Tag: SurfaceTravel

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The wrong (moment to put on your waterproof) trousers

This is a post for the cycling decision-makers among you. It may resonate even if you don’t cycle. Variations on the question of whether, if it starts raining when cycling, it is worth stopping to put on your waterproofs.

How late am I running? Have I got time to stop? How heavy is the rain? Will it carry on? How quickly could my clothes dry? Will I get wetter stopping to put them on?

If I do decide to carry on, is it wetter to go quicker or slower?

Do I have all the facts? Do I know all the unknowns? Is this a complicated or a complex problem? Am I able to make a good decision? 

Is there an angle I can cycle at in which my rain shadow protects my lower half sufficiently? 

Is how I’m framing the question limiting the result? What opportunities am I not considering? If I stop at a random location to put on my waterproofs, what might I notice that I might never have discovered had I ploughed on?

What happened last time? Was it the right decision? What are other people doing? What would my future self advise?

Am I even in the right frame of mind to make this decision? What could I be thinking about instead?

What happens if I get it wrong? How much does it matter to me if I get it right? Am I deluding myself that I’m in control? 

[This post was originally published on 28th September 2024 on eiffelover.com]

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Clash of system goals

I took this photo at Étampes station. It shows a nineteenth-century roof that spans four platforms with no internal columns. And then, right in the middle of that column-free space, stand the massive posts that support the electric cables — added in the 1920s.

It’s a clear clash of system goals.

The roof was built to create a grand civic space — a place that celebrated the station as a node of travel and encounter.

The cable gantry belongs to a different system altogether: it’s about maintaining a rigid, continuous grid for electrical power.

In the first, place is what matters.

In the second, continuity is what matters.

Retrofitting the roof to carry the cables would have been expensive, yes. But the network engineers could at least have designed special gantries for inside the station — ones that respected the goal of place while still meeting the goal of network.

The station architects began with a blank sheet of paper and could design more or less what they wanted.

The electrification engineers didn’t start with a blank sheet, but arguably designed as if they did.

We rarely start with a blank sheet of paper. Existing and new systems bring different goals. Our task as designers is to reconcile those goals through better design.