{"id":3913,"date":"2009-01-06T09:45:40","date_gmt":"2009-01-06T14:45:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spacingtoronto.ca\/2009\/01\/06\/assorted-transportation-articles-transit-drunk-tent-japan-demotorizing-dangerous-indian-roads-pedlock-dangerous-sidewalks-and-talking-cctv\/"},"modified":"2009-01-06T14:04:24","modified_gmt":"2009-01-06T19:04:24","slug":"assorted-transportation-articles-transit-drunk-tent-japan-demotorizing-dangerous-indian-roads-pedlock-dangerous-sidewalks-and-talking-cctv","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2009\/01\/06\/assorted-transportation-articles-transit-drunk-tent-japan-demotorizing-dangerous-indian-roads-pedlock-dangerous-sidewalks-and-talking-cctv\/","title":{"rendered":"Assorted transportation articles: transit drunk tent, Japan demotorizing, dangerous Indian roads, pedlock, dangerous sidewalks, and talking CCTV"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

I’ve been doing a New Year’s file clearing, and I came across various articles that I had set aside because I thought they might be of interest to our readers.<\/p>\n

• The Toronto Star<\/em> recently had a wild story from London, England, where the health service created a drunk tent at a subway station<\/a> in the financial district, where doctors and nurses could deal with people incapacitated by drinking too much at Christmas office parties and getting sick or passing out in the subway system.<\/p>\n

• The Star<\/em>‘s “Wheels” section recently had a story about “demotorization” in Japan<\/a>. It seems increasing numbers of Japanese no longer see cars as a status symbol, and the rate of car ownership in Japan is beginning to decrease. Since the article is in the “Wheels” section, this is portrayed as a problem, but really it’s a process that needs to happen everywhere. As I wrote in Spacing <\/em>earlier this year, cars can be useful, but we can’t sustain the number that we currently consume. Rather than trying to find ways to keep the industry at its present rate of production, governments need to find ways to help companies convert part of this production to other uses.<\/p>\n

• A report earlier this year found that India’s roads are the most dangerous in the world<\/a>, especially for cyclists and pedestrians. In an interesting counterpoint to the popular idea of “shared streets<\/a>” where boundaries between modes of transport are reduced in order to calm traffic, some Indian commentators believe that one of the causes of this danger is in fact the lack of separation between cars and more vulnerable modes of transportation in India.<\/p>\n

<\/blockquote>\n

Rohit Baluja of Delhi’s Institute of Road Traffic Education said: “The real issue is not car design but road design. About 85% of all deaths on the roads are pedestrians and cyclists, not drivers. We do not design traffic management systems to separate different streams of traffic. In America this began in 1932.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/p>\n

• A favourite new word of mine is “pedlock” — what happens when you get so many pedestrians in one place that they have a hard time moving. It turns out it’s been around for a while<\/a>, but I first saw it in a report about the problems of Times Square in New York<\/a> (PDF) and some of the solutions the Times Square Alliance<\/a> is coming up with to deal with them.<\/p>\n

• It’s easy for those of us with full mobility to overlook flaws in the sidewalk. But a study out of Great Britain<\/a> estimated that falls by the elderly as a result of dangerous or damaged sidewalks cost the health service almost a billion pounds a year (close to $2 billion dollars). It calculated that 2.5 million British seniors fall in a year as a result of flaws in the sidewalk, and a third of them had to go to hospital. It also discovered that significant number of seniors avoided specific areas where sidewalks seemed risky or neglected, which effectively restricted their mobility.<\/p>\n

• Finally, this may be old news to some people, but several cities in CCTV-mad England have introduced talking CCTV cameras<\/a> to monitor heavily-used public spaces in recent years. The city of Middlesborough was one of the first, and the government then provided grants to spread them to other cities<\/a>. Operators monitoring the camera feeds who observe people behaving in an “anti-social” manner, such as littering, can admonish them from the camera and tell them to behave. Critics describe it as “Big Brother gone mad”. I confess I find the possibilities of random public etiquette orders from disembodied voices both disturbing and hilarious: “You! In the puffy jacket! Don’t pick your nose!”.<\/p>\n

\"Talking
\n
\n<\/em><\/p>\n

Top photo by 416style<\/a>; <\/em>graphic from the BBC.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve been doing a New Year’s file clearing, and I came across various articles that I had set aside because I thought they might be of interest to our readers. • The Toronto Star recently had a wild story from London, England, where the health service created a drunk tent at a subway station inContinue reading “Assorted transportation articles: transit drunk tent, Japan demotorizing, dangerous Indian roads, pedlock, dangerous sidewalks, and talking CCTV”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4006,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9,8,6],"tags":[810,11184,2022,11182,1401,1158,11181,3480,393,1138,359,11186,1278,469,21,416,36,11185,405,2084,339,3225,11188,11183,849,464,391,11187],"class_list":["post-3913","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-traffic","category-transit","category-walking","tag-america","tag-assorted-transportation-articles","tag-bbc","tag-car-design","tag-car-ownership","tag-christmas","tag-delhis-institute-of-road-traffic-education","tag-gbp","tag-india","tag-japan","tag-london","tag-middlesborough","tag-new-years-day","tag-new-york","tag-other-cities","tag-pdf","tag-resources","tag-rohit-baluja","tag-the-star","tag-the-times","tag-the-toronto-star","tag-times-square","tag-times-square-alliance","tag-traffic-management-systems","tag-transportation","tag-united-kingdom","tag-usd","tag-wheels"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nAssorted transportation articles: transit drunk tent, Japan demotorizing, dangerous Indian roads, pedlock, dangerous sidewalks, and talking CCTV - 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