Damn. After scouting around car insurance last week, and finding their premiums were all pretty similar, I went with AAMI, as they seem to have a good reputation, and they gave a grant to the PTUA a couple of years ago, so I know they’re (hopefully) good corporate citizens.
But given I drive something like a third of the Australian average, I have wondered in the past if any insurance company would offer a deal taking that into account.
Inevitably, after paying AAMI, I found one that does. Pay As You Drive.
Most of the others came out with a premium of around $550-$580. PAYD, based on 5000 kms per year, comes out at up to $200 less. And they have an option to offset car emissions.
Mind you, I haven’t yet read the fine print, nor am I absolutely sure that’ll be my usage for the year. More research required; maybe I can go with them next year.
Also found during the car shopping experience…
Keys… I was curious to find out how much it’ll cost to get a duplicate of my new car key, if needed, as newer car keys have electronic bits inside. This 2002 Drive article suggests about $80.
LMCT… Looking at car ads online, sometimes they don’t tell you the dealer’s details, just the dealer number. I’d like to know where they are. I found I can use the Department of Justice Licensed Motor Car Trader search to find who and where they are. Handy.
I gave a mock answer for that one, which wound up proceedings, and a quick discussion followed on the merits or otherwise of punctuation in street signs. As it turns out, the Guidelines for Geographic Place Names says apostrophes shouldn’t be used, or that the possessive “s” at the ends of words shouldn’t be included.
And of course we were never going to get a lightning bolt in ACDC Lane.
Oh, the real topic of discussion? Congestion charging. It works in other cities. London is obviously the shining example, where the funds have gone into public transport — primarily buses — and usage has jumped. Provided you give people a viable alternative to driving into congested areas, why not encourage them to use that alternative by charging them extra?
Here, the government has ruled it out. I suppose they know it’d be unpopular. But the thing is… it works.
Congestion pricing “has worked around the world in about 100 different places, 100% of the time.” — Martin Wachs.
As with most transport issues, it’s a political problem, not a technical one.
Like apostrophes in street signs, I suspect it’ll never happen.
It’s a 1993 Mitsubishi Magna TR Executive sedan, dark grey, manual, 4 cylinder 2.6 litre, air-conditioned. Built in sunny Adelaide, it’s got about 215,000 kms on the clock. The tyres were replaced about 10,000kms ago.
No major dents or damage. Some paint is peeling, particularly on the roof and boot (a few Magnas of this age have this if they’ve been out in the rain). One hub cap is missing. Inside is comfortable, though a small tear on the back seat. Comfortably sits 5 people. A baby seat mounting bolt is fitted.
It’s got central locking, cassette/radio (but FM doesn’t work), power mirrors. It runs fine (though a little smoke on ignition when starting from cold). It’s had regular servicing and maintenance, mostly from a dealer (have the books), and is right up-to-date, including oil changes. The engine was fully re-conditioned about 5 1/2 years ago.
But it is getting to the age when from time to time it has mechanical issues. Overall it’s been very reliable, but each scheduled service seems to result in things being found that need preventative maintenance. So it would best suit someone who has more mechanical knowledge than me, and is able to do small repairs and oil changes etc themselves.
I’ll include the “PTUA - More trains = less traffic” sticker at NO EXTRA COST!!! (Or Trams or Buses if you prefer; a Trains one is on the bumper right now.)
Make me an offer! Email danielbowen at gmail.com
Feel free to pass this web page to anybody who might be interested.
I almost did a double-take when I saw this on the news last night.
Why? Because I recognised it as being this, snapped by me on my phone, and originally used on my blog:
…plus a little bit of this, snapped by me and originally used on the PTUA web site…
It looks like a part of another picture has been added to the very bottom left, but I don’t recognise it.
Most amusing. And not entirely surprising — both pictures are in the top five if you search Google Images for crowded melbourne train.
Glad they found some good pictures to get the message across!
(The first pic has also been used in The Age print edition a few months ago.)
And the story? Well, lots of extra people using public transport is good. But them having to squeeze in because there are hardly any extra services… that’s not so good.
The other week I wrote: Personally, I’d rather eat than drive any day.
Evidently not everybody agrees: Pensioner Josephine Simsa says she would rather not eat than give up her car and her treasured independence.
She doesn’t mean it literally of course, but the article goes on to describe how she specifically shops for cheap food so she can keep her car running.
I find that interesting, particularly for someone who lives in Albert Park, which has some of the best public transport in Melbourne. But only, of course, if all your trips are into the CBD, St Kilda, or other places easily reached on the tram. It’s not so good if you have relatives in Dingley and friends in Warrandyte.
Ultimately it’s likely that unless you live in a high density area, you’ll have to resort to methods other than walking to get to the things you need, and where you need to be. That’s Walkscore’s downfall — it doesn’t measure proximity to usable public transport.
Also related, an interesting discussion on the Freakonomics blog, looking at the future of suburbia. This quote caught my eye, which probably applies just as much to Australian cities as US ones:
High oil prices and the imperative to address global climate change will help spur denser residential development along transit corridors outside of cities. We’d see more of it today, if supply kept up with demand. Chris Leinberger estimates that walkable suburban communities served by transit today command anywhere from a 40 percent to 200 percent price premium over conventional drivable suburban development.
I just bought a car. Well, subject to a mechanic giving it a going-over.
Holden Astra CD TS, 2000 hatchback “Olympic edition”. Which means it’s from two Olympics ago, and that it has a few little extras like fog lights. Silver, electric windows, airbags, ABS, CD player, alloy wheels (like I care), remote locking.
Perhaps not the ultimate in motoring, but a nice little car that’ll cut my petrol consumption by about a quarter, and heaps nicer (and zoomier) than the old beast, if a little less roomy inside. And at a price which is reasonable given how little driving I do.
After signing the paperwork and leaving, some other people were looking at it, a tad disappointed. Seems I beat them to it by mere minutes.
Will probably pick it up next week. Pics later.
The only catch is no trade-in. Anybody want to buy a 15-year-old Magna?
Yeah the angles don’t match, but I reckon it’s not bad given that I took the new picture last year, before seeing the older one.
AND it’s exactly the same platforms in shot. AND in both there’s a train on platform 9.
(As far as I can tell, the old picture, being from before 1955, is out of copyright. Anybody in the know — and a few who have that knowledge lurk here, I know it — care to confirm or deny that, before I get into trouble?)
A Herald Sun article last week quoted figures showing that ditching cars and switching to PT could save you between $4,000 and $10,000 per year. (Seriously, it’s not just fuel — if you take into account finance, rego, insurance and repairs, it adds up fast.)
Problem is that somewhere in the sausage factory that is the media’s editing process, the reason for the PTUA pointing this out was lost. It’s no use telling people to ditch their cars if all they have is crap PT. It’s up to governments to provide a viable alternative, and as new figures showing Sunday bus patronage up 44% proves, when the PT option is there, people actually use it.
So what does it take to get lots of people willingly out of their cars? There’s a bunch of things (which even have a nifty acronym: SCARCE — standing for Safety, Comfort, Accessibility, Reliability, Cost and Efficiency), but the number one is waiting times. If the waiting time is too long (and at present it’s often more than the total travel time by car), then people will keep driving.
And it’s not just a matter of providing frequent services into the CBD and inner-suburbs, during peak hours. As the Unsettling Suburbia report notes, that’s already pretty much in place, and PT dominates that market. The problem is all the other trips — around the burbs, and outside peak hours. Little wonder that with only around 15% of Melbourne’s population going into the CBD on a typical working day, cars dominate for other trips.
No, what we need is a whole network of frequent services, running seven days a week, and into the evening, so you can travel from anywhere to anywhere, at most times of day, without having to wait. In other words, genuinely competitive with car travel.
And that’s what’s behind the call for services “every 10 minutes to everywhere” — trams, trains, and main road buses running every 10 minutes, right across Melbourne.
(If the animation’s already stopped, Right Click and select Play to play it again.)
Every 10 minutes is often enough that you’ll never wait very long, even without checking timetables.
Every 10 minutes is often enough that even if you walk to the stop and just miss the bus/tram/train, another one will pick you up in less time than it takes to go back get your car.
Every 10 minutes means operators don’t have to work hard at trying to co-ordinate good connections between services, because you’ll never wait very long anyway, no matter where you’re travelling.
And interestingly, every 10 minutes is about how many buses you need to carry 20% of the passenger load of the typical suburban 2-lane arterial road. In other words, to reach the government’s own 20% target, they need to run services every 10 minutes!
It’s also not as expensive as it might sound, because most of the rail/tram infrastructure and fleets are in place. The major cost is extra buses, and more drivers… and even that is small compared to the 18+ billion dollars worth of major transport projects proposed by the Eddington report.
It’s the type of thing needed to get people to happily reduce the number of cars in their household, and not suffer for it. On the contrary, everyone would benefit economically, there’d be reduced traffic congestion, and a big cut in transport-related emissions.
Most unexpected question from the media pack at 1 Treasury Place this morning: Should Premiers Lane have a possessive apostrophe?
