Posts by BenWilson
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Will the use of the findings and the data by TVNZ be driven by a need for enlightenment, or a need for controversy and profit?
Is the Pope Jewish, or ...?
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But we’re all committed, in a helpless fashion, to the future.
Great line, dude.
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Speaker: Data Love or: How I learnt to…, in reply to Russell Brown,
Yes the frontline of any such movement has to be people who are extreme enough to risk being attacked by a crowd. In the case of rushing the stage, it's bordering on suicidal in the USA.
I'm certainly not saying Trump is great because he's encouraged extreme behaviour and violence from both sides. It's more that given that he has already encouraged violence from his own side, that there is a part of America that is not intimidated into silence by that.
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Speaker: Data Love or: How I learnt to…, in reply to simon g,
Young protestors were just as mobilised against Nixon and Reagan – before they won landslides.
I'm just glad to see that the part of America that even can protest is still healthy. Those young protestors you refer to are now old people.
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One very heartening aspect of it all is the way that Trump has mobilized protest against himself, though. It would seem that a steadily rising number of Americans are not afraid of fighting against him, that his violent rhetoric cuts both ways in a society that is full of fear and rage.
It's heartening that there is a strong enough undercurrent of sane people in American to build a protest movement against Trump before he gets too powerful. He may well mobilize the youth there, in a way that he did not intend.
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Speaker: Data Love or: How I learnt to…, in reply to Graham Dunster,
Yes, that's interesting. The rise of that kind of nationalism seems like an inevitable consequence of neoliberalism's full spectrum dominance of political discourse in most of the developed world. Worst part is that it's not like it hasn't happened before. Someone tapping xenophobic rage and talking about protectionist economics at the same time is pretty much a feature of the politics in the 20th century. Every democracy everywhere has one or two doing it. We're no exception. What's exceptional about Trump is that he's a celebrity billionaire. He's both super rich and super famous already, and his target is the most powerful country in the world.
I do feel a little comforted by Kirk's confidence in the impending rout of Trump by whoever gets the Democrat nomination. But not fully, because people like Trump are very unpredictable. There just isn't a lot of data to fall back onto when it comes to such rare candidates.
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Hard News: Paths where we actually ride, in reply to Matthew Hooton,
People from west Auckland: why don’t you use this new facility? Knowing the answer to this might help AT make better decisions in future.
I can answer, as a West Aucklander who commutes to the University. At first, this path seemed like a boon. But in practice, every exit is then followed by a big ascent to Symonds St. So actually, the only real use for that route is to get to Parnell and surrounds. You get off it literally at the very bottom of Auckland, which is built on a hill, so you have to go back up a hill to everywhere else. It's not quicker and certainly not easier than just going down Queen or Symonds St. It is safer, unless you spoon off at high speed (something that could well happen since it's a continuous descent on a long sweeping curve and is frequently littered with leaf mess when wet), at which point you could lie injured for quite a while before anyone even discovered you. Fortunately you're not that far from the hospital, although no ambulance would be able to reach you. The chopper could get you out, maybe, if the overhanging trees were not impeding them.
I don't know how many people commute by bike from West Auckland to Parnell. Those people have something quite useful.
I can tell you what I had hoped would happen, which would have seen me a regular user - if the path did not start after the ascent up Ian McKinnon Drive, but instead bypassed that ascent, it would be very useful. But that would have meant crossing the motorway without using the Upper Queen St bridge. An underpass was suggested. If it went beyond suggestion, this route could become the path of least ascent, and would probably be more patronized. Instead it's the path of greatest ascent, unless you're going to Parnell.
This might seem odd, because Upper Queen St also starts with a significant drop. But coming off the cycleway, it's effectively like a bowl - you zoom down one side and up the other without using much energy. This effect could possibly be better exploited on the Grafton cycleway if the exits were sweeping curves and high speeds could be used to climb back up to Symonds St. But they're not, for safety reasons.
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Hard News: Paths where we actually ride, in reply to Howard Edwards,
in particular the one that requires cyclists to maintain a 1m distance between themselves and pedestrians.
It seems unduly restrictive. It makes it essentially impossible to ever ride on a shared way if there are any pedestrians around, since pedestrians tend to move quite randomly on footpaths.
It’s a blunt instrument which only makes sense in a situation where the cyclist is going fast. If they are going slowly, then passing closer is surely fine. A low speed collision (like at walking speed) is unlikely to cause anyone real harm, and people can judge when it will, like if the pedestrian is elderly, disabled, impeded or a child, or whatever, and be extra careful in that circumstance. I wouldn’t, for instance, ride rapidly past a glazier carrying a massive sheet of glass, or a blind person tapping along with a cane. But someone who has clearly seen me, and is even standing slightly aside? In that situation it’s rude NOT to pass as quickly as you can.
I don’t know the solution, though, for shared paths. I understand your view that it’s startling to be suddenly overtaken. However I also understand why cyclists do it. If they signal well in advance, quite often the pedestrians don’t really know what to do, and make themselves even more impeding. Or they go OTT and leap out of the way like you’re driving a truck at them. Neither is really what the cyclist actually wants.
In the case of dogs, I’d usually rather that they didn’t see me coming because they have no sense whatsoever, and are likely to stand directly across your path, or jump “out of the way” so that you tangle in the leash. Or attempt to sniff you and be struck. Or, of course, in my mind, is the thought that they might take fright and bite.
Which is not to say that it’s a good idea to do the sudden silent overtake. I just understand the motivation. Should I really be ringing my bell continually along the cycleway, even at pedestrians who are actually just walking along on the left, out of the way? Do I really want every single pedestrian to be forced to look backwards at me? Should I ring the bell until I am absolutely sure they’re aware of me? The problem is that we don’t have a sufficiently advanced cycleway culture that the etiquette is well understood even by locals, let alone anyone else who can’t be expected to know local customs. Which is complicated by the many differences between the cycleways themselves.
The North Western, for instance, functions mostly as a cycle-motorway. Its purpose is not really sightseeing, but getting somewhere fast and safe. Because it is long and there isn’t much to see for a lot of it, there aren’t really that many pedestrians, and those pedestrian quickly come to realize that cyclists expect to be going fast and don’t want to slow down, since the way is actually wide enough for a safe high-speed pass. The noise around is only the sound of cars roaring by on the motorway, so an approaching bike is actually easy to hear even if it doesn’t signal, and the sight lines are long anyway – you could look back once a minute and see cyclists before they reach you. So in this instance it works well as a shared path – there’s no reason to deny pedestrians the right to use it, because they just don’t use it very much.
Tamaki Drive, on the other hand, only functions as a cycleway if the cyclists essentially are sightseeing themselves. It has an awful surface, endless blockages, a lot of pedestrians who are dawdling around randomly rather than striding purposefully, cars parked along virtually the whole length, with the potential to open their doors directly onto the cycleway. A cyclist who actually wants to go a reasonable speed has little choice but to use the road instead, which is unfortunately quite dangerous. In this circumstance, it should really be a physically separated cycleway, probably bi-directional. People should be able to walk along the footpath looking at the view, without the danger of being struck by a fast moving vehicle.
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Hard News: Paths where we actually ride, in reply to Stephen Judd,
Some of our shared paths by contrast have design that really encourages or at least doesn’t discourage bad behaviour.
Yes, a good one on Tamaki Drive is that the path marked for cyclists is the one that has the street lamp posts in the middle of it.
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As for cyclewaying Ponsonby Rd, it's hard to see it happening. Currently on any Friday or Saturday night the place essentially 6 lanes of taxis for several hundred meters. Parked, and standing in both lanes in both directions. There's hordes of drunks wandering everywhere - hard to see where a cycleway could fit in with any of that. It would need to be physically separated, or people will certainly be killed.
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