Road congestion

[Roderick Smith]

The figure 'congestion vs population' is completely meaningless and undefined.
How to lie with statistics. That is not to deny that congestion exists, but how should it be measured?

Roderick.

Melbourne traffic congestion on par with world’s biggest cities like London, Rome and New York.
Herald Sun June 18, 2017.
TRAFFIC congestion in Melbourne is on par with New York and could rival the world’s worst cities if nothing is done to combat the problem.
Figures supplied by Tom Tom show congestion levels in Melbourne are at 33 per cent compared to its population.
This means motorists are sitting in peak hour congestion a third longer than if the traffic was free-flowing.
Sunday Herald Sun journalist Andrew Jefferson took a taxi from Preston to Melbourne’s CBD to test traffic congestion. Picture: Andrew Tauber.
Congestion on a freeway in Beijing. Source: Transurban London, Rome, LA and Moscow — all big cities with high congestion levels — had congestion levels of between 40 and 50 per cent.Sydney was at 39 per cent while the world’s most congested city was Mexico City at 66 per cent.
Melbourne’s population is expected to double by almost 100 per cent to 8 million people by 2050, placing twice the strain on the city’s ageing infrastructure.
How bad is peak hour traffic congestion in London?
By comparison, New York was expected to grow by 8 per cent, LA 12 per cent, and Chicago 16 per cent — all cities with populations two or three times the size of the Victorian capital.
Transurban chief executive officer Scott Charlton said traffic congestion in Melbourne was only going to get worse unless urgent action was taken.
“Tackling congestion is an issue cities across the world are confronting and here in Melbourne, significant funds are being poured into level crossings, a new underground rail line and the West Gate Tunnel,” he said.
Heavy traffic on busy famous 7th Avenue near Times Square in New York.
London traffic congestion.
If Melbourne continues down the same path without reform, it’s feared the city could be looking at congestion levels of between 60 and 70 per cent by 2050.
Despite Melbourne being voted the world’s most liveable city for the sixth year in a row, transport infrastructure accounts for less than 6 per cent of a city’s total liveability score.
With half of Australia’s federal budget expenditure tipped to be spent on health and aged care by 2050, Mr Charlton said areas like infrastructure would be left “scrambling for funds”.
Sarah Blake takes a ride in a New York taxi.
“We’re already spending more on roads than we’re raising from road relating taxes — fuel excise, vehicle registration and licence fees,” he said.
“As well as building more infrastructure, we need to look at replacing outdated fuel taxes that sees people driving further in older vehicles paying more to get to and from work every day.”
Figures supplied by VicRoads reveal more than 400 new drivers pass their test each weekday, adding more pressure to Melbourne’s already heavily congested roads.
More than 151,000 new drivers licenses were issued in 2015/16, a jump of 16 per cent from the 130,700 licenses issued in 2009/10.
Helen Lindner, VicRoads Director Registration and Licensing Practice, Standards and Solutions, said as Melbourne continued to grow, everyone needed to be mindful of all road users.
“The number of licences issued is growing steadily each year, in line with population growth, and we are investing in the roads needed to meet this demand,” she said.
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/victor ... 7e134a6101

[Roderick Smith]

The ever-smug bicyclists want everyone to cycle, in Australian conditions, and coined the phrase 'active transport' so that they can be lumped with pedestrians and public-transport users.
That may not be evil, but there has to be a better method of handling bikes on pt. In a different thread, there are trials with hooks on the front of buses (just like WA did for prams, well over 50 years ago).
Melbourne's parkiteer program has been one of the few good ones espoused by DoI/DoT/PTV/TfV.
Trains could have ceiling hooks, as they did in country brakevans 100 years ago, and in Tait suburban trains.
San Jose (California, USA) trams have bike space inside.

Roderick.

June 18 2017 Will China's bike boom beat Sydney traffic?
Beijing: Frustration with being continually late because he couldn't find a carpark convinced Donald Tang, 33, that Sydney needed to embrace Asia's digital bike-sharing boom.
The University of Technology, Sydney graduate says there are some places, like Darling Harbour, where city workers can't even catch a train or bus to the office.
Donald Tang founder of bike sharing new Sydney start-up ReddyGo. Photo: Steven Siewert .
Mr Tang's start-up, Reddy Go, will place red bicycles wth GPS tracking at train stations around the Sydney CBD in July.
The bikes are located and unlocked with a smartphone app, and will cost $1.99 for 30-minutes. They come with a helmet, and can be left wherever it is legal to do so.
After months of discussions with the City of Sydney, Mr Tang has lost the race to be the first dockless bike-sharing service to launch in Australia. Singapore's Obike hit the streets of Melbourne on Thursday.
"Competition is good," says Mr Tang of Obike's arrival. His first 160 bikes will ship from China on Monday, but the plan is to put 6000 bikes on greater Sydney's streets within six months.
Top Ryde, Macquarie Park, Chatswood, Rhodes, Burwood, Parramatta and Hurstville are among the suburbs being targeted.
Smartphone bike sharing was born on China's university campuses, and boomed after venture capital firms invested hundreds of millions of dollars in a dozen rival start-ups.
The red Reddy Go bike model that will be rolled out in Sydney. Photo: Supplied Millions of bikes, in a multitude of competing bright colours, are hired daily on city streets, often clogging footpaths.
Mr Tang, who has lived in Sydney for 12 years, became involved through a former classmate from Anhui province.
Tired of jammed bus and tight security checks at subway stations, Beijing commuters have adopted share bikes. Photo: Sanghee Liu The old classmate, Binsen Tang, is the founder of mobile gaming company Elex-Tech, which has 50 million users, and was named by Forbes magazine as one of China's "elite entrepreneurs under 30".
He was an investor in China's third-biggest bike sharing company, Bluegogo, and will fund Reddy Go in Australia. Elex-Tech will build the app. Bluegogo will supply the red bikes.
Commuters unlock shared bikes using their smartphones in Beijing. Photo: Sanghee Liu The City of Sydney says it has no jurisdiction to allow or disallow bike-share operators, and has told Reddy Go that safety, especially in pedestrian areas, must come first.
Mr Tang says Reddy Go will employ university students to maintain the bikes and ensure they aren't left where they shouldn't be.
Shared bikes discarded by commuters rushing to work in Beijing's CBD. Photo: Sanghee Liu The biggest difference between China and Australia is the helmet law, and it has been speculated this may prove an obstacle to bike sharing's mass uptake.
Reddy Go will provide free helmets in bike baskets, and remind riders through its app to wear them.
"We will be happy if any user steals them, because there is a big logo on those helmets... it will be free marketing," Mr Tang said .
A City of Sydney spokeswoman said "dockless bike share has the potential to transform travel in our city".
"While the City supports the concept of bike share, the Lord Mayor has written to the Premier asking the NSW Government to urgently look at developing an appropriate response to managing the operation of bike-share schemes in the public domain," she said.
"Of particular concern is regulation around where and how bicycles will be parked and managed. In other cities the biggest impacts have been around train stations and bus stops where bike share is popular for last-leg journeys."
A University of Sydney bike-share start-up, Airbike, is also expected to start a trial on campuses with 50 bikes in September. Airbike founder Angus McDonald was inspired by his stint at Fudan University in Shanghai while on a New Colombo Plan scholarship.
Related Content:
MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA - JUNE 15: A general view of the yellow bike-sharing bicycles in the city on June 15, 2017 in ...
When it comes to shared cycling, yellow is the new blue .
A Beijing commuter unlocks her share bike.
Bicycles retake China's streets, next the world .
http://www.theage.com.au/world/will-chi ... wrq46.html

[Roderick Smith]

June 15 2017 When it comes to shared cycling, yellow is the new blue .
You may have already seen them on your way to work.
Shiny yellow bicycles scattered around the city with inviting signs that read "Please ride me away" and not a chain in sight.
Ranks of the orange bikes have been seen on Melbourne streets. Photo: Wayne Taylor .
But far from being a random act of charity, these humble pushies are part of a hi-tech new bike-sharing platform.
Singaporean company oBike has released several hundred of them onto city streets as a direct competitor to Melbourne's RACV blue bikes.
Thousands of oBikes sit in an empty lot in Nunawading. Photo: Jason South .
Believed to be the first business of its kind in Australia, oBike's launch has posed a fresh set of problems for local councils about how to police them and regulate quality.
As a dockless bike sharing system, oBike differs radically from the existing Melbourne Bike Share system.
The bikes are left in public parking areas and are unlocked remotely via a mobile phone app.
This means users can pick up and drop off a bike anywhere they like, as opposed to returning it to a designated docking station.
The instructions seem simple. Photo: Eddie Jim .
The cost is $1.99 per 30 minutes with initial plans to cover the CBD, Brunswick, South Yarra, Fitzroy, St Kilda, and Carlton. Helmets are included.
The company launched 12 months ago and boasts 60,000 daily trips in Singapore. There were 170,000 trips taken on RACV bikes between July 2015 and June 2016.
Melbourne Bike Share bikes lined up outside Southern Cross station in 2010. Photo: MAL FAIRCLOUGH .
But can oBike's success overseas be translated here?
Councillor Nicolas Frances Gilley, who chairs the transport portfolio for Melbourne City Council, said the council's goal is a city focused on walking and cycling.
oBike began in Sinapore in 2016 and are launching in Melbourne. Photo: Jason South .
Mr Gilley acknowledged the city had "radically changed" since the council wrote their transport strategy four years ago.
"Bike sharing had its place but we have spent the past four years going 'we know this place doesn't work'."
oBike is launching in Melbourne. Photo: Supplied .
"We know how people want to use bicycles now. We want people to be able to have cheap bikes, put them everywhere and have people able to use them."
But Mr Gilley defended Melbourne Bike Share against criticism, saying it had worked hard to adapt to its biggest drawbacks including helmet rental.
The publicly funded scheme is run by the state government. In the April State Budget, the Andrews government committed $4.9 million to continue the initiative.
An RACV spokeswoman said they operated the system on behalf of Public Transport Victoria and called it an "easy and inexpensive way to get around central Melbourne".
"[It] is sustainable, integrated into Melbourne's transport network, and part of Melbourne's culture with the iconic blue bikes."
Technology investor Richard Celm, a program director at startup accelerator Startupbootcamp, said the city needed to invest in new technology to maintain its place as one of the world's most liveable cities.
"Giving people the option of jumping on a bike for short trips around the city has a number of significant benefits," he said.
"It reduces vehicles on the road which improves air quality, reduces congestion, and means there is less need for roadside parking which gives a huge amount of lost space back to the city and its people."
Mr Celm said a failure to implement the right technology would see Melbourne's infrastructure fail to keep up with the demands of a growing population.
oBike will run on a self-regulating system where users report faulty or broken bikes in return for credit on their account.
Users who do the wrong thing such as locking the bike inside their house will have their account penalised.
Several hundred bikes were released into the CBD on Thursday as a pilot test, with a full launch to follow in coming months.
For more information, visit the oBike Australia website here.
http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/are-y ... wmz3u.html

[Roderick Smith]

170515M Melbourne 'Herald Sun' - bikes.
Roderick.

[neilrex]

i'm not sure that I'd want to pay $2 to rent a bike to ride from Central to Pyrmont, when the bus would be $2.10, and I'd have to put up with the sweat and clothing limitations and helmet laws. The real problem is that there isn't a decent bus service.