April Fools’ Day traffic.

Although this is not one of my favourite days of the year I must admit that I found rather funny and amusing the following stories with urban traffic themes.

The first one comes from Philadelphia USA. Watch the Mayor announcing the E-lane initiative where pedestrians can walk and use their mobile at the same time safely.

The second one comes from Vancouver Canada where Vancouver Observer online newspaper announces the province's new mandatory pedestrian helmet law. This one if it was on Brisbane Times it would be more believable since Australia has already the mandatory cyclist law.
 

The first really interesting April fools’ day story about traffic and transportation that made world headlines was the Copenhagen’s new subway. It looked as if one of its cars had an accident, and had broken through and surfaced on the square in front of the town hall.

 

April Fools ’ Day presents a great opportunity to draw peoples attention to sustainable mobility and humour is quite an effective way to reach behavioural change.

Parking for disabled

At my work I try to do my best to help disabled people find a parking space that suits them in different parts of the city. Their problems are very well presented in this awarded short film from Greece :

My congratulations to the director Stamos Tsamis.

No parking odd sign.

While discussing parking restriction signs and regulations with my colleagues I realised that European parking signs are a lot different than those in Australia.

Take a look at some of the most common parking signs in Australia:

 

Here, parking signs are more like the USA signs:

In both countries you will find some differences between the different states (and territories).
But in Europe, parking signs are a lot different,. This is how the no parking and no standing sign look like.

Also there are some odd signs. Because of the mixed land uses in city centres and the narrow width road network there are the no parking on odd months and even months signs in Greece that look like this: