TRANSPORT IMPACTS

Three little movies about places I living and cycling

jacqui — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 23:09:31 +0000

This one is about riding around Sydney

This one is some bike rides I’ve done around Newcastle

And this one is about stuff in poetry form

And we’ll be riding

jacqui — Fri, 02 Mar 2012 09:33:00 +0000

Here are some videos I made, just with my little camera, minimal editing skills and some music I borrowed for a worthy purpose

This one is of cycling around Sydney which everyone seems to be doing these days

This one is of some bike rides I have done around Newcastle

Waiting can drive you coconuts!

jacqui — Fri, 02 Mar 2012 09:21:42 +0000

I still remember finding a beautiful yummy coconut on a road trip to Cairns. There were five girls determined to reach the juicy goodness within the hard shell of the coconut but not knowing if it would ever be possible. So with a stake being driven into the coconut we set about on our quest. It felt fruitless (pun might be intended or might not be) and it wasn’t that we had to put in effort that was the problem – it was that we didn’t know if we were getting anywhere. We couldn’t tell from one strike to the next weather we were making progress. It was a little bit like waiting for a bus – supposedly you are on your way but you are not going anywhere and you can’t see your progress. Often you don’t even know if you’ve just missed a bus or not. This feeling can drive you mad!

However, once the bus arrives or you strike the inner shell, you are then able to see how you are moving forward and getting closer to your destination – whether it’s work or coconut water.

While I don’t have a sure fire way to feel like you are making progress with coconuts – real time information for buses could do wonders – and it is not just knowing when the bus is coming but it is what you can do with that knowledge. In Paris, I looked at the time to the next bus and would walk to the next stop if I had enough time – it made me feel like I was getting somewhere even if I knew that in the end I would catch the same bus.

Anyway – I seem to have way to many analogies with fruit …

Just consume less, you all consuming bunch…

jacqui — Fri, 02 Mar 2012 09:05:49 +0000

A couple of years ago Ken Livingstone made an amazing revelation in the State Theatre to an audience of enthusiatic citizens of Sydney…. He said all we need to do is consume less and we can save the planet. Who could have thought it could be that simple? The crowd applauded and all felt inspired like they were in an evangelical church and Ken was bringing them the love of the Lord. On leaving the state theatre, I heard the masses talking up this speech, saying …. “if only everyone in the world could hear it, we could correct the wrongs of our consumerist world”.

I came out feeling like we had been sold short. The responsibility of all the wrongs of the world had been put on people as “the consumer” where the buck stopped (well the bucks are assumed to keep on rolling actually). Why didn’t he talk about us as producers as well, or is that assumed to be a too monstrous system to attack and sensitive topic to talk about? Why didn’t he look at the different pressures put on the consumer to make them aspire to consume? Why did he make it sound so simple for us to do something that is really one of the hardest things in the world? The corporate world, the producers of what we consume are highly organised and they want to drive “consumers” to consume. They have creative minds, psychologists, strategists and the like all getting together to prod us into spending our money.

I think it is important to consume less, and I celebrate the ability of people to live with lower environmental and social impacts. These people can find status, joy and socialisation through their low consumption lifestyles. However, we shouldn’t look down on people who still find themselves the product of a system designed to make people dependent on consuming for their very status, joy and socialisation possible. It is important to therefore address the system – we need much stronger regulations of how marketing maniputes the way people find fulfillment. Marketing a car should be about showing how it can get you from A to B rather than how it can make you more fun, free and sexy. The other part of the system to address is educating people to question the ridiculous claims of marketing material. Adbusters and the like have taken a niche approach but it needs to be part of our mainstream education, it needs to be part of our media and it needs to be part of the conversations we have with our kids.

Anyway, I don’t subscibe to feelgood speeches when in comes to consumerism because it is a seriously morbid topic. I think instead we need some ironic speeches aimed at the producers to make them think about what they are doing. We need some funny speeches to make consumers realise how ridiculous some of the strategies of producers are – and we probably need a lot more speaking in general… that won’t necessarily make us applaud.

Incidentally getting it right

jacqui — Fri, 02 Mar 2012 08:44:04 +0000

The world is a stressful place, and even the thought of having a stress free moment stresses you out, because you stress about why you are not stressing!! So, understandably, you don’t have time to think about everything every time you make a decision.

You have to rely on signals around you to take your cues, and act the way you do. At the same time, you like to believe you have made rational weighted decisions, and you don’t have time to stress about not being rational anyway. So … inorder to get things right, it needs to be effortless, incidental and stress free – or people are just going to use the ration argument – Look I don’t need any more stress in my life – and continue doing what they are doing in their own stressful way.

So what can we do? I’d love to hear your thoughts but here are a few de-stressing ideas to promote public transport, bikes and walking …

meditation podcasts for public transport trips – designed to fit into the travel times of your trips by public transport – and in winter use reflector art

public transport seats with inbuilt massage machine
tags you can wear to let people know you don’t mind chatting on public transport
ride/walk by art – bike paths with artwork to relax you on your way to work
bike computers with a speaker that encourages you and plays music that goes with the intensity and landscape of the ride
Shady bike routes with a well shaded cushioned pole to lean on at traffic lights when you are tired and hot