Island Life: Get over it
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Some figures for consideration re the AKL harbour bridge cyclelane costs. According to TNZ's own info hidden away on their web site, the average construction cost for recent major bridge projects nationwide is approx. $1,500/m2. Assume the bridge is 1,200m long and is widened 1m each side (to add to the space created on the existing bridge deck) and you arrive at just under $4 millon. The rate/m2 is for new bridge construction and may be high? for just widening work, but this is a tricky site so it may be appropriate.
Obviously this is just ball park stuff but is closer to the $3-5 milion figure rather than the $30 to 40 million TNZ has estimated.
The same TNZ info has the average cost increase from tender at 17%.
The entire brand new Upper Harbour bridge and casueway at Greenhithe cost $36 million. Hard to see how a bit of widening on the other harbour bridge can cost the same. -
Jason:
Thanks for posting those figures... extremely interesting stuff! It certainly makes Transit's $30-40M look a little odd.
Stephen:
That CHCH guys obviously has the same commute as I do (or, rather, used to) -- I recognize all those spots. The whole video is just like an average morning commute as far as I'm concerned. I wouldn't even blink at any of it.
The thing that upsets me is hoons throwing bottle at you. I had a spectacular splinter of glass sticking out of my helmet as a result of a hoon's handiwork. Knew there was a reason we had to wear those helmets.
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God, Stephen. Is that you biking?
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Josh Campbell is a teacher in Chch who bikes to work every day, and that's a montage of the, er, highlights from his handlebar-mounter camera.
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And people go to special parks with ramps and half pipes and jumps and all sorts of rubbish to get their thrills.
Looked to me like the average bike commute should get everyone's heart pumping enough.
They could put that on one of those immersion rides at Disneyland and have everyone sitting on little bike seats with pedals and throw them around with big surround screens and sounds. No one would ride bikes in the real world again.
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It's pretty typical for my ride in Wellington. I have a scary moment probably every other ride. Scary for me that is - if you were in a car, seeing what Josh's video shows, it'd be annoying but not life-threatening. Which I think in the end is why motorists feel that they're not really as bad as all that, while cyclists think that motorists are dangerously careless bastards.
I've been brooding about this off and on for years now, and I have finally come to this conclusion:
When I was a kid, biking to school, there were lots of cyclists at school rush hour, rather than the school run. And motorists expected them to be there, and drove accordingly.
Nowawdays this isn't true. Cyclists are rare, and so motorists don't look out for them. And I now believe they never will. Why would they? Cyclists are rare. No amount of awareness campaigning will get people to pay attention to a hazard that they don't encounter frequently. Cyclists are rare.
In the days when cycling was common, there were certain factors that contributed. 1, cars were relatively more expensive. 2, car traffic was less dense.
Neither of those factors is true now, nor will the current car density and cheapness change in the next couple of years. Therefore, I don't see us getting back the conditions that led to lots of safe, salient cyclists out there.
I am resigned to things being as they are now until we have cities which deliberately, a la Copenhagen or Amsterdam, seek to reverse the dominance of the automobile. (And that has taken decades to achieve in those cities, from a base plan that predates-automobiles). Or when oil prices become high enough that car ownership is prohibitive for the less well-heeled again.
Basically, I expect to pootle around in safety on my bike when I'm in my 60s.
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I had a big stack in Amsterdam on a bike too, and no, I wasn't high. Goddamned tram tracks. Doesn't matter how safe you make the city, bikes are still dangerous. But great fun.
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"I know the human being and the fish can coexist peacefully. I have known this ever since candidate Bush declared it to be so in the election of 2000."
But can the human being and Bush coexist peacefully?
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Earth Hour was fun.
It coincided with a neighbourhood kids 11th Birthday and just to encourage the neighbours they when out onto the street and shouted:
"Earth Hour,
Turn off your Power"Seemed to have worked as well - a few of the lights in the street started to flick off.
A bit of a pity it was over cast night as the car park at Riccarton Mall had the lights on full and these reflected down to glow over Poumatuaringa (Riccarton Bush) - no hope of putting Bats in there. Keeping the car park lights on was a bit odd as the block it off on weekends so the boy racers go somewhere else on Friday & Saturday nights.
They did at least turn off the Westfield neon moon that has been shining in my window for about 5years.
And some other neighbours decided it was a good time to get rid of some fireworks. Not too eco but good fun.
12.8% savings they're saying.
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Earth Hour was fun.
And then there was this comment on the Stuff Article:
After taking part in Earth Hour quite considerably by fully lighting the house with candles and having all lights off, we decided in the last 15 minutes to go for a drive to see if our community was also taking part. We were appalled at the amount of lighting we seen around the Spreydon/Cashmere area. One house had almost every light on inside aswell as all the outdoor lighting. Come on guys, we are supposed to be leading the way here and this is how you represent us. It was actually a rather disappointing event from what we thought. Hopefully the rest of the world can help out alot more than what we did.
Yes, they got in their car and drove around complaining that other people weren't turning their lightbulbs off.
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"There is no mains electricity on great barrier island. Do's they get a round of applause?"
No, but they have got a dose of the clap - ka da boom
As for Tasha & Shannon driving around to tisk tisk.
I'm rather concerned the fall back position to electrical lighting is candles. Romantic sure, but "by fully lighting the house with candles " it is one hell of a fire risk. -
Umm. Correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't using candles and kerosene lamps for lighting be worse for the environment then the equivalent wattage of electric lighting. Kerosene and paraffin are both derived from fossil fuels ...
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worse for the environment.....
thats kinda what I was thinking,plus the various factors around candles....supply/transit/packaging costs etc; dont wanna be too much of a grinch about it though. I guess the point of the exercise is to make people realise where they can make a difference, and have fun without using lots of power.
The family moaning about others with lights on whilst driving around to check is hilarious though.
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Umm. Correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't using candles and kerosene lamps for lighting be worse for the environment then the equivalent wattage of electric lighting. Kerosene and paraffin are both derived from fossil fuels ...
<mutter>... rolled from your own beeswax like a real hippy...</mutter>
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If you want green light, get one of those torches that you have to shake. Then you're only burning your own fat, not some poor little animal that had to die for your candles. I expect after a few nights of that, people will go back to mains lighting, for reasons that are obvious to everyone who doesn't go to bed at dusk.
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I actually have 2 of those torches, but the main reason is because I use torches so seldom that they always have nasty corroded batteries inside, which is bad for the environment, and more importantly, useless during a blackout.
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Earth Hour was fun
Call me a cynic, but did anyone measure the carbon footprint of the Earth Hour promotion effort? All I saw was specially printed stickers, specially printed t-shirts, and celebrities who may or may not have walked to Christchurch to promote the event. Not being a Christchurch resident I don't know how many extra pages were printed by sponsors The Press to also promote the event.
And didn't they nail the fallacy of 'Green People' last night on Boston Legal? (Sorry, searched Utube for a clip without success)
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Call me a cynic, but did anyone measure the carbon footprint of the Earth Hour promotion effort?
I was far too busy gagging at ballocks like this:
One of the most prominent supporters of last year’s initial Earth Hour, the Sydney Theatre Company co-artistic director Cate Blanchett, will do her bit on Saturday, with the performance of The Year Of Magical Thinking moved forward to 6.30pm. The 90-minute show, directed by Blanchett and starring former STC director Robyn Nevin, will be followed by a “candlelight” supper party at the wharf to celebrate the hour of environmental awareness.
My God, I hate the fucking bourgeois. Blanchett is an enormously talented actress -- and I certainly hope her tenure at the STC is rich with artistic and commercial success. But heavens forbid the moral masturbation of the middle-classes come with some degree of actual sacrifice, or even genuine inconvenience.
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Craig, you aren't really trying to tell us that ridiculous moral masturbation is confined to the bourgeois?
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So they move the stage-show forward a few hours?
Fantatsic!
I guess the 10kW follow-spots and all the other stage lighting and sound equipment didnt consume the same power at 6:30 that they would have at 8:30?
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Craig, you aren't really trying to tell us that ridiculous moral masturbation is confined to the bourgeois?
No, but I've been wading through so much media house price hysteria over the last week (you can't afford to live in Herne Bay -- and I care because?), I'm on the verge of becoming a bomb-heaving anarchist.
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Yes, it does make about as much sense as anarchy to take out bitterness at Aucklanders on Sydneysiders, and bitterness at house price hysteria on people honoring a strange Green ritual. When the rage can't be contained....
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Yes, it does make about as much sense as anarchy to take out bitterness at Aucklanders on Sydneysiders
Oh, Ben... Pardon me for getting just a tiny pissed at self-righteous Baby Boomers who do love to have their organic Fair trade chocolate cake and eat it too. I'd have been just a wee bit more impressed with Blanchett if the STC had cancelled the performance -- but that would actually have cost then a few bucks, wouldn't it?
Instead Robin Nevin came to work a couple of hours early and went to a party afterwards -- where I assume nobody in attendance drove their stinking cars into the Sydney CBD.
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Heh, riiiight, I see the silly hippie thing, but the connection to Herne Bay unaffordability angst is still lost...
But getting bitter on Baby Boomers is an end in itself. Who else is it that owns all the property in Herne Bay? What have they ever given me, except for life itself?
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I was far too busy gagging at ballocks
--"When Blow Jobs Go Wrong"
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