Australian urban planning, public transport, politics, retrocomputing, and tech nerd. Recovering journo. Cat parent. Part-time miserable grump.

Cities for people, not cars! Tech for people, not investors!

  • 59 Posts
  • 59 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
Cake day: November 5th, 2022
  • AJ Sadauskas@aus.socialtoTechnology@lemmy.ml•Google Admits Its AI Overviews Search Feature Screwed Up
    2·
    1 month ago

    @makeasnek On a broader note, I think possibly the best approach for decentralised, open-sourced web search might be an evolution on the SearXNG model.

    At the top of the funnel, you have meta search engines that query and aggregate results from a number of smaller niche search engines.

    The metasearch engines are open source, anyone with a spare server or a web hosting account can spin one up.

    For some larger sites that are trustworthy, such as Wikipedia, the site’s own search engine might be what’s queried.

    For the Fediverse and other similar federated networks, the query is fed through a trusted node on the network.

    And then there’s a host of smaller niche search engines, which only crawl and index pages on a small number of websites vetted and curated by a human.

    (Perhaps on a particular topic? Or a local library or university might curate a list of notable local websites?)

    (Alternatively, it might be that a crawler for a web index like Curlie.org only crawls websites chosen by its topic moderators.)

    In this manner, you could build a decent web search engine without needing the scale of Google or Microsoft.

  • AJ Sadauskas@aus.socialtoFediverse@lemmy.ml•Federated Blogging Platforms
    6·
    1 month ago

    @sabreW4K3 Plume doesn’t appear to be active, unfortunately 🥺

    There’s a notice on the official Join Plume website saying the former developers don’t have the time to maintain it anymore. Most of the former public instances now throw up errors of various kinds.

    WriteFreely ( @writefreely ) is alive and well. I was seriously toying with the idea of setting up a blog through its main instance, which is called Write.as Professional. The sticking point for me was that the official on-platform monetisation tool (Coil) appears to be dead, and doesn’t support members-only posts (like Ghost).

    Ghost, when federation goes live, looks like it will be the best option for my blog.

    WordPress plus @pfefferle 's plugins is another great option, depending on what you want to use it for. (There’s no shortage of WP plugins!)

    As for Lemmy, I could see a blogging-focussed front end being created for it, in the same way FediBB put a traditional message board front end on it, but one doesn’t appear to exist at present.

  • AJ Sadauskas@aus.socialtoFuck Cars@lemmy.ml•Study Finds More Americans Commuting To Work Splattered On Grill Of F-150
    1·
    4 months ago

    @owen @heatofignition @mondoman712 Here’s where there is a big difference between the US and Australia.

    The wealthiest parts of Australia’s capital cities are in the inner-city, which already have access to good public transport.

    The poorest areas tend to be the outer suburbs, where public transport is a half-hourly bus, and cycling involves navigating a six-lane stroad with no protected bike lane.

    It’s the opposite to the US, where in many metro areas the wealthiest white residents live in outer-suburban gated communities and the (often Black) working class have traditionally lived in the inner city.

    The wealthiest suburbs in Melbourne are served by the (mostly inner-city) tram network. Toorak, Brighton, Kew, Camberwell, and increasingly Fitzroy.

    And the poorest tend to be in the outer suburbs.

    There’s a whole history of why it played out differently to the US.

    But the big factor for why someone lives in, say, Carrum Downs in outer southeast Melbourne (where the local public transport is by bus) is because it’s all they can afford.

    In the US, where the wealthiest people live in the outer suburbs, raising gas prices to encourage them to move to the inner city where there’s better public transport would probably work.

    The difference is that in Australia the wealthiest people actively avoid the outer suburbs.

    It’s the working class who tends to live in the outer suburbs.

    Most Carrum Downs residents would gladly choose to live somewhere like Brighton or Toorak with good public transport. If they could afford it.

    That means there needs to be decent alternatives to driving if you’re going to increase the cost of driving.

  • AJ Sadauskas@aus.socialtoFuck Cars@lemmy.ml•Study Finds More Americans Commuting To Work Splattered On Grill Of F-150
    1·
    4 months ago

    @owen @heatofignition @mondoman712 The answer is definitely not never.

    I’m all for increasing the cost of driving, including fuel excises. And taxes on cars. And potentially congestion taxes.

    But most people — at least in the mainland capitals — should be within comfortable walking distance of a public transport service that runs every 10 minutes first.

    That’s not currently the case.

    Price mechanisms aren’t as effective as they could be at changing behaviour if there are no viable alternatives in place.

    So my answer is ideally petrol prices should be increased at the same time as decent bus services are rolled out across the capital cities.

    And I think where public transport services are already at a decent standard, or as services are improved, we should be rolling out more localised disincentives to driving, such as pedestrianising streets.

    We should be doing that right now.

  • AJ Sadauskas@aus.socialtoFuck Cars@lemmy.ml•Study Finds More Americans Commuting To Work Splattered On Grill Of F-150
    1·
    4 months ago

    @owen @heatofignition @mondoman712
    “When do you expect transit to be sufficient to allow increasing gas prices?”

    Probably sometime during the Fraser government, back in the 1980s.

    So an important difference between Australia and the US is that the Australian Federal Government already has a national Fuel Excise Tax, as well as Goods and Services Tax on Fuel: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_taxes_in_Australia

    But going back to the main point.

    People can’t choose public transport over the car if the public transport system in the area isn’t up to scratch.

    People on higher incomes can afford any increase to the cost of driving the most.

    And they tend to live in the inner suburbs that have the best access to public transport.

    It’s the working class people in the car-dependent outer suburbs — the western suburbs of Melbourne, Sydney, and Brisbane in particular — who are the least able to afford it.

    And when you attempt to increase the cost of driving when there aren’t any good alternatives, you prompt a not-unjustified political backlash.

    That political backlash is real. It’s why — for example — Australia no longer has a price on carbon.

    And from a social policy standpoint, you effectively financially penalise people for being poor.

    The reason why I cited the Northwest Metro is because it’s a great example of a rail service that’s better than driving for many trips. And it was built in an area that previously had quite poor access to public transport.

    That means improving density along existing rail corridors, opening up new higher-density mixed-use developments along new rail corridors, and retrofitting high-frequency (every 10 minutes or greater) bus services to existing suburban areas.

    Once good alternatives are in place, that’s when you ideally should take steps to make driving less attractive.

    That can range from local interventions, such as pedestrianising streets and reducing the mandatory parking requirements in local planning codes.

    It can potentially include congestion surcharges, parking taxes, etc.

    And at a state or national level, increasing fuel excise, motor vehicles registration, stamp duty, etc.

  • AJ Sadauskas@aus.socialtoFuck Cars@lemmy.ml•Study Finds More Americans Commuting To Work Splattered On Grill Of F-150
    1·
    4 months ago

    @owen @heatofignition @mondoman712 Here’s the timetable for the Sydney Northwest Metro: https://transportnsw.info/documents/timetables/93-M-Sydney-Metro-North-West-20230929.pdf

    It has a service every four minutes during the morning and evening peak.

    I’ve attached a screenshot from Google Maps showing what’s typical 8am morning commute would look like from Rouse Hill to Macquarie University and the Macquarie Park business precinct.

    It’s typically 40 minutes by car. You have to have your hands on the wheel. You’re stuck in traffic. That’s if you pay $9.56 or $14.13 for a toll road, which is a bit quicker.

    Or you can take the Metro.

    Trains run every four minutes during the morning peak, so you can turn up and go. It’s a modern service with driverless trains and platform-screen doors.

    It takes 32 minutes — so it’s the faster option. And you can do other things during your commute.

    (I’ve attached a screenshot, please note you might need to see the original post to view it.)

    The train is the faster and more convenient option.

    Why wouldn’t you take the Metro?

    This isn’t because the state government has done anything to hobble road driving.

    It’s because the NSW State Government has invested in building a good quality, frequent Metro service to the northwestern suburbs.

    The Metro has been a catalyst for building a number of transit-oriented developments at each of the stations. For the people living in those apartments, there’s a clear winner.

    The problem is that for around 70 years after WW2, governments have zoned whole suburbs for low-density residential.

    These car-dependent suburbs, cars were the only viable option for getting to work, school, or shopping. By design.

    At best, there’s an often unreliable bus that runs every 20 minutes during the peak. And that’s it.

    At least in Australia, they tend to be on the outer fringes of the major metropolitan areas. Wealthier people with a choice tend to prefer inner-urban areas with better public transport.

    If you just hit people in these areas with taxes and fines without a compelling alternative, and you’re effectively levelling a poor tax.

    Give people access to good quality public transport — and yes it can be faster than being stuck in traffic — and they’ll choose it.

  • AJ Sadauskas@aus.socialOPtoFuck Cars@lemmy.ml•Concerned about microplastics? Research shows one of the biggest sources is car tyres
    2·
    4 months ago

    @oo1 @abroad_octopus A typical bike weighs somewhere around 6.8 – 10kg or so. Even when carrying an adult human and some cargo, you’re only looking at maybe 80 – 100 kg

    By comparison, a Ford 150 pickup truck weighs 1837 kg and 2375 kg. The 1.2 (on average) humans on-board are a rounding error.

    So you’re looking at the difference between around 100kg on two fairly thin tyres, versus over 2 tonnes over four thick tyres.

    What that means is when you hit the brakes on a pick-up truck, you have twice as many tyres are doing an order of magnitude more work to stop a far heavier vehicle.

    Now on to road damage. (Road wear and asphalt degradation is the other half of this equation.)

    The general rule of thumb is each time you double the weight of vehicle, the amount of road wear increases 16 times. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_power_law)

    A 10kg bike with a 70kg rider is going to do a miniscule fraction of the damage to a paved road that a 1837 kg pick-up truck or SUV does.

    (A 160kg vehicle does 16x the road wear of an 80kg one, a 320kg one does 16x the wear as a 160kg one and 256 times an 80kg one, a 640 kg is 4,096 times an 80kg one, a 1,280 kg vehicle is 65, 536 times an 80kg one, and a 2,560 kg vehicle is 1,048,576 times the road wear of an 80kg one.)

    So a motorist, especially an SUV or pick-up truck driver, is likely to cause an order of magnitude less environmental damage on a bike than in a pick-up truck or SUV.