2023 was, again, a year of extremes. We don’t want to be too political and already stated that nature only knows weather divides but no borders and, therefore, we are against military conflicts and their casualties. So, let’s focus on some of the absurdities we have found in the ordinary world.
These road signs clearly indicate to shift from road to rail. Do you think this is a one-way road in the wrong direction? Just follow it in an orthogonal way. (Braunschweig, image by Andreas Richter)A different possibility is to visualize the carbon footprint of the different transport modes. Whereas the road stays black as unhealthy coal, walking and parking have a clean slate. Who ever tries to greenwash their darkness will be exposed. (Seogwipo, image by Marius Dupuis)Another way to make everybody think about modal split is to make transparent how much space every mode gets. Here pedestrians are marginalized. (Kanazawa, image by Andreas Richter)
Reduce traffic
If people don’t want to change their behavior, infrastructural change can help to make people start to focus on their current movement situation:
Two out of three isn’t quite bad if you’re betting on something. But would you bet on an autonomous vehicle recognizing which lane is closed? Especially, if the pattern changes just a few meters downstream? And how do you solve the contradiction between “No stopping at any time” and a potentially red traffic light? (Greenwich, image by Marius Dupuis)If the people continue to ignore the subversive hints we can be also more pragmatic to tell that it’s time to think about not driving there. Or is this just a SUV advertisement? (Notojima Futaanamachi, image by Andreas Richter)When he road gets slippery, the really interesting traffic modes may still be explicitly excluded. Not quite sure whether this has an impact on the carbon footprint of transportation sector, especially in summer times. (Osterhofen, image by Marius Dupuis)And again sometimes nature is brassed off and starts to apply transversal speed reduction road markings – nobody in Europe will get this. (Suzu, image by Andreas Richter)If you still don’t get it, nature will get violent. Interesting enough, the vehicle’s reaction changes slightly depending on whether its a handful or a mouthful of rocks. (Minamicho Hakusan (left), Shirakawa (right), images by Andreas Richter)
Conclusion
Do you agree that we should make our hints and suggestions more unambiguous or do you think that we caused a shit storm by over-interpreting things? Have a happy new year!
Beware of human-made shit storms. (Beijing Capital International Airport, image by Marius Dupuis)
