Home again, still not well. Some kind of stomach bug combined with headaches. Blargh. Not pleasant.

Meanwhile my sister is getting over a cold, some of the kids have had colds too, my mum’s been unwell, my dad’s had to go into hospital with a blood problem.

It seems to be one of those weeks.

I’m at home today, not well. So here’s a brief post.

I keep forgetting what this is called: Parkour closely related to Free running. Basically pedestrianism for superhumans.

This video from Top Gear shows it off well. You can skip the first minute if you’re not interested in the Peugot 207 that James May is racing against the Parkour guys.

(Available here in high resolution.)

I know for a fact I’d never be fit enough to able to do it, and I’m betting it takes a lot of training to achieve it and avoid injury.

Remarkable stuff.

Almost exhausting just watching it. I’m going back to bed.

The zone system has its faults, such as anomalies with the boundaries, and a big jump in fares when you cross a zone boundary. But it’s one of the best things about Melbourne’s public transport. Its introduction in the 1980s led to a big boost in patronage, and in terms of ease of use, it remains the best way of charging for trips.

Where I live is walking distance to a zone 1 station, meaning I can do my usual commute to the CBD with a zone 1 ticket, saving over $500 per year compared to living in zone 2. That was part of the aim when I was house hunting.

But I’m actually in the zone overlap, thus while I can use zone 1 on the train into the city, almost any other trip requires a zone 2 ticket. Even the bus to Brighton (which is also in the overlap) curiously needs a zone 2 ticket — one of many anomalies with the boundaries.

While I could moan about that not being fair (and actually, I do from time to time), until they fix it, I figure it’s part of the cost of living on the outer-edge of zone 1. So beside my Yearly Z1 ticket, I have tucked in my wallet a 10×2 hour Z2 ticket for those trips (remembering that the Yearly is valid in both zones on weekends).

There are rules about when you can make a multi-zone trip on multiple tickets. Normally you need to have a single ticket for your trip, but if you hold a weekly or longer ticket, you can use a second “extension” ticket for the extra zone. If you can’t buy it beforehand (eg you are travelling from a location that sells only zone 1 tickets, into zone 2), you can buy the extra ticket at your destination.

[Source if you want to quote chapter and verse: Victorian Fares and Ticketing Manual 2008, chapter 11, page 94]

So I took the old car for its Roadworthy Certificate in preparation for sale. I thought there might be minor problems to be fixed.

But no. It failed in a most spectacular way. With fireworks, a brass band, a ticker-tape parade and 20 metre-high letters.

It’s a write-off. Good for parts and scrap only. A whole raft of minor faults, but the whopper is that apparently the engine is burning oil. Which means it needs a new one. Which means spending about twice its value to get it roadworthy.

I’m a tad miffed as I had lined up a probable buyer, but that’s the way it goes.

On the bright side, I didn’t need the money, the replacement is already happily here, and I might get a couple of hundred bucks for scrap.

And of course by me switching to a more efficient car, and having this one scrapped, it means nobody who would drive it more than me will be out on the roads with it. And the parts will get re-used and recycled.

Something I’ve been meaning to blog about for… oh, over a month. At the Climate Change forum last month, a question was asked about the car pollution impacts on cyclists. Elliot Fishman from the Cycling Promotion Fund (and who looks uncannily like my sister’s husband) replied that because cyclists are higher up, they don’t get that much car exhaust. In fact more goes to other car drivers.

As this New Zealand article says:

ETA (1997) reviewed over sixty studies of pollution exposure by different transport modes, and found that cars offer little or no protection against the pollutants generated by traffic. Most of the studies indicated that motor vehicle occupants face pollution levels inside a car two to three times higher than those experienced by pedestrians and cyclists, with larger public transport vehicles somewhere in between.

Partly it’s because the emissions stay close to where they come out of the exhaust, only to be brought into following vehicles. For myself, when driving in traffic, I often set the ventilation to recirculate — preferably before catching up to cars in front — and if needed I open the window a snadge to get some (hopefully) less-polluted air into the car.

Evidently a better way to avoid the foul air is not to be in a car at all.

On a related topic there was a comment on Top Gear a while ago joking about hybrid cars, along the lines of that you can stop your car engine when the car is stationary. Actually I do that at places like level crossings, where I know I’m going to have to wait a while — especially if I can hear a slow freight train coming.

The Age today has a give-away poster of the Art Deco exhibit Spirit of Progress ‘Matthew Flinders’ picture.

It’s not quite as massive as the poster on the side of the gallery.

Hmm, that’d make a great framed print for my house. Err, slightly smaller that is. Not sure where I’d put it though.

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.

Most unexpected question from the media pack at 1 Treasury Place this morning: Should Premiers Lane have a possessive apostrophe?

(That Brendan is a joker.)

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.