Along with this, who represents public transport users in this city?   Let’s get organised and make an organisation.  The biggest issue I’m having is what to call this organisation and how to get it started.   Does it need to have an acronym?  I hate acronyms but it seems to be the best way.  The only one I came up with is

PIST (People improving sustainable transport)

Maybe I need some suggestions from you…… then we’ll start thinking about how to get it started and what would the framework be – the most important thing would be is just that we make a way for all people who are using sustainable transport to have a voice, and for information sharing, accountability and all the other stuff that the advocates of the car have had over us for all these years

Currently, I’ve just started work 20km from my home and about 7km from my grandma’s place.  I am equipped with a bike and legs, my parents are often going passed (in a car) my work to head to see my grandma or their work.  There is a minor train station (not all trains stop at it) about 2km or so away.  I live about 1 km from a station.  There is also a bus route from about 500m from my house to my work. So I’ve got options….. and I’ve been using them.

Mon – Lift with mum in – nice to catch up with mum / then rode to my grans for dinner (she cooked for me she is so sweet) and the rode to the station and got the train – nice riding although there was a bit of a head wind and I built up a sweat

Tues - Bike/train in – train was late but so was I and I got to read my bike and fly down my hill / then rode to a nearby hospital in the afternoon to see my sister and drove back with her and mum – it was a nice cruisy ride around the lake to the hospital, lovely to see my sister

Wed – Rode to work via Wallsend – ran into a bunch of old timers meeting for a bit of a ride together and they were all so happy and friends and helpful too – I managed to find my way to a very new incomplete bike path from Wallsend to to Glendale, it went through the bush and was completely away from the road… What a find / Rode back from work through a gully in kotara which was peaceful, funniest thing that happened was a guy stopped at the traffic light started ordering a small fries and coke from me

Thurs - Just rode in before writing this.  Along the kotara road - sadly I’m not sweat free on arrival and have to change which is really not my thing.  But I make sure I still where a nice skirt while riding just cos it feels nice.  Cutest thing I saw today was a lady dinking her kid to school, with the kid side saddling on the crossbar.  

I have had some really lovely interactions.  I think I said ‘mornin’ to about 20 people walking/ riding and have had some nice smiles and even waves from people in cars.  This is only in my first week and in an apparently ‘bike unfriendly’ city.  I look forward to riding more and hope that to see more and more bikes everyday - in a similar way I did in Sydney over the last 3 years.

I will confine my writing to only my amusing encounters as I ride along on my bike, train, bus or car….

In Sydney, as in most cities of the world, the lit up green man is the signal for people to walk across a road.  When there is a red man lit up you are meant to wait.  There is often a button next to the lights which you need to press in order to call the green man into action.  The red man comes without being called.  There is a problem with the green men of Sydney… they have been programmed to be extremely skimpy and I’m going to tell you a story about how this has come about and how it could be fixed.

A traffic light is a sequence of movements – a bit like a circle of dancers where some get to move at some times and must stay still at others.  There are lots of traffic lights happening in a city so it is like one big ballroom, with people moving from one dance circle to the next.  Some of these people move by putting their foot on an accelerator, others all together in a bus, then there are those rotating pedals around in circles while others move lightly on their feet.

Those moving lightly on their feet are the one’s that must wait for the green man before entering the dance circle.  However, the rights of the accelerator pushing dancers have been making sure that most of the dancing time belongs to them.  Their time in the circle has been maximised and synchronised with other dance circles so they can be dancing as much as possible.  Meanwhile those moving lightly on their feet have had little representation in the choreography department, as for each round of the dance (cycle of traffic lights) they are just given enough time to dance from one side of the circle to the other and little more than.  This is also contingent on whether one manages to press a button on time which allows them to do this short little dance.

I propose that we reconfigure these dance circles, so that pedestrian get the maximum time allowable. So this is what I think…..

• Why walk once when you can walk twice in a cycle? – Ensure that the green man comes on every phase within a cycle that it can 
• Keep it green – keep the signal on the green man as long as possible within the phase – not just the time it takes to walk across the road (you don’t keep the lights for motor traffic only green for the time it takes cars to cross the intersection
• Don’t make us press the button – when the green man can come on automatically with no conflict to cars – there is no need for a button – JUST MAKE IT AUTOMATICALLY GREEN!
• Think about shortening the cycles… if anyone from the RTA wants to justify the way the signals are at the moment, I’d be happy to chat

So I guess that’s all I ask.  Let’s see who has the last dance

It’s all very nice to try and make us reminisce about poets, social campaigners, writers and politicians, but maybe we could use this space very wisely…. I think that this space on these bits of plastic and metal could be used to remind us what we can do to help save the planet, what the world could look like and also just a few reminders about how beautiful our world is – there are some cute Australian animals on Australian coins but we can always have more nature on our money.  We could have wind farms and solar panels, bikes, buses and trains, eating fresh, saving power, community etc. as all themes of our “sustainable” money.

Everytime we are partaking in a monetry exchange that involves cash – we may get a little reminder about what our consumption patterns are doing to the earth and how we can improve them.  We would then have to work on getting credit cards and debit cards to also have little reminders on them.

What makes the public a public that cares and is willing to demonstrate this through both their citizenship and behavioural actions?

A campaign by a local newspaper pushing their agenda, a few seminars, public consultations and opening for submissions sponsored by the media…. or a restructuring of media corporations so they don’t rely on the money from many messages made by professional manipulators to make us want things we didn’t really want before.  Maybe we need a media that is there to sell information and empowerment to the public rather than sell the public’s attention to the biggest corporations of our time.

If we are to be serious about developing sustainable transport within our city, we have to acknowledge that the media is not a benign institution – and I’m not going down the track of media watch, looking at particularly nasty or incompetent pieces of work.  I’m talking about the way it functions from day to day.

My first point is that media sells attention

We go and buy the paper, turn on the TV or the radio, and we feel like we are being served.  The people and performances we are exposed to are there to make us want to watch, to keep us interested, entertained and if they are doing their job right – getting a good part of our attention.  That doesn’t seem like such a bad deal, you as the “consumer” of this production the media has put on for you, could almost feel like you were being very well attended to.  But why?  These media institutions are not purely, altruistic charities – just here for our pleasure.  They have your attention for a reason.  They are going to sell it to the highest bidder.  One of your most valuable assets is up for grabs and it’s going to be bought by a fast food chain, a toy manufacturer or the automotive industry.   It almost seems unfair that people are acquiring and selling something of yours while you are distracted by whether Darren will win the million dollar prize.

My second point is that media’s clients are corporations with special interests

So, the media industry is being paid by these big corporations in exchange for our attention.  How would this affect the content of the media?  Well, usually you don’t bite the hand that feeds you and this rings very true for our friends in media land.  While advertising dollars isn’t going to prevent any mention of opposing views, it has the potential to dull down these arguments and ensure that the point of view which is more interesting for the concerned corporation, will be heard.

This was a big issue in the anti-tobacco movement.  The debate may have pushed through certain barriers much faster if the media weren’t so reliant on the allegiance of tobacco companies as one of the biggest sources of advertising money.   It is worth noting that when tobacco advertisements were banned on TV, the tobacco companies diversified and bought up “advertisable” products so they could continue to “censor” the medias coverage of the tobacco debate.  Nowadays, media are probably more dependent on “Quit” advertisements, so the whole allegiance has gone full circle and may be even overly sympathetic towards the anti-smoking sentiment

My third point is that media employees don’t understand the power of their messages

You say one thing and you portray a list of statements and sentiments that would fill the rest of the news bulletin if you had to explain them all.  I will not talk about all of them right now, but will try and explain some of the more important.

Firstly, normative messages will arise from you innocent account.  There are injunctive norms which are all about what people ought to be doing.  Most journalists, producers and script writers are pretty aware of these norms.  They gather that when someone says this is good or bad, this is recommended or not, legal or not, sensible or not, responsible or not – people get a certain message about whether or not they ought to be doing it.  Descriptive norms, however, are often  alluded to without the knowledge of the person who presents the messages.  These are the norms that are all about the fact that other people are behaving this way – describing what is happening with no apparent judgment.  Descriptive norms are very powerful as we are more like sheep than we know.  We also are not consciously aware that we are following blindly.  So, every time we are told how bad it is that there are so many people doing such bad things, we are provided with the injunctive norm that we shouldn’t behave like this, but we are also provided with a descriptive norm that so many people behave like this that it is an accepted way to behave.  Maybe journalists have to think less about sensationalizing stories and more about the consequences of their messages.

(Note I may have unwittingly introduced the descriptive norm that most journalists don’t worry about descriptive norms and hence encouraging them to continue to carry on in this fashion – aaagh sometimes I feel like I just create traps of inevitable hypocrisy while just trying to benignly analyze the world…)

Secondly, messages often carry a sense of empowerment or helplessness, a sense of the public being free agents or mere products of the system.  Allocating blame for problems, responsibility of action and victims of situation leads us to potentially feel guilty, victimized, empowered or overwhelmed.  The truth is, usually these stories are not that simple, distribution of blame, responsibility and affliction of problems is spread across a wide range of institutions of which the public are included.  The media often simplify these stories and the public can often be given a passive role – this will lead to helplessness as they feel they can only merely watch as the stories unravel before them each day.  It is important that the stories in the media make the public feel empowered without feeling overwhelmed.  This is a potentially powerful tool the media possesses but lacks the confidence or competence to use.

So today, I have just had a brief (and incomplete) look at the media and the potential ways they could improve the people power for a more sustainable world.  I think I would like to continue this with a look at some other major institutions which have powers to help the people have power.  Who knows, one day we might be able to work together enough to push buses along like I witnessed in India.