About me, as a person, and my family.
The Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Combined Authority have recently introduced some Tiger bus services. Many locals do not know about them, as the advertising for these services is abysmal. (If you look at the CPCA site, the Tiger buses really are well hidden.) But a couple of them have the advantage of calling at the stop right near my house, so as soon as I could find a gap in my hectic…
Part of transport policy in the UK is the sustainable transport hierarchy. There are lots of versions of this, as it turns out - see for example here and here . But generally put, the hierarchy has a number of tiers: Walking and wheeling Cycling Public transport Taxis and shared vehicles Private cars Air travel Generally, modes are more sustainable as you go up the list - lower pollution, lower…
Dirk Gently was a great fan of the fundamental interconnectedness of all things. Those who are responsible for our public transport? Not so much. At least where I am and for the journeys I tend to make, joined-up thinking really hasn't permeated into public transport. It wasn't that much better in the past - consider how many railway stations are set distant from their notional destination. Blame…
Here in the UK, the government placed a £2 cap on single bus fares. Cheaper bus fares is a good thing, surely? The snag with this limit is that, at least in Cambridge, it makes 2 single tickets cheaper than a return (OK, there isn't a return, there's a day ticket). It's even cheaper that the advance flexi ticket (which is the day ticket on the smartphone app). (One possibility is that the single…
We first got moved over to a smart meter some years ago. It partially worked great for about a day, then stopped. The whole thing has been a bit of a shambles. It wouldn't take electricity readings, the in-home display (IHD) wouldn't communicate with the meter, our meter wasn't even registered with the supplier, and that sort of thing. Even now, despite having a smart meter that's capable of…
I considered briefly the magnitude of the response needed to address the COVID-19 pandemic, and concluded that - roughly - a factor of 10 reduction in social activity was required . The question then becomes - how to achieve that? Clearly, lockdown works (although the fact that our decline was slower than it should have been indicates that it wasn't working optimally - lacklustre leadership, being…
Nobody really knows how many people have died in the UK due to COVID-19. There are currently 3 numbers that might give a bit of a clue: The daily statistic of those who've died after a positive test The number who have had COVID-19 mentioned on the death certificate The excess deaths reported compared to a normal year The last one is more amenable to statistical analysis, but is also subject to a…
Short version: quite a lot. The long version below is a rough attempt for me (a former scientist) to understand the problem and the rough nature of possible solutions. It starts with the R factor - essentially the number of people that an infectious person passes the disease on to. The more people you infect, the faster the disease grows. If you manage to get to a situation where people infect…
One thing that appears commonly in reports of deaths due to coronavirus is that those who died were elderly or had underlying health conditions. Partially based on this, there seem to be a lot of people making or supporting the argument that Covid-19 doesn't matter because it only kills ill or elderly people, and they would have died anyway. How true is this? Not true at all, as it happens. You…
I think I had a paper round in my early teens, but that was only a few weeks. They changed the scheme almost every day, and then decided to get rid of the paper boys and girls entirely. My first proper job was 5 weeks in the summer of 1980. The company was called William Watts, a small engineering firm selling machine tools. At the time they imported machine tools from East Germany - while not…
Early on in the coronavirus pandemic, the shops ran short of supplies. There was no sanitiser gel to be had for love or money. Of course, there was wall to wall messaging about how important hand washing was, and how you should use sanitiser if you couldn't wash. Shortage of supplies in the shops means that people were paying attention. Basic food supplies - pasta, flour, and the like - were…
A while ago I wrote about On working from home . Of course, the recent COVID-19 crisis has meant that a lot more people are working from home. Although we have to be honest and say that this isn't the normal working from home, it's having to try and work in isolation away from the office because of the pandemic. Even for those of us used to working from home, this isn't normal . When I decided to…
One thing that is absolutely clear in the battle against congestion and pollution is that modal shift away from the private car is essential. The fundamental issue is space-efficiency. Cars are horrendously inefficient users of the precious limited space available in urban environments. It doesn't really matter what alternative mode is used - whether walking, cycling, bus, tram, or train -…
I recently went to a meeting hosted by Carbon Neutral Cambridge on developing a Local Transport Plan that would get us towards being carbon neutral. Quick summary: the measures proposed by local authorities (specifically Cambridge, but I suspect it's not that different elsewhere) won't get us even close to being carbon neutral by 2050, and likely not ever. Given that, realistically, any hope we…
We all know the saying "you wait ages for a bus, and them 3 arrive at once". But why is this? The basic reason is simple: once a bus starts to run late, there are likely to be more passengers waiting at stops, slowing it down. Because it's running late, the bus behind it has fewer passengers waiting when it gets to stops, and catches it up. There's a strong feedback loop that drives well-separated…
If you've been through an annual performance evaluation in a large company, chances are the HR department has introduced you to the notion of setting SMART goals. For those unfamiliar with this horror, a SMART goal is: S pecific - you have to avoid meaningless waffle M easurable - otherwise how can you prove you've achieved it A ttainable - there's no point trying to do something impossible R…
There's been a lot of controversy in Cambridge over the parking charge for our Park and Ride service. A few years ago, the council introduced a car parking charge. To say it didn't go down well is a bit of an understatement. Locals were outraged, not only by the charge, but the pain and complexity involved in paying for it. Recently, a plan has come about whereby the charge would be scrapped.…
I've been working from home for about two and a half years now, and it's been great. My employer, Haplo , is on the far side of London. It's not that difficult to get to, but it is almost a 3 hour trip (especially once you've allowed for the erratic bus "service" to Cambridge station). Fine for occasional visits, not something I can see being viable for a daily commute, so I go down to see…
One question that occurred to me when I attended the Rebooting the City Deal meeting was how dense the coverage of a public transport system needs to be to make it useful. I've seen several statements along the lines of x% of Cambridge being within a 7-minute (or whatever) walk to a bus stop. But what is a reasonable walking distance? I don't know, but I have a little data. OK, 2 data points.…
2016 has been a year of surprises, to many. A UK referendum for Brexit was followed by a recent victory for Donald Trump in the US Presidential Election. I'm not a great fan of either result, but don't find either surprising. In the case of the EU referendum, there was a huge problem with the Remain campaign. Essentially, it failed to give people a good reason why they would want to stay in the…
One of the characteristics of the EU referendum was the "we can have our cake and eat it" promises from the Leave campaign. That we would be able to get all the benefits of being in the EU while avoiding the obligations and responsibilities that go with those benefits. Post-referendum, the notion of Soft Brexit follows the same illogical path. Having your cake and being able to eat it has…
I'm sure that when you're getting married, you don't think too much about the long term consequences of the date you choose for the wedding. I know that when we chose a date back in 1986 it was largely around when people and places were available. We didn't think that late October would mean that our anniversary would always be (a) autumnal, verging on wintry, and (b) coincident with the school…
The Greater Cambridge City Deal is a project that gets a significant amount of funding to improve Cambridge and its surroundings. Having looked at some of the proposals they've come up with, I was pretty concerned that they didn't seem to be heading in the right direction. Or even close. There's a real possibility that the urge to be seen to be "doing something" will fritter away this investment,…
The UK held a divisive referendum back in June that resulted in a very narrow majority for "Leaving the EU". Whatever that means. Let me construct an analogy for you. You're travelling along a motorway in a car, and a faction say "we don't like this car". You hold a narrow vote, and the result is a narrow win for the get rid of the car faction. I mean, everyone wants a better car, right? So, what…
Following on from the highly successful short breaks we had last year in Manchester and Leeds , we've just had a long weekend in Liverpool. We stayed with a friend, and the reason for the timing was the Grand National at Aintree. However, while Mel went to the races, I wasn't overly fussed about the idea of standing in a cold muddy field in a huge crowd, being unable to see anything properly,…