A few minutes at a bus stop

I stood at the stop near the HSR BDA complex, on the Outer Ring Road, today.

Since I had time, and nobody to speak with, thoughts crossed my head, and I saw many things. Amongst them -

• Damn, soooo many one-person cars. Drivers with the owner do not count.
• That ONE Volvo has as many people as the 40 cars I can see occupying road space from here till wherever!
• Who threw these bus tickets/cigarette packets/wrappers around ? Do we have the slightest right to crib about governance ?
• All this road work is so we can have more people drive in cars alone, and then start needing more road space ? Dumb.
• Bangalore still has lovely weather.
• The traffic and construction dust is killing it though.
• Thank God for the many who take the buses. Esp those who could've otherwise been in cars.
• Hmm, no 'choice' cyclists in the 20 minutes I've been here. Still a tiny minority, obviously. Or they take a better route!
• Why does everyone honk so much when it has absolutely no impact! Frustration, I guess.

Anyhow...

Posted via email from bangalorekaapi

The Increasing Autombile Wastelines

Inventing Green « We’ve Got 35 Times More Horsepower in Our Cars Than in Our Power Plants talks about the power generation capacity available through automobiles vs all the rest of them! Interesting way to look at this.

I'm sure that a couple of hundred years from now, folks will both lament and wonder at the stupidity and short sightedness of a few of our generations. Consider a few facts:

• Cars carry mostly their own weight around. Most of their energy is used up in just moving the mass of metal, rubber and glass and plastics that they are!
  
• Cars are getting more and more powerful - and at least in the cities (where most run) going slower and slower!
  
• On board electrical capacity can usually power a host of appliances these days - including mini refrigerators and huge entertainment systems. Mostly goes unused!
• Cars "sit around" for 90%+ of the time, yet a lot of us have one each.

The debate often reduces to personal safety, personal convenience etc. Case in point from the comments in the above article - "I certainly would not want to take my wife & 3 kids camping in a “Tato Nano”, much less worry about what parts of me will still be around for the paramedics to save after an accident." This is a very inward out, narrow way of looking at the problem from its current state alone. The fact is that as a transportation system, its pretty flawed from an efficiency (and even safety) point of view. These arguments often ignore that completely alternative transport systems are possible which consume less on an average, provide more safety overall and are just - well - saner.

But then purging was part of "modern" medical science at some point of time, wasn't it...

Cars move cars, not people!

Amazingly good read about the inherent inefficiency of private transport, why trains work better and why cities should be defined by a 20 minute walking radius!

You might initially not find the ideas practical, or even digestible, but give it another read, and start asking "why not". For too long we've not questioned the way of life, the form of economics and the attributes of progress that have been defined for us and that we're expected to pursue and strive for.

Excerpt:

The real problem is, though, cars don’t move people, cars move cars. The average car or light truck is two tons or so: 4000-plus pounds to move 200 pounds of people. OK, everybody out of the SUVs and F-150s and into a nice, green Prius. However, the curb weight of an unladen Prius is 2765 pounds, which means a ton and a half around to get you and a bag of groceries home. Not good.

Someday a generation will wonder "How could they? Did they not pause to think, or did they have no brains or foresight?"

Drive Less.

Car Exhaust, Air Pollution and the Environment: Health Effects of Exhaust Chemicals

Make this a goal in your life. Walk, take the bus (and divide the kms by the number of passengers!). Ride a bike. Whatever. Just reduce the total number of kms per head done in Bangalore (or any city) by 30-40%, and we'll have solved a whole bunch of problems at one go.

Yes you have that usual reason of inconvenient public transport, or timings, or distance.

Same kinda reasons to not go jogging, or running, or start the big project you've been trying to.

We're a rather procrastinating species, it seems. Its starting to boil down to how much longer we want to sustain. Do you want to, or not ? Take a little bit of pain or inconvenience to get started, and try help solve the pain points instead.

Its not someone else's job to do this or that first before it becomes oh-so-totally easy for you to ride/bus/walk. its your job as well.

Come on. Let's shake our collective slumber and zombie-ness and get cracking. Use the automobile when necessary. And preferably, with 4 people inside.