Investing in art: Personalised licence plates.

A few of the past posts in my blog were about the differences between Greece or Europe and Australia on transport and traffic issues. Traffic signs, tolling road infrastructure, roadside memorials and most recently World Cup logistics, my Greek origin and my Australian living allowed me to easily point out such differences. One of the first differences to spot, which I didn’t have the chance to write about, was personalised plates or vanity plates as they are also known.  Australia is one of the now many countries that allow vehicle owners to customise their license plates altering their colour, fonts, and even the numbers and letter on the plate. Greece on the other hand, allows only for standard license plates issued by the Ministry of Infrastructure, Transport and Networks that nowadays follow the EU standard for licence plates.

History of Greek Plates (source)

Slogans on the bottom of the plate, is another difference between the standard plates of Greece and Australia. In Australia similar to USA every state has it’s own slogan that is used as a promotional pitch. Queensland uses the trademark Sunshine State while a few years ago the plates wrote The Smart State. 

History of QLD plates (source)

Victoria has the Stay Alert Stay Alive slogan while the previous wrote The Place to Be , On The Move and Garden State. Currently New South Wales standard plates don’t have any slogan but in the past they used The Premier State, The First State and Towards 2000. South Australia also has no slogan but they used to have the slogan The Festival State. WA used to have the slogans State of Excitement, Home of the America’s Cup and The Golden State but they abandoned all slogans during the beginning of the 90’s.

Personalised plates come in a variety of forms, colours and slogans and they can be almost fully customised. Depending on one’s preferences, those plates can cost up to $3500 for a new one that spells KYRIAKO or $500 for an Endless Summer theme. From there, the laws of  free market can skyrocket the price of a plate. 

 

   

It has been reported that the owner of the Q1 plate, that is supposedly the most sought after plate in Queensland, refused an offer of more than a million dollars for his plate. The Q8 plate was in the market a couple of years ago and the auction close at $220,000 more than 17 times the amount the owner spent to buy it, back in 1988.

Personalised plates have now become more than another way of revenue for transport authorities around the world and a means to fund road safety projects, like we do in Queensland. They have become an investment similar to buying artwork. I am just wondering why Troika and the rest of Greece’s lenders haven’t requested this “reform” from the Greek government as a way to repay debt. But then again, with so many car owners handing back their plates because they can no longer afford having a car, or at least a licensed car, maybe the calculated revenue would have been very low.

Final destination: Changi airport.

I just came back from a leisure trip to Singapore and it was very interesting to notice a few things about air travel. Generally air travel is something that transport planners and traffic engineers are often professionally involved. Planning and designing airports, forecasting air passenger traffic and coming up with solutions for trips between terminals are some of the areas that a transport planner or a traffic engineer may provide his/her services. Over the last decade there were many changes in this field with most of the changes relating to  airports.

Airports are starting to become more significant than ever with some of them starting to become a destination of their own. This appears to be one of the top emerging travel trends. Air travel security checks and changes in airlines charging systems require passengers to be at the airport a long time before their flight. Long distance travel and airline alliances affect also the average time passengers spend as stopover between destinations. Competition between airports and the drive for alternative revenue has made airports reinvent themselves and change dramatically what they offer to passengers.

Changi International airport is probably the leading example, having won 430 awards since 1981, including 30 'Best' awards in 2012. The variety of services and experiences offered to passengers is beyond expectation. And the even more amazing thing is that the vast majority of them are free of charge. Depending on how long your stay in the airport is you can surf the Internet either from Internet stations or with Wi-Fi, visit and enjoy a number of different gardens that include a fantastic butterfly garden, get foot massage at Foot and Calf Massage stations, play a wide selection of Xbox and Playstation games, catch a movie at a movie theater or even get a 2hour Singapore Tour. And I repeat all of the above are offered free of charge.

Art and architecture is another field that airports are concentrating. Changi airport makes the list for the world's most beautiful airports. You can find amazing art pieces throughout the terminals with the Kinetic Rain installation catching the eye.

On top of these offerings the airport takes quality control and benchmarking very seriously, with numerous touch screens located in every spot of provided services for passengers to give their quality ratings.

Source

 The contrast with Darwin International airport which was my stopover on the way to Singapore was disappointing. There isn't really much to compare but the locked electricity wall sockets were the highlight of the terminal along with the almost torn apart sofas.

Choosing a flight in the near future, will become more and more affected by issues like stopover time but it seems that in certain occasions people will choose to ignore that in order to visit and experience airports as destinations. World airport competition is fierce and Australian airports although not centrally staged as Changi, need to keep up realising that the old philosophy of airport design is now obsolete.