On my last trip to Warwick, the local (RER) train I boarded broke on its way to the CDG airport, after hitting something in a tunnel just three stops short of the airport, with so much delay and misleading communication that I missed my flight. While a minor issue for me, since I managed to work (and blog) in an airport lounge for most of the day—where I crossed path with Numerobis—, while waiting for the only flight to B’ham, this made me to reflect anew on the very poor state of the transportation network in Paris and its suburbs, with such incidents (power failures, broken rails, vetust engines, stolen cables, idiots on the tracks, &tc., even without mentioning the strikes) more and more the norm. And to wonder at how the ancient and bursting network is going to cope with the incoming flow of visitors attending the Olympics this summer… Actually, when compared with the other cities with a fairly reasonably efficient airport connection I experienced, it remains a mystery to me why the Greater Paris conurbation—whose president, Valérie Pécresse, was apparently deemed the main culprit for our train break by an incensed fellow passenger that morning!—has kept for years postponing the construction of a dedicated rail line between the airport and central Paris, as the unpredictable and uncomfortable suburban train is not delivering the intended message to Paris visitors and their still-growing contribution to the French GNP. But with the growing public opposition to any new infrastructure, incl. trains, this is unlikely to happen!
Archive for tourism nuisances
travel woes
Posted in Travel, University life with tags Astérix et Obélix, Birmingham, CDG, De Gaulle airport, French politics, GNP, Jamel Debbouze, mass tourism, Paris, Paris 2024 Olympics, Paris suburbs, public transportation, RER B, SNCF, tourism nuisances, train travel, University of Warwick on April 29, 2024 by xi'aninnumerazione
Posted in Kids, Statistics, Travel with tags Bastia, Corsica, Eiffel Tower, innumeracy, recycling, tourism nuisances on September 5, 2021 by xi'an
While vacationing in Corsica, I spotted this poster all over town (Bastia). About the weight of recycled garbage in Corsica. Its congratulation smelled somewhat fishy and trying to argue the point with my family I looked at what it meant in meaningful units….
Since the weight of 8 Eiffel Towers is about 80,000 tons and there are about 340,000 people residing in Corsica, this means 235kg are recycled by an average Corsican (if the figure does not include agriculture, industry, and service recycling). Which sounds close to the national figures, when considering the average 580kg of personal garbage produced by the average French. However, this statistic does not account for the likely impact of tourists (like us) on the figures. Considering that there are about 3 million tourists visiting Corsica every year, with [the conservative figure of] an average stay of one week, assuming that they recycle as well, the figure per inhabitant gets down. (This impact can also be spotted in the raw [!] figures per month, which are triple in August, when the majority of tourists is visiting, than in March.) Hence the figure is not so conclusive…
prohibited! [jatp]
Posted in Statistics with tags Duomo di Milano, Italia, Milano, prohibition, regulations, tourism nuisances on August 27, 2017 by xi'an
