The last text.

This is not the first time that I write on my blog about texting and driving. The previous time, I wrote that this is a very unsafe practice and it is usually OMG and not LOL. But reading the news today I was once again shocked. This resembles a Greek tragedy: A 32 year old woman has died in a head-on collision on a US highway just seconds after she posted selfies and updated her status on Facebook, according to the police. The tragic part of the story is that the woman was listening to the “happy song” and her last (typed) words were: "The happy song makes me so HAPPY."

This takes the whole distraction while driving issue to a different level.  The crash statistics of texting and driving are nowadays well documented and the facts say that this is quite a common practice among drivers, especially among young drivers. It seems though that there is still a lot to be done. 

There is a lot to be done in terms of driver education. A lot of campaigns focus on speeding, like the “Join the drive” campaign that Queensland government launched before Christmas and kept it going during this last Easter period due to its big success.

I remember that at first, the whole discussion was about driving and talking on the mobile phone. After a few years and as the mobile phones evolved from the first generation almost primitive ones - good only for talking - to the new smartphones that you can send SMSs, connect to Facebook, check and respond to emails and even read a book, the driver distraction problem got much worst. 

There is also a lot to be done it terms of technology. Apple seems to be realizing the depth of the problem and just yesterday has announced that has filed a patent application for a system that could bar access to an iPhone’s messaging apps while a user is driving.

There is a lot to be done in terms of enforcing. While the road rules covers this topic quite adequate, It seems that it is not a top priority for police to target texting and driving.  Just a few days ago a West Australian police officer was photographed using his mobile phone while driving. As a reaction WA police have launched their Easter road safety blitz with a show of force designed to deter distracted drivers from picking up the phone while behind the wheel. That included the use of unmarked motorcycles to crack down on texting drivers.

And the craziness seems not to be limited to mobile phones. A few weeks ago, a driver on the Pacific Highway was readinga book while driving at speed over 100 km/h. 

At my previous post I was asking: Why can't we just do the right thing and don’t use the mobile phone while we are driving?  Why do we prefer OMG rather than LOL? It seems that we are way beyond this point. There is no time anymore to waste on asking theoretical questions. It is time to act. Everyone on his own and the responsible organisations and governments on a structured and effective way. 

AITPM@IPENZ - Last day. Ingenuity now more than ever.

Last day of the conference and I am happy to report on the conference proceedings back from Brisbane. I fully enjoyed my stay in Wellington but... give me Brisbane any day.

The conference day kicked of with keynote speaker Steven Newman, CEO of EROAD. I was hoping that Steven will speak about the work he did on road charging but Steven preferred to speak about future transport systems or as he called it super intelligent transport systems.

The second keynote speaker for the day was Rob Merrifield. Rob has worked for more than 50 years on road construction and management but his passion was always studying the historic development of transportation. From the Diolkos and the other ancient Greek rutways to the 1834 Newcastle upon Tyne railway and other tramway systems in England it seems that archeology takes more and more interest in transport systems of the past.

One of the morning streams was dedicated to the Railway Technical Society of Australasia a joint Technical Society of Engineers Australia and IPENZ New Zealand, formed to further the interests of the railway industry at large and its individual participants. With their upcoming conference CORE 2014 in Adelaide they are directed towards providing leadership for the facilitation and coordination of professionalism in the railway industry and the encouragement of member contributions to the application of railway technology and good management practices.

Michael McKeon from KiwiRai and then Randall Prestige from Target Railway Progress presented current and proposed New Zealand railway projects that will enable more efficient movement of freight and passengers across the country.

Overall the IPENZ Transportation Group 2014 conference was a great opportunity to learn about transport projects from the other side of Tasman sea. There are also  some good opportunities and ideas to enhance the collaboration between IPENZ and AITPM that are worth exploring the following days. I also found some good ideas that we can maybe adopt for our AITPM 2015 conference in Brisbane.

The quest for transport ingenuity is ongoing and more relevant now than ever in the history of 100 years of Engineers of New Zealand.

AITPM@IPENZ Day 3 - Freight, logistics and ... dogs.

Day three of the IPENZ Transportation award and as always with the conferences, people start to feel a bit tired and thinking of all the work that they have left behind.

Luckily there were a few interesting presentations starting with Geoff Dangerfield, CEO of NZ Transport Agency. Geoff presented the work that NZTA is doing to provide for transport solutions for today and tomorrow. He presented the “one network” thinking behind all NZTA actions and focused specifically on freight, where he described the agency’s goal for more freight on fewer trucks.

 

 

Of course he presented the already famous TV road safety ad, part of the wider Safer Journeys strategy.

 

One of the conference streams this morning was dedicated to the Signals NZ user group. The group has recently extended their activities to cover Intelligent Transport Systems to enhance people and freight movement through traffic control and ITS. An interesting fact from the presenters was that in New Zealand enforcement of red light cameras in not yet legal.

The organising committee has set aside some time in the program for delegates to have the chance to go through the “Active Poster Display”. Authors stood beside their posters and gave everyone the opportunity to ask questions and clarify things.

 

Another distinct stream of the day was the presentations of the Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport a worldwide professional body with presence in more than 100 countries.

 

Finally the day closed with another fairly unique feature, the roundtable presentations. Seven different presentations were set up around tables and repeated three times with a duration of 25 minutes each. That gave the presenters the opportunity to have a true interaction with everyone witch worked quite well for most of them.

 

 

In the case of Jo Draper from NZ Transport Authority was a huge success, where she and her colleague Dean Ingoe from Auckland Transport presented the challenges behind stakeholder consultation on transport projects land acquisition and engaged us in a role playing game that helped everyone understand all the critical factors. As Jo said “when you visit people at their houses, beware, there is always a dog”

AITPM@IPENZ Day 2 - Is it all about perception?

Second day of the conference and it was time for papers, presentations and posters. But the start of the day had a bit of a surprise for all delegates. The fire alarm went off and everyone got out with no problems. The Fire Services arrived at the spot within a short time and it must have been something minor, cause a few minutes later we were allowed back in and the second day of the conference officially began.

 

 

Dr Soames Job from Global Road Safety Solutions delivered a very interesting presentation on the Safer Journeys Strategy. He put the emphasis on speed and stated that speed is “in the heart of safer systems”. He also commented on how we dramatically underestimate the role of speed in serious crashes. He said that all the research shows that when we lower speed limits, crashes go down. He ended his speech by saying: When it comes to speeding; Think publicly – act personally.

 

 

Malcom Douglass and Ron Fisher two of the older members of IPENZ transportation group presented the history of transport in NZ and the role of engineering inheritance. IPENZ celebrates 100 years of presence and the Transportation Group celebrates having more than a 1000 members.

3M one of the major sponsors of the conference had a short but very helpful contribution to the discussion at the conference. Michael Holderness revealed part of a wider research that shows that major improvements to signs can be made by simply cleaning them.

 

Shared spaces was a big part of the Active Travel session. Presenters from Auckland Transport and University of Auckland showed examples where shared space schemes were implemented in NZ.

 

A common theme on several presentations was the notion of perception. Presenters were talking about the perception of safety and about the perception of benefits or about the perceived cost for the user and how projects should include perception surveys. That made me wondering; are we focusing too much on perception?

 

The final presentation for the day came from Dave Ferguson. Dave leads the vision, learning and mapless driving team for Google’s self-driving car program. And while other companies are working on the same research topic that will make us all one day Knight Riders, it was impressive to see a blind person sitting on the driving seat of a self-driving Google Toyota Prius.

 

 

AITPM@IPENZ Day 1

A few days ago, I had the pleasure and the honour to win the AITPM New Zealand Study Tour Award. This award gives the opportunity to an AITPM member to have the conference registration costs, reasonable travel & accommodation expenses to attend the conference and accommodation costs for an additional two days in the conference city fully paid by AITPM.

Wellington is a lovely city, relaxed but yet vibrant, with a very friendly atmosphere.

It kind of made me homesick as it reminded me a bit of Kavala. Harbour town build amphiteatrically around the water.

Wellington though, has some amazing museums with astonishing Maori art and artifacts.

The highlight of the CBD tour was the cable car ride. Wellington's cable car is more than 110 years old.

Networking with my New Zealand (and a few Australian) colleagues was fun with activities like the geocaching/ treasure hunt at Zealandia and a bridge building competition that proved that traffic engineers and transport planners are not only good in planning and designing bridges but also at building them.

This first day was very promising. I hope the rest of the IPENZ Transportation Group conference is as interesting and as fun.

Tolls on roads or tolls on fire?

I was looking the other day at these pictures that were circulating the Internet and at the same day I read about the toll price hike on Brisbane's toll roads.

Source

Apparently it seems that the pictures are taken back in July 2013 when protesters in SP-332 Highway, Sao Paolo, Brazil set 8 toll booths on fire. The protests are ongoing, in several Brazilian cities, initiated mainly by the Movimento Passe Livre (Free Fare Movement), a local entity that advocates for free public transportation. The demonstrations started as a move against increases in bus, train, and metro ticket prices in some Brazilian cities, but soon included other issues such as the high corruption in the government and police brutality used against some demonstrators.

The same happened recently in Maharashtra, India, where protesters against  toll roads vandalised booths in Kolhapur. In the center of their protests were the cost of everyday transport and the political nexus between the ruling parties and contractors.

Source: The Hindu

That of course reminded me of all the problems with the economic crisis back in Greece. A similar protest movement named "I don't pay" ("Δεν πληρώνω") was initiated at 2008, even before the big crisis hit Greece as a protest mainly for paying tolls in the extremely unsafe Athens - Patra highway. Soon with the Troika (European Commission, European Central Bank, and International Monetary Fund) demanding more public revenue from almost every aspect of life in Greece, toll booths start appearing every 20-30 kms in existing and similarly bad condition roads, with toll prices rising almost every 6 months.

Historically toll roads started becoming a problem in Greece, when the Greek government decided to package maintenance works in sections of the highway network with the existing toll plazas and contract it out to the private sector. In order to make it more attractive, the contracts allowed for more toll booth locations and regular raises in prices. Soon the situation got out of control and the cost of travel for those toll roads went through the roof. When the "I don't pay" movement started and for a long period after that, a significant percentage of drivers were getting off the car, raising the boom gates and passing through the tolls without pay. The fact that the Greek legislation has not been adapted to this new regime and the cost of individual prosecutions made it even easier to avoid paying tolls.

Now some years later, the Greek legislation has changed to include privately run tolls and police have targeted toll evasion, so this practice has mostly phased out. But the cost of tolls is still ridiculously high and drivers just avoid the toll roads, or even worst the sections of those highways with tolls. Lots of different maps have appeared on webpages and facebook pages with detailed directions on how you can travel from Athens to Thessaloniki without paying the tolls. Of course this wasn't particularly difficult as even Google Maps has a tool where you can get directions between two places by avoiding tolls.

A few days ago there was again a series of demonstrations near Athens where people from a nearby village that their free access to the majority of the road network including the road to Athens was removed, protested and set the toll booths on fire. Police made many arrests, including the Mayor of the regional council.

Of course  highway traffic between the two biggest cities in the country, diverting through small villages and rural areas, is not only a highly unsafe practice from a road safety perspective but also highly uneconomical with lost hours and reduced productivity that sums up every day. It is also a bad use of road infrastructure with road wear shifting towards local government controlled and funded minor roads.

Unfortunately the extreme neoliberal policies of Troika are only concerned with the fiscal side of the economy, mainly the deficit and don't care about other aspects like unemployment, economic growth or even debt to GDP ratio let alone aspects of life like road safety.

Unlike Greece that is no longer a sovereign state anymore, in New Orleans, USA people in a referendum held on May 4, 2013 defeated the toll extension and officially ended tolls on the Crescent City Connection. The referendum was defeated by an overwhelming 78 percent of voters.

The discussion for road pricing has been going on for quite a while. Trying to find a fair pricing system is a matter of extensive research and work throughout the world. Cities like Singapore or Oslo have opted for congestion pricing.

Others like Brisbane, have opted for tolling new infrastructure like the ClemJones or Airport link tunnels while always providing a toll free alternative.

One thing is quite certain though: Road access can't be treated as another consumer product. Freedom of movement is a fundamental human right and road pricing should always include a free alternative. Excessive toll prices would eventually affect other aspects of life and the cost paid might be a lot higher than the toll revenue.

Moving around Sydney.

For the New Years Eve holiday period I took the family to Sydney on a city trip. I only had been to Sydney just once before on my trip to present the on-line mobility management toolbox at the AITPM conference in 2012. At that time I didn't had much chance to explore the city so this year I was keen to explore the traffic and transport in the city.

Moving around the city, I was quite impressed not only by the major attractions, the landmarks and the beaches but also with the extended public transport system. Although I was stunned to see and learn that the monorail was dismantled; buses, trains, light rail and most of all, the Sydney ferries all played a major role in discovering the city as a tourist.

In my previous time in the city I didn't have the chance to take a ride with the monorail system so I was quite disappointed when I found out that it no longer exists let alone operate. The funny side of the story was, that I was looking for it just outside the Haymarket station, looking at one of the maps at a light rail station. Apparently while the system was removed, the maps remain the same indicating the line and stations of the monorail system. I don't have the details of the removal project so I can't really say if that was a good or bad decision, but I must say that a lot of people would miss the monorail. Looking at the amount of pictures of the system in the Internet and sites like Panoramio it looks like it was a popular tourist attraction on it's own.

The Sydney ferries were my favourite transport mode in the city. The beautiful scenery along Sydney Harbour and Parramatta River and the views of the Sydney Opera House and Harbour Bridge are worth the slightly  more expensive ticket. Different but equally attractive is the night ride. I suggest to take the ferry to Manly so you can get a different view of the city.

Of course when considering moving around Sydney by public transport as a tourist, the best option is the one day MyMulti pass. With this ticket you can travel unlimited across the city for a full day (to midnight). Sydney Transport  has also a very good offer for Sundays called Family Funday Sunday where for $2.50 per person, your family gets unlimited travel on all trains, buses, ferries and light rail in Greater Sydney provided by a bunch of different operators. Another good choice for Sydney visitors is the free city CBD shuttle bus that runs every 10 minutes on a loop from Central Station to Circular Quay via George Street (both directions).

Sydney has a lot of common traffic and transport practices with Brisbane. But it also has a few differences that caught my attention. I have written in an old post about Dragon's teeth, the markings around school zones. Another interesting difference that I noticed was the footpath arrangement, where at least at the suburb where I was staying, was different than the usual Brisbane footpath. The concrete strip is located adjacent to the property boundary and not at the middle of the verge. Personally I like this arrangement and I think it allows for better landscaping with tall trees.

Sydney's inner suburbs have a unique character as they preserve to the most part their architectural heritage. Some of the traffic calming I saw also looked  quite old. They feel in line with that historical character as they are not the standard precast ones that lately have prevailed.

Of course not all traffic and transport parameters in Sydney were world class. Sydney's congestion is notorious and visiting the city at a holiday period helped me avoid all that. Another bad example of mobility management were the parking meters and the parking management system in general, outside the Botanic Gardens. Having to pay at a specific parking pay station for a number of bays can be quite confusing especially if you have parked at the outermost of the lot. In this area Brisbane's parking management system is a lot more advanced.

On the other side in Brisbane we don't have a parking facility like the Sydney Opera House underground parking. Although, that too has gone into receivership, it is a really beauty architecturally and a brilliant transport design. It's innovative double spiral design can accommodate approximately 1200 vehicles in 12 stories.

I can understand the frustration of everyday commuters facing delays on their trips to work or home. After all Sydney is an Alpha +  global city where traffic and transport improvements are a constant requirement. To me Sydney was a great trip experience and a great place to visit or live.