All the wrong reasons

One of the most widely read bicycle blogs is Copenhagenize run by Mikhail Colville-Anderson. He's become a bit of a legend and has one of the coolest jobs around. He gets invited around the world to talk about bicycles.

Recently he was in Barcelona and he had plenty of positive things to say about it and what it was doing to encourage what he calls "citizen cyclists".

Today, it was South Australia's turn to get a mention. It coincided with the news that Adelaide is in the top ten most livable cities in the world, according to the Economist Intelligence Unit's latest survey. That survey measures "livability" by reference to a set of defined criteria. There is naturally a certain amount of subjectivity in choosing those things that are said to make a city livable. Low population density and crime rates seem to be things on which a city can score highly.

As we all know, if ease of getting places by bicycle were a criterion, Adelaide would alas not rate quite as highly as it does.

The mention on Copenhagenize was all about the new campaign from the Motor Accident Commission. It seems to be doing its best to make riding a bicycle have the image of something only losers do. Their latest "safety" campaign is called "Lose your licence and your screwed". The purpose seems to be to scare young drivers into obeying the rules because, as they say, without a licence you're screwed. It is literally impossible to live without a driver's licence and a car.

They have a series of banners, one of which has a picture of a couple on a bike:

Predictably, they have stupid looking helmets on that are obviously designed to make them look even more like dweebs. In any other country, you can see images of young people riding around giving their friends a lift. Scroll through the Amsterdamize website or his Flickr stream and you'll find dozens:

(One of thousands of great pictures on Amsterdamize)

There you go. Your tax dollars being spent on a campaign that effectively says you are a loser. Brilliant.

A great public service

It is that time of the year again. On my route home from work last year, I was swooped a couple of times by a killer magpie. It was horrible. No matter how much waving and shouting you do, they keep coming back. It started with just swooping (which is bad enough) but over time, it started pecking.

I took a large detour to avoid it.

Just the other day it was back which means a few months of avoiding that corner.

Gus at Adelaide Cyclists has put together a map of killer magpies as a public service. He already has getting on for 2000 members compared to the 4 people who occasionally chance upon this blog by accident so lots of people know about it already. Nevertheless, if you do not, I would encourage you to check the map before you take a trip and add to it if you are attacked. Other people will be grateful.


View 2011 Magpie attack map in a larger map

As you can see, they're everywhere.

One suggested solution is to lose the helmet for that stretch of road:

"Build more roads"

Who would have thought? According to a recent article, little detectors buried at every intersection in metropolitan Adelaide have been counting cars since 2003. They have apparently generated more than 42 billion records which will be used to study changes in traffic flows over time to help with planning.

This then led to a whole bunch of comments calling for more roads to be built because that will reduce congestion of course.

Those commenters who suggested more roads are necessary went the whole hog and asked for freeways. For example, comment 2 said simply "Build a decent freeway system" though what constitutes a "decent" system remains to be seen. Comment 6 asked for an "elevated highway from Greenhill Rd intersection with Anzac Highway through the parklands immediately west of the cemetery and Adelaide High through the outer west sector of the North Adelaide Golf No.2 with clover exits and entries East and West". Comment 49 was similar and asked for an elevated "South Road on stilts above current restricted south road. Make 3 lanes each way".

I think it is safe to assume that none of these people will live near these elevated freeways.

A few commenters bemoaned the MATS plan that was (thankfully) cancelled in the 1970s. Part of that plan was the proposed Modbury freeway which became the very successful north east busway. Parts of the plan have in fact been built, such as the Port River Expressway.

Two major parts of the plan led to its downfall I think. One was the Hills Freeway which would have connected the CBD with the start of the South Eastern Freeway. It would have cut through a number of eastern suburbs. The second was the Hindmarsh interchange. It consisted of a number of flyovers above each and in turn above the suburb of Hindmarsh. It would have been revolting.

A city does not need elevated highways to be economically viable. It may be nice for those people speeding along them to get home but the wider benefits are more questionable. I imagine people living underneath them would not be quite so enthusiastic. A comparison of Glasgow and Edinburgh reveals the difference as anyone who has visited the two cities will have seen. Edinburgh does not have any freeways running through it and it is doing just fine. Glasgow on the other hand is still suffering. There is a good post (with good pictures) on the War on the Motorist blog.

The fact is, building more roads does not solve congestion. There is not a single city in the world that has solved congestion by building more roads. There are some really well written studies that shows the effects of building more roads. Two particularly good ones are "Before and after opening of the M4 Motorway from Mays Hill to Prospect" and "Before and After the Motorway" by Michelle Zeibots.

Building yet more roads merely makes cars even more necessary because the alternatives slowly become impossible. Not being able to get around without a car then becomes a wider problem because people end up paying such a large portion of their income on running their car (or two).

We know it doesn't work. I would really like to us try something different.

Build it and they will come. From Wikipedia.

Saturday afternoon

So there I was. I'd been to school soccer. There was the lawn to mow, shopping to do, meals to plan, plenty of stuff to fix and shelves to put up. So I did what any reasonable person would do in that situation - made a cup of coffee and put the telly on.

On the ABC was a show called E2 Transport. It's a series made by PBS in the US and is about alternative transport forms to the car. One episode is about the London congestion charge.

This show was all about the Paris Velib bike hire. It was brilliant. Granted it was done slightly through rose-coloured spectacles but even so, the authorities over there have made some great achievements.

In planning the system, the authorities studied a number of systems around the world, some of which had been successful and some abject failures. Whether they looked at Melbourne was not made clear. When they were puttin gthe system together, they looked at the population in various areas of Paris including what businesses were in the area. They divided the city into 400 square meter blocks. Each has its own Velib docking station. The number of bikes is determined by the projected demand.

It has been a roaring success. Not only are the Velib bikes weel used but the authorities have found that cycling generally has increased and local bike shops can barely keep up with demand.

Servicingf so many bikes would be difficult but the company that runs the systems uses a big barge that sails back and forth along the Seine picking up broken bikes from cages. There are people that go around inspecting and servcing bikes. If they cannot fix something there and then, they take the bike to one of the cages on the bank of the river.

The right number of bikes and making them easy to use are key. Melbourne and Brisbane (and indeed Adelaide if it is planning this) could learn a thing or to. You would think the relevant authorities would already have looked at Paris and seen what works and what doesn't. Three particular words shout out at me as an obstacle to success. They are "mandatory", "helmet" and "laws". But hey, that's just me. Apparently, the Melbourne and Brisbane authorities are fairly certain that that has nothing to do with it.

You make up your own mind. Whatever you might think, the people of Paris seem to be doing ok. One drawback so far seems to be vandalism.

You can see a trailer of the show here and the entire series is on iTunes.

Borrowed from here.

An added bonus, if you're into that sort of thing, is that it is narrated by Brad Pitt.

I learned a new word

Well, it's two words really - "desire lines". I knew there was a phrase for them. If you visit a park, it might have footpaths all around it. Sometimes though, you can see a well worn part of the grass that has been walkled on repeatedly. It's like that because that is the way people want to walk. I've seen it too in the Ikea car park. There are little bushes around the edges (perhaps to offset carbon emissions). There are little holes through them where people walk through rather than walking backwards to the designated walk-through and then coming back.

There are pedestrian desire lines all over the city but regrettably they are littered with obstacles. There is a lot of pedestrian traffic between the central market and North Terrace where the railway station is.

A popular one is outside the markets on Gouger Street:

Closer to North Terrace, there is one on Flinders Street:

That one leads along a walkway, past the Adelaide City Council to Pirie Street:

At all of them, pedestrians have to wait. Drivers are generally pretty good in that if there is a traffic jam, they will keep the area clear so that people can get across. However, if traffic is moving, they do not stop.

It would be easy to require cars to stop when someone is waiting to cross. The roads are generally not fast moving and even if they were, drivers would only be delayed a few seconds and they would not get to the next red light quite as quickly.

On my walks around the city, I have only ever seen one crossing that actually requires cars to stop. It only really affects the line of taxis sitting outside the Disrict Court building. This is it:

It seems to connect the central market and Hilton Hotel with a bus stop. It is strange that it is there bacause I do not see it used much. If there is one there, it makes you wonder why there can't be more.

They would make a very small but significant difference.

The cost of parking yet again

The price of a parking ticket has made the news again. Adelaide Now has an article about parking fees in the CBD rising.

With no evidence at all, the article begins by saying "Rising city parking costs sting retailers". Although I have looked hard, I have not been able to find a study that has actually measured theh effect on retail spending of car parking fees.

One of the problems with the article is that it is confusing two things. It says:

Flinders St UPark users are among the worst hit, with hourly rates almost doubling since last year. A five-hour weekday park will cost commuters $25, compared with $13 previously. Weekend street parks also jumped from 30c to $1 when the Council reviewed its fees last month.

The $25 weekday cost for commuters is irrelevant to city retailers. That is the cost for people parking their car and going to work. The question is what casual visitors have to pay. That is shown in the next sentence. Most shopping is done at the weekend and we are told that on street parking fees have jumped (a massive) 30c to $1. How does that break the bank and damage retailers' business?

The council spokesperson who is quoted is dead right. Adelaide's parking costs are some of the cheapest in the country. Not only that, we have a huge number of inner city car parks compared say to Perth. When I was there recently, I did not see any evidence that it had damaged business. I am not sure parking could actually get much cheaper in Adelaide.

The article goes on to say:

Rundle Mall Management Authority chair Theo Maras said it was up to Adelaide City Council to provide affordable parking for people who were visiting or working in the city.

Well, no it isn't. It is up to Adelaide City Council to provide the an environment for the best transport options for everybody, taking into account individual benefits and the wider cost that is born by everybody. Providng "affordable" parking amounts to a subsidy. There's plenty of that already for motorists. We do not need more.

A space the size of the largest room in your house to store your car for only $

Borrowed from here

While we're talking about parking

When I have work to do, I very much enjoy procrastinating and finding interesting ways of putting it off. One of the best tools of this is Google Streetview. You can go on to the street in any city that has had a Google mobile drive through it. All of Australia is covered along with all of North America and a large chunk of Europe, Singapore, Japan and a whole bunch of other places.

I was checking out the design of some new suburbs in Denmark the other day and after crossing a bridge, came across a large shopping centre called Fisketorvet. This is the view from across the bridge:

Borrowed from here

And this is its entrance:

Borrowed from here

As you would expect for a shopping centre of its size, it offers 2000 car parks. The first three hours are free. If you go to the cinema inside the complex, they will give you a free parking permit at the ticket office.

What is great is that bikes are not forgotten. The entrance is a u-shaped driveway that allows cars to come in and drop people off or pick them up. A wide bike path goes the who way around and then leads to separate, raised lanes over the bridge.

The bike path leads to a bike park with space for 600 bikes. It is difficult to find a picture so here is the Google Streetview image:

View Larger Map

This is what choice looks like. How hard would it be to make this mandatory for new shopping centres and large shops? It would add nothing to the cost and its benefit is that it recognises the number of people who do arrive at these places using a transport method other than the car - or who would if they actually had a choice.