Mark McIntyre

@markjmcintyre.bsky.social

525 Followers 802 Following

Keen on active travel 🚲 music, cities, odds and ends of Glasgow history, transport. Powoli uczę się polskiego 🇵🇱 posting my own views

Google Street View image from 2017 looking onto Neuer Markt in central Vienna, one of the city's main historic civic squares. The square is filled with parked vehicles, with very little space for people to move or even sit. In the distance is a historic water fountain, inaccessible due to the parked vehicles. The square has since been transformed for the better (see next image).
View of a street in Vienna's Nordbahnhof district, a massive new housing district being built on the site of disused railway land, near the river. Many bikes can be seen parked in the foreground, while people walk on a wide pavement lined with planting and trees, and a tram passes along the street.
Photo of a section of Wien Museum's exhibibition exploring contemporary Vienna, looking at the role of transport and public space in people's lives. The room was filled with notes and videos sharing the stories of locals, of how public transport, walking, wheeling or cycling is an essential part of their lives.
Looking south along Argentinastrasse in central Vienna in December 2024, close to Karlskirche. The whole street is now a "cycle street", with red surfacing and bike decals denoting priority to bikes. Changes to the nearby road network have rerouted most vehicle traffic elsewhere, keeping it calm enough for cycle priority. Space has been reclaimed for wider pavements, bike parking and lots of new planting and street trees.
Coverage of upcoming repair of two essential footbridges crossing the M8 and M77 motorways in the Kinning Park area of Glasgow. These footbridges have been closed for two years. The story is framed entirely as "disruption to drivers", rather than the valuable repair of two rare pedestrian and cycle crossing points of the single widest stretch of urban motorway anywhere in Europe.
Google Streetview image of Marywood Square, one of 6 tightly packed terraced streets in the Strathbungo area in the southside of Glasgow. The image shows a street dominated by parked cars. Pedestrians can be seen walking on the road as there is so little space to pass freely on the pavements. Cars frequently come down each of these streets meaning you have to pause and get out of the way before continuing on.
A street in the Kartoffelrækkerne (Potato Row) neighbourhood near central Copenhagen. Car parking has been removed from the middle third of the street and replaced with trees.
Screengrab of an early stage city in the game Anno 117 on the Xbox Series S.
Screengrab showing a small Roman port city in Anno 117, captured on Xbox Series S.
People cycling home in Glasgow via a new protected cycle lane
The book River Kings, by Cat Jarman.
A big group of people cycling home in the evening sunshine, on the South City Way protected cycle route as it passes Gorbals Cross (where new housing is nearly complete).
People cycle home in the sun during evening rush hour in a very sunny Glasgow.
A post from Oldham Council's "I love Oldham" Facebook page, sharing photos and info of the council's newly elected Youth Mayor. The post received a barrage of racist comments, which the page responded to forcefully.
Photo of the junction of Grange Road and Battlefield Road in Glasgow. Soon it'll be the site of Connecting Battlefield phase 2 works, turning this into a plaza and adding a 1km cycle lane connecting Queens Park to Mount Florida via Battlefield Road.
Screengrab of discussion section of linked research paper, with text reading: "while our analysis shows an instantaneous improvement in network efficiency, an induced demand response over a longer time horizon and/or expanded treatment region could mitigate the travel time improvements of our intervention. An induced demand response would entail that additional drivers who had previously been deterred from using the targeted road segments by high travel times would switch to these segments upon learning that the travel times have lowered. While this is an important area for future work, our intervention behaves quite differently from the highly visible supply changes that are typically studied in the literature around induced demand for road networks."
A 1975 photo of Zuiderdiep, a main road on the southern edge of Groningen city centre, looking west from the junction with Oosterstraat. The picture shows a streetscape dominated by car traffic, with a very wide central roadway with 4-5 lanes for vehicles. This was taken two years before major changes brought in to reduce car access to the city centre in 1977. Source: Beeldbankgroningen.nl, press photo agency D. van der Veen.
Aerial image of Groningen's Grote Markt (main square) in 1977, before implementation of the city's 'Traffic Circulation Plan', which greatly limited car access to the city centre. The picture shows the main square as a large traffic gyratory, with three lanes for vehicle traffic surrounding a the city hall and a small public space in the centre. Source: Beeldbankgroningen.nl Municipality of Groningen Information office 1977
Qui-Gon Jinn gets to spend a whole level flaneuring around Mos Espa, buying odds and ends and chatting to the townsfolk as he searches for a T-14 hyperdrive generator, in Star Wars Episode 1 The Game for the PS1.
Screenshot of a newly started game in Cities:Skylines 1, on a custom workshop map of Passau in southeastern Germany.
Murky photo of two young foxes prowling around the back garden.
People come and go via the escalators leading down to a 1,250 space secure cycle parking facility, at Nieuwe Markt in the centre of Groningen. The facility was co-designed around the newly opened public square and the nearby newly opened civic building, the Groningen Forum.
A new fancy looking gate on National Cycle Network route 75 near Paisley. The whole route was looking very obviously upgraded and super smooth to ride on.
Looking east on Argyle Street in Glasgow city centre, roughly outside the Marriot Hotel, near the Kingston Bridge. The street has been significantly redesigned, with a reduced roadway, new pavements, new trees and planting, benches, and a new protected cycle lane.
Papengang lane in Groningen, leading down towards Peperstraat where most of the student nightlife is. Blues/reggae Cafe De Zolder ("Attic Cafe") is in shot, one of the best bars in the city.
Google Mal view of Oxford and the surrounding countryside, showing the rural village of Stanton St John a few miles to the east of the city.
A sun soaked Spilsluizen canal in Groningen. People lounge in the sun on a newly renovated canal bank, with tiered decking, new cobbled paving and trees. A canal boat is parked in the background and my thumb leers ominously into shot from the left.
Google Streetview image of Tursingel, on the northeast corner of Groningen's city centre perimeter canal. Taken in 2015, it shows a road, a petrol station, and not much more.
Looking down a quiet car free street on the edge of Groningen city centre, lined with terrace houses of different shapes and ages. Ivy crawls up a wall to the left, while the street edge is lined with flowers, planters and parked bikes. A bench sits next to someone's front door.
A very contented tabby cat, Ivy, lounging on the armchair as the sun sets through the window.
Photo taken across the street from the entrance to York rail station, showing newly laid paving, protected cycle lane and lots of planting and trees. York city walls are in the background. This used to be quite a wide road to cross, heavy with car traffic. Once this is all done, it'll make for a nicer connection between the city centre and the station.
People walk and sit at St Helen's Square in the middle of York city centre. The entire city centre is a relatively low traffic area, with modal filters and barriers preventing through traffic, much like many cities in continental Europe. The result is a really pleasant place to walk, wheel or cycle, or simply to sit and spend time (and money).
Groningen Vismarkt on a busy Saturday afternoon. Hundreds of people walk past the market stalls, with the Martinikerk tower in the background. A few decades ago this square was used as a car park on non-market days. Today, private vehicles are prevented from accessing the inner centre of Groningen nearly entirely, by a combination of timed modal filters and diversions at the city centre perimeter. Deliveries are possible by can at specific times. You can broadly access some streets by car or taxi, but through-traffic is impossible, except by bus, walking/wheeling or cycling. It makes for a totally people-focused space across the city centre, benefitting local businesses, residents and visitors.
Front of Groningen railway station in the Netherlands. Loads of bikes are in the foreground, spilling out of the massive underground bike parking area, with space for around 5,000 bikes (soon to be upgraded to house ~15,000 bikes). The station front is relatively ornate brickworks with stone columns and arched porticoes, with a tall Dutch gable. A man wheels his bike out of the cycle parking area.
Looking north across Groningen's Grote Markt, filled with loads of new trees, new paving, outdoor seating and people walking and cycling.
View of the northern edge of Groningen's Grote Market (main market square) in glorious sunshine. The Martini Tower rises above brand new buildings on the north side of the square, as people cycle past in the foreground. The squares new trees can be seen on the left.
A busy Vismarkt in Groningen
Groningen Grote Markt
Map from the Fietsersbond, the Dutch cyclists' union and cycling advocacy group, showing Doorfiets routes in the Netherlands. Lines in green radiate out from major towns and cities, showing complete routes. Yellow lines are being constructed, and grey lines planned for the future. Ultimately, this will be a complete rural, interregional cycling network, connecting small villages and towns together, and to the wider transport network via rail stations.
Photo taken from a moving train in Flanders, near the Belgium-Netherlands border, showing a person cycling on a top quality bidirectional cycle path that runs alongside the railway line, connecting villages and towns to one another along the entire route.
View from the high speed through-tunnel, deep underneath Antwerp Centraal Station, looking up towards the 19th century station building three levels above.
A 360 degree video showing the incredibly ornate and impressive interior of Antwerp Centraal railway station entrance hall.
Exterior view of the extremely ornately designed Antwerp Centraal railway station.
Google Street View image of the A92 in Arbroath in 2017, showing a wide dual carriageway with many lanes for vehicle traffic, running through the centre of the coastal town. This location now has a much reduced roadway, with space given over to wider pavements, planting and protected cycleway. See images in linked post.
Frietjes en joppie saus
Someone cycles past Gravensteen castle as the sun sets in Ghent.
A very drizzly De Haan, on the Belgian coast.
A woman cycles on a cobbled street in Ghent, Belgium.
Sam, a grey tabby cat, sitting at a stool in a canal-side bar in Ghent.
A quick pan around the back entrance to Ghent train station in Belgium: hundreds of parked bikes, from one side of the street to the other. A cheery local guy plays harmonica in the background.
Holding up my dog-eared, decade old Dutch phrasebook, outside St Pancras Station in London.
Pedal on Parliament participants smile at the camera on Edinburgh's Royal Mile. Photo credit: Isers Malone and Pedal on Parliament, via the event's press photo gallery https://www.flickr.com/groups/14939768@N23/pool/with/55303159309
View of a street in Vienna's Nordbahnhof district, a massive new housing district being built on the site of disused railway land, near the river. Many bikes can be seen parked in the foreground, while people walk on a wide pavement lined with planting and trees, and a tram passes along the street.
Close up of the front of a Hofner Galaxie electric guitar, with red body and black scratch plate. The image shows the three humbuckers with switches and dials to control them.
A red Hofner Galaxie 175 or 176 electric guitar, newly refurbished by Southside Music in Govanhill, Glasgow. A weird looking guitar, I think maybe from the 1960s, it has a Stratocaster type body, three humbucker pickups, an almost Jazzmaster tremolo system, and around seven switches and rollers to control the pickups, a bit like a Mustang. The fretboard has light and dark pearl inlays all the way up the neck.
Concept map of Glasgow city centre produced by the Replace The M8 campaign, showing a reimagined motorway corridor, incorporating a boulevard type road and reclaimed space lined with new developments, helping to stitch both sides of the motorway back together.
Google Maps overhead view of Argyle Street, close to the M8 at the Marriot Hotel, with satellite imagery captured a year ago or longer. It shows a very wide street, designed as an extension of the motorway system as it connects to the city centre street grid. Wide lanes, limited crossing points, hard surfacing.