Down & Outbound: The Hub

European Transportation Observations – Part 1

After spending four weeks in Europe using public transportation to get around Venice and several nearby cities, Prague, Berlin and Ljubljana (Slovenia) I pulled together some random thoughts about those experiences that are anecdotal in nature. I begin with Italy and Prague in Part 1 and then move to Berlin and Ljubljana in Part 2.

Venice

When flying into Venice, no matter how tired your are, you immediately awaken to the fact that this is a public transportation network like no other. To get from Marco Polo Airport to the city you must take a water bus and dock at one of many “boat stops” on the way.

There are no cars or trucks in Venice and one must rely entirely on boats and your own two feet. Since hundreds of canal bridges populate the city, there are very few bicycles and e-scooters to contend with on the streets and sidewalks.

What struck me was that every function you expect from a car or a truck was provided via boat whether is was an ambulance boat, a fire fighting boat or a boat hauling  goods or garbage. Why these boats didn’t collide was a mystery to me, and it reminded me of all those cyclists in Amsterdam I witnessed a few years ago crisscrossing each other without incident. (And yes, I did do a gondola ride but only for about five minutes just to cross the Grand Canal.)

 

Treviso, Italy

Treviso, Italy is part of the Veneta and is only 30 miles north of Venice. It serves as a regional rail hub to cities such as Verona, Padua, and Conegliano. Regional trains ran regularly thoughout the day and evening so it is fairly easy make day trips – vineyard tours outside of Conegliano, the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua, and the Colosseum in Verona (shown left to right in the above collage).  The train stops at smaller cities on the way, and one must be vigilant because these stations are not always announced. An added benefit is that on the back of your ticket there was a graphic reminding me how train travel was the best mode of transportation for the environment when compared to automobiles and planes.

Treviso is pedestrian-friendly in the center city because access by automobile is limited. Also, it is a fairly flat city with narrow streets and cyclists – sans bike lanes – effortlessly dart in and out among pedestrians (but not recklessly). Based merely on my observations, there were other unwritten rules among the cyclists encapsulated by the snapshot of this older woman who unknowingly embodied the following guidelines:

No Helmets – only children with their parents wore helmets.

No Spandex – cyclists wore their regular daily clothes. Just because many Italians like to dress fashionably did not prevent them from riding bicycles.

No Shame in Walking Your Bicycle – Older riders were not hesitant to dismount and walk his or her bicycle up a hill or in a congested area.

No Age Limit – It was not unusual to see riders in their sixties and seventies riding slowly but effortlessly in the center city.

No Fancy Bikes – These bikes were more functional in nature with front baskets and back baskets and fenders to prevent muddy splashes on those nice clothes.

There is a city bus system in Treviso, but since my traveling partner and trip planner extraordinaire Denise Casey  stayed in the center city,  we didn’t need to use it. You can walk anywhere in center city in 20 or 30 minutes including the Treviso train station. This short video gives one some sense of the vibe.

 

Prague, Czech Republic

Prague relies on its electric trams and a major subway with three main lines. Our tour guide remarked that the only thing Soviets did right was build a subway system that commuters could get from the outskirts to the main centers of the city in a few minutes. (It is fifth busiest subway system in Europe in terms of ridership with trains running every two to three minutes at rush hour.) Since we were staying in the nearby Mala Strada, we quickly mastered the tram system, which we used regularly to take us back and forth to the more touristy Old Town and sites such as the Astronomical Clock. I regret not checking out some of the stations in the tunnels, but it was never necessary because the trams were enough for us to get around.

Like the drivers in my hometown of Atlanta-- even though traffic is slowed and not has heavy --  as a pedestrian you had to make eye contact with the motorists even if you were in a crosswalk. I almost got paved into a cobblestone street near the Prague Castle.

There was some cycling and the e-scooters in Prague as well, but I am not sure those e-pests will be widely accepted. I saw a few people riding e-scooters on cobblestone streets and their heads were bobbling so much I thought I saw a few teeth fly out.

At the end of our stay, we took the tram directly to at the Prague train station where we boarded a train for a four-hour  trip to Berlin.

 

MARTA Whiteboarding

Recently at the southbound platform at Atlanta's Midtown Station, MARTA put up a large white board with magnetic letters encouraging commuters to “spell an affectionate word, food for thought, or a poetic sentence for your fellow passengers.”  These kind of initiatives (this one is called #railtalkATL) never hit me right. Instead of giving me warm and fuzzy feelings about public transportation worth sharing, my initial reaction was: “Don’t these people who think this stuff up have better things to do like keeping the trains running consistently?”

Apparently, judging from the affectionate words and thoughts shown here, my fellow commuters felt much the same.

I was thinking of rearranging the letters to:

If u cn rd

ths u prbbly

cnnt spll

This joke comes from the cover of a collection of cartoons called MacDoodle Street (1980) by Mark Alan Stamaty (note the circled text). But before I could act, the white board was removed. See? Atlanta is coming together as a city.

 

 

Scooter Humor

I have become obsessed* about scooters but in an unhealthy way -- like riding 15 mph on a motorized scooter without a helmet on a sidewalk strewn with wet leaves. I really dislike them.  I've even written a joke about it:  "The only thing that keeps me from clipping the brake cable on every parked scooter I pass, is doing prison time for manslaughter."

Here's the one major irony of scooters. They often are parked on narrow sidewalks blocking the path of pedestrians and can become a nasty obstacle to those on motorized wheelchairs. The irony is that the ramps on curbs that allow motorized wheelchairs to cross the street are the same ramps that allow scooters to use sidewalks. Funny, but nobody's laughing.

 

*check out the DownandOutbound Facebook page for more scooter vitriol. 

Is This Abandoned Bicyle Street Art?

This seat-less bike has been chained to a Midtown Atlanta street sign for a couple of weeks. Long enough to wonder if someone is making some kind of "artistic" statement.

Anti-Scooter

When I have to share the already narrow, crumbling sidewalks of Midtown Atlanta with speeding, silent scooters, ridden by well balanced, carefree,  young people, I will I admit I have evil thoughts about vandalizing the offending vehicles. And I am not only one, as reported in the August 18, 2018 edition of The Chicago Tribune.  

"You could say the scooters have created a buzz — not necessarily the good kind — in select cities. In Cleveland, city officials ordered Bird, another dock less scooter-sharing company, to remove its equipment, citing safety concerns and a lack of city permits that would allow the scooters to be parked on the sidewalk, The Cleveland Plain Dealer newspaper reported.

But in cities like Los Angeles, scooters have been set on fire, tossed off balconies and even dumped into the ocean — a backlash that is a melange of anger over so many tech companies popping up in Southern California and anger that they’re clogging up public spaces, according to news reports . That has resulted in cities in California limiting or outright banning the scooter-sharing services, the Los Angeles Times reported."

"Help me, I've fallen," said the scooter, but I stood by and did nothing.

Crosswalks: Good, Bad and Ugly

Street wise pedestrians know that decorative, "fun" crosswalks are badly outnumbered by faded crosswalks, crosswalks covered with utility petroglyphs, and crosswalks that have turned into potholes.