Posts by George Darroch
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Hard News: Staying Alive, in reply to Chris Waugh,
One does still see donkeys and mules working even in downtown Beijing.
Even working as an institute of contemporary art.
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A car has been essential for everyone who lived or lives in the area:
Or the vehicle with four legs? I imagine it's how all got by out your way before the oil-age.
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Or, put another way: Michael Schumacher drives dangerously, but has absolute awareness and full control of the vehicle. Others drive 'safely' but have limited awareness and often very little control of the vehicle.
I know who I'd rather drive with. This of course isn't an indictment of speeding campaigns and other road safety messages. But it's my experience as a cyclist that the incompetent are more of a threat to me than the reckless.
And to questions of payment above, I'd suggest that there would be cause to call for an ACC funded trial. However, under our current perverse government there's less chance of that.
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Hard News: Staying Alive, in reply to Sacha,
Subsidised or free compulsory training paid for from taxes and transport-user fees? Not that hard.
My own Grandmother, who is in her mid-80s, still drives around. She's cautious, but has less control of the vehicle than she should. Nevertheless, owning a car greatly increases her mobility and allows her to be a full member of society. Having acquired a manual car from her sister's estate, her driving deteriorated, and she decided she needed an auto again. At which point she booked in of her own accord for a few hours supervised with an instructor, who pointed out gently some of her failings and how to address them.
Driving a car is a privilege. Having sat with a number of drivers whose inadequacies scare me, I think there's call to have people take supervision about once per decade, and if necessary have those people referred for further training. This wouldn't address the wilfully dangerous, but it would greatly increase safety for the rest of us. The cost would be fairly low (based on a cost of about $50-60/hour).
There are a number of ways to crack this nut, and this is my suggestion.
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Ah man, you're making me all misty.
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That HoS editorial is excellent, and the comments are highly sympathetic. Unusual for such a publication, but I'll take it. It appears that the writer took cues from this column and Transportblog (and why wouldn't you?)
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Hard News: Staying Alive, in reply to Chris Waugh,
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.)
Indeed. Again I think there's a failure to conceptualise. Apartments are seen as rundown 70s rowhouses with steel framed balconies, and 20 story shoeboxes, housing the destitute, the immigrant, and the immoral. Illustrating the alternatives in all their splendour, as this post from Transportblog does so well, is worth doing.
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Hard News: Staying Alive, in reply to Chris Waugh,
Also, isn't Beijing building one of the biggest metro systems in the entire world? According to Wikipedia they have 15 lines extant, 4 under construction, and another 7 to be completed before 2015.
Its smog is undoubtedly among the worst anywhere, but at least they're moving in the right direction. At current rates it will be another decade before Auckland's first single connecting underground line is finished.
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Better still, once he’s over there, get him to volunteer as a crash test driver if the dummies prove innacurate. He’s a petrolhead after all, isn’t he?
In cattle class, down the very back and sandwiched between two large and sweaty Australians.
Now you're just being silly. Nobody has to go anywhere: the effects of spending entirely on roads are well known. And it's Gerry Brownlee who is now Minister for Transport.
I'd rather our politicians looked at cities where things are done right. What we have is a failure of the imagination as much as anything, and to be fair it's easier to imagine what you've seen.
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Hard News: Staying Alive, in reply to James Butler,
I’m pretty sure the sensors are inductive loops tripped by large masses of metal, but yeah, this too.
On such a light your wait will literally be anywhere between 20 seconds and 20 minutes. When you stop, you have no idea. In peak traffic, when you know another car will be along soon, it’s worth waiting. In the late and early hours when the roads are quiet or deserted, it makes very little sense. Thus, after a short wait I usually look both ways, look behind me for cars approaching (and unsympathetic police cars) and then cross. Such delays can massively increase the amount of time required to cycle anywhere.
Again, there’s infrastructure for this; you either phase the lights automatically, or you simply put up a pole with a buzzer or install better sensors. All of which are available to us, we simply have governments who consider that these things are not priorities: car-road spending is axiomatic, non-car-road and non-road spending is not.