I was fed up with having to google each time I wanted to see an example of a piece of cycling infrastructure so I create a site with a collection of images and links to maps.
https://cyclingprojects.weebly.com/

http://www.victoriawalks.org.au/Assets/Files/The-Economic-Case-for-Investment-in-Walking-FINAL.pdf

​Happy maps (2014). Daniele Quercia - www.ted.com/talks/daniele_quercia_happy_maps
How to rethink commuting. Trading off efficiency for a happier commute.
 
The Shortest Path to Happiness: Recommending Beautiful, Quiet, and Happy Routes in the City​ (2014). Daniele Quercia, Rossano Schifanella, Luca Maria Aiello arxiv.org/abs/1407.1031
Crowd sourced maps based on beauty, quietness, happiness to develop route algorithm. 

Planning for Pedestrians: A Way Out of Traffic Congestion (2013). Tudor Morar, Luca Bertolini 
www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1877042813015504

The spatial relationship between pedestrian flows and street characteristics around multiple destinations (2015). Kazuki Nakamura 
www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0386111215000266

Watching the peak hour traffic from the balcony above the entrance to the City of Amsterdam from the City of Amsterdam council's building is fascinating. 
The ring road carries heavy vehicle traffic, but it is prevented from entering the centre of the city. Instead you can see the most people use other transportation networks, bicycles, trams, and walking, to get into and out of the centre. 
What amazes me is the flow and efficiency of each of the modes and how balanced they are. 

London train stations make it ridiculously to do multi modal travelling. These space on the train platform is probably bigger than all the bike parking space available in Sydney. Ride to the station. Lock up bike. Hop on train. Too easy. And if you don't have a bike and rock up to a train station just step outside and swipe for a bike (paid per hour) at one of the hundreds of bike share docks around the city. 

​My friend told me to give myself 2 hours to get from Manila airport to the hotel in Makati and to take a taxi it'll only cost about 400 pesos ($15AUD) also because there was no public transport.
I get a taxi and instantly the driver asks if I wanted to take the "Skyway" it's the new motorway, he said proudly, but it costs 20 pesos (LESS THAN A DOLLAR). "Sure as long as it's faster". Yes he reassured me. 
This motorway technically has 4 lanes marked and yet due to the volume of cars, drivers make their own lanes and still the lanes are packed 10 lanes deep for kilometres on end in both directions. 

In the absence of any really public transport (more on the Jeepney mini bus later), people have no choice but to use private vehicles. So you build motorways to "ease congestion" and what do you expect more people will drive outta their way to use it. Congestion doesn't ease with more lanes. 

Going to mega nerd it out this month with all things Janette Sadik-Khan

I just moved to a new area and begins the process of finding the best route to get anywhere. Good luck to any one new in Sydney let alone old time Sydney siders trying to figure out where the buses go. The Sydney Buses website lets you download a Pdf after you select the bus route number. 
They assume you magically know what the route number is

I want to be able to see what modes of transport are available in my area so I just start plotting away. 
​I used carto to quickly plot out some networks.

• Train rail - railmaps.com.au/sydney.htm
• Light rail - railmaps.com.au/sydney.htm
• Cycleways - rms.nsw.gov.au/roads/bicycles/cyclewayfinder/index.html
• Bus stops - sydneybuses.info/routes

Another beautiful weekend away with the girls. This time in a gorgeous rustic French country house in the Southern Highlands. Our jaws dropped when the host opened the doors to a toasty house with a fire burning, exposed ceiling beams, timber framed French country house. 

The intrigue of the French doors, fenetres and the locking mechanism. My google search skills fails me as I wasn't able to find instructions on how to build them. 

The deep frame designed so that the shutters can sit flush against the wall when closed, 

The ability of a window to frame the view. I hate the floor to ceiling windows you see everywhere in Australia. Most of the time the sun's too bright, or we're too exposed to even have the full view and so they're covered most of the time.
​ 

The small touches, jam in tiny jars, bike trail guides makes for a relaxing weekend away.

Every morning I get a coffee from a corner joint along Lee St Chippendale, next to Central Station. Lee Street is an artery road feeds onto George St, the main road through the City of Sydney. 
Every morning I see bike riders negotiate space on the road with other car drivers. Every morning I have one cringe moment when I wonder if I'm going to be a witness to an accident. My word of advice is always take the lane if you fear being squished against a kerb. Just like this chick chose to do this morning.