home *** CD-ROM | disk | FTP | other *** search
- Xref: sparky sci.environment:9654 sci.physics:11229 sci.energy:3459
- Newsgroups: sci.environment,sci.physics,sci.energy
- Path: sparky!uunet!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!mips!mips!munnari.oz.au!bruce.cs.monash.edu.au!monu6!yoyo.cc.monash.edu.au!daniel
- From: daniel@yoyo.cc.monash.edu.au (Daniel Bowen)
- Subject: Re: Is car pooling for real? (was Re: Are bikes really less polluting?)
- Message-ID: <1992Jul21.044006.15912@monu6.cc.monash.edu.au>
- Sender: news@monu6.cc.monash.edu.au (Usenet system)
- Organization: Monash University, Melb., Australia.
- References: <1992Jul15.161206.7337@aio.jsc.nasa.gov> <1992Jul16.014908.8439@monu6.cc.monash.edu.au> <k1-m61m@dixie.com>
- Date: Tue, 21 Jul 1992 04:40:06 GMT
- Lines: 57
-
- In <k1-m61m@dixie.com> jgd@dixie.com (John De Armond) writes:
-
- >daniel@yoyo.cc.monash.edu.au (Daniel Bowen) writes:
- >>I'm off to the city centre now. The station is about five minutes walk
- >>away. I won't hurry; if I miss the next train, there's another one in
- >>ten minutes.
-
- >>Get the picture?
-
- >No, I don't. A 5 minute walk is more than I'm willing to make, as is
-
- A five minute walk is unreasonable? Lemme guess, you park in your lounge
- room? And you drive up to your office in the elevator?
-
- A five minute walk is just a quick stroll - in this case, across my
- university campus. Like the Europeans, I found this statement pretty
- incredible.
-
- >a 10 minute wait. I rarely travel more than 15 minutes from my house.
- >While you're waiting and walking, I'm already where I want to go.
-
- Wrong in this case at least. Say the average waiting time for a train is
- five minutes (as in this example; Caulfield station to the city, in
- Melbourne, Australia, on a weekday.) Add to this the generous travelling
- time of 15 minutes by train, lands me in the city in about 25 minutes.
-
- Meanwhile, someone going by car will have had to walk down to his car
- (given the same position as me; on the fourth floor of my faculty
- building).. let's make that 3 minutes - the driver, unless a member of
- staff here, will have to have parked in the middle of campus, at least a
- couple of minutes away. Now the travel time.. and no matter how you look
- at it, I can't see a way of getting from Caulfield to the city by car
- in less than 15 minutes. Then you have to find parking.
-
- Parking in the city of Melbourne is not easy. A friend's husband once
- spent over 40 minutes looking for a place to park one evening. I presume
- he didn't want to have to go to a paid parking spot. Anyway, I digress.
-
- Anyway, what I'm eventually getting to here is that trains can be just
- as fast and convenient as driving, if not more so. Given the right
- circumstances, it can work. It's cheaper, it's safer, and it's
- environmentally friendlier.
-
- >I will personally NEVER give up my personal mobility. If that mobility
- >comes someday in the form of some gadget that runs on matter-anti-matter
- >generated farts, so be it. But it WILL be personal mobility.
-
- Well, my personal mobility is my feet. Clean, natural, safe, and cheap.
- I'll stick with them.
-
-
- Daniel Bowen
- --
- Daniel Bowen, Monash University | What I want to know is...
- Melbourne Australia | did Elvis wear Levis?
- daniel@yoyo.cc.monash.edu.au |
- TCWF: tcwf@gnu.ai.mit.edu | [TCWF]
-