Along with all the talk about IKEA decking out Paris Métro stations with couches and lamps as an advertising stunt, there have been a ton of comments that pretty much follow this formula: "That’d never work in New York, the subways here aren’t clean like the ones in Europe!"
What I love about Twitter is the spontaneousness (is that a word?) of random discussions about virtually anything. Today @oliyoung, @chimpocalypse and I were responding to the South Aussie government’s ambitious road plans by taking about high speed rail and how Australia desperately needs it.
As you may have noticed if you’ve been reading my blog for a while, I’m somewhat of a public transport nut. Having lived in Singapore most of my life, moving back to Australia for part of the year made me realise just how much I’d taken the public transport there for granted.
Photo of the Adelaide CBD by Mozul
Two comments I submitted on articles on the AdelaideNow website (the online version of the Adelaide Advertiser):
Australian’s not buying local produce
AUSTRALIANS will stand up for the flag and the anthem but not for their mates when it comes to buying Australian, a study suggests.
An Australia SCAN survey shows only 28 per cent of consumers consider buying Australian-made goods necessary.
In 1995, 46 per cent of Australians ranked it highly.
Social analyst David Chalke said that as the recession continued, people would become even less inclined to buy domestic products which cost more than an imported alternative.
“I think we’re going to hunker down a bit more,” he said.
I would love to buy Australian and help people here, but as a computer guy I don’t have a choice than to buy from overseas, all the stuff I get is from the US, Taiwan, Singapore, Japan and Korea. Even though I’m Aussie I’ve lived most of my life overseas and I realise the reality that some places are better at producing things than other places, it’s Economics 101. Food I proudly buy Australian at the supermarket not just because “it comes from here” but because of it’s superior quality.
Perhaps with further local development and investment in education I could one day buy my electronics from Aussie companies too; I certainly believe the entrepreneurial spirit and creativity needed are already here.
Adelaide’s Gallipoli underpass a traffic nightmare
THE much-vaunted $118 million Gallipoli underpass – open for just over six weeks – has become a nightmare for commuters during afternoon peak-hour.
Thousands of motorists are now being caught in anp exasperating daily crawl – but authorities say drivers will have to put up with the problems for now.
During Friday night’s rush hour, traffic banked up more than 1.5km between the Anzac Hwy turnoff on South Rd to Greenhill Rd.
The almost daily gridlock occurs because Anzac Hwy commuters are forced to give way to south-bound underpass traffic.
Public transport public transport public transport grilled cheese sandwiches public transport.
Having a coffee while typing this at a… very busy cafe!
One of the great things about living in Adelaide from a lifestyle point of view compared to most other Aussie cities is it’s relatively small and urban sprawl hasn’t taken hold to the extent it has in Sydney and Melbourne for example. What this means is any trip via the CBD is easy to plan, especially on public transport. It also helps that the Adelaide Metro has unified timetables and signage for trains, trams, buses and jaffles, a huge relief if you’re from Melbourne where each bus company does their own thing!
Despite being smaller though, Adelaide’s public transport system is still far too complex in my opinion. Back in Singapore you can pick up a TransitLink guide book which is slightly larger than a stack of playing cards and in it each bus route is clearly defined with fare stops and frequency that don’t change. In Adelaide each set of bus routes has it’s own foldout broadsheet guide with a dizzying array of tables containing detailed times, stops and exceptions, all of which change depending on the time of day, what day it is, whether there’s a full moon and so on. If you rely on puplic transport you rapidly accumulate these foldout broadsheet things, and nine times out of ten the information is inaccurate anyway!
Adelaide has just over 1 million people, Singapore has over 4.5 million, yet if you were to look at their public transport information you’d swear it was the other way around!
Traffic and trams on North Terrace in Adelaide by Bill Drury
As more people become aware of the impact they’re having on the planet or just don’t want to have to deal with the costs and hassle of owning cars, an efficient and predictable public transport system becomes even more important. I see all this needless complexity and shake my head because I see the potential for the government to spend the same amount of money but provide better service. If it were simpler, more people would use it.
This afternoon my sister and I went to the HarbourTown shopping centre at Westbeach which meant we had to take the 132 from the city. We waited in line at the bus stop and caught it, only to be told halfway the service stopped there because it was the 132B. Sure enough when I figured out how to unfold the huge guide for the 13X buses, ONLY at the time we boarded was the scheduled bus the 132B. Then after a certain time and after a certain part of the way along the route the number changes to something else entirely! I took responsibility for not reading the bus number properly and received deserved head smacks from my sister, but it still begs the question why different bus numbers are needed at different times and why some have to have letters after them. Sheesh!
Wait, the bus stops here?! Ah crap!
I’d still feel guilty owning a car at this point because I can live without one and the last thing the world needs is another single guy in a rich country burning petrol because they’re too lazy to walk or research public transport, but experiences like this do really test my patience!
I’ve been typing this at a coffee shop on my iTelephone, but now it’s time for us to leave. I hope we don’t accidentally board the bus which despite it’s number goes to The Ocean because between 18:00 and 18:15 it travels west not east.
The changing Singapore and public transport episode!
Do more people know where Singapore is now? Sleeping with blinking lights; Asia changing every five minutes; gutting the Bishan MRT station; the Singapore Heartland; changing skylines; apartment buildings springing up from nowhere; the feared "en bloc sale" phenomena; the Adelaide Glenelg Tramline; the Sydney Cross City Tunnel; using the Internet Archive for Rubenerd Shows; rating shows with stars; Liberal and Labor guys; an extended rant on building roads instead of public transport; and don’t blame me I voted for The Greens!
Download MP3 to listen ↓ 21:15 9.9MiB
You can also stream this episode and view its Internet Archive page.
The Holden Commodore Omega, photo by User:OSX. Can we afford to have everyone driving such huge cars?
I know I only wrote about this issue last week (Reduced profits of auto companies a good thing?) but the headlines keep cropping up in Google Reader and I have to expand on my ideas again.
Today’s two articles are about General Motors and their failing bottom line: to put it bluntly they’re simply struggling with sharply reduced demand. Adelaide Now lets us know that Holden (GM’s Australian subsidiary) is cutting back production again. Time magazine asks whether or not General Motors is worth saving.
As with other car companies, General Motors has a disproportionally greater responsibility over other companies to help us in our global effort to protect our environment, and so far their [lack of] fulfillment of their environmental obligations has been laughable. Due to a loophole in American law which does not impose more stringent fuel efficiency standards on light trucks and SUVs because they’re not "cars", the Big Three fell asleep behind their corporate wheels and didn’t do anything while companies like Honda and Toyota have worked to improve efficiency and create hybrid technologies. They are certainly a long way from being perfect, but at least they’re driving in the right direction.
The German InterCityExpress (ICE) by Sebastian Terfloth
I think General Motors should be given financial assistance, but only on the proviso that they wake up and starting taking the environment seriously: such funding should go towards developing more fuel efficient cars and researching alternative fuels, NOT towards restyling the bodywork on their current petrol-guzzlers for a new year range. They should also be supervised, and be encouraged to take seriously some brilliant, practical and unconventional ideas.
Such funding however should also be complimented by much larger government funding grants for the serious construction of public transport; this doesn’t just apply to the United States. And I mean serious. Our planet cannot afford any more cars. It couldn’t afford any more cars 20 years ago.
Only with a concerted and long term plan to improve public transport systems around the world will we see any change. We need to fundamentally rethink the way we get around this planet.
Next train arriving in 4 minutes? THAT’S what I miss about Singapore!
Photo from my Flickr Singapore MRT gallery
A few people who’s shared items I follow have made comments on this exact issue, but I felt I was going to be posting a lot more than a comment field would allow, so it’s going here.
Having used Google Reader again for a few days now, it’s made me aware once again of news stories that only make it big in Australia, and those that are repeated by news sources around the world. Along with my tech and personal blog subscriptions, I’ve also subscribed to ABC News (Australia), AdelaideNow, BBC World, CBC News (Canada), CNN International and Channel News Asia (Singapore). One of the news stories that keeps appearing in all of them is the sorry state of the auto industry.
Now first of all I’d like to make it clear that I think when redundancies occur there are decent, hard working and loyal people who get laid off, and this is a real tragedy. Often we forget that underneath the hugely overpaid CEOs, middle management and other senior positions of transnational corporations, there are hundreds or thousands of other people who perhaps make enough to feed their families. It’s a travesty that when companies go under that for the most part senior executives keep all their luxuries when the backbone of their companies — their workers — get left with virtually nothing. This has to change.
With that said, and with all the bleak reports streaming in from the US, Europe and Japan, I’m finding it difficult to feel sad over the declining profits and output of the auto companies. I don’t feel sad because such results mean there are less cars being produced, and less therefore being used. In tough economic times people’s demands are changing; consumers want smaller cars that use less fuel, that use fuel more efficiently or that use a hybrid system. The real losers in such an economic climate are the environmentally irresponsible cars such as so called "light trucks", 4WDs, SUVs and other TLAs.
I’m 22 years old and I don’t have a [car] drivers license. I don’t feel ashamed to admit this; in Singapore you definitely don’t need a car with the public transport system they have in place, in Adelaide it’s a bit more of a struggle but I’m able to commute from our home to the university and to offices in the city using trains and buses. If not, I have the option of using a bicycle, or if worst comes to worst, a scooter. If the distance is less than a few kilometres (or sometimes if it’s longer) I’ll walk.
Street traffic in the Place de l’Étoile as seen from the top of the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, France, by BrokenSphere
I think the car symbolises the ultimate human expression of excess. There are many legitimate uses for, and users of, private vehicles, but for every legitimate use I’d say there are dozens of people who have just become lazy and dependent on their cars to take them along distances they could easily walk.
Economists sometimes label downturns in stock prices "corrections". I think in the case of the auto industry, their ridiculous profits and unsustainable (for our planet) production of vehicles definitely warranted a correction.
Let’s hope the shortfall will be made up for by increased government investment in public transport options. They’re being used more now across the world, let’s divert finance from ultra expensive road tunnels and expressways and turn it into more accessible, efficient, reliable and more comfortable public transport. Hope I’ve done you proud Todd :)
“Mawson Interchange in Adelaide next to our house. Taken by Ian Threlfall
It’s come time for another blog post to be submitted from my iPhone instead of my laptop. What can I say, my back says my MacBook Pro is a great machine but not exactly the lightest thing to be carrying around constantly. I think most of the time it’s just fine, but it’s nice to just carry an iPhone sometimes.
As I sit here at the Mawson Interchange train station whatsit I can see from the LED display that the train is arriving in 4 minutes. Problem is, that’s what it said 5 minutes ago. I’m not one to judge the accuracy of public transport message boards, but I’m judging this one to be inaccurate. Either that or somehow that display exists outside our regular space-time continuum and its some sort of time traveling notice board. One can’t help but think that the money used to buy a time traveling public transport notification display could have been put towards actually buying more trains to improve frequency times so such intentionally misleading displays would not be necessary in the first place.
ASIDE: Is that how you spell continuum? The iPhone dictionary says so, but it doesn’t look right to me. Not that I’m questioning my almighty iPhone mind!
The fact is, given I spent most of my life in Singapore (okay most of my life I can remember, I lived in Sydney and Melbourne before I was five but I certainly don’t remember it!) the whole concept of public transport timetables is completely foreign. In Singapore the buses, MRT and LRT systems don’t use predetermined times, they go by frequency. For example, if you stand at the Dhoby Ghaut MRT station you’re told on the screens that the trains come every two to three minutes.
Of course this system isn’t perfect, but the difference is over there they have enough confidence in their fleet sizes to pull off frequency rather than timetable timings. The ironic thing is quite often here (and most of the rest of Australia) timetables aren’t even a reliable guide anyway, most trains and buses run late every time anyway. I’m reminded of Captain Jack Sparrow’s line in the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie: "The code is more of a guideline than actual rules!"
Want to battle climate change, reduce dependency on foreign energy, revitalise neighbourhoods and CBDs, clean up the air, dedicate more space to parkland, reduce stress on commuters, let people keep more of their money, increase aura and pride in communities and make sense… stop building expressways and artery roads, and build better public transport systems! Especially in times of economic uncertainty, public projects like this that keep people employed just make sense!
Punggol MRT station in Singapore, taken from my Flickr profile
Sent from my iPhone
The disjointed rambling about indie media and building things episode.
ACT ONE: Recounting childhood memories and obsessions from Melbourne, Ikea furniture, Lego.
ACT TWO: Is Starbucks having a positive effect? My favourite coffee house closing, improved coffee quality.
ACT THREE: Rant about public transport: are we better building new damned giant roads or new train lines?
ACT FOUR: General public’s perception of security is wrong: YOU are the biggest security threat! Getting fascinating Bruce Schneier books for my birthday, security companies screwing consumers, using a non-administrative account on Mac OS X.
ACT FIVE: Comparing building your own computer and open source software to hot rod builders, being a 1990’s kid, running Windows software on Linux and FreeBSD with Wine, why it’s a great time to be alive!
ACT SIX: Comparing open source software developers to independent musicians, thanks to Jim Kloss and Esther Golton for the inspiration, sorry for the sacrilegious comparison! Are people worth what they’re being paid? Who’s deriving more happiness from what they’re doing?
Download MP3 to listen ↓ 1:23:03, 39.0MiB
You can also stream this episode and view its Internet Archive page.
I'm Ruben Schade, welcome to my labour of love mix of tech, anime, thoughts and nonsense from Singapore and Australia. Thanks for stopping by.
I'm also on Twitter, Flickr, Google Reader and lots more places.
