Archive for the 'Transport' Category

 

Oyster on mobiles

Wednesday, September 24th, 2008

Building Oyster technology into mobile phones seems like a good idea. Just about everyone is permanently wedded to their phone. However, I have a couple of slight issues with it. Just about everyone also always carries their wallet or purse and an Oyster card - the size of a normal credit card - is hardly [...]

 

Mayor Johnson, or how I learned to stop worrying and love the bendy bus

Monday, September 15th, 2008

The 507 (Wikipedia, TfL) and 521 (Wikipedia, TfL) are going to be the first London bus routes to have the bendy bus removed. This is going to make my commute into work longer. Bendy buses have attracted a lot of opprobrium; read on to find out why they’re actually a really good idea.

The 507 and [...]

 

Want to improve Heathrow? Build railways

Thursday, June 19th, 2008

The controvery around the expansion of Heathrow keeps on rumbling. There is no doubt that having a hub like Heathrow near London is a boon to the regional economy. Beyond the immediate benefits to employment, the multiplier effect is substantial. You cannot fly (for instance) from Bangui direct to Moscow. However, you can get from [...]

 

Gesticulating at thirty thousand feet

Monday, February 25th, 2008

Richard Branson has flown one of his aircraft on biofuels. Two interesting points come out of it.
Firstly, the green lobby has had to accept both that reducing carbon emissions can have economic consquences and that those consequences can be unacceptable. Specifically, various people have (rightly) pointed out that, at the moment, growing crops for biofuels [...]