Rob Fisher

Motorcycles are now allowed in certain bus lanes in London.  This is safer for bikes because often the alternative to using the empty bus lane is to filter close to oncoming traffic.  Unfortunately it is quite hard to tell which bus lanes you are allowed to use, because the signs telling you are small and hard to see.  And there are people waiting to catch you out if you stray into the wrong bus lane, as I found out to my cost.

Rob Fisher

The IET’s Engineering and Technology magazine this month has an article about a proposed light rail system called Nowait in Sweden.  The track forms a loop and so does the train.  In the station carriages turn sideways and go slowly enough to let people on, then they turn lengthways and speed up to 40km/h.  There are a couple of animations on the company’s site if you click the “how it works” link.

It looks cool, but I have reservations.  All the carriages are linked together, so if there is a problem the whole system would need to be stopped, leaving people stranded between stations.  The system can’t adapt to busy and quiet periods.  And I wonder how long you will have to wait to pass through each station.  But if it gets built I will go and try it out.

Rob Fisher

Science fiction author Charles Stross is shocked at how slow and inefficient travel by train is in the United States.

Rob Fisher

A few weeks ago I flew on Emirates EK002 from Heathrow to Dubai.  I specifically chose that flight to try out the A380.  From the front it looks a bit ugly.

Front of A380

Once inside, the first thing I noticed was the stairs.  They look like the entrance to a London night club.  Commoners like me were not allowed up the stairs.

A380 stairs

The seats were pretty spacious for economy class.  I am six feet tall and did not feel at all cramped.  I don’t think it was much different from 747s I’ve flown on, though.  The interior didn’t look much different either, although Emirates put tiny lights on the ceiling to look like stars, which was quite pretty when the main cabin lights were dimmed.  One odd thing is the entrance to the cockpit, which rather than being on the top deck like a 747, is on the lower deck but up a few steps.  There are two sets of steps: the left set leads to the cockpit and the right set leads to toilets.

The in flight entertainment system was the best I’ve used.  The screen is nice and big, there were lots of movies, every number one single ever and some slightly better than usual but not great games.  You can plug in a USB stick and view your photos.  I managed to send an email to Michael Jennings, but didn’t get his reply even though the system told me I would.

In-flight email

Best of all were the three external cameras.  The front one was best and offered a good view of the approaching runway while landing, the downward facing one was mostly useless except shortly after takeoff when the front one only showed sky, but the most spectacular was the tail camera, even though image quality seemed slightly worse on this one.  Unusually, the system was switched on from the gate until landing, so you get to keep an eye on everything.

Tail camera

If you’re not interested in planes and you’re flying economy, you won’t notice much difference.  But if you like planes or you get to try business class or better, you’ll have a lot of fun on the A380.

Rob Fisher

This month’s Bike magazine celebrates the best of Britain with 39 ways to enjoy motorcycling in Britain.  #03 points out that in Britain we have fewer regulations on things like engine power and after-market exhausts.  #37 starts with, “Because we can still get away with it.  Britain is not a police state.  A smart rider with his wits about him can still make his own decision on speed and risk taking.”

But for how long?  In his column in the same issue, Rupert Paul laments that “they hate us again.”

The EU is talking again about a 100bhp limit for bikes, and manufacturers are terrified at the prospect of other compulsory ‘safety’ laws.  The UK government wants to reduce the speed limit on 400,000 miles of country roads to 50mph, using average speed cameras.  A Hayabusa rider gets six months for doing 122mph.  Derbyshire council installs hidden roadside motorcycle detectors that identify bikes, track their movements and calculate their average speed.  There are parking charges for bikes in London—and every other city before long.

He complains that it’s very easy for box-ticking civil servants and politicians trying to get re-elected to To Something About motorcycle death tolls and recognises that reducing death tolls at any cost can interfere with liberty.  Riding a bike,

...involves judicious speeding.  And yes, if you get nicked, you should usually get fined and points.  But it’s not the mindless, suicidal rush into oblivion that the road-safety lobby imagine.  It’s a moment-to-moment excersise in judgement and responsibility.  Because if anything goes wrong, we cop it.  We gladly accept that risk in exchange for not having to sit in a steel box like everybody else.  And the resulting freedom is a source of meaning, satisfaction and happiness.

I’m worried that it’s days are numbered.  I should get out on my bike and enjoy it while I can.

Rob Fisher

Modern Movement seem like good guys.  They are a grass roots campaign group in favour of better, faster, cheaper transport for all.  Who’d have thought it?  Perhaps this is part of the fight back that Counting Cats wrote about.  On February 19th they are holding a demonstration in Parliament Square in support of the Heathrow expansion.

The extension of flying to millions of people has been a liberation. Most of us can now afford to go on holiday and welcome the cheapening of air travel allowing us to fly abroad. The development of aviation infrastructure is crucial to allow ever more people to fly.

This is why Modern Movement will be holding a counter-demonstration at the same time as the anti-aviation groups to show our support for airport expansion and urge on the building of the third runway at Heathrow.

Good luck to them!

Rob Fisher

I wrote about the new motorcycle test back in July when it was due to start in September.  Now, according to Ride magazine it’s due to start in April.  The delay is because there weren’t enough test centres to do the new off-road part of the test in which riders ride around cones.  There still aren’t enough in urban areas, so DSA have split the test into two, so you have to ride to a centre out of town and possibly far away to do the off-road test.  As Ride magazine says:

If it wasn’t so annoying, we’d be able to enjoy the irony of people having to ride long distances on the road in order to reach on off-road test centre and ride around some cones.

Rob Fisher

An incredible story has unfolded on the TV screen in the bar I have just emerged from. An A320 has landed in the Hudson and floated for long enough for everyone to be rescued.

Until now I had assumed that the life jackets and emergency-slides-that-become-life-rafts were just safety theatre, and that planes broke into small pieces on contact with water. Thankfully I was wrong.

Rob Fisher

Environmentalists have bought some land in an effort to stop the expansion at Heathrow.  I think they are misguided: that airport expansion isn’t really a problem for the environment.  But I do think owners of land have a right to their property.  So if the government tries to use compulsory purchase to allow the expansion to go ahead, I will be on the side of the environmentalists.

Of course, I also think that anyone should be able to buy some land and build an airport on it.  Environmentalists would disagree with me and would say that it is okay for the government to decide what people can use their land for.  So if the government wanted to be really clever about this, perhaps it could just designate the plot of land as for air transport infrastructure use only, and then fine the owners for growing vegetables on it.

Rob Fisher

Back in November the Telegraph ran a story about the ACPO submitting evidence to the Transport Select Committee in which it suggested banning motorcycles from certain areas called “protection zones”, whatever they might be.  Here are the ACPO’s words from page Ev242 of the report (the 297th page according to my PDF reader):

7.3 There is a need for radical thinking in respect of motorcycles, including consideration of engine capability and the creation of protection zones where all motorcycles other than those specifically permitted, would be prohibited.

7.4 Production machines are readily available for use on our roads with top speeds in excess of 200 miles per hour. Motorcycles are seen in the UK to be, in the majority of instances, vehicles of choice rather than necessity and one might consider if our congested roads are any longer fit for purpose for these motorised toys.

Such scorn for motorbikes!  The Telegraph says it’s not true that bikes that can go faster than 200mph are available.  Manufacturers do limit bikes to 186mph although it’s possible some 8-year-old Suzuki Hayabusas might be available, if not quite “readily”.

Devil’s Kitchen, to whom a hat tip for this link, thinks this is the thin end of a sinister wedge, with the ultimate aim of banning motorcycles completely.  It does indeed have similar smell to the anti-tobacco movement.  Start with restricting motorcycles from certain areas and you can easily expand those areas.  I wonder where the protection zones the ACPO has in mind might be.  Possibly they are thinking of A-roads on sunny Sunday afternoons which is when a lot of accidents happen.  The “motorised toys” rhetoric certainly indicates this.

Hopefully it will come to nothing.  Motorcyclists are quite good at organising themselves into large groups and hopefully that will make politicians think twice.  But this is worth keeping an eye on.

As an aside, I recently took my motorised toy to Norway and made a video about it.

Rob Fisher

The other day I wanted to get on a bus but it stood uselessly at traffic lights and I could not get on.  So I am pleased to see that the new London buses are a hop-on-hop-off design, like the Routemaster.  Well done, Boris!

Rob Fisher

Lego have some fun looking transport related products.  Somewhat related to my previous post is a fun video about the Lego container port.  Not to mention the airport, cargo truck, and train.  I wonder how generous my fellow Transport Bloggers will be this Christmas…

Rob Fisher

The BBC are tracking the journeys of a shipping container as it travels around the world.  You can look at a map and see the route taken so far.  The position is updated about once a day.  It seems to be something to do with a documentary about globalisation.  It left Southampton in early September and is now in the middle of the Pacific.  The name is inspired by the title of Marc Levinson’s book, The Box.  From the Amazon reviews it appears there is politics and controversy in the history of shipping containers; the book should be worth a read.

Patrick Crozier

Every year (or near enough as makes no difference) the government allows the rail companies to increase those fares that they, the government, control.  Result? Instant outrage.  “Why should we pay more when the trains are so overcrowded/unreliable/expensive etc...” Sometimes there are feeble attempts to justify these rises along the lines of “Oh they are needed to pay for longer trains, taller trains, newer trains, more trains, faster trains etc.”

If you want to see the absurdity of this situation you need only compare this state of affairs with that state of affairs at Tescos.  There’s none of this outrage when Tescos puts up the price of, say, a tin of peaches and no attempts to justify it on the grounds of “Oh we need to raise prices in order to fund the new store at Banbury.” No, there’s just the acceptance that if Tesco is putting up the price of something it is either because it costs them more to buy or because they want to prevent empty shelves.  The store at Banbury will be expected to pay for itself.

Actually, you don’t even have to look as far afield as Tescos - simply look at those times and places when fares have been free.  There was none of this outrage in the past when fares (for the most part¹) unregulated.  Mind you in those days fares for the most part were coming down and conditions improving².

You don’t even have to delve into the history books.  Currently, first class, most inter-city fares and freight rates are completely unregulated and there are few complaints.

The simple fact is that none of this outrage would exist if we had a true free market, with private rail companies having absolute freedom to charge whatever they liked.

So, why don’t we just return to that system as quickly as possible?

Vested interests.  Or the man on the 0822 problem.  He’s the guy who needs the 0822 to get to work but if fares went up dramatically (as they probably would if they were free) he would either have to lose his job or move home.  Clearly he wouldn’t be very happy and would resist any dramatic move to a proper free market.  And I can’t say I’d blame him.  The point I’d make is that when you fix a problem it often involves pain but do you blame the person trying to fix it or the person who got you into that problem in the first place?

Notes

1.  100 years ago regulation such as it was extended only to what were known as Parliamentary Trains and Workmen’s Fares.

2.  See the story of Midland’s abolition of Second Class.  Also here

Brian Micklethwait

This evening I was watching a rerun of QI on Dave, and they mentioned something called the Mondo Spider, and showed a bit of it in action.  It’s an eight-legged walking machine, made by some Canadian artists:

Video here, complete with rather fine sound effects.  Website here.  The above picture, of Mondo Spider being driven by the Mayor of Vancouver, Gregor Robertson, found on flickr, here.

Clearly this principle of locomotion has very little in the way of a present, other than as entertainment on YouTube.  But does it perhaps have any kind of future?  Unmanned planetary exploration?  Domestic robots?  Small robots?  Helping oldies up steps and staircases?

Rob Fisher

The third and final article in Ars Technica’s series on self-driving cars is about how they will be regulated.  It discusses whether government subsidy or limited liability will be needed to give car manufacturer’s an incentive to introduce the technology.  Subsidy is probably unnecessary as something is either profitable or it is not, but apparently:

At one point, “all of the general aviation manufacturers stopped making planes because they couldn’t handle the liability. They were being found slightly liable in every plane crash, and it started to cost them more than the cost of manufacturing the plane.” Airplane manufacturers eventually convinced Congress to place limits on their liability.

The article goes on to look at who will have control over the software used.  Arguments in favour of open source software are presented, but I don’t think the situation is much different from software used in aviation, so the outcome is likely to be similar.  However, there is concern that the government would like nothing more than to take control of your car.  It seems inevitable that the police will be able to remotely disable it and politicians will control its speed.

Brian Micklethwait

Yes!  As already reported at my personal blog, I can now post not just stuff but pictures, when out and about.  And that’s what I am now doing.  I’m in Maria’s Vietnamese cafe in Lower Marsh, and very nice it is too.  I have not once been home since taking this snap:

So, I can now transport blog while being transported.  And, my transport experience will be transformed for the better.  That’s if my dongle will work in buses, trains, etc.  We shall see.

That’s a picture of a bookshop that is also transport related, although they also stock books about war and various transport and war related toys and kits.  Sort of Old Nerd Heaven, you might say.  This shop is also in Lower Marsh, which is where I also get my second hand classical CDs.

I should report, however, that as of now it takes me about a quarter of an hour to post a photo, because it takes me ten minutes to load a picture up to Web Resizer dot com so that it can be resized.  My mini-laptop can’t seem to resize photos on its own.  Why not?  Search me.

Rob Fisher

Next Big Future are reporting on a supersonic business jet being developed by a company called Aerion.

Rob Fisher

A House of Commons Transport Committee report has been published.  Cue outraged calls for Something To Be Done about road safety.

The Liberal Democrats say the government should be ashamed of itself for not reducing drink driving casualties.  To their credit, they seem to be calling for enforcement of existing laws rather than new ones.

Here is the BBC story.  Road deaths are being presented as “the major public health problem of our age”, which is probably accurate.  That people are, when not being hectored by politicians, prepared to accept this level of risk says something about just how overblown reports of other risks are.  Why worry about eating the wrong type of food when you’re perfectly prepared to cross the road every day?

This morning, the vague and impossible to link to Radio 1 Newsbeat was reporting that “MPs” were “calling for” laws to prevent young drivers from carrying young passengers at night.  It looks like the Transport Committee likes this idea, but another report from the Department of Transport called Learning to Drive rejects it in favour of extra hoops to jump through to get a full license.

I suspect the report will quickly be forgotten and we won’t see any big changes to road laws for a while as it’s unlikely to be an election issue.

Rob Fisher

Ars Technica is running a series of articles on the automation of road transport.  The second article looks at the benefits of cars that drive themselves.  Safety advantages are obvious.  More interesting are the economic advantages.  In cities, taxis are more efficient than privately owned cars.  But:

So if taxis are so great, why aren’t they popular everywhere? The problem is that when you rent a taxi, you’re not only renting a car, but you’re hiring a driver as well. And human labor is expensive. So taxis only make sense financially in places where parking is so expensive or hard to find that driving your own car isn’t worth the trouble. Everywhere else, the cost of the driver is high enough that driving and parking your own car is a better deal.

Self-driving cars offer all the benefits of taxis for the cost of a traditional car. A self-driving vehicle will be able to show up on demand, transport passengers to a destination, and then drive off to pick up more passengers, refuel, or find a parking space. When self-driving taxis are readily available, many people—even far from dense urban areas—will find renting both cheaper and more convenient than owning a vehicle.

It’s easy to imagine being able to hire a taxi to your exact location from your GPS smartphone, have it turn up in minutes thanks to automated routing and demand prediction, and be able to choose from a selection of vehicles so you can get a pickup-truck to take you home from the furniture shop with your new sofa.

The article goes on to discuss the changes in parking and vehicle design that self-driving cars will enable, as well as the retail, freight and courier industries.

I have one concern: I enjoy driving and motorcycling, and it’s only a matter of time before human drivers are made illegal for health and safety reasons.  There will be other reasons, too.  Some kinds of automated congestion management may not work with a mixture of human- and computer-controlled cars.  For example, long convoys with only inches between each vehicle, or intersections where conflicting flows of cars are tightly interleaved.  Driving for pleasure may one day be confined to the track.

Rob Fisher

On the one hand, we try to reduce the cost of transportation between England and America, or Canada and the United States, by developing faster and more efficient planes and ships, better roads and bridges, better locomotives and motor trucks.  On the other hand, we offset this investment in efficient transportation by a tariff that makes it commercially even more difficult to transport goods than it was before.  We make it a dollar cheaper to ship the sweaters, and then increase the tariff by two dollars to prevent the sweaters from being shipped.  By reducing the freight that can be profitably carried, we reduce the value of the investment in transport efficiency.

Henry Hazlitt in Economics in One Lesson.

Rob Fisher

Poor old Qantas.  First the hole of horror, now the plunge of, er, horror.

On the bright side, the safe landing of these flights should provide some comfort to those experiencing future in-flight anomalies.

Update:  ATSB has released information on the preliminary investigation.  It looks like a navigation computer fed erroneous data to the flight control computer.  Pertinent questions have been raised on the Risks Digest mailing list: the primary flight computer is supposed to compare information from multiple navigation computers, so why didn’t it notice something was amiss?

Patrick Crozier

This was on BBC4 the other night.  I thought it was garbage.  In fact it was such utter garbage that there was no chance of me ever getting round to writing it all down.  So, I recorded a podcast instead.

Patrick Crozier

I love this sort of thing: maps where area is proportionate to something other than territory.  Hey, I even designed one of my own way back.  This is the one for rail travel.

I think this is for passenger rail travel or else the US would be a lot bigger.  Look at China and India.  What does this say I wonder?

Rob Fisher

In the first episode of his documentary Big Ideas, James May from Top Gear is in search of a personal flying car.  It’s rather less dumbed down than programmes like this tend to be.  James didn’t shy away from discussing gyroscopic precession in helicopters, for example.  And there are some inventions I hadn’t heard of before, like a nifty helicopter from Japan.  Of course, he covered the Moller Sky Car, too.  Now he’s discussing automated control systems which would make getting ordinary people into the sky feasibly safe.  He’s in a car that’s driving itself so well that it can cope with American 4-way stops.

James finished up with a rant about the reasons he thinks these products aren’t viable already: health and safety and bureaucracy.

The show is repeated next Thursday.  The graphic below should be relevant to your current location and time.

Rob Fisher

I am excited because I am booked onto an Emirates flight to Bangkok via Dubai on an A380.  Ok, so I can’t afford a private suite, and none of the exit aisle seats were available (and I found out what a bassinet seat was and so avoided booking one of those), but Emirates is supposed to be one of the better airlines* so I have high expectations.  I should at least be well entertained.  The external camera views sound interesting.

My flight is not until March and the A380 starts on 1st December, so hopefully there won’t be any hiccups.  Will I be the first transport blogger to fly on an A380?

* Not everyone would agree.

Rob Fisher

Remember the Boeing 777 that crashed back in January?  Investigators are saying it was probably caused by ice crystals that formed in the fuel.

Investigators said three unique factors came together in flight BA038 that had not been found in 13,000 other flights: the length of time that fuel temperatures stayed below 0C; low fuel flow demands in cruising flight, and high fuel flow demands during landing. They added that the amount of water in the fuel supply - around five litres - was not abnormal.

No matter how carefully aircraft systems are designed, once in a while a combination of events will occur that you hadn’t tested for.  But at least it won’t happen again, and air travel will be just that little bit safer from now on:

Boeing said last night that it had devised “a number of operational changes” to prevent ice building up in 777 fuel systems that used the type of Rolls Royce engine involved in the crash.

Hat tip: The Google News Alert I set up, knowing that the follow-ups to this story probably wouldn’t make the front pages.

Update: Incidentally, in this story there’s a lot of insight into how air crash investigations are done.  13,000 normal flights were compared with this one.  That suggests that black box recordings from many flights are archived, and that statistical and data mining techniques can be used to find out what’s unusual about a given flight.  I wonder if enough computing power and clever enough software could be installed in the cockpit, comparing current data with all previous flights and warning the pilot of anything unusual.