I'm sorry, but this time I can't use the "first time" meme. Even Berlusconi didn't reach the point of making an acrimonious, hateful and incoherent rant in front of the UN General Assembly.

🚦❓ How many traffic lights do you need to manage in-neighborhood traffic in this 1.3 sq km densely built and apparently gridded area of Södermalm, Stockholm?

I'n not impressed by surface transit priority in Copenhagen's inner neighbourhoods This is Amagerbrogade, the main bus axis in the South, and basically, the only priority measures are no left/right turn, no parking, and side streets deprioritization, i.e. generic through traffic priority measures.

You know, you shouldn't take Tylenol. Just take Tachipirina. Or Efferalgan.

The airport branch of Copenhagen metro follows an old railway alignment. To keep the metro alignments at grade, many road crossings have been closed and have been replaced with pedestrian/bike bridges or underpasses

A couple of years ago, the ARTM told us that any kind of above ground transsit grade-separated alignment is necessarily unsightly. Copenhagen didn't get the memo, I guess.

Anecdotal, but I've been in Copenhagen for 24 hours, and I've had my ticket checked 3 (three) times in the metro. I've taken a dozen trips, maybe, so that's 1 in 4 chances of being checked

Copenhagen folks, I struggle to understand what all these " motorized traffic prohibited" signs that are on most non-pedestrian streets of the hypercenter mean in terms of actual access restrictions. Is this some form of limited traffic area thing?

Interestingly, Copenhage metro stations' general layout between changed very little between the first (M1-M2, 2002) and second (M3-M4, 2019) generation. But they added a second street-to-platform elevator.

NYC: we need a ventilation building for air intake and smoke extraction, so it's at least 40 feet above street level. Actually, we need two for each station. NFPA 130: extraction/intake should be a couple of feet above street level, so one can't park above it. Copenhagen:

If an embassy area is walled out like the green area of Baghdad, you can be pretty sure that it's the US or the UK embassy and no one else.

Copenhagen might be a great bike city, but it's not really a great pedestrian city. So many of these unmarked mid-block crossings with traffic islands but no zebra, where pedestrians don't have priority. Way worse than the Swedish and Finnish approach. Even worse than Italy, I dare to say.

Sorry if I'm inflaming old infra-Nordics disputes, but I have to say that for what I've seen so far, the Danes might win in terms of bombastic architecture, but Swedish and even more Finnish new urban developments are far better in terms of quality of urban spaces and overall urbanism.

Up: the entry pavillion & vertical circulation of an open cut station for a diesel regional train station running at 12 minutes interval (Ottawa) Down: the entry pavillion (not) & vertical circulation for an open cut station in an outomated metro running at up to 3 minutes intervals (Copenhagen)

Well, this does qualify as a "closer to Hell than to the Sky" type of station Helsinki Airport.

The urbanism of Tampere

For some people, robotaxis feel like the symbol of the urban future. For me, it's the pneumatic garbage collection.

🚋🫂🏰 www.trambologna.it/2025/09/19/s...

I would like to import these enclosed balconies concept to Canada. The glass can be completely opened in summer. Make it for a nice sheltered extension of the house in shoulder seasons and even in winter.

Once again, as an Italian looking at US news. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Editto_...

I really like that Tampere didn't kick out buses from its main street when it introduced the tramway. It's quite a long transit-only street, and buses (so many!) stop at multiple bus bays to get out of the way of the trams.

Finnish folks, do I interpret it correctly that the numbers below the "no left turn" sign are the hours of vality on weekdays, (saturday), and sunday (red)?

Stone pavings of Helsinki I really would like to know the per sqm cost, the construction and maintenance budget, and who funds what and how because the quality of soil treatment in new developments is incredible. In Montréal, we can't even afford to use stone in our most iconic main street.

Slim boi

How it started -> How it's going. What used to be a signalized intersection has been tarned in a non intersection, eliminating all car maneuvers crossing the center-runnin tram right-of-way with a traffic island.

Looking at this narrow tram stop, I ask myself the forever question of design: "Is it ok to settle for something that improves over the previous conditions (on-street boarding) but does not meet the full standard for proper accessibility?"

The central station of a city that has less than half the inhabitants of Montréal (metro area) and 60% of the population of Québec. More trains get in & out of this station in 15 minutes than of Gare Centrale in an entire day. We have a long way to go, and we have not even started.

New pedestrian, bike, and tram bridges. Part of a new major chain of bridges, including a large cable-stayed one, that will link new developments popping up around Helsinki's Eastern Harbour to the city center via a more direct route

It's interesting that Helsinki, who conserved an extensive legacy tramway network, built its new orbital light rail without all the paraphernalia that you usually see in other systems, like barriers, fences or or flashing lights/signals at stop pedestrian crossings.

Aalto University main campus has a pedestrian, bikes, and transit-only core where the new orbital tranway line 15 meets the new-ish western extension of the metro

That's a good way to concisely describe the benefits of a quad-tracking project.

Love the texture of these finishes.

Swedish road signs design seems straight out of the 1950-60s Vienna Conventions graphic. They feel outdated when one is used to the Italian ones, which were completely redesigned and modernized in 1992.

I have now a camera roll absolutely full of side streets made dead end for véhiculer traffic. Probably quite a while ago based on the size of trees planted on the pocket parks. They are literally everywhere in Stockholm's inner neighbourhoods.

Here, where many routes using buses using the center-running lane of Odengatan split, buses can turn left, go straight moving to the lateral lane or turn right from the center lane during a dedicated (but not actuated, I guess) phase. Left turn is prohibited for cars. A bus turning right 👇

If North America wants to implement effective transit priority in its legacy gridded neighbourhoods, it needs to understand that many lateral streets will need to stop to be through streets

A fairly busy center-running bus lane split into two contraflow ones. The conflict is managed with a simple yield. Odenplan.

Mom, I want an INA Casa neighbourhood! We have INA Casa at home INA Casa at home: (Jokes aside, seeing it in person conveys very well how Swedish 1940s empiricism inspired INA casa architecture. Even though I dare to say that the Italians were more innovative, architecturally, and urbanistically)

These elevator retrofits would not comply with the design guidelines of many NA transit agencies. Left: The elevator is in the stairs' surge zone, and the elevators's landing area overlaps with the clear zone of the faregates. Right: the elevators open directly into the platform's edge.

Here, buses can turn right from the center-running dedicated lane during an actuated phase.

At the northern end of the Götgatan, the main access to Södermalm from the south, left turns into the Ringvägen are reserved to buses with a dedicated and actuated left turn phase. Cars can turn left via a right-right-right itinerary.

What about not only single-stair, but also narrow-stair?

Swedish urban street design is way less sophisticated than what you see in the Netherlands, but pedestrian refuge islands are literally everywhere. They are simple to build, way cheaper than a traffic light, and do not force to a full halt traffic, including buses.

Very interesting document in English organizing Stockholm's built form into typo-morphological units characteristic of different eras of urban development. vaxer.stockholm/siteassets/s...

Europeans only walk, bike and take transitthey didn't plough freeways through the very heart of their citi... Oh, never mind!

I’m hoping this will be the first of a number of reports I run by practitioners writing about a specific issue or set of issues they’ve encountered in their work related to building codes and other technical standards. If you’re interested in talking about writing something, please reach out!

What is it with the Nordics and their love for discharging rooftop drainpipes directly into the sidewalks?

Interesting data about the composition of the workforce of Bologna's tramway project from a press release on the occasion of a medal award ceremony. 81% of the workers are on civils, 8% on trackworks and systems, 11% is white collars. Nationality: 🇮🇹 38% 🇦🇱 11% 🇪🇬 9% 🇮🇳 7% 🇷🇴 7% 🇲🇦 6% 🇹🇳 5% 🌐 18%

Bologna-Milan HS line that prevalently runs along the A1 motorway has a 30-ish buffer with a service road plus earth mounds with gabions and/or cocrete walls for what I believe is some sort of protection from runaway vehicles.

You can't imagine how much this is also a cause of design bloat in underground metro stations in jurisdictions that require power backup beyond what can be reasonably reached with battery packs. And now, guess which jurisdictions tend to require longer power backup capacity...