Jan and Klodi's Party Bus - part II **off topic discussion**

RobFowl wrote: »

Off to see New Order today 😎

You'll get this feeling you're in motion..

Rogue-Trooper wrote: »

A sudden sense of liberty?

They'll be afraid of what they'll see!!

Doc07 wrote: »

Is John Barnes joining them on stage for a rap.

Jesus I would hope not.

RobFowl wrote: »

Off to see New Order today 😎

How did it feel?

Lusk_Doyle wrote: »

Is that not depeche mode?

Blue Monday

tigerboon wrote: »

Blue Monday

Ruby Tuesday.

RobFowl wrote: »

Off to see New Order today 😎

So what was the gig like?

*Resisting temptation to ask how did it feel.........

An Italian town will pay people hundreds of euros per year if they cycle to work instead of using their cars.

The council in Massarosa, just north of Pisa, says the pilot scheme will see cyclists paid 25 cents per kilometre travelled, up to a monthly cap of 50 euros (£35), the regional Il Tirreno news website reports. That means commuters who switch to two wheels could pocket up to 600 euros (£424) in a year. It's said to be the first such scheme in Italy.

http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-news-from-elsewhere-34831650

A similar scheme was introduced in France in 2014, with mixed results. While a six-month trial found that paying people to cycle to work did increase the numbers doing so, the majority had been using public transport, rather than private vehicles. Of those making the move from cars to bicycles, most had already been carpooling.

Robert Davis of the Road Danger Reduction Forum in the UK often claims that in the Netherlands cycling mostly soaks up journeys that would otherwise be made by public transport. Don't know how true that is.

Dunno, the resistance to getting out of cars is strong. Consider that people continue to drive despite the fact that it's the slowest way of commuting, it means there are factors that cause people to drive which for many people outweigh the fact that it's a waste of time.

Probably simplicity and privacy, if I had to guess. That is, the fact that you can get into you car from outside your house and drive to work (or very close to it), while being warm and cocooned in the car.

People on public transport have already sacrificed both of these so they get to work quicker. So it stands to reason that if someone can get door-to-door faster on a bike than on public transport, they're going to switch. But the driver doesn't consider the time saving to be important, so they don't see any benefit to getting out of their car and onto the bike. If anything, they see the bike as more hassle.

So it makes sense to me.

What it means that incentivising cycling needs to be more focussed than just incentivising cycling. It needs to specifically make it more difficult or more costly to commute in the car. Simple things like increasing the car parking space levy to something like €500/year, and also charging employers €1000/year for each space, while providing grants and rebates to convert existing car parking spaces into bike bays.
The councils also need to get more aggressive about bus corridors. Bus lanes are great, but the primary issue in Dublin is the pinch points where they have to join the main traffic. They should be aggressively changing these pinch-points such that they becomes bus gates during peak times and commuting traffic is forced onto a circular route.