Marco Chitti

It's the same in Italian

Gli Stati Uniti sono
La Francia è

For example.

Oh, definitely. Or Azeri engineers who studied in Moskow. It's just amazing how strong and long-lasting the initial imprint of Moskow technical solutions has been across the block. For example, within Italy, there is much less technical uniformity in terms of design.

"No dear Moscow, we didn't really copied your homework when we designed our metro. Not at all"

Well, that's already much better than the rush hour-only ones we have in Montréal!

Pretty well respected too.

Well, most of these systems emerged in Europe in the 1970s, well before the GPS was a thing. It resulted in a much more widespread use of directional road signs compared to North America or Australia.

I think that cost deflation, in terms of unit costs, is hard to achieve unless there is a steady drop in demand and a sudden surge in competition, which is unlikely. Pressure on some input costs is still upward right now.

My brain is melting but this thing is starting to look like something finally...

But even then, Europe is heavy on adaptive city or area-wide management of signals based on real-time traffic levels (see UTOPIA), but even within this framework the Dutch have been able to add very effective actuated transit priority. But that's because of a very diff traffic management philosophy.

The problem is that North America does very little absolute priority, which often requires heavy circulation and intersection redesign that is necessary to implement effective TSP. So, most of the literature is about optimization for specific traffic patterns and very tech-focused.

There is a ton of literature about TSP, but unfortunately, it is very engineering-y, focused on the technicalities and various forms of micro-optimization rather than the overall concepts and macro-families of TSP. If I'll haver find a good resource, I'll share.

They are going with batteries in the city center. With today's technology, it's a better solution than Bordeaux's APS

🚋🚋

(Pics from Comune di Bologna)

Maybe it is, but we are so used to it that we do not really realize that it's an oddity.

Bologna built its second wall enclosure (yellow) in the second half of the 12th century, but already less than 100 years later the decision was taken to build a 3rd wall (violet), which would more than triple the surface of the enclosed area, which was already full of out-of-wall "borghi"

I think in Italy, at least, there is a more common far greater understanding now that the "Duecento," as the 13th century is known in historical circles, is the peak thriving century: urban boom, free Comuni, an early end of feudalism and servitude, booming trade and manufacturing.

Almost unrelated comment, but it's interesting how successful Renaissance has been at "public relations", especially for non-italians, while the actual urban and economic renaissance of Italy (and most of Europe) really happened two centuries earlier, in the 13th century rather than the 15th.

It's an interesting question. Milan's passante was initially encisioned to be used for longer regional trains (so-called "interpolo"), too. Zürich has built first a suburban and then a mixed S/RE/IC through running tunnel. Madrid and Barcelona did the same (sort of).

The difference in the time it takes a streetcar in Amsterdam vs. Toronto to clear an intersection after servicing a nearside stop.

Read TSP.

Look inside.

"Extended Green 10 seconds max or truncated red 5 seconds max"

Seriously, this is better than nothing, but the rigidity of signal phases in suburban contexts plus limited headways (3 buses/hour) makes it very difficult to "monetize" the modest time savings for operations.

Housing - Reading list

Nothing of this would have been possible without the people I have been reading online for more than a decade (I keep a list of references you can look at: docs.google.com/spreadsheets...).

This is mostly a reframing about 15 years of housing discourse in a convincing and coherent way. I hope.

When I was hired at @vivreenville.bsky.social in 2020, I had about a decade of exposition to anglosphere discourse on housing and found that in Québec professional circles, almost no one else did. We had failed to learn from the failures of English Canada and the US, and it was already too late.

Opening Doors | Publications | Carrefour Vivre en Ville Consultez notre publication « Opening Doors ». Carrefour Vivre en Ville

I wish there was a way to convey how much of a big deal this is to me, I wish you could feel it.

Our work on housing policy, condensed in a single report, has finally been translated to English. You can download it here:

carrefour.vivreenville.org/publication/...

(Click "Télécharger le PDF")

I'm old enough to remember it. There were also some shops inside, but it was a bit gloomy, with its linoleum paving and low ceilings...

yes. there is no service to Catania right now.

Yeah, they changed the project quite a lot. The mist updated version can be found probably in the VIA documents under "modello d'esercizio"

I don't think this went through the Public Debate process because it's an old project

Yes! Can you imagine?
Actually, parking on the "pad" at the center of Piazza Maggiore (il Crescentone) was banned a bit earlier, like in the first half of the 1960s IIRC.

None of these changes was "inevitable" or "natural." They were all the results of deliberate policy actions (or inaction, which is a policy choice too).

Fast forward to today: the pedestrian underpass has been closed in the early 2000s (IIRC), the street has been reserved for transit, taxis, bikes, etc. since the late 1980s, and it has been pedestrian-only on weekends since 2011. The sidewalks have been greatly extended in 2013-15.

1971 or 72: car traffic is still rampant, but something has already changed: the left turn visible in the 1960s has disappeared because the square and street it provided access to (located outside of the picture on the right) were pedestrianized in 1969.