Christopher Addison

A British guy in Montréal living life. A casual advocate for better and safer cities. Mass transit fan. Software engineer by day. He/him.

[QueensLink @thequeenslink]

We. Love. Maps. They’re hands down one of the best ways to visualize just how transformational QueensLink truly is.

These stunning isochrone maps answer the question: just how far can you get in one hour on existing subways (NO BUILD) vs. with QueensLink (BUILD)?

[Hayden @the_transit_guy]

This is not legal to build in the USA. It should be!

[Christopher Addison @CrispyAddison]

@syneryder @birch_js The MacOS 12 limitation is set by Electron/Chromium. As of Electron 38 the minimum version is 12

[YIMBYLAND @YIMBYLAND]

> Boomers grow up as the most prosperous generation
> Consume all available housing
> Pass laws to ensure no more housing gets built
> Families cant afford limited supply of housing
> Families move out of city
> No city kids
> Schools shutter
> Boomers consume schools

Bleak.

[Rodney @_ChanFace]

510 Spadina Streetcar crawling through King St intersection.

Double Point switches were needed decades ago to allow faster speeds thru intersections, but the next best time is now, especially when we’re already rehabilitating intersections and sections of tracks.

[Hank Green @hankgreen]

The amazing thing about a politician asking people nicely to put their thermostat up to 78 is that if 30% of New Yorkers are pro-social enough to do it, everybody avoids the negative outcome.

Manage scarcity. Build abundance.

[Hank Green @hankgreen]

For context on the air conditioning debate between the US and Europe...one must consult the ancient texts:

1. Anything that is in the world when you're born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works.

2. Anything that's invented between when you're 15 and 35 is new and exciting and revolutionary, and you can probably get a career in it.

3. Anything invented after you're 35 is against the natural order of things.

-- Douglas Adams

[Jason, @jasonc_nc]

The Paris Fire Brigade (serving a metro of 10M people) has an average fire response of 12 minutes. 7 for EMS.

Houston as a US example uses “90th-percentile*” times, at 13 minutes for fire and 15 for EMS.

Smaller apparatus & alternative vehicles improves medical response times without sacrificing firefighting capability.

Meanwhile if a typical U.S. city reduced road deaths by just 10% they would save more lives than all fire deaths. Road diets, traffic calming and related show reductions in crashes of ~20-40% and in fatalities and serious injuries of ~30-40%.

There has been zero improvement in deaths per fire for ~5 decades, because response after the fact has little impact on outcomes. But we could save 3-4x that number by simply making safer streets that also work better for everyone on them.

[mary @theoceanblooms]

unfortunately

[Jason, @jasonc_nc]

The default size of a fire truck the U.S. is entirely based on the personal preferences of firefighters & their love of big trucks.

The rest of the world designed the trucks to meet the city. In the U.S. we designed our cities to meet the expanding trucks.

In return we got the following:
-no superior outcomes in fire deaths
-more road injuries and deaths
-less space for people and housing
-more expense
-less enjoyable cities

[High Speed Rail Alliance @HSRail]

Don’t let American railroaders tell you that stack trains can’t run under wire, We can electrify our railroads

[Josh Matlow @JoshMatlow]

I strongly disagree with the TTC’s decision to install barrier fences on subway platforms. I’m convinced it’s a waste of money, and won’t effectively prevent tragedies, trespassing onto the tracks or reduce subway delays. I support working toward installing real platform edge doors. https://t.co/EaNwI4RmNm

[M. Nolan Gray 🥑 @mnolangray]

More recently, in the first half of the twentieth century, as much as 20% of the urban population of big US cities lived in units—from cheap SROs to luxury hotels—without kitchens. They ate nearly all of their meals at cheap ¢5 lunch counters and cafeterias, including automats.

[More Transit Southern Ontario @moretransitso]

This is a perfect example of one of the reasons we have absurd transit costs. We can only compare ourselves to other Canadian and American agencies such as the MTA, who consistently have some of the worlds highest construction cost. Platform doors in Europe are 10x cheaper.

[Gebo @GeboMpls]

“As soon as we fix the problem we created, we can focus on fixing the other problems that we also created.”

[Edward Row 𓃡 @edwardrow]

who could have predicted this

[The Notorious S.E.B. @bigseb31213]

As long as you are sober it is completely legal to hit people with your car in America. This is because every single politician in the country can envision themselves or their loved ones accidentally running over a toddler when distracted and wants leniency when it happens

[Jason YYC @Jason___YYC]

Is there a fucking road in front of your house?

Does your house have plumbing that leaves your property?

Do you want the fire department to show up if it’s on fire?

These fucking idiots man

[Happy Captain @EODHappyCaptain]

Counterpoint: it shouldn’t take a major event to get a city clean.

[NASA @NASA]

It's our home.

This Earth Day, see our planet as our Artemis II astronauts saw it with these new images from the mission.