lexande

Today I'm on an ICE stopping at Berlin Zoo for some reason.

The direct Paris-Berlin ICEs actually go via Strasbourg though, but I wasn't able to book that because the BahnBonus website was broken most of yesterday.

It did! Forbach is the last French stop on the line to Saarbrucken.

I'm sure it was slower as a route from E&C to Kings Cross but thru service would have been valuable anyway. And of course they could and should have electrified it.

Hard to believe it was so much slower that it was faster for thru passengers to transfer with a long escalator ride at Kings Cross, London Bridge, or E&C.

Tokyo and Berlin also have concentric rings, even if they aren't quite operated that way.

Held for an hour in Forbach for no apparent reason (I assumed border checks but didn't see any actual check).

Because it's mostly in the wrong place to connect with existing Metro stations, and good connections to radials are absolutely crucial for a circumferential line.

Huh I thought it always had some passenger service just rather infrequent. What dates was it freight only?

Some of it is reasonably nice linear park and I think much of the rest is supposed to eventually become park. There are several places where bars and restaurants open directly onto the line & use the edges of it for outdoor dining areas.

Passengers at Paris Gare de l'Est queued up for a ticket check to board a Frankfurt-bound ICE

What is this, Amtrak?

The one bit that's still in use, by the RER C from Boulainvilliers to Porte de Clichy, is as I understand it one of the weakest lines of the Paris rail network; @alonlevy.bsky.social has even argued for abandoning it as well.

It's *right* next to the T3 trams.

(Something similar is also the only way I can make sense of London leaving its north-south S-Bahn tunnel without passenger service 1916-1988, from the opening of the tube lines in the 1900s until the shifts in freight traffic in the 60s the Snow Hill Tunnel's comparative advantage was freight.)

I guess for most of the 20th century it was more useful as a freight line than for passengers? And by the time that use ended in the 80s, radial Metro lines all had their stops on the adjacent boulevards & not in place to connect with the Ceinture, so circumferential trams were built there instead.

It's weird how Berlin's Ringbahn is among its most important passenger rail lines while Paris just abandoned theirs. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemin_...

There are a number of empty lots adjacent to stations that look like they are being prepared for development now, though the outer terminus is still adjacent to an undisturbed farm field.

The Paris cable car is both a lot of fun and seems plausibly quite useful for people living in the area served. Daily ridership is apparently 12.5k, not huge but a good 3x the London cable car for example.

Navigo Liberté signup demanded an Ile-de-France address and French phone number for me today, but happily accepted the address and phone number of the friend I am staying with (even though these definitely don't match my bank account).

Even people with that (extremely unreasonable) premise should be willing to welcome defectors who otherwise would have paid enough tax to fund multiple Russian soldiers' armor & equipment, or enough drones etc to kill multiple Ukrainians.

I'm at BER right now and they all seem to be working. Guess the end times are upon us.

Oh I was assuming you'd heard somebody say "Hormutz"

And then he tried again and succeeded last year in the OBBB.

Italian or German?

Have you ever heard them pronounce Zelenskyy that way?

ProtonMail has always been snake oil.

Timeline map of Bay Area streetcars (and other rail and trolleybuses), 1860-2025 transit-timelines.github.io/misc/sfobymo...

Getting out with their money to where Putin can't tax them to fund the war is *kind of* like helping Ukraine... beats the alternative at least.

There was a lot more crime then but a lot less homelessness. The refusal to build enough housing creates a lot of pressure on public spaces that aren't built to handle it.

Germany

That's because other university-educated workers in Europe are underpaid.