Public Transport, Commonwealth Games, real gaming, crazy links

[tcpip]

A couple of weeks ago The Age raised possibility of free public transport (paid through rates) as a means to relieve congestion adn pollution, Prosper Australia have asked me to write a an article on said topic. Anyone have some clever ideas on how to break this proposal? (special kudos to severina_242 for some good ideas). On a related matter I've discovered that two previous articles on a similar theme have made their way to the School of Cooperative Individualism library. Prosper Australia have also approached me to do more public relations work for them.

All systems go for the Ballarat Install Fest. I've written general public and IT literate press releases and have started some modest distributions. This weekend will see it crank up a couple of notches with training on Sunday. The event itself is all happening during the Commonwealth games, which look like they'll be a bit of non-event, with the exception of the graffiti event (hat-tip to adricongirl and the StolenWealth games. Interesting reference to previous paragraph - what will be the net loss of the Commonwealth games? Will it be more than the $340 million required to provide free public transport for a year?

Three gaming events since my last post; Outbreak of Heresy last Sunday has led the party to Wallachia after escaping the castle of the lich of Vlad Tepes (hey, the body was never found!), last night was Dogs in the Vineyard which involved convincing the local Steward to let two "Mountain People" (read: Amerindians) marry and pray with rest of the faithful as his refusual was allowing demonic influences into the town (very cool narrativism), and finally, I've started composing a RuneQuest II module for RetroCon. Adventures continue on Sunday with GURPS Australian Noir. Hell that's a lot of dice-rolling and cooperative storytelling.

Want to go on SBS's Insight program? Register here. Ten worst dictators (hat-tip artbroken. Death of a Liberal Party Nazi. Korea calls for a Linux city. The USA really is going theocratic.

Comments

Re: Ration by queue

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

If it increased usage, and one did not invest in more rolling stock, you would just replace rationing by price with rationing by queue.

If, and only if, current services are fill to capacity - of which there is some justification of saying this in peak hours (and in the inner 'urbs, they already have effective free public transport at this time).

Experience around the world suggests that about 10% of journeys being on public transport is all one can expect, particularly given such a small percentage of jobs nowadays are where the public transport goes to.

If we get to 10% then that may be enough.

*nods* to transport - jobs issue.

How do you think we can increase the patronage?

Re: Ration by queue

[erudito.livejournal.com]

I think peak pricing (in this case, off-peak discounting) has a certain amount going for it.

But the biggest problem is the lack of radial connections. Though I doubt that the capital cost would be worth the return.

Really, one would need decent controlled studies. This is one of the brute empirical questions that one needs such studies to really tease out.