Keeping the enemy at bay

Margaret Thatcher died not long ago. Love her or hate her, what cannot be denied is that she left her mark. I grew up in the UK in the 1970s and 80s and have a strong memory of her. Primarily it is through the eyes of 'The Young Ones' with Rick shouting things like "Thatcher's ruddy Britain!" the whole time.


What strikes me is how much she looked like Meryl Streep:


A bit like Lindy Chamberlain used to:


Lady Thatcher is credited with saying a few things including the mythical, "A man who, beyond the age of 26, finds himself on a bus can count himself as a failure." One thing she definitely did say though is, "In my lifetime all our problems have come from mainland Europe and all the solutions have come from the English-speaking nations across the world."

Really? All our problems?

When I lived in the UK, there was the ever present threat of the problem of a reliable and functioning train service intruding from mainland Europe. Mrs Thatcher successfully kept that at bay. One of their best secret weapons was the "we've had a centimetre of snow and the points have frozen" excuse. It was hugely successful. Even though she is long gone, her legacy seems to remain in England. The British have the dubious honour of the most expensive train tickets in Europe.

Another dreadful threat from mainland Europe was a functioning and high quality health service. I thought we were in big trouble with the National Health Service. However, plucky Mrs Thatcher stuck to her guns (as did Tony Blair after her) with a slow and deliberate strategy of internal markets and sub-contracting. They're slowly making headway.

To their credit, the whole way through my childhood, the Government showed steely resolve in steadily eliminating the European threat of providing all citizens with the freedom of getting around at low cost and under their own steam. In the late 1970s, kids my age were probably the last of misguided generation who thought that it was somehow appropriate to ride a Raleigh Chopper around the neighbourhood. That sort of ridiculous behaviour has rightly all but been eliminated.

Australia (another English-speaking nation full of solutions) did the same but just to make sure, it carpet-bombed the problem with an all ages mandatory helmet law. Genius. And that is one of the reasons why you never see this type of crazy foreign mainland-European threat:


(Borrowed from here)
Children on bikes? Pfft. Look at them. They're clearly on drugs.

I do not know why but it seems to be mainly English-speaking countries that have the problem with this.

I have never understood why. Without too much effort, it is possible to think of a number reasons why it is beneficial to develop a transport and planning system that does not have the car at its heart for every single journey no matter how short and no matter how many other people may be going in exactly the same direction at exactly the same time. They include:

• it is cheaper;
• it is safer;
• it is more democratic;
• it is healthier in so many ways;
• it is better for business - both through exposure and to the fact that there is more disposable income available;
• and so on.

How a transport system with the private car as its primary focus was allowed to develope is clear. Back then, it seemed like it would work. Nobody seems to have predicted that the system would eventually suffocate under its own weight. We now know better and slowly but surely the public opinion seems to be turning. Despite that and true to form, we still have two recent announcements for huge pointless road projects - one in Melbourne ($8 bn) and one in Queensland ($6.7 bn). To put it in perspective, that total is more than the entire Gonski reform. They have 'barely raised an eyebrow'. On top of that, the Australian Automobile Association is demanding better roads (in other words, more money). The claim is that it is for "all Australians" but have a look at the sample petition letter to your local MP and you see it is for the minority of the population with access to a car - "As a motorist, ..."

Why do we persist with a system that excludes well over half the population? One that not just encourages the least efficient way of getting around but actively discourages others? There is no reason other than the type of thinking that led to that ridiculous and embarrassing comment for which Margaret Thatcher will always be famous.

Sudden realisation

Adelaide is weird.

We have just finished the school holidays. If you did not read in the paper all of the tips for keeping children entertained during the holidays, you probably wouldn't have noticed. Actually that is wrong. You know it is the school holidays because the number of cars drops by a third in the morning rush hour. Regardless, whether it is the school holidays or not, whether the sun is shining or not, you almost never see children in the street. That is, hanging out and playing and being normal.

It dawned on me the other day that while you may see adults walking around, the vast bulk of them are doing it not to get anywhere but solely to keep fit. That is not a criticism of course - merely an observation.

People who walk places in Australia are just like people who ride bicycles.

You get a tiny minority who make a conscious choice to walk places, perhaps holding a calico bag or shopping basket on the way. On the other hand, some do not make the choice. It is left to them because they do not have access to the dominant and almost exclusive form of transport. They are the utility walkers and are seldom seen.

For a couple of hours in the morning and afternoon on a weekday, you'll see people walking to work too. Often they are in their work gear but with sneakers on. Others will be in their fitness gear. They are the commuter walkers.

But far and away the biggest group are the fitness walkers. It struck me the other day when I was in Golden Grove. That is a 1980s housing development that is totally car-centric. Great wide arterial roads and car parks are everywhere. It was the evening and there seemed to be a good number of people just walking the streets. You could tell they weren't going anywhere. They were just walking for the sake of it. All were dressed in tight pants (lycra - what else?), sports tops with reflective stripes and specialised walking sneakers - with little reflective swooshes on them. And they were walking with purpose. And breathing heavily.


A pair of "walkers" as found in Australia
As with people on bikes, the biggest group of walkers consists of the people who come out at the weekend specially dressed to go nowhere in particular but to go up lots of hills in the process.

We are weird.

In the news

Since the Australian Formula 1 Grand Prix moved to Australia all those years ago, outside of the country very few people have actually heard of Adelaide. Sydney and Melbourne are generally well known but not so much the other cities, especially ours.

Occasionally though, we do make the news. Now that news spreads quickly through the Twittosphere, that can happen quite quickly and the news can spread fast. Regrettably, it is often for the wrong reasons. We all remember those 'lose your licence and you're screwed' adverts from the MAC and the reaction to them. It was not a good look.

Now it is the turn of the town of Clare and its newspaper, the Northern Argus. This has been retweeted more times than I could remember. The article is all about a crossing outside of the Clare Medical Centre. The problem has been rectified, you will be pleased to read, and "near misses should be a thing of the past".

Here's a picture of the crossing thanks to Google Streetview:



The "problem" is that elderly people are leaving the medical centre and crossing the road "in front of cars". They mistakenly think they have right of way.

So what do we do about it?

The road itself runs parallel to the main highway running through the centre of town. You can see it runs between Wright Place and Lennon Street - a distance of about 450m. The medical centre is helpfully pointed out:

You might think a pedestrian crossing could work there. You would be wrong of course. Even though one was installed on Pirie Street in the city recently, we are told it was "the first in South Australia" (not true) and "South Australian drivers aren’t used to zebra crossings".

Luckily, "the council has implemented a plan to avoid future accidents." The solution? Give way signs for pedestrians.

I kid you not.

In addition to the obligation to give way on a narrow and short road, pedestrians have other obligations too. "High visibility vests, tabards, arm bands or clothing will highlight your presence for a significant distance."

And my favourite to finish the article:

Clare neighbourhood watch are giving away high visibility vests for people who walk in early hours or at night, free of charge, thanks to the support of Clare Auto Centre.

Vests can be obtained from the Clare Police Station.

Now what's that saying about the inside of the lunatic asylum appearing normal to the inmates?

The 40 year excuse

One of my favourite blog posts to refer people to after a conversation about transport and urban planning is David Hembrow's much linked-to "all those myths and excuse in one post" post. They are all there.

A common one is the 40 years ahead excuse. It is even the subject of a widget:
As the post says, it is wrong anyway. The actual figure (assuming it is even relevant) is more like 15 years. What was done 40 years ago has long since been replaced and improved.

Not that long ago, part of the Parade in Norwood was resurfaced. It must have cost a fair bit. There was lots of serious machinery and a lot of tarmac. It took a couple of weeks. It was quite depressing to watch. Here was an opportunity to make some changes to the road layout as part of ongoing maintenance but it was left exactly the same. There is bountiful off-street parking but the few on street parks were kept there, blocking buses from pulling out and providing a door zone for anyone game enough to ride a bike along there.

More recently, part of O'Connell Street in North Adelaide was resurfaced:



and a close up:



Again, no change whatsoever to the road layout. I wondered how long it has been since that road was last resurfaced and so I asked by making a Freedom of Information request.

I spoke to a very helpful fellow at the council. He explained that the asset life is generally estimated to be around 25 years. However, it quite often ends up being shorter than that. The stretch of O’Connell Street that was just resurfaced was last done 15 years ago. That is no uncommon. For example, the council is finding that Grenfell Street is wearing out more quickly since the bus lanes opened. That seems to me to be a good thing. It shows that the buses are now able to travel along that stretch of road at a decent speed instead of crawling along stuck behind a line of traffic as they used to be. The drawback of course is that the road wears out more quickly.

Another thing that determines the life of the road is its foundation. On busy roads, you need a decent 50cm foundation. Where you start seeing potholes, like there are on Jeffcott Street at the moment, that is often because the foundation is a bit inadequate for the level of traffic that the road is experiencing.

A quick but important aside: different levels of government are responsible for different roads. The vast bulk of our roads are in fact council run and maintained. It is only really main arterial roads that are the responsibility of the State Government. This map shows which ones



You can see that Adelaide City Council is responsible for everything inside the ring road. That includes very busy roads like North, South and West Terrace, the café strips, Grenfell Street with its bus lanes and everything in between. The paltry amount that motorists pay for registration (not to be confused with compulsory third party insurance which is the bulk of the payment) does not go towards any of those roads. It is all paid for by local residents and business paying their rates. All those many motorists who come into (and through) the city do not pay for the roads through registration and petrol tax. Someone else pays. Granted, the city workers indirectly contribute by supporting the businesses that own the buildings for which rates are paid but it is far from a user pays system. Those motorists who simply pass through do not contribute at all.

Rates provide less than 50 percent of the revenue of the Council, with other revenue gained from fees & charges (including parking fees that are the subject of so many complaints), external funding, borrowings and commercial operations.

The Federal Government has its ‘Roads to Recovery’ program which provides road funding to local councils but it is funding that must be applied for. It does not come automatically. I was told Adelaide City Council receives $850,000 a year. It is not a great deal. Roads are very expensive.

With such limited funding sources it is perhaps not surprising that it takes a while for holes to be fixed and roads to be upgraded.

Getting back to my point, 15 years is not that long ago. Titanic won the Oscar for best picture, Microsoft released Windows 98, Google was founded and season 4 of Friends was broadcast. However in other respects it is a very long time. 15 years ago, most of today's children were not alive. It is topical because of what this recently posted video shows:


A whole bunch of children in the last 15 years have been denied independent mobility. That is a whole generation.

There is no excuse for such a crap and undemocratic system. The frequency of road maintenance shows that genuine upgrades could easily be part of that budget. And there is no excuse for crapness either. Bus lanes, well designed intersections, roads and neighbourhoods that stop rat-running and quality cycling infrastructure are all part of the same road transport system. They should all be paid for out of the same budget.

Melbourne Bike Share

So I had another romantic weekend away in Melbourne a couple of weeks ago. I highly recommend it. This time round we saw the Australian Ballet do a triple bill of modern ballet pieces. Just beautiful. See it if you can.

Next morning we went to the Art Gallery to see the Monet exhibition. Being a philistine I never knew that Monet spent many years developing his garden in Giverny, about 70km north east of Paris. That then led to Monet's many paintings of lilies, his green bridge and other flowers:


Our hotel was opposite the MCG. Below is a map of the area. The orange arrow points to the hotel (I fear I am fairly crap with graphics programs so a dodgy arrow is the best I can do). The Art Gallery, as I am sure you know, is where the purple arrow is pointing:


On our first day, to get to the arts centre, we walked along Wellington Parade and then picked up the free city circle tram near where the Hotel Lindrum is. That took us to Flinders Street station and then we walked across the bridge to South Bank.

The next day I was determined to have a go on the bike share bikes and luckily there was a station near the hotel (where the blue arrow is pointing). Had it not been that close, I would not have been allowed. The system is very easy to use and very cheap. You pay $2.70 for the whole day and as long as each journey you make is less than 30 mins you don't pay anything else. Just climbing into a taxi is more expensive than that.


As we all know, Australia is one of three countries in the world with all ages helmet laws. There were about 6 bikes at the station but only one helmet. However a sign where you pick up the bike tells you they are closer than you think:


The 7-Eleven I was directed to was about 800 metres away in the opposite direction from where we wanted to go. Also, when the system was introduced there were a number of complaints about a lack of helmets at the 7-Elevens. I didn't fancy a wasted walk so I broke the law instead.

The bikes themselves are great - comfortable and smooth with a functional little luggage rack on the front. The gearing makes the bikes quite slow even in top gear but that kind of works because you end up spending a lot of time on the pavement and journeys are quite short.

We passed another set of bikes near Federation Square and I was able to pick up a helmet there. That meant I was no longer a criminal. I have to say though the helmets are probably the cheapest crappiest examples I have ever seen. And they make you look like a total goob. Before that I had been rolling through the streets looking all debonair with my linen jacket flapping in the breeze. The image was totally destroyed once I put the plastic hat on. A total turn off.

And completely unnecessary. I'd been on the pavement the entire time. Everyone we passed was fine about it. I was doing maybe 12 km/h tops. Is the plastic hat really necessary? There was no way I was going to walk to the 7-Eleven and back. Had I not had a specific intention to use the bikes, like most people, I would not have bothered.

Now it may be that there are other reasons for the woeful performance of Melbourne's bike share compared to other cities. I doubt it though. Dublin uses the same system - with fewer bikes. It is just as hilly and the weather is much worse. Yet it easily outperforms Melbourne by a mile. A combination of ditching the blue hat requirement and setting up a decent grid of safe bike lanes would transform it.

After Monet's exhibition, we took the bikes to see Legally Blonde the Musical (of course). This time, although there were plenty of bikes, there was not a single helmet. Again, the 7-Eleven was "closer than you think" but really? For a 5 minute journey? We both broke the law initially and then found some again near Federation Square. So after a brief spell of feeling just a little bit European, we went back to looking like the two guys off the Motor Accident Commission advert:



Not sure I'll bother next time.

When we dropped the bikes off, there were 3 helmets for 7 bikes (the largest ratio we'd seen). Something tells me they would not have been there a couple of hours later.

What if you build it and they don't come?

I got a bit depressed a little while ago. I was reading a superbly well-researched article about a town north of London called Stevenage. The article was about its network of off-road bicycle routes and the fact that not many people really uses them. There is also a shorter but just as good article on the European Cyclists' Federation website.

Borrowed from the article, which is written by Carlton Reid.

A couple of lessons come from the article. The first is that this was a different time. The paths were built in the 1950s and 1960s. Car ownership was expanding quickly and there was nothing like the congestion we experience now - especially the UK. At the same time, car use was not curtailed at all. The bike paths were there but it was just as easy, in fact easier, to get everywhere by car. The network has not been updated or expanded on since the 1970s. Since then, new shopping centres have been built further out of town that are not reached by the current network. Finally, it was never updated. It's effectively frozen in the 1970s. Compare that to the Dutch who have continuously improved their system since then.

A further lesson is that building infrastructure is just one of a number of things that are required to change transport practices. It is not just about bikes but rather about a coordinated package of planning and urban design policies that lead to a democratic choice of ways of getting around.

The great difficulty for Adelaide is that not only is it one of the most carcentric cities around, it feels like it has always been that way. It is as if alternatives simply cannot be contemplated. They have to be though because what we have now is unsustainable and it disempowers a large segment of the population, including all children, the elderly and anyone without their own car.

Re-engineering the entire built environment is not really politically realistic. Not overnight anyway. What needs to happen is that a network begins in the CBD and expands outwards. Utility cycling practically does not exist in Australia but more and more people are commuting by bicycle. Whatever changes are made first must be highly visible and be seen to be working. Aiming at those commuter cyclists first of all and the motorists who sit in stationary traffic alongside them is probably the most effective way to make your point to start with.

It is for that reason that I think the Danish style of bike path would work best in Adelaide at first. It is sometimes criticised but by comparison to Adelaide, it is light years ahead.

You only have to speak to anyone in Adelaide who has spent their life getting around by car to realise that they do not get it. Cycling friendly nations around the world may as well be on Mars. Any form of transport that is not a car is so far off their radar that you may as well be speaking to a fridge. For any changes to be made, there has to be some public support. At the moment, there isn't because there is very little misunderstanding.

Adelaide has wide streets with plenty of space for the road to be rearranged but without any obvious impact on motorised traffic. Lanes can be narrowed or, as happened very successfully in Grenfell Street, lanes can be reallocated to public transport. Or bicycles.

A series of wide raised lanes that do not disappear at intersections would be a visible reminder that taking the bicycle is a genuine alternative. The width of course must be sufficient for passing and talking side by side. You can in a car, on foot or on a bus. Why not on the bike lane?

Here is a view from Google Streetview where you can see a lane halfway through being built:

Here are a couple more borrowed from Hamburgize:


And the finished product:

There are also good views on two posts on Copenhagenize. Indeed, at first, it need not necessarily involve raised lanes of that style. Separation can be achieved in other ways too.

But it is why I think adopting the Danish style of bike path at first will make such a dramatic change at modest cost. It is something that is easily achievable and highly visible.

And it's not about arrogance or forcing people to adopt a particular way of getting around. It is about giving everyone the choice - something that is lacking at the moment. In fact, I could not put it better than this comment:

... just sensible and economic: a very effective way of increasing mobility while reducing congestion and using available city space better, at low cost.

The fact is, there is a direct correlation between modal share and quality of infrastructure that can be seen between countries and within them. That means the right treatment depending on the designation of the road so that there is a continuous network that is useable for everyone.

Another English town that experimented with segregated infrastructure is Milton Keynes (also north of London but you have to catch the train from Euston rather than Kings Cross). Its paths became known as Redways and, like those in Stevenage, had mixed results. A good balanced article about them is on the Cycling Embassy of Great Britain website.

For a recent thorough and well-written description of the Danish system, see Voleospeed.

Yay Adelaide City Council

For some time now, every time I crossed Pirie Street outside the Adelaide City Council Administration Centre I would stand and wonder why the groups of people on both sides of the street would have to wait for cars to pass only to watch them have to slow down and join the stationary traffic queue 20 metres down the road.

The wondering is over because at long last, the council has installed a pedestrian crossing:


Yay!

I would like to think it was because of some feedback I provided to the draft Integrated Movement Strategy but it wouldn't have been. A crossing there has been obviously missing for ages. Everybody would have suggested it. Now all we need is one outside the market entrance on Gouger Street - and probably a few other places.

This one even has little warning signs on the green bike lanes:


And just next to it, there is a new bike corral:


Good stuff. Keep it coming.