Posts Tagged ‘going solar’
Major Cities Unit
Posted in Policies by Maeztri on November 11th, 2008
The section below is republished with permission from the Going Solar Transport Newsletter #84, 4 November 2008, compiled by Stephen Ingrouille. Going Solar newsletter provides an excellent commentary on local sustainable transport issues in Melbourne.
“If Australia is to maintain our prosperity, our cities must become more productive, more competitive, more innovative. At the same time they must be sustainable. … To make our cities more liveable and to improve the quality of life and sense of community for all who live in them. For this to happen we must have a long term vision for our cities. … Meeting the climate change challenge requires a whole of government approach which must include the planning of our cities. We must engage in the debate about the impact of alternative urban policy visions on climate change. For example,this is an important context when we are debating the planning of higher density housing alongside better public transport corridors. Or considering decentralised commercial centres which minimise the need for people to travel long distances to work, and provide community infrastructure where people live. …
Tags: city unit, community infrastructure, going solar, policy, roads, sustainable city, transport
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Airline Trash Landings
Posted in Policies by Devin Maeztri on October 28th, 2008
The section below is republished with permission from the Going Solar Transport Newsletter #82, 21 October 2008, compiled by Stephen Ingrouille. Going Solar newsletter provides an excellent commentary on local sustainable transport issues in Melbourne.
“Years after recycling became second nature at home, the aviation industry is taking the first steps to introduce recycling on flights and in airports. These early moves - including a Virgin Blue trial of in-flight recycling and the installation of recycling bins at Sydney Airport - follow a report that found American airlines throw out enough aluminium cans every year to build 58 new 747 jets.
Tags: aviation industry, energy, going solar, transport
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More on the CBD Bus Accident
Posted in Policies by Devin Maeztri on October 7th, 2008
The section below is republished with permission from the Going Solar Transport Newsletter #79, 30 September 2008, compiled by Stephen Ingrouille. Going Solar, www.goingsolar.com.au/transport. This newsletter provides an excellent commentary on local sustainable transport issues in Melbourne.
“Unfortunately, this was an accident waiting to happen. It is ridiculous that Swanston St should be closed to car traffic but that these enormous coaches should be allowed to clog up the street during its busiest period. When the coaches are parked, cyclists are forced ride within a hairs breath of the coaches or cross into the path of the trams. In the wet (when tram tracks are very slippery for cyclists)this problem is even worse. The coaches should be removed.”
Ref: Reader’s Comment, The Age, 18/9/08
“Stung by criticism he failed to protect cyclists from the thousands of tour buses that choke one of the city’s main thoroughfares, an emotional [Melbourne] Lord Mayor John So last night banned buses from Swanston Street after a young woman riding to work was killed. … Melbourne City Council last year considered forcing tour buses from Swanston Street to a purpose-built terminal at Federation Square. But the council buckled under pressure from tour operators - which pick up 320,000 customers a year on Swanston Street from nearby hotels.”
Ref: Clay Lucas, The Age, 19/9/08
Tags: accident, bicycle, cyclist, going solar, sustainable urban transport, tranport
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Park(ing) Day
Posted in Movements by Devin Maeztri on October 6th, 2008
The section below is republished with permission from the Going Solar Transport Newsletter #79, 30 September 2008, compiled by Stephen Ingrouille. Going Solar, www.goingsolar.com.au/transport. This newsletter provides an excellent commentary on local sustainable transport issues in Melbourne.
“It’s a car park and when you put the money in the meter it’s essentially taking out a short-term lease on a space and you can do what you want with it,” said 29-year-old Alicia Hooper [Melbourne]…Since International Parking Day began in San Francisco in 2005, people have filled their car parks with beds, aquariums, putting greens and anything people can play with.
Ref: Hamish Townsend, The Age, 19/9/08,
From Flatbush Gardener
“Brisbane’s first Park(ing) Day will feature 47 parking spaces, joining hundreds of others across the globe, from New York to Rio De Janeiro. PedBikeTrans president Robyn Davies said Little Stanley Street will be dotted with Park(ing) spaces, and will feature street furniture and some more unusual aspects.”
Ref: Andrew Wight, Brisbane Times, 19/9/08
Tags: city, going solar, urban design and built form, urban space
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“The Story of Highways”
Posted in Research by Ferne Edwards on August 7th, 2008
The section below is republished with permission from the Going Solar Transport Newsletter #70, 29 July 2008, compiled by Stephen Ingrouille. Going Solar, www.goingsolar.com.au/transport. This newsletter provides an excellent commentary on local sustainable transport issues in Melbourne.
This article is a excerpt of the transcript taken from ABC Radio National program Rear Vision: “The Story of Highways” produced and presented by Annabelle Quince, 20/7/08, See: http://www.abc.net.au/rn/rearvision/stories/2008/2281165.htm
The Story of Highways
Annabelle Quince: Throughout the first part of the 20th century, Freeways were seen as the epitome of modernity, but by the end of the century this began to change. The motor car first arrived in Europe and the US at the end of the 19th century. But according to Peter Norton, historian of technology, engineering and society at the University of Virginia, the car wasn’t welcome on the city streets when it first appeared.
Peter Norton: A hundred years ago of course roads were not for cars, because cars were rare, and to make roads places where cars could go, they had to be redefined. It helps us understand what the street was like to city people then, if we think of what a city park is like to us today. It’s a place where we think of everybody as welcome, provided they don’t get in the way of others, don’t make a nuisance out of themselves, and don’t endanger other people. And it was in the nature of cars to be nuisances and dangerous, and so the early response was to blame the car and to restrict the car.
<!–more–>This started to change partly because people, who had an interest in selling cars and in a good future for cars, saw that this would really limit their future, this attitude would limit their future and that they would have to change it. And to do it, they had to do a number of things at the same time: one is to try to teach children to stay out of the streets. They could not rely on parents to do this because parents at that time thought of the street, at least residential streets, as proper playgrounds for children. So auto dealers and auto clubs did things like promote the construction of playgrounds, they got involved in school safety education where they taught children to look both ways before they crossed; they started sponsoring school safety patrols where the children would guide each other as they crossed the street, and most importantly, would teach children that the street is a place for cars and not for children.
They also had to get adults to concede the street to motorists as well, and reaching them was harder, and they did it in a number of ways, but I think the most effective and most interesting was a campaign to redefine walking in the street as an inappropriate thing to do, an inappropriate use of the street. And one way they did this was to invent a new term of ridicule, and direct that against pedestrians walking in streets. They used a mid-Western American term ‘Jay’ which was an insult; it meant that you were uneducated and rural, and they connected it with ‘walker’ and invented the term ‘Jay walker’ and it was used as a term of ridicule against pedestrians.
Annabelle Quince: The other way car companies and car associations changed our understanding of the road was to promote the construction of car-only roads. Thomas Zeller is a historian of Technology and the Environment at the University of Maryland.
Thomas Zeller: When we talk about roads exclusively for cars, sometimes they were called cars-only roads, there was a precedent in the United States in the 19-teens and 1920s, roads that were called ‘parkways’. Those were roads that were built exclusively for shall we say pleasure drives, and they were designed in such a way that the people who drive on them experience lovely views and then once those parkways are built in the countryside, they’re built so that they touch on the vantage points, and they go to the hilltops, and there are rest areas so people can enjoy the scenery. But then what we see in the ’30s especially, is that two European dictatorships take over this idea of highways exclusively for cars, and those are Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany, and in both of these countries you had lobbies, lobbies made up of middle-class car owners and the construction companies who would benefit from building those highways, the automotive clubs, their companies that would sell tyres, so there’s a whole coterie of interest that pushed for these automobile-only roads in the inter-war period.
Tags: ABC Radio, going solar, highways, transport
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Comments about our tram conductors
Posted in Policies by admin on July 29th, 2008
The section below is republished with permission from the Going Solar Transport Newsletter #69, 22 July 2008, compiled by Stephen Ingrouille. Going Solar, www.goingsolar.com.au/transport. This newsletter provides an excellent commentary on local sustainable transport issues in Melbourne.
Response - Tram Conductors
“Excuse this Sydneysider intruding into things Melbourne, but on our only light rail line from Central to Lilyfield, fare evasion was rampant, the ticketing system was not working and revenue loss was enormous. The company decided that roving conductors, even allowing for their wages bill, were justified - to cut out evasion and for the security of the drivers as well. The line became profitable and the company has never looked back. Melbourne’s trams would benefit from such a system for the same reasons. Even allowing for the wages, the incidence of fare evasion would almost be wiped out, as well as protecting the crew from physical attack.”
Ref: Frank McQuade, The Age, 14/7/08, URL
“So the reintroduction of tram conductors would make economic sense, and sparks a predictable flurry of support? I beg to differ. First, where does the report’s author think the connies are going to fit? Commuters can tell you that it’s barely possible to get a back-pack on board, let alone another human being. Second, it’s time to challenge the nostalgic view that all connies were benign beings focused on the greater good of society. There were good and bad connies. The good ones sometimes made our trips happier; the bad ones were a drain on the public purse. My observation is that other commuters are more likely to come to the aid of a dad with a pram or a traveller being accosted by an abusive drunk than were many connies. And, finally, regarding the possibility of increased patronage, is that a threat or a promise?”
Ref: Julia Hickey, The Age, 20/7/08, URL
Tags: conductors, going solar, tram, transport
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The cars that ate Melbourne….?
Posted in Research by Ferne Edwards on April 1st, 2008
The section below is republished with permission from the Going Solar Transport Newsletter #52, 25 March 2008, compiled by Stephen Ingrouille. Going Solar, www.goingsolar.com.au/transport. This newsletter provides an excellent commentary on local sustainable transport issues in Melbourne.
The Cars That Ate Cities
“When you’re in traffic these days, four-wheel drives are everywhere. Most of them are registered in the cities and rarely leave the bitumen. They can be deadly urban assault vehicles. Many of them guzzle fuel at a rate that makes the big Falcons and Commodores look like petrol misers. And the toxic emissions that many four-wheel drives spew from their exhaust pipes can rate up there with small trucks. Four wheel drive sales have boomed over the past decade; they now make up about a quarter of all new passenger vehicles sales in this country. In contrast, regulation by the federal and state governments is going at a snail’s pace. It’s been a similar situation in the United States, where four-wheel drives now rule the roads. New Australian safety research you’ll hear about on today’s program adds to the concern. …Actually here they’re now officially called Sports Utility Vehicles, or SUVs, as they’re called in America.”
Ref: Stephen Skinner, Background Briefing, The Cars That Ate Cities, Radio National 15/6/03
Read the full transcript: http://www.abc.net.au/rn/talks/bbing/stories/s881845.htm
Tags: cars, going solar, Radio National, traffic, transport, vehicles
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Melbourne’s sustainable transport: cycling
Posted in Visions by Ferne Edwards on January 17th, 2008
The section below is republished with permission from the Going Solar Transport Newsletter #42, 15 January 2008, compiled by Stephen Ingrouille. Going Solar, www.goingsolar.com.au/transport.
Sustainable Transport: Cycling
“The number of cyclists entering central Melbourne has doubled in the past year, according to the first comprehensive study of cycling in the City of Melbourne. [The] inaugural Bicycle Account summarises cycling trends, behaviour and safety in the CBD and inner suburbs.
A copy of the account obtained by The Age shows:
♦ Cyclists account for 8 per cent of all trips in the morning peak, up from 4 per cent last year.
♦ On-road cycling increased by 10 per cent and off-road by 20 per cent.
♦ Cyclists make up 22 per cent of traffic on St Kilda Road.
The number of cycling accidents is also decreasing. In 2005, there were 155 crashes, dropping to 146 in 2006. In the year so far, only 46 road crashes have been recorded. Crash figures could be much higher as many incidents go unreported or police are unable to prosecute because cyclists have been thrown from their bikes and cannot identify other vehicles involved.
But only 46 per cent of cyclists surveyed in the data said they felt safe riding in the City of Melbourne and 41 per cent said cyclists observed road rules. Lord Mayor John So said cycling had become a preferred mode of traffic in the CBD. ‘More than half of cyclists surveyed for this initiative described Melbourne as a cycle-friendly city. We want to ensure that even more cyclists share that view in the future,’ he said.
Ref: Stephen Moynihan and David Rood The Age 17/10/07
Republished with permission from the Going Solar Transport Newsletter #42, 15 January 2008.
Tags: cycling, going solar, sustainable transport, transport
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