You know what narks me? It’s the argument that we have to build lots more roads because people have to drive so that they have personal mobility.

It’s an argument from the road lobby that is basically saying wherever you go, you have to be able to take your car.

And it gets traction because in much of Australia, the alternatives are crap. PT often does well for commuting to work, if your trip is along a frequent route, but for most it’s awkward to live the rest of your life without driving, unless you confine yourself to places within walking and cycling distances.

But it doesn’t have to be that way. There’s no reason we can’t set up our cities so that people can live their lives without having to drive. Check this short, reasonably amusing, advert:

(Catch the Gordon Ramsay cameo? Better quality, but shorter, version here.)

This guy in the advert manages to do a myriad of activities in just one day, without ever getting behind the wheel of a car. He has personal mobility.

In Melbourne, people who come into the CBD without their cars don’t complain about a lack of personal mobility for getting to lunch, or meetings, or running errands. Most things you need are within walking distance, and the trams run every few minutes if you need to get further.

But most of the rest of the city misses out on this convenience. If the whole metropolis was covered in a grid of trains, trams and buses running every few minutes all day, backed-up by better pedestrian and bike facilities, then we could all leave the car behind more often, or even choose not to have one, with no consequent cramping of our lifestyles.

And while some may claim Melbourne’s population isn’t dense enough to do this, count the cars on a main road in any developed suburb and it’s obvious that if you really wanted to get a substantial number of trips out of cars and onto PT, services every few minutes would be viable.

It can be done right. And it does make a difference. As the Wikipedia article for New York City notes:

New York is the only city in the United States where more than half of all households do not own a car (in Manhattan, more than 75% of residents do not own a car; nationally, the percentage is 8%).
…
New York City’s dense population and low automobile dependence help make New York among the most energy efficient in the United States. The city’s greenhouse gas emission levels are relatively low when measured per capita, at 7.1 metric tons per person, below the national average, 24.5.

(The Australian average is 14 tonnes per household. My rough estimate for my household is 9 tonnes… though I need to re-do the calculations, and more accurately.)

I used to give either thumbs up or thumbs down. I’m switching to thumbs up, thumbs down, or neither.

Microserfs — This is the kind of book I should just lap up, isn’t it? A geek novel? But I didn’t. It dragged.

J-Pod — More enjoyable than Microserfs. Douglas Coupland’s self-referential bits were a bit hard to take, but overall I enjoyed it a lot more.

Torchwood series 2 — Less gratuitious L/S/V, it’s calmed down a bit. The insertion of Martha and more Who references (especially in the penultimate episode) made it all more enjoyable to watch, though I didn’t think there was a stand-out episode this year, not in the same way I enjoyed Random Shoes. The finale was a bit of a let-down, but came up with some surprises. I’m not a hard-core Buffy fan, and don’t know what those that are would have made of Captain Spike. The BBC actually put out a PG-rated version, but I think even that is pretty dark for kids to see. I’d watch it again one day — it wasn’t brilliant, but it had its moments.

Fistful of Quarters: The King of Kong — Great stuff. Not so much about classic video games as about the personalities involved in the world of classic video games — so non-gamers will enjoy this. The people involved are geeks, and know they’re geeks. The trust from the score referees in the messianic Billy Mitchell, and their mistrust to his challenger is particularly interesting. Not surprised Mitchell wasn’t happy with the way the film portrayed him. Definitely thumbs up. (Maybe I should start giving the double-thumbs up where appropriate?)

Next I need to see Chasing Ghosts.

My old car wasn’t always a 15-year-old bomb. Once upon a time it was the latest in finest automotive excellence.

Even the colour in the ad matches mine!

(Thanks to Tim C for posting this and other fascinating old Aussie commercials onto YouTube)

When did they rename Swan Street (west of Punt Road) as Olympic Boulevard? I must have missed that memo.

Is it just to remind any visiting Sydneysiders that we had an Olympics before them?

For something that happened over fifty years ago, it seems a bit odd to keep actively renaming things to commemorate it. Maybe it’s part of a pattern. Exhibition Street was originally Stephen Street, and was renamed after the 1880 Exhibition… but evidently not officially until 1898.

Makes a change from renaming everything after Monash, I suppose.

We’ve also got lanes named after Dame Edna, and AC-DC. I wonder how long it’ll take for something to be named after someone or something post-Baby Boom?

Thanks to Kirsten for pointing out that at least one of my blog posts got hit with a spam attack, inserting invisible links into it.

See here and here for other reports.

The quick solution is to upgrade to WordPress 2.5 quick smart. Which I’ll be doing now, so apologies for any interruptions.

My car is so cool, I can park anywhere I want.

Yesterday there were demonstrators outside the SX building in Exhibition Street, with brochures, a big banner calling for a Royal Commission. Into what? I’m not sure to be honest; it wasn’t obvious. I didn’t look too closely and I didn’t take a brochure as I had other things on my mind.

The Premier John Brumby and his staff walked out of the building, followed a couple of minutes later by all the journalists I’d been waiting for. Brumby had been making an announcement about train timetables.

Not one of the protestors moved. They didn’t budge. They didn’t call out. They didn’t try and have a word with Brumby or the journos, or even thrust a brochure in their direction.

Did they even notice the Premier was there?

I still don’t know what their cause was. Bay dredging? The desalination plant? The water pipeline? Werribee loop trains?

Don’t know. But I do know that if they’d been a tad quicker on their feet, they might have got a word with someone who in all probability may be able to influence whatever it was they were campaigning for — or got some media attention.

You have to pay attention. They missed an opportunity.

And the train announcement? Thumbs up. It’s exactly what we need. The trains are crowded, so we need more, but under the current timetables, almost everything’s squashed into the loop, and conflicting movements slow everything down. So changing the operating plan so some trains bypass the loop, or run through it in a different direction, allows more trains onto the tracks, and means when the 18 extras start arriving next year, they’ll be able to be deployed in peak hours, where they’re needed most.

So some people will have to change trains, or have a slightly longer trip. But others will have shorter trips, and more train services will mean less crowding, and shorter waiting times. Everybody wins.

It’s precisely what I was talking about last week: making better use of the infrastructure.

Update Saturday morning: Why the PTUA is supporting the changes to metropolitan train timetables

The 2006 Census tells us that in Australia, there are 6,863,624 men above the age of 15.

Of these some 616,033 are in defacto relationships, including same-sex relationships. 3,547,331 are married. 2,700,260 are neither.

The Census doesn’t tell us how many men wash the dishes. But let’s assume for a moment that 30% of those married or in defacto relationships do the dishes at least sometimes. Hopefully it’s higher. And let’s assume all of those who are single do the dishes. Let’s also assume that men aged 75 and over have it done for them. That gives a total of 3,726,455.

So around Australia, over three and a half million men wash the dishes. Maybe not every day (I do it every 2-3 days; the dishwasher takes care of the rest).

My question then is…

Why the hell can’t rubber glove manufacturers make gloves that fit mens’ hands?

I don’t have the biggest hands in the world, but all too often I’ll buy a rubber gloves, supposedly size Large — and there’s none bigger in the supermarket, at least not in the brand that I otherwise like — get them home and find they’re tight on me. Frequently they’re small enough that I can only just squeeze them on and off my hands, and I can feel the bloodflow being constricted as I wash my saucepans.

Or is there a brand/type in XL somewhere that I need to switch to?