UK Transportation Chief rides a scooter, tells others to ride the bus
Filed under: Transportation Alternatives, Legislation and Policy
I picked up this little story from The Scooter Scoop, which I can always count on to have funny little blurbs of interest. It seems that UK Transportation Chief Martin Mullaney has been chided for not taking his own advice, which is to ride the bus to work. The problem? He rides his scooter. I can appreciate the Lambretta myself, being a lover of most things on two wheels, but those old two-stroke motors are quite the polluters. Modern scooters are almost all four-strokers these days, and the two-strokes often have catalytic converters on them, despite being very small in displacement.
Martin says that if more people were to take him up on his suggestion to take the bus, then he would too. He says that there are too many cars on the road, making the trip by bus take too long. I think that people are probably making too much of the whole thing, but perhaps that is understandable, as the committee that Martin is chief of recently published a pretty harsh report claiming that the wealthy and middle-classers are too "snobbish" to take the bus. The same report suggested a congestion charge like that of London in Birmingham, U.K.
The picture with this post shows Martin riding his very nice vintage Lambretta.
[Source: Tony Collins / Birmingham Mail via The Scooter Scoop]
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
1-13-2007 @ 7:07PM
piedoggie said...
I'm surprised no one called you on your comment about scooters and air pollution. yes, the older engine designs are rather bad. see: http://www.bajajusa.com/emissions.htm but newer designs are much cleaner. other advantages to scootering are faster transportation (point to point), fewer start-stop cycles with attendant pollution spikes, higher respect for person's time (less time on road, can go when you need to)
wrt snobbishness and buses, I don't know a single person that, given a choice, would not prefer to take a single person transport. only one reason is that buses are filthy disease filled transportation. ask any public health official how many illnesses are communicated by contaminated surfaces or shared air. then work out how many billions of dollars/euros would be lost to bus propagated illnesses. before you discount this problem, there is a related situation in offices today. parents with children in daycare. despite all precautions daycare diseases increase sickness in the office. what is going to happen where people take no precautions against spreading cold and flu?
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1-13-2007 @ 9:05PM
Peter said...
Piedoggie, I've got the solution to both problems: ride a bicycle. It is as personal as transportation gets, and you'll be in better shape so you'll have a stronger immune system for when you do to take the bus.
Imagine the reduction in health costs if everybody got 30 minutes of cardio every day on the way to work and 30 minutes more on the way back!
For folks who aren't able to ride a bike, we'll clean up the public transportation system. It doesn't have to be filthy - have you ever ridden a train in Germany or Switzerland? They are unbelievably clean. We just need to feed some small percentage of the billions of dollars we spend on personal transportation into establishing useful public transportation.
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1-14-2007 @ 1:15PM
Tim said...
I hear that the electric bicycles and scooters are really getting quite good. http://www.peswiki.com/index.php/Directory:Electric_Scooters Can’t wait until the new nano L-Ion batteries are within price range. While you’re at it, take a look here for some very interesting reading. http://www.peswiki.com/index.php/Congress:Top_100_Technologies_--_RD
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