large? Over the years I've come across some expensive bike shares and some very affordable ones. The only other thing worth noting is that residents of Marion County, which Indianapolis is in, can ride a certain amount free and at a discount after that. I thought bike shares were perfect for visitors or travelers who may not have a car at their destination.

Would you consider the Pacers Bike Share in Indianapolis Expensive?

For this price, if I was in Indy for a week, I'd buy a Craigslist bike and donate it to some random kid when I left. $40 of gas would take me across the state.

Fewer cars. Faster travel. Less honking....

https://archive.is/NRCcg

cross-posted from: https://fedia.io/m/micromobility@lemmy.world/t/2141355

Greater Manchester Police insists "thorough investigation" conducted, but cyclist left questioning lack of prosecution for motorist who cut corner at junction, knocking her off bike, before leaving victim injured in the road