Rail journeys down 92% in April-June of this year compared to the same period last year!

[Nurzat]

Won't that basically kill off city centres?

Anyway, it seems that rail travel in the UK is nearly back to pre-pandemic levels.[...]

With the Elizabeth line included, the relative usage was 89% compared to pre-pandemic."

do Western corporations care about Romanian city centre business? this planning is not local, local businesses work normally, it's corporate jobs, which are a big thing in Romania in terms of number of employees in the main 4 cities of the country (Bukarest, Jászvásár, Kolozsvár, Temesvár). also, if it would be local, it would be worse, we have huge corruption in the public sector, mayors are selling public space from parks and from between older apartment buildings to mobsters who build other apartment buildings, parks and trees disappear day after day. in the city centre of Bucharest the mayor gave away a large chunk of one of the few parks of Bucharest and they are now putting it on fire to kill the trees and bushes so that the land profile will change from park to another category, so that they can build on it

anyway, work from home is bad from many points of view, I start to have health problems since I don't move outside the house anymore but for short walks at the store, especially related to heart (arrythmias at sudden effort, which wasn't the case before the pandemic) and digestion (gastritis, reflux etc), being always at home you don't eat properly, you always snack, and you don't move anymore. it's also an area where it's not nice to walk, it's not pedestrian-friendly, there are stray dogs and sidewalk is missing in many areas, some of the streets are unpaved also, and are very muddy when it rains (I don't drive).

ironically my home village is from this point of view better than these outskirts of the big cities, in terms of quality of the people and cleanliness around their house as well. I understand less and less why people gather around big cities, especially why we move to the suburbs, you're practically going on pension in a suburb - if I'd be in the city I could take a walk at any time of day and night (used to while I was living in the city in my youth)

[Tooting Carmen]

Passenger numbers Oct-Dec 2023 pretty close to pre-pandemic levels. https://dataportal.orr.gov.uk/media/...t-dec-2023.pdf

"With the Elizabeth line excluded, there were 359 million journeys in the latest quarter, which equates to 80% of the 447 million journeys in October to December 2019 (pre-pandemic). With the Elizabeth line included, the relative usage was 90% compared with pre-pandemic".