Hard News by Russell Brown

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Hard News: No end of mileage

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  • Sam F,

    "the lad might get laid driving one of those. More likely than a '90 Corolla with imitation chrome hubcaps.."

    My first and current car is a '90 FX-VS Corolla sans fake chrome hubcaps... mind you, I was well served for female company before I bought it, so the hubcaps weren't such a matter of urgency. It took me a while to find it actually - a 3-door model with a manual shift and a decent-sized engine, without being a badly braked cop magnet like the FX-GT versions. Insurance costs are a big factor as well - in fact, as I'm under 25 my car is still legally my dad's property and me a nominated driver, to keep the prices somewhat realistic, even for third-party (I did fork over the $3000 purchase price myself, though).

    I caught the bus all the way through my undergrad degree, but finally spat the dummy in late 2005 when the monthly bus pass went up to $100. I've been amazed ever since at how convenient, fun and economical it was, and how stupid I'd been not to bother with it for the previous three years. As long as you use cycleways wisely and behave sensibly on the road it's a fairly safe option too.

    I deliberately chose a flat close enough to town for cycling, and coincidentally right on the Western rail line, so I sometimes treat myself to a train ride into town (just found out that walking to Kingsland Station instead of Morningside cuts the fare in half, from $2.80 to $1.40). 15 minutes to town. Last year I worked fulltime in Panmure for a month, and cycled from Mount Albert to the office and back daily, an hour either way. Not too difficult and saved a fistful of cash. You'd be amazed what can be done with a bike and determination.

    I generally use the car in situations where I need to a) go somewhere I can't either cycle or get a train/bus in reasonable time, or b) need to haul a bit of gear. I like the car for the extra comfort and convenience; I like the bike for the economy and the sheer fun of tearing along in the wind. You get to appreciate both and not rely on either. Oh, yes, we're talking about boy racers... maybe I move in sheltered circles, but I've never known anyone wealthy enough to meaningfully hot up any car, or stupid enough to race on the road. :)

    Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 1611 posts Report Reply

  • anjum rahman,

    mind you, I was well served for female company before I bought it, so the hubcaps weren't such a matter of urgency.

    i hate to break this to you guys, but no female is going to go out with you because of the size (or shape or shininess) of your hubcaps...

    hamilton • Since Nov 2006 • 130 posts Report Reply

  • stephen walker,

    so, let's see, we have:

    Cars are choice.

    my car. It is an extension of my household

    its a plain fact humans LOVE cars

    To whoever said 'driving is not a right', it is.

    more convenient than public transport will ever be

    people don't actually NEED great public transport

    you're asking a lot if you want to take my car away

    phew.
    how did humanity survive without cars for all those hundreds of thousands of years? what were they thinking, forgoing the pure convenience?

    and to add my 10 cents worth to the above list of invaluable quotations...
    cars suck
    yes, they may be convenient, but transforming your whole society and trashing the entire planet in 100 years for the sake of these crappy machines is, well, a bit of a screw-up, to put it mildly.

    y'see, until the 1950s, AKL had a perfectly good public transport system: electric frigging trams. until some bright spark decided he had to create an LA in the South Pacific (i'm not joking, this is true) (pdf) so they ripped up all the tram lines and over the ensuing 30 years turned the remaining public transport into a joke. but it didn't have to be that way. when they built all the outer suburbs, instead of friggin motorways they could've extended the tram lines.

    So, in summary, i agree with:
    Kirsten, Bart ,Tom Beard and Heather.

    because this 50-year driving binge is fast drawing to a close. the party's almost over and y'can all be on y'bikes. will cars disappear? nah. will one-car-for-every-over-16-year-old-based-society disappear. you bet.

    a litre of petrol does not even cost one-tenth of one hour's average wage. wait till it costs the same as an hours's wage. that's not as far away as we like to think. or not think about, as it were. the amount of WORK (remember school cert physics?) done by a litre of petrol is HUGE. but our oil-slave supply is just about past its peak...the down slope won't be pretty. because, y'know, EVERYONE (billions of Chinese and Indians included) wants their own car too. they deserve the convenience too, right?

    but, no cheap oil = driving reverts to an occasional luxury.

    and that solves the petrol-head problem, too, i suppose. nice.

    nagano • Since Nov 2006 • 646 posts Report Reply

  • dc_red,

    Stephen - definitely some food for thought there, but it's worth noting that almost every other city which had a street car/tram system tore it up too. That includes pretty much every other NZ city of any size. Such that we're now left with the Wellington Cable Car, and the "tourist" tram service outside MOTAT (created in the 1980s, I believe, to showcase all the disused trams they'd collected!).

    Internationally, the few cities that retained tram systems (Melbourne, San Francisco) seem to have benefited considerably.

    Oil Patch, Alberta • Since Nov 2006 • 706 posts Report Reply

  • 81stcolumn,

    Hands up who would ride on a bus/tram/train with a wireless uplink ?

    Footnote: Neither my wife nor I drive to work....and we live on the shore - tell me about__ need__.

    Nawthshaw • Since Nov 2006 • 790 posts Report Reply

  • Rebecca Williams,

    I should point out that my first car was a Morris 1800. Yes, a land crab. It was so uncool it was perversely cool.

    me too! lmao@perversely cool. mine broke a drive shaft in the middle of blimmin' queen street. fortunately i had a tall handsome friend with me who helped push the damned thing round the corner into victoria street and over to the side where we forlornly awaited a tow truck.

    indeed russell, kids would do drugs and girls (and boys) would get raped, cars or no cars. i suppose what i was trying to get to was that it's just as unrealistic to say "oh, poor yoof, leave them alone, they're just doing their thing" (public address system) as it is to say "these children are satan's spawn and should be ridden out of town on a rail!" (mayors of new zealand).

    very bad shit happens at the places young people congregate, however uncomfortable it is to accept for those of us who recall our own youthful congregations and simply had a bit of harmless fun and quite a good time. for the 99% who have a laugh and a formative social time, 1% gets fucked over and i think it's these ones that need to be thought about by communities, councils, families etc when we are ranting against being woken up at 2am in the morning.

    i feel a bit preachy. sorry about that.

    Auckland • Since Mar 2007 • 120 posts Report Reply

  • Rebecca Williams,

    ooh, i still get surprised by my mac's propensity to take it that i mean to click a button when i hover my mouse over it for too long. oh well, there's my post without a second read through!!!!!

    Auckland • Since Mar 2007 • 120 posts Report Reply

  • Rebecca Williams,

    Cars are choice.
    my car. It is an extension of my household
    its a plain fact humans LOVE cars
    To whoever said 'driving is not a right', it is.
    more convenient than public transport will ever be
    people don't actually NEED great public transport
    you're asking a lot if you want to take my car away

    crikey, we sound like american's with guns. scary.

    Auckland • Since Mar 2007 • 120 posts Report Reply

  • Bart Janssen,

    Brent and RB both state that Auckland isn't a great city to cycle in. And I see their point.

    I agree that the traffic on the roads is worse than it was. SUVs are a real menace for bikes because they generally can't see the bike.

    But it doesn't need to be like that.

    Yes we have hills, but downhill is lots of fun on a bike.

    The key to making cycling fun is to separate bikes from busses and cars. Bike lanes can be narrow and a bike path that runs under a road looks remarkably similar to a large drain pipe and is as easy to build. Most of suburbia could have bike paths between the backs of houses ie you alternate streets with bike paths. Anyone who has been to Davis CA will know what I mean.

    Make some of those changes and Auckland would be fun to ride in again. It would take the will to do it but it wouldn't actually cost that much.

    cheers
    Bart

    Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 4461 posts Report Reply

  • BenWilson,

    Steven and Rebecca, I have actually lived in Melbourne, and for a year I didn't have a car. In the end I bought one because it sucked arse not having one. Sure trams are great and Melbourne, being a flat city, wisely chose to make the roads wide enough to accomodate both cars and trams. In the few really old parts of town where they didn't, you can see why Auckland dropped them - there's nothing cool about driving along a 10 km road behind a tram that stops every 50 metres and you're not allowed to pass it because of disembarking passengers. So the traffic flow there is absolutely rotten, and the streets mostly empty (ie underutilized) for miles in front every tram. Also, I actually witnessed a tram crash and it was pretty scary to see a car shunted 25 metres sideways and the passenger crushed.

    I commuted on them every day for about 3 years, and I will say they were more enjoyable than buses, but nowhere near as much fun as the motorbike I eventually replaced that with, nor as cheap, fast or reliable.

    So why did I want a car? Because anything outside of a carefully regimented set of routes I had mastered for relatively short trips was just a pain in the date. Shopping was especially painful. Seeing friends/girlfriends spread around the vast city that was Melbourne was a pain. Going anywhere outside the city was a REAL pain. Transporting anything was a pain. And truth be told, even the stuff that trams were good for were still more of a pain than the equivalent car trip, like long commutes.

    Steven even when petrol costs an hour's wage, I'll still use it if it saves me an hour. I anticipate that we'll be getting a lot more miles for a litre progressively anyway. I'm not especially hooked on petrol, just self powered transport. If cars are electric they'll still be damned cool. Can't wait for the hybrid muscle cars that Toyota are making.

    Not that petrol will ever get that expensive for me given my hourly rate. Biofuel puts an upper limit on the price fuel can ever reach and it's waaaay less than an hour's wage for me per litre. Plug-in-hybrids already have absolutely fantastic fuel consumption, and that includes the fuel at the power station. We're talking 80km/litre or so. Less smokey and noisy too.

    Rebecca, it is true that cars kill more people than guns. But they also do a lot more good than guns. I still think those who hate cars are total ingrates. It's like hating penicillin because maybe it undermines natural selection. Penicillin can kill you too, if you are unlucky.

    Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 10657 posts Report Reply

  • BenWilson,

    Bart, I definitely agree that cycle ways should have higher priority. They are so cheap to make, for starters, and they dramatically improve road safety for cyclists. If we had a lot more of them perhaps the stackhat laws could be softened a bit too, which would get more women who don't want their hair fucked up onto bikes.

    I don't think they should really be eating into existing road space though. Footpath space perhaps, as in Europe, or roadside parking space. You soon get over the umbrage at bell ringing eurofascists yelling at you to get out of their way, after having one of them slam into you.

    I do have to say my experiments with electric power assisted cycles have been a total flop so far though. One of the points of a bike is that they are cheap and simple, and thus reliable. And you can thraaaash them. But E-bikes are none of those things, expensive, complicated, unreliable and very sensitive to jarring. For the sweet-fa extra power they give, it's not worth it.

    Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 10657 posts Report Reply

  • Nobody Important,

    They are probably too busy with check points or something or other but surely great punchups which often result in death and serious injury in NZ and get dragegd through the news for a week are worthy of a bit of attention.

    Back in my day the cops were too busy luring 16 y.o. shop assistants with self-esteem issues back to the station for consensual sex. But I take your point and you're right. This govt (and the one before it) are more focussed on revenue and 'outcomes'. Outcomes are easy when you can say "we ticketed X00 motorists"

    IT WAS A BABE MAGNET. Clapped out cars are not babe magnets. Ergo, my Morris was not clapped out.

    Ah, that would explain those calendars. The women are not drapped over the bonnets, they're stuck there, such is the the power of the babemagnetmobile ...

    expat • Since Mar 2007 • 319 posts Report Reply

  • stephen walker,

    The vox pop from hell...

    I further noted that "Quite a bit of what passes for the culture of the nation is really a reflection of the price and availability of energy. Cheap energy has given rise to a culture of physical dispersion, if not sprawl, coupled with a sense of personal entitlement to private and energy-intensive forms of transportation, housing, and many other things."

    what a classic. karma in action, maybe?

    nagano • Since Nov 2006 • 646 posts Report Reply

  • BenWilson,

    Stephen, I'd say it's a major factor, for sure. I've also heard the idea that the US style of dispersion is actually a generalized defence policy against nuclear war, and their road layout is similarly military in inspiration, with the insistence that aircraft can land pretty much anywhere in the whole country. Similar inspiration to the design of the internet. Decentralization and massive redundancy.

    Of course the Russians just made more nukes so they could just flatten the entire place, and even if the US did come out of nuclear holocaust with more survivors it's still a fuxored scenario, and the end of their global dominance, and possibly the whole species.

    I'm inclined to think most changes in human behaviour are primarily driven by technological changes. Which means it's almost impossible to predict the future, unless you also know the future of science. Since scientists don't even know that, I'm not optimistic. I mean this whole energy debate could be made obsolete by fusion power, and future people will just laugh at our doomsday peak oil predictions. There could be quite simple solutions to global warming that some bright spark will find. So many major issues may have 95% technical solutions.

    Unfortunately we can't plan around what we don't have and don't know, so we have to go with existing tech in all our plans.

    Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 10657 posts Report Reply

  • Michael Fitzgerald,

    Australias drive for nuclear energy is the smoke screen by which they seek to hide their ambition to become a regional nuclear power. The only saving grave may be the great state vs federal seperation preventing Howards expansion plans.
    Sure this is a conspiracy theory but a hell of a sound one. As it follows Bush/Howard/Blairs thinking on Iran and what dear Israel is doing.

    Since May 2007 • 631 posts Report Reply

  • Russell Brown,

    The only saving grave may be ...

    Good Freudian!

    Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 22850 posts Report Reply

  • Richard Llewellyn,

    "Australias drive for nuclear energy is the smoke screen by which they seek to hide their ambition to become a regional nuclear power."

    Michael, you may or may not be right on that one, I dunno if I want to get into the 'Deputy Sheriff wants real weapons' argument, but there is a much more prosaic reason why nuclear energy is inching its way back onto the public agenda in Australia.

    Like most countries, they have rising energy demand, rising energy costs, and dwindling supplies of traditional and 'safe' energy sources. Unlike most countries, they've got a shit-load of the key ingredient for nuclear power, uranium. Its only natural that more decision-makers will start looking longingly at that uranium on cold winter nights ...........

    Mt Albert • Since Nov 2006 • 399 posts Report Reply

  • Nobody Important,

    New Zealand must build it's own Nuclear Power Station if we are to compete effectively in the Global Economy! Why should we play catch-up with Australia?! This is an opprtunity for NZ to display it's technological advantages on The World Stage! Safety is not an issue if we build it on [choose a remote] Island!

    expat • Since Mar 2007 • 319 posts Report Reply

  • BenWilson,

    Choose remote non-volcanic island in NZ? Good luck.

    Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 10657 posts Report Reply

  • Michael Fitzgerald,

    Russell - a grave mistake indeed.


    Nobody said -
    "This is an opprtunity for NZ to display it's technological advantages..."

    Is Broad Band :

    a) an essential part of our infrastructure
    b) the group "When the Cats away"
    c) All of the above - very dated and over hyped

    Since May 2007 • 631 posts Report Reply

  • Nobody Important,

    er ... in case it wasn't obvious: I was__ taking the piss __with my justification for going noocular - it's the sort of reasoning one sees in the MSM

    and, following the utube links on pg 12 from jon_knox I also discovered this one
    whilst military grunts aren't noted for their mental fitness I would have thought even an imbecile would know better than to use German deathmetal as the soundtrack for your US Killing Machine vid??? The Nazis would be proud ...

    expat • Since Mar 2007 • 319 posts Report Reply

  • Craig Ranapia,

    er ... in case it wasn't obvious: I was taking the piss with my justification for going noocular - it's the sort of reasoning one sees in the MSM

    Well, Nobody,back in the day nobody was extracting the urine while penning furious editorials about how electricity period was an unspeakable menace to human health, the Model T Ford was a novelty that was never going to catch on, and the printing press? Well, it was just going to lead to the brain death of civilization and give the peasants silly ideas. I think you can fairly criticise the MSM for not exactly showing the highest standards of scientific or statistical literacy, but please let's not encourage media Luddites any more than we do already.

    North Shore, Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 12370 posts Report Reply

  • stephen walker,

    Model T Ford was a novelty that was never going to catch on

    but unfortunately it did.
    and we ended up with a trashed planet
    a dead-end car culture
    and petrol-heads causing moral panic.

    nagano • Since Nov 2006 • 646 posts Report Reply

  • Michael Fitzgerald,

    We have always had moral panic.
    It's ultimately not about the youth, it's about the changing perceptions of the old - the bifocals and viagra.
    The denial of aging - like over 30's speaking for the youth of today!
    If 'I' haven't changed, it's must be them - blame the youth (if you can see/catch them).

    Since May 2007 • 631 posts Report Reply

  • stephen walker,

    "Unfortunately we can't plan around what we don't have and don't know"

    an oblique reference to rumsfeldian poetry, perhaps?

    **The Unknown**
    As we know,
    There are known knowns.
    There are things we know we know.
    We also know
    There are known unknowns.
    That is to say
    We know there are some things
    We do not know.
    But there are also unknown unknowns,
    The ones we don't know
    We don't know.

    —Feb. 12, 2002, Department of Defense news briefing

    but what we do know, is that we live on a finite planet. and our economic system is predicated on never-ending "growth" (i.e. using up the finite resources at an ever-increasing speed. so unfortunately we are planning around what we don't have--ever-increasing supplies of petroleum and natural gas for transport, agriculture, manufacturing, electricity, etc.
    placing your faith in "unkown" new technology to solve all our energy problems seems about as realistic as, i dunno, a cargo cult? ha

    nagano • Since Nov 2006 • 646 posts Report Reply

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