Danny Yee
@dannyyee.bsky.social
Oxford (ex Sydney), books, transport, education, science, mathematics. Probably mostly posting about Oxford transport, with the odd book review and some pathological polymathy. For just the book reviews: https://bsky.app/profile/dannyreviews.bsky.social
A History of Wales in Twelve Poems - short historical essays accompanied by poems dannyreviews.com/h/History_Wa... (my review)
October 26, 2025 at 7:41 PM
A History of Wales in Twelve Poems - short historical essays accompanied by poems dannyreviews.com/h/History_Wa... (my review)
Europe's Tragedy: A New History of the Thirty Years War dannyreviews.com/h/Europes_Tr... (my review) - "a long and involved, but rewarding, account of one of the most traumatic periods in European history"
October 4, 2025 at 12:06 PM
Europe's Tragedy: A New History of the Thirty Years War dannyreviews.com/h/Europes_Tr... (my review) - "a long and involved, but rewarding, account of one of the most traumatic periods in European history"
This is a huge step, with Oxford set to join a small but select number of cities which have implemented a congestion charge.
September 10, 2025 at 2:07 PM
This is a huge step, with Oxford set to join a small but select number of cities which have implemented a congestion charge.
Oral history integrated into a compelling narrative - my review of David Van Reybrouck's _Revolusi: Indonesia and the Birth of the Modern World_ dannyreviews.com/h/Revolusi.h...
August 20, 2025 at 8:20 PM
Oral history integrated into a compelling narrative - my review of David Van Reybrouck's _Revolusi: Indonesia and the Birth of the Modern World_ dannyreviews.com/h/Revolusi.h...
_The Year of the Hare_ - a journalist takes a hare on a light-hearted romp through rural Finland dannyreviews.com/h/Year_Hare.... (my review)
August 19, 2025 at 5:18 PM
_The Year of the Hare_ - a journalist takes a hare on a light-hearted romp through rural Finland dannyreviews.com/h/Year_Hare.... (my review)
A Millennium of Amsterdam: Spatial History of a Marvellous City dannyreviews.com/h/Millennium... (my review)
July 10, 2025 at 9:15 PM
A Millennium of Amsterdam: Spatial History of a Marvellous City dannyreviews.com/h/Millennium... (my review)
There are up to 10,000 cycle movements a day along St Clements, Cowley and Iffley Rds crossing the turning traffic using those streets as cut-throughs would create. To see what that might do, here are the (reported, decade pre-LTN) injuries at the bottom of Southfield and Divinity Rds.
July 5, 2025 at 1:16 PM
There are up to 10,000 cycle movements a day along St Clements, Cowley and Iffley Rds crossing the turning traffic using those streets as cut-throughs would create. To see what that might do, here are the (reported, decade pre-LTN) injuries at the bottom of Southfield and Divinity Rds.
And ten years ago I was pushing my daughter across this junction in a buggy, and thought "this junction should just be destroyed". Then I got some traffic numbers (around 4000 cars/day in each direction) and though "no this will never happen"....
June 26, 2025 at 5:41 PM
And ten years ago I was pushing my daughter across this junction in a buggy, and thought "this junction should just be destroyed". Then I got some traffic numbers (around 4000 cars/day in each direction) and though "no this will never happen"....
But I asked for these anti-pedestrian chicanes outside my daughter's secondary school to be removed and they were gone in eight months!
June 26, 2025 at 3:58 PM
But I asked for these anti-pedestrian chicanes outside my daughter's secondary school to be removed and they were gone in eight months!
This is in the officer briefing "Exemptions and permits would be identical to the traffic filters (but with an additional central permit area to take account of the continued closure of the Botley Road – see Annex 4)." And this is the map in Annex 4.
June 10, 2025 at 7:32 AM
This is in the officer briefing "Exemptions and permits would be identical to the traffic filters (but with an additional central permit area to take account of the continued closure of the Botley Road – see Annex 4)." And this is the map in Annex 4.
The problem is that in the narrow central streets of Ghent, there is no choice but to cycle along or even inside the tram tracks. (In contrast, cycle tracks in Amsterdam are separated, and cross tram tracks at an angle.)
June 2, 2025 at 2:20 PM
The problem is that in the narrow central streets of Ghent, there is no choice but to cycle along or even inside the tram tracks. (In contrast, cycle tracks in Amsterdam are separated, and cross tram tracks at an angle.)
There an estimated 500 admissions a year to Ghent hospitals of people cycling crashing as a result of tram tracks. libstore.ugent.be/fulltxt/RUG0... (The headline here is 140, but if you read carefully the extrapolated estimate must be around 500, which is the number I was given by Ghent officers.)
June 2, 2025 at 2:20 PM
There an estimated 500 admissions a year to Ghent hospitals of people cycling crashing as a result of tram tracks. libstore.ugent.be/fulltxt/RUG0... (The headline here is 140, but if you read carefully the extrapolated estimate must be around 500, which is the number I was given by Ghent officers.)
The Slade has cycle tracks which give up completely at the junctions, and Old Rd, Hollow Way, and London Rd are awful for cycling. Kids trying to get to Cheney from Barton or Risinghurst have the additional challenge of crossing the ring-road, with poor quality underpasses or dangerous crossings.
May 30, 2025 at 10:33 AM
The Slade has cycle tracks which give up completely at the junctions, and Old Rd, Hollow Way, and London Rd are awful for cycling. Kids trying to get to Cheney from Barton or Risinghurst have the additional challenge of crossing the ring-road, with poor quality underpasses or dangerous crossings.
The dropped kerb isn't on the pedestrian desire line either.
May 28, 2025 at 3:42 PM
The dropped kerb isn't on the pedestrian desire line either.
At the Barton Park crossing of the A40 there is a choice between using the pedestrian crossing or cycling across the junction on the carriageway.
May 13, 2025 at 3:47 PM
At the Barton Park crossing of the A40 there is a choice between using the pedestrian crossing or cycling across the junction on the carriageway.
If you look very carefully, there are 50cm wide circles engraved into the paving, letting people know it's ok to cycle in the pedestrian space
May 13, 2025 at 3:47 PM
If you look very carefully, there are 50cm wide circles engraved into the paving, letting people know it's ok to cycle in the pedestrian space
Frideswide Square (Google Earth, 2021): can you see any cycling infrastructure?
How is someone who doesn't want to mix with motor traffic on the roundels supposed to get from the westbound cycle lane on Hythe Bridge St (red star) to the "cycling space" in front of the business school (green circle)?
How is someone who doesn't want to mix with motor traffic on the roundels supposed to get from the westbound cycle lane on Hythe Bridge St (red star) to the "cycling space" in front of the business school (green circle)?
May 13, 2025 at 3:47 PM
Frideswide Square (Google Earth, 2021): can you see any cycling infrastructure?
How is someone who doesn't want to mix with motor traffic on the roundels supposed to get from the westbound cycle lane on Hythe Bridge St (red star) to the "cycling space" in front of the business school (green circle)?
How is someone who doesn't want to mix with motor traffic on the roundels supposed to get from the westbound cycle lane on Hythe Bridge St (red star) to the "cycling space" in front of the business school (green circle)?
The first option is narrow and undulating, obstructed by trees, bus shelters, lamp posts and other obstacles, and has no priority crossing side streets. It would be seriously - and dangerously - sub-standard even as a one-way cycle track, but as a two-way track it is just farcically bad.
May 13, 2025 at 3:47 PM
The first option is narrow and undulating, obstructed by trees, bus shelters, lamp posts and other obstacles, and has no priority crossing side streets. It would be seriously - and dangerously - sub-standard even as a one-way cycle track, but as a two-way track it is just farcically bad.
On most of Woodstock Rd, there is a choice between cycling on the footway, where a white painted line marks a notional cycle track, or cycling on the carriageway, where the right to cycle is reinforced by cycle symbols in the general traffic lane or signs authorising cycling in a bus lane.
May 13, 2025 at 3:47 PM
On most of Woodstock Rd, there is a choice between cycling on the footway, where a white painted line marks a notional cycle track, or cycling on the carriageway, where the right to cycle is reinforced by cycle symbols in the general traffic lane or signs authorising cycling in a bus lane.
When the Sahara Was Green: How Our Greatest Desert Came to Be (Martin Williams) - my review dannyreviews.com/h/Sahara_Gre... (@princetonupress.bsky.social 2021)
May 8, 2025 at 8:38 PM
When the Sahara Was Green: How Our Greatest Desert Came to Be (Martin Williams) - my review dannyreviews.com/h/Sahara_Gre... (@princetonupress.bsky.social 2021)
The biggest safety gains from the LTNs have been on the boundary roads, because of the reduction in traffic turning into and out of them. This shows the pre-LTN hotspots at the bottom of Southfield and Divinity Rds. Which have disappeared with all the motor traffic cutting across Cowley Rd.
April 25, 2025 at 9:24 AM
The biggest safety gains from the LTNs have been on the boundary roads, because of the reduction in traffic turning into and out of them. This shows the pre-LTN hotspots at the bottom of Southfield and Divinity Rds. Which have disappeared with all the motor traffic cutting across Cowley Rd.
For modal filters, definitely. Trees are the best!
March 6, 2025 at 8:36 AM
For modal filters, definitely. Trees are the best!
a metafictional circling around an imagined meeting in 1926 between two pioneering Armenian feminist writers, Shushank Kurghinian and Zabel Yesayan, inside a frame involving the author and a friend researching their lives dannyreviews.com/h/Book_Untit... (my review)
March 3, 2025 at 9:13 PM
a metafictional circling around an imagined meeting in 1926 between two pioneering Armenian feminist writers, Shushank Kurghinian and Zabel Yesayan, inside a frame involving the author and a friend researching their lives dannyreviews.com/h/Book_Untit... (my review)
There are some horrible ones on Kingston Rd in Oxford maps.app.goo.gl/6stQK7MsKEgE...
February 23, 2025 at 5:43 PM
There are some horrible ones on Kingston Rd in Oxford maps.app.goo.gl/6stQK7MsKEgE...
Yes, if there's an inland road to take the through traffic. Marazion in Cornwall looked like an obvious LTN candidate to me.
February 8, 2025 at 4:18 PM
Yes, if there's an inland road to take the through traffic. Marazion in Cornwall looked like an obvious LTN candidate to me.