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Private Sector to double Dept of Infrastructure Cycling Budget

PRESS RELEASE

As a sport, a pastime and a way to commute, Cycling has had a fair share of ups and downs in the local industry. Before the internal combustion engine ushered in the dominance of the car, Belfast was awash with trams and bicycles.

The North of Ireland has the dubious position of being the only region in the UK and Ireland where use of cycling and public transport for commuting is actually decreasing. This is due, primarily to the horrendous provisions for cyclists around the province.

The Department of Infrastructure recently appointed a Cycling and Walking Champion whose role it is to accelerate the adoption of these “alternative” modes of transport. The Champion could not be reached for comment. Nor could anyone describe them, or find their office.

We have seen the incredibly poor state of the “drain lanes” in Belfast so-called because every cycle lane painted on the roads is beset with potholes and water drains making a cycling journey an exciting and bone-jarring experience with the added thrill of a near-miss from a speeding car if the cyclist dares to step outside the boundaries of the paint. Paint that’s only present on a small fraction of roads, never continues to roundabouts and most drivers consider it to be a white line that’s “fair game for parking on“.

Despite this, the private sector has stepped in to double the cycling infrastructure budget by investing in 10 tins of white paint. This will ensure at least one more road in Belfast will get a white line that can be ignored by drivers. As a gesture of good will, Derry will also receive four tins of white paint for their cycling infrastructure.

Private sector enthusiasts have also said they will consider another 10 tins of white paint if the Minister raises the ante in providing further white paint for cycling infrastructure.

Green Ways

Wouldn’t it be great to have 10 miles of relatively straight commuter greenway for cycles, ebikes, cargo bikes, scooters and runners alongside the M1 stretching from Lisburn to Belfast with a connection hub at Blacks Road (where there’s already a Park and Ride) and connector greenways from Lambeg, Derriaghy, Dunmurry, Finaghy, Balmoral, Falls, Malone.

Paths and bridges so human commuters didn’t have to constantly dismount. So that they didn’t have to constantly worry about 1 ton death machines piloted by distracted drivers.

We have to start thinking about the future at some point.

Electric cars are a bandaid to the problems of the future. They’re more efficient and less polluting than ICE cars, but their efficiencies are tiny compared to bikes, ebikes and scooters. The average ICE car has an efficiency of about 3%. (That is, about 3% of the gasoline you put into it is used for actually moving you.) Electric cars are also impractical for the thousands of households who don’t have a driveway. How are they meant to charge their cars? Cars as a whole block pavements.

So what happens in 10-15 years when it’s almost impossible to buy a ICE car? Where’s the alternative transport coming from? Why not plan for it now?

But we can add a six lane road in Belfast and 500 more parking spaces in a Brutalist edifice in the city. Where are the 500 spaces removed from the public domain? Why aren’t we converting on-street parking to cycle lanes wholesale? No demand? Well, yes, there’s no demand while you don’t actually have cycle lanes. There’s no demand while cyclists are murdered by drivers. No demand while cyclists are despised by government as much as they are despised by motorists.

Hydrogen

I don’t think that hydrogen is going to be a satisfactory alternative. We need to get out of the mindset of choosing finite resources (we only have a finite amount of hydrogen on earth). We end up just moving the problem down the road. Remembering that the water on our planet is finite and it’s a thin skin on the surface of the Earth should be sobering. Remembering that every hydrogen transaction is lossy. And every hydrogen escape is a permanent loss to the planet.

It’s the same with nuclear. Hydrogen is not renewable, nuclear is not clean.

Much of the energy we use is tied up in cars – they’re horrendously inefficient. Not just in the energy conversion (~70% loss) but in the transportation of 100 kgs of human, we have to also transport 900 kgs of car (and that’s for an average one). So, when you think about it, only 3% of the energy we put in the tank is used to transport a human. Electric cars won’t save us from this – they’re a band aid (and they’re even heavier)

(I question the symbolism of Wrightbus in the photo. I question the commitment of the minister from a party of climate-disruption denialism. I question the use of hydrogen for storage – after all, it’s not like hydrogen under pressure has been a problem in the past.)

Take the long view. Build civilisations to last.

Much excite

No, I don’t expect you to understand and no, I won’t explain.

Northern Ireland will never change.

I found this exchange distressing.

A very bad misjudgement from Emmet McDonough-Brown

Some context on Jimmy Brown.https://t.co/ZERdmOdnSl pic.twitter.com/ZvhbsQW56g

— Mr Virtue Signal (@MrVirtueSignal) August 18, 2020

Think about it. It’s the son of a murdered terrorist who’s now standing for a party that promotes “can’t we all just get along” which is pretty laudable when the whole world is going to shit. And believe me – I have little interest in the Alliance Party after their past shenanigans* but really, are we “cancelling” people because their fathers did a wrong thing? I mean, really, sins of the fucking father?

Anyway. This place is depressing as shit. Who could be bothered with this.

They think that I’m above all this. These are the same people who think I live in a mansion (er,….nope) or that I’m a son of North Down (errrr, nope – for those who don’t know, they’re talking about the Gold Coast of North Down, heavily populated by millionaires).

They may not realise that I’m much the same. Working class. Raised in a mixed marriage in Northern Ireland (which meant I was as much of target from both sides of the struggle). Never found a political home (until I did….and that went to shit). Lived in a Council house for many of my formative years (and left there about two years before they started burning “my kind” out of there).

However I made choices. I didn’t want to be teaming up with woolly faces to hurt people. I refused to get behind flags which made out that the other side was bad. I never had time for either side even though that ideology was pushed (Nationalism at school, Loyalism at home).

And this is the problem. Twenty years after “peace”, people are busy searching their rolodex-style memories for reasons to be offended. Is there a reason why Emmet can speak about bonfires? Sure. He isn’t his father and he’s taken steps to distance himself from his fathers idiocies.

Northern Ireland; you’re such a fucking bore.

*Alliance did every dirty trick in the book when I was briefly involved in politics and they currently support a Councillor who bullied my friend Lyra relentlessly. So, fuck them.

Is the 30% AppStore tax fair?

The AppStore is a software aggregator. It’s not the first, it won’t be the last.

About 100 years ago, in the early 2000s, I was buying software for my phone and Palm Vx. I used various software aggregators (Handango being one) and I remember what a rigmarole it was. You really had no idea what you were buying, sometimes a “sticker” set was nothing more than clip art and there was zero recourse if it didn’t work or if you wanted a refund. What’s more, Handango was a revolution in itself as it only took 40% of the cover price. Other aggregators for other mobile operating systems took 40-90%. You’re reading that right. If you got significant success, you ended up paying 90% of cover price to the aggregator. It was like the sliding tax rate but you were really just lining pockets rather than paying for roads and schools.

Then Everything Changed

The AppStore came along and everything changed.

It was hailed as a revolution. A single point of access, installed on every device, taking only 30% and people could trust the vendor – it was the same vendor they’d spent the last few years buying music from. What could be better. Developers would get access to millions of customers overnight, for a small fee which included a code-signing certificate and there were all these dev tools. Sure, it wasn’t perfect by any means and it still isn’t but it’s a damn sight better than it was.

So what’s the fuss?

Some vendors who rely on tight margin subscriptions aren’t happy with the 30%. They’re just pissy with it. It’s hitting on an underlying business model of tight margins. (I’m talking mostly about Spotify and Amazon but it would equally apply to anyone). Their models don’t work if Apple takes 30%. But even then they adapted to while I can’t buy a Kindle book through the Amazon app or the Kindle app, I can just pop onto the web site and it works fine. But it is a little bit of friction.

So, what’s to be done for sharecroppers who are happy to give away an app for free and then use the platform for promotion and distribution without contributing to the baseline? Surely most developers who charge a reasonable amount for their apps would be thinking “No….Amazon shouldn’t be getting a free ride at all!”. But instead it’s really focused the camera on whether Apple’s 30% is reasonable in this day and age.

What percentage would mollify the masses?

There’s really no right answer for this. Some people would only be content with 0%. Thinking that they bring so much to the Apple ecosystem that Apple shouldn’t be making money off the ecosystem. Others might think that 20% or 10% is a good number considering that storage, network costs and compute costs have dropped considerably in the last 12 years. Some folks are happy enough with the 30% but would like the option to offer their own stores, with their own payment systems or the ability to side-load content. There will, like Brexit, be no one single solution that would make everyone happy (and by everyone I include Apple here).

But it does feel like the time is ripe for Apple to rethink the model. To re-evaluate what makes developing on their platform so compelling and to reward those who have made great apps. Maybe it’s dropping the percentage for those who support universal binaries? Or who have switched to Swift 100%. Or those who stick to some other set of rules? Maybe those who do well should get a sliding scale?

Gruber and Gassee used to agree with the Apple Store but have things changed?

Betteridges Law Applies. As Ever

I’m a fan of Betteridges Law. This rule of thumb decrees that the answer to a headline question is always “no” and so I’ll have to apply it here.

Times have changed. Costs have changed. The market has changed. So maybe it’s time to cut developers a bit more slack.

Dear Government, Just Do One Thing….

Dear Government,

I’m really only talking to the Northern Ireland government here, but if the rest of you want to take a leaf, then do something about it.

Everything is “Covid-Paralysed”. I just see inactivity in every area. People holding their breath. It’s not good enough. We have to be pro-active. But as a “cultural hand grenade”, I figured I’d write a list of things our government departments could do while they’re waiting for society to re-open.

The Executive Office. – frankly, I have no idea what you do anyway other than argue and be ineffectual. This isn’t a personal dig – the EO has always failed to deliver. Look at the unspent social investment fund.
Department of Education. – We have been constantly training more than 200 teachers than we need every year and we have a large bank of supply teachers. So rather than having parents killing themselves trying to educate children, get your act together and use this resource. Yes, not everyone has and iPad or whatever, but that doesn’t mean you do nothing. Find out who needs resources and work together. Use the existing teacher pool, the supply teachers and the unemployed grads to deliver education over Zoom or your tool of choice and take the pressure off parents.
Department for the Economy. – Every skills program that can be opened over Zoom should be opened over Zoom. The lecturers are being salaried. We are in exceptional circumstances and much of it can be delivered over Teams or Zoom. So do it. Make it free and allow people to upskill quickly.
Department of Health. – Be honest, we haven’t yet sorted this crisis. So make sure there’s enough PPE, find more staff to re-open the wards force to close because of sick nurses and doctors and let’s beat this thing.
Department of Justice. – Start preparing law suits against employers who fired or made redundant workers rather than furlough them. And maybe a case against the UK government for wilfully endangering millions of people resulting in the deaths of thousands of people
Department of Infrastructure. – You know, I’m never going to step into a taxi and I’m damn sure it’s going to be a while before I’m on a bus or train. So change the narrative. Convert parking spaces into bus and bike lanes. Do it now while you still can. And while you’re at it, a Greenway from Lisburn to Belfast would cut down on traffic. Plan it now. Execute when lockdown opens up a bit.
Department of Communities. – it’s time for more parks, more leisure facilities, more public art (by local people, not half a million quid to somewhere else). You have a month before the summer starts properly. Are you going to watch the tourist industry completely fail? Get a move on.
Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs. Take some leadership and sort out broadband. Thousands of families are struggling without connectivity and if Education get their act together then the families will need it. Do it now.

The Realm of the Possible: Inventing a New City

After DRIVING past the new “death trap” paint on the Sydenham Bypass that’s meant to be a “cycle lane”, I am comforted to see that some cities have leaders who are prepared to re-make the world as we would like it, and not just rely on what has been past. .

Seattle to permanently close 20 miles of streets to traffic so residents can exercise and bike on them

Nichola Mallon, our Infrastructure Minister, isn’t being advised on what’s in the realm of the possible. It’s the problem with that department (and in particular Roads Service). When you ask a road engineer on what would solve a problem, they think in terms of roads.

I tend to think of the realm of the possible extends from impossible to impossible!

So how do we get people cycling and walking more?

Is it impossible to make cycle lanes which are more than paint?

No, plainly not. Here is a part of the Sydenham Bypass with a kerb! This would make cycling much safer. So, why is the department so happy with a line of paint? If we have it for part of the Sydenham Bypass, why not all of it? Why not extend it to Bangor and Ards?

Is it impossible to close BT1 to private street traffic?

No, it’s not. In fact, a lot of that is in the Regional Transportation Strategy including deflecting traffic from hope street straight to the Ormeau/Cromac area via a new road at Bankmore Square. Essentially the only cars in the centre outside of emergency services and buses, should be taxis and disabled vehicles.

Is it impossible to turn every non-disabled parking space in that area into cycle lanes to protect cyclists from buses, lorries and taxis?

No, obviously. We will see a decrease in traffic overall after the pandemic passes as a lot of people-intensive businesses will be re-looking at their leases for commercial property (some large businesses are closing multiple sites and having their workers work from home because working from home can improve productivity (as long as the kids are at school!) If you think about it, all of the streets in the CBD of Belfast are host to “car corpses”. Cars which are driven in and just lie dead all day. Our streets are littered with them. What are the knock on effects of that?

So we don’t need as many parking spaces? Or commercial parking lets? Or office buildings?

No, we really don’t – so that frees up huge amounts of space for cycling and pedestrians. Think of the lives saved from cars not careening into people.

What about those offices? Will they lie empty?

Well, Belfast City Council has been trying to square the circle of getting people to move into the centre of the city, but there just hasn’t been the space. So, if we are talking about maybe a million square feet of unoccupied office space right now and perhaps up to five times that in two years, that’s a thousand 1000 sq ft apartments now, and 5000 in the next decade. That solves the “Belfast is a graveyard” problem every evening as well as fostering small business in the city centre – including the eateries in the city which really deserve a bit of an uplift after the runaway rates and Covid-19 related collapse.

Thousands more living in the city would be a massive uplift for the city economy. And we have the space.

Are there other things we can change?

Of course, with decreased traffic and more reliance on public transport, we don’t need that M2/Westlink Exchange upgrade. That’s a waste as it is, it’s doubly so after the pandemic. We could invest that in live/work apartments in the city centre. We could invest in arterial segregated cycle lanes from four quarters of the city as well as dedicated cycle freeways along the M1, M2 and A2. With the decreased pollution of decreased traffic, Stockman’s Lane might be bearable to cycle through.

Anything else?

Well, I’m always going to say “free public transport”. The fact that it would decrease pollution and particulate matter, reduce the burden of road repairs on the taxpayer, increase social and economic mobility for just about everyone, equalise some of the society and put cash in the pockets of low and middle income workers is just the tip of the iceberg.

We have an opportunity to change the city and be an exemplar. Wouldn’t it be great to be proud of Belfast for things that were great and that worked? Stuff we could boast about that was good on a global stage and not just “better than what we deserve”. Can’t we aspire to greatness as a city? Celebrate our best and brightest?

Rather than a ship that sank, forty years of civil war and an alcoholic footballer?

#NoOneLeftBehind #RuralUrbanDigitalDivide

Bridging the digital divide means guaranteeing access to adequate broadband

It is easy to assume NI is digitally connected and everyone has a smart phone or computer at home. The reality is this is not the case and many homes are forced to choose between buying larger data allowances or buying electricity and food.

Kate Clifford sets out a cogent case against privilege in this article.

I remember sitting in rooms filled with civil servants crowing about how Northern Ireland had the best digital platform in the world.

A claim that was patently not true if you even took a second to survey the rest of the world.
A claim that was even more embarrassing when you excluded developing countries from your survey.

Society is feeling the effects of the digital divide even in areas which are well served with hardware and broadband. At home, my own broadband is creaking under the strain of multiple zoom calls, content delivery by iPlayer and YouTube. Imagine then being in an area poorly served.

The hardware issue is….also difficult. I’ve offered Raspberry Pi computers from my Dojo (and given away a couple) and also given away two slightly ageing Chromebooks – in an attempt to get people up and running. But a lot of content out there just isn’t accessible on more open platforms. It just won’t run on slower computers.

And don’t get me started on Classroom 2000.

Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel

One night during a global pandemic, comfortable in my privilege, I sat chatting to friends across the world.

We were discussing America. And how it might be time to take steps.

America is currently being besieged by rebels calling out for the execution of elected representatives. Their crime? Slowing the spread of the global pandemic mentioned earlier. This sort of thing gets you thinking; a dangerous pastime in any era.

These rebels, complete with wooden painted machine guns and spent husks of rocket launchers, are marching on government buildings, posing with their buddies and complaining at the lack of common services like hairdressing. It hardly needs to be said that while this service is easily done at home, it important to remember Thomas Jefferson “the tree of liberty must be refreshed time to time with the blood of patriots”. That said, Jefferson also put into his Canon, “Never trouble another with what you can do yourself”.

Jefferson also said: “The Christian god can easily be pictured as virtually the same god as the many ancient gods of past civilizations. The Christian god is a three headed monster cruel vengeful and capricious. If one wishes to know more of this raging three headed beast like god one only needs to look at the caliber of people who say they serve him. They are always of two classes fools and hypocrites.”

Which I can offer no argument against.

But what’s the future hold?

It might seem a little hysterical but America is not well. The thesis goes:

If in November 2020, President Trump does not get re-elected to the highest office in the country, the outburst from loyalists will shake the very foundations of the Republic. If the angry white men can march, armed and armoured, on the Capitol building because they want haircuts, imagine what will happen when they’re told that Trump lost the election due to foreign interference. Liberals wring their hands, Conservatives make shells.
If in November 2020, President Trump does get re-elected, it’s possible to expect Washington, Oregon and California to begin secession. It’s been talked about before. The US has been a single country in name but never united politically or culturally. Whether or not you think the two party system is desirable or not, it exists. And if these states move to secede from the Union, even through a legal process, expect the military to be used to force them to stay.

The status quo therefore becomes totally untenable. Needless to say, conversations will begin again in the GOP about allowing a president to stay longer than two terms and with their control of the Senate and the Supreme Court, who is left to challenge them?

But as I said above, it may be time to take steps. Even while we recover from the grips of the pandemic, there will be a need to take in refugees from war-torn America. Gird yourselves.

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Then Everything Changed

So what’s the fuss?

What percentage would mollify the masses?

Betteridges Law Applies. As Ever

Related posts:

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Is it impossible to make cycle lanes which are more than paint?

Is it impossible to close BT1 to private street traffic?

Is it impossible to turn every non-disabled parking space in that area into cycle lanes to protect cyclists from buses, lorries and taxis?

So we don’t need as many parking spaces? Or commercial parking lets? Or office buildings?

What about those offices? Will they lie empty?

Are there other things we can change?

Anything else?

Related posts:

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