Posts by Chris Waugh
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Hard News: Staying Alive, in reply to Steve Barnes,
The big problem in NZ
Yeah, I agree that a big change in attitude needs to happen along with massive investment in better designed infrastructure. We've got a similar problem here in Beijing where piss poor training, inexperience, and some pretty bad attitudes combine to render what is often actually quite good infrastructure useless. NZ's driver training system is much better than China's, but the attitudes leave just as much to be desired.
Now, hopefully this media coverage of the issues drives some positive changes...
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Hard News: Staying Alive, in reply to Lilith __,
Ah, yes, very reminiscent of what I remember seeing some time ago. It's amazing what good design can do to encourage good behaviour.
Thanks for that.
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Hard News: Staying Alive, in reply to Lilith __,
See how the cyclists whizz on through and the motorists politely give way!
[sigh] No. Youtube is blocked. I just tried some fancy Firefox add on that was supposed to help me sneak around the Great Firewall, and it didn't work. But it certainly sounds like the kind of video I was referring to.
But on thing I can see is this. Sometimes outside views can be very useful.
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Hard News: Staying Alive, in reply to Steve Barnes,
what’s wrong with roundabouts
I seem to remember watching a video on well-designed roundabouts in, I believe, the Netherlands. No barriers, no controls, just roundabouts set up so that it's clear to all road users that it's a shared space, and everybody driving with respect for that fact, and it works. Of course, there does seem to be an element of attitude in that, but the design encouraged road users to share the space effectively.
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Seems at least partly relevant to the discussion. But my first reaction was:
So bloody invest a lot more in cycling and public transport!
Then I thought, well, a few cities around the world have experimented with congestion charges, so why not Auckland? And I do believe similar ideas have been suggested for Auckland, but of course Len Brown seems to be having some trouble persuading central government to listen.
Traffic restrictions too, although I don't think that would be popular. Here in Beijing all private cars are banned from the roads one day a week based on the last digit of their licence plate. Weekends and public holidays are open slather. I'm a 7, so I'm currently banned on Thursdays. In early April that will rotate to Fridays, then three months after that I'll be back to being banned on Mondays. Also, most heavy trucks are banned from within the 5th Ring Road from 5am to midnight. Trust me, I regularly have to mix it with China's trucking industry, and that makes driving a hell of a lot easier and pleasanter. I wonder how much Auckland's traffic would improve if long distance trucks were only allowed into the city at hours when they weren't competing with commuters for road space? Maybe set up big truck stops at say, Papakura and, I dunno, Orewa? Warkworth? and keep the trucks their during the day to free up road space for Aucklanders to go about their daily business?
I wonder how popular restrictions on car purchases would be. Probably not much. In Beijing we have a periodic (every three months, I believe, but we got our car just before that policy was announced) lottery for the right to buy a car, with one third of those entering the lottery winning. I believe Singapore has even tougher restrictions.
Beijing also staggers start/stop work times at work units controlled by the city government to spread the rush hour loads out. I wonder if Auckland could do that with it's central and local government departments - have half work 8 to 4, half work 9 to 5, swap over every few months, encourage private enterprise to take similarly flexible approaches to work hours.
And sorry Auckland, but you're just going to have to adapt to a lot more high density housing. Gazillions of people round the world cope perfectly well with raising families in apartment blocks, no reason why Kiwis can't, too. (full hypocrsiy disclosure: Part of the appeal of moving back to NZ is the comparative ease of getting a proper house with a yard.)
I dunno, just some ideas....
And it occurs to me I may be overreacting, but I didn't see any acknowledgement in that article of the need to change (although I may have overlooked it in my haste). After all, oil prices are only going up in the medium to long term. The government and other conservative types need to drop the obssession with already failed models like car-based sprawl.
Perhaps while we're sending Steven Joyce up here to Beijing, we could send the actual transport minister around the proper big cities of Europe and Asia with decent cycling and public transport?
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Hard News: Staying Alive, in reply to Richard Grevers,
Chris, you forgot to mention that the Chinese tend to cycle at a sedate pace
Well, true. They also tend to walk sedately. And also that many Chinese cities are fairly flat. I've never been there myself, but I hear cycling is unusually rare in Chongqing because the city is so mountainous. But I disagree on the 'not overheating' considering how hot and humid summers are through most of China. In the warmer months my students arrive in class looking quite the worse for wear, and most of them have only had to walk a few hundred metres and climb at most 6 flights of stairs.
Of course, electric scooters help a lot with the summer heat - I wonder if they're making an appearance in at least some of NZ's flatter cities? Although their batteries are so heavy that if you take it inside to charge, you'll certainly overheat. One of my neighbours solves that problem by simply dangling an extension cord out her window. Of course, she hauls the extension cord back in again when her scooter is charged so nobody steals her power.
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Hard News: Staying Alive, in reply to Islander,
Thank you. I'll be alright.
Would've been nice to get some sleep earlier, though, that's the best fix for a migraine. But as I was lying there wishing I could get to sleep, I thought about your comment earlier about turning the cellphone off, and remembered a strange ad I saw on TV when I was last in New Zealand. A husband and wife are driving their cars in different parts of the city. She wants to phone him, so whips our her phone and calls him. He suddenly finds himself in a quandary over whether to answer or not, and eventually picks up the phone. Cops catch both of them. And I thought, how bizarre? How hard would it have been for her to find a safe place to stop, pull over and call? And for him to find a safe place to stop, pull over and answer? After all, when you're talking to somebody you can't see, your mind brings up an image of them, and so your mind is quite literally elsewhere. And on the way to the doctor this afternoon I got stuck behind a police car whose left tail lights had fallen off and whose driver was too busy blabbing away on his phone to go any faster than 20 km/h.
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Hard News: Staying Alive, in reply to Russell Brown,
And before the threatening migraine arrives and turns my day completely to shit, and excuse any typos, I'm in the funny vision stage of threatening migraine, I'm really happy to see cycling activists getting so much positive coverage in the likes of the Herald and Stuff. I'm hoping this momentum continues to build and translates into more cycling infrastructure and a road culture change, because like I said, I want to get a bike when we get back. And we're aiming for Auckland, so I hope Tamaki Drive gets sorted as the infrastructure is built, cos it sounds like a nice ride.
I hope that came out coherently.
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Hard News: Staying Alive, in reply to George Darroch,
I don't know how it compares on a world scale, and I've lost track of how many lines are open, how many under construction, and how many more planned, but preparation for building a subway station is happening just outside my office, and there's stacks more within about a ten minute walk, and I remember reading some years ago that the city government plans to have no point within the 4th Ring Road (i.e. almost the entire central city) further than 1km from a subway station when the network is complete.
Oh shit, visions going funny. I hope I'm not getting a migraine on top of the gut trouble I just went to see the doctor about. This is not the best day.
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Hard News: Staying Alive, in reply to Sacha,
buy Steven Joyce a plane ticket
one way
Not until my family has one way tickets back to NZ.