Praise For Late Buses

To get to the family homestead for Christmas, the first step was to catch the bus from my local stop. Knowing the timetable, and how long it takes to walk to the bus stop, i was right on schedule...

Then i realised that carrying all my luggage and a bag of Christmas presents was slowing my pace. While 3pm on a hot summer's day is not the ideal time to do a jog through the neighbourhood while carrying waaay too much stuff - that's what i had to do.

Arriving at the bus stop 1 minute after the scheduled time, the electronic display informed me that i had not missed the bus - but that it would be a couple of minutes late. Just enough time to catch my breath, and have some gratitude for the occassional delay.

Twas Days Before Christmas

Riding my bike along the bicentennial pathway (between coronation drive and the river) i'm getting into top gear and building up some speed, when i hear a "Hello David!" from a passing pedestrian.

It was a friend of mine who had moved to Adelaide a few years ago. Turns out that she (plus hubby & offspring) are moving to Brisbane - which is good news indeed (in my opinion).

Friend (plus child) were headed for the ferry terminal for a 'ride on the river'.

Sunday Night Help

So last night i'm walking home through the suburb of Indooroopilly. A Chinese guy asks me for directions to a bus to the city.

It was hard to describe the bus stop location, so i walked with him (it was kind of on my way). Turns out he's currently doing a PhD at uni - and is living on the northside (which explains the unfamiliarity with westside buses).

Remembering The Departed

So today is remembrance day, where we take time to remember those who, through the unwanted circumstance of war, died for noble principles such as freedom and democracy.

I recently read that the number of deaths on Austalian roads is now over double that of WWI, WWII, Korea and Vietnam combined. It's a stat that sticks in my mind.

So while i pay tribute to those who died for the sake of future generations like us, i can't help but feel sorrow for the 170,000+ that died for nothing at all.

Bike Stats

Last time, i showed how popular bikes are becoming. Today i found some more stats about bikes:

- about 100 bikes can be made from the materials used for one car
- bikes use 1/50th of the energy of a car
- bikes use 1/20th of the parking space
- a new bike costs around 1% of a new car

and while these are all really great, i reckon they're only part of the reason why people are getting onto bikes.

Wheely Popular

Spotted this graph of bike and car production.


Car production is increasing, but many more people are discovering the economy and exercise of the good old bicycle.

If Cars Were Drugs

Continuing my reading from yesterday, i found that each year..

1,700 Australians die in car accidents
4,000 Australians are disabled by car accidents
2,400 die of air pollutants (which cars produce half of)
48,000 people are hospitalised from transport accidents

Possibly because i used to work in pharmaceuticals, i wondered "If cars were a new drug, would the government even allow them into the market?"

Costly Cars

I read that in 2007, the RACQ estimated the total cost of owning a car to be 100-300 bucks a week ($5,200-$15,600 per year) when everything was included - fuel, loan interest, rego, insurance, depreciation, racq membership, tyres, services, repairs...

The scary thing is that this assessment was based on a fuel price of 113.5 cents (now just a dream) and didn't even include parking costs or the costs of making an insurance claim (eg. the excess). And there are probably more..

Meanwhile, a friend of mine is paying a few hundred bucks to get her windows made slightly darker!

Green Wave

On my blogroll is Copenhagen Cycle Chic and it is there that i found this great clip of a "Green Wave". (Music is Danish)



All the traffic lights are timed so that cycling at 20kph means every traffic light is green.

Over a Barrel

As if global warming wasn't enough reason to ween ourselves of oil, Alan Durning presents the following graph showing oil price rises and recessions.


He notes that the increased oil prices (since 2003) took hundreds of billions out of the US economy. Possibly the sudden rise in price also made some families unable to keep up with their sub-prime home loans. He concludes that less oil addiction would make us less vulnerable to price shocks.