Our chauffeured children are a problem we can't ignore

[Calvin27]

To get a desired outcome, you first have to know why it isn't happening now.
The best information for increasing kids who walk/ride/PT to school are the views of the majority of mothers who drive their kids to school.
The best information on why so many people prefer to commute privately on congested roads rather than use PT or ride bicycles are serious studies into the subject.

It isn't happening because of overt helicopter parenting. My brother and I rode to school even though mum was around to drive us. For us it was independence. Even rainy days we'd chance it. We got hurt. A lot. Always grazed knees and bruises doing stupid stuff (still happens I guess haha). But the bottom line was our parents were just like meh - just watch out for cars. We rode on footpaths mostly and small back streets. It was awesome.

Looking at my young nephews and cousins today and trying to understand why they don't do it - I've got to put it down to outright overprotective parents. Too hot to ride (we got some coins for sunny boys on hot days), too wet to ride (admittedly mum hated this because the wet stuff would mess up the house), cars too dangerous, murderers, rapists and everything else. It's attitude shift that needs to happen the most.

Kind of reminds me of the Japanese model where they send kids out really young to find their way around:

https://www.citylab.com/transportation/ ... nt/407590/

On a side note: People don't take PT because it actually isn't that effective - which is a different problem to kids not cycling to school imo. They can't find parking at the station and the trains are always packed and late. Busing it here takes even more time than driving and end of the day driving wins.

[warthog1]

On a side note: People don't take PT because it actually isn't that effective - which is a different problem to kids not cycling to school imo. They can't find parking at the station and the trains are always packed and late. Busing it here takes even more time than driving and end of the day driving wins.

Bingo.

On the OT I rode to school back in the 80's even if it was pi$$ing rain, (which in good old Melb it often was, 3 seasons in one day. There is no summer in Melb)
It was quicker and I hated the crowding even then. I'd rather a soaked school uniform than face the PT.

[CKinnard]

It isn't happening because of overt helicopter parenting. .......... I've got to put it down to outright overprotective parents. Too hot to ride (we got some coins for sunny boys on hot days), too wet to ride (admittedly mum hated this because the wet stuff would mess up the house), cars too dangerous, murderers, rapists and everything else. It's attitude shift that needs to happen the most.

bingo....fearful anxious parents (mainly mothers).
were they as fearful 50 years ago? if not, what's changed? How about diversity of values.....

if you scroll back through the thread, there's a few who would die before they believed parent anxiety has anything to do with kids being driven to school.

On a side note: People don't take PT because it actually isn't that effective - which is a different problem to kids not cycling to school imo. They can't find parking at the station and the trains are always packed and late. Busing it here takes even more time than driving and end of the day driving wins.

All that inconvenience of Melbourne PT is part of it. But it's also fear. Articles about "how to stay safe" on public transport, and violence and harassment, are almost weekly in Fairfax media.

Type
Melbourne train assault
into google, limit results to 'past year', and you still get over 5 pages of results.

and
https://www.pedestrian.tv/news/women-sh ... australia/

[warthog1]

Well it appears Melbourne residents are attempting to use the woefully inadequate system in bigger numbers, better them than me, but capacity simply hasn't kept pace with demand.
https://www.theage.com.au/national/vict ... 507kw.html
No surprise since there has been no significant investment in years and yes population has skyrocketed.

I don't miss the city, and hey my kids have always ridden walked or caught the bus to school from the age of about 8.
They'll be catching the damn train to Melb for uni too. Poor buggers.

[Thoglette]

Type Melbourne train assault into google,

Come on, you're better than that. I can type "don't eat this one food" into google and get pages of all sorts of tripe.

At least dig up some decent statistics on VicRail PT assaults per usage vs other public spaces. Or vs other PT systems world wide. Or vs other policing methods.

Otherwise I can just blame those Sudanese gangs (or was it southern italian gangs. No, that was last century's boogie man).

[CKinnard]

Type Melbourne train assault into google,

Come on, you're better than that. I can type "don't eat this one food" into google and get pages of all sorts of tripe.

At least dig up some decent statistics on VicRail PT assaults per usage vs other public spaces. Or vs other PT systems world wide. Or vs other policing methods.

Otherwise I can just blame those Sudanese gangs (or was it southern italian gangs. No, that was last century's boogie man).

Stats are like police....they usually show up well after the incident, which isn't much good if you are the one being raped/bashed.

Besides, big important guberment officials and police invest a lot of time, money, and energy in telling Melbournians there are no gangs, and Melbourne is safe as houses (though not the ones subject to home invasions).

The media and victims beg to differ, and not get bashed and raped.

As for gangs, nope, no gangs on trains.
https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/australi ... ar-BBNTN3m

Nevertheless, 'not the Melbourne gubermint' funded a nationwide survey of trains.
And Melbourne rates lowest for safety.
https://www.canstarblue.com.au/city-trains/

But there's cracks appearing in the official narrative...due to the elephant in the room stomping all over it.
Though none are so blind as refuse to see:
http://www.starweekly.com.au/news/trans ... -the-rise/
https://lens.monash.edu/2018/03/07/1321 ... -for-girls
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-10-23/ ... se/9076334
https://www.theage.com.au/national/vict ... zt2ur.html
https://www.theage.com.au/national/vict ... 0pq04.html

https://www.australiandesignreview.com/ ... men-girls/
"Public transport is consistently identified as one of the most notorious spaces for public harassment: sexual assaults of females on Victorian public transport spaces account for one in 11 sexual assaults in public spaces, with the figure likely to be much higher due to under reporting."

Or are Australia's media more into clickbait than the truth?

Finally, is there anything to learn from the Swedish experience?
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/5195/sweden-rape
Sure there is...when gubermint doesn't want the citizenry to know something that goes against the social engineering narrative, they stop collecting statistics about it....or generate bogus ones. Common guberspeak for inconvenient crime stats is "more people are coming forward and reporting it" which is laughable because there's no objective way to know that is true.

And I should bow out at this point, the point having been assaulted, raped, and bashed to death.

[fat and old]

(or was it southern italian gangs. No, that was last century's boogie man).

Where did I read about that just this last week? There was some loose reporting in a story I read comparing our present day woes with the stigma attached to southern Italians

FWIW, as for world wide PT issues, I have a strong suspicion that the rise in PT assaults matches the rise in the popularity of Chikan xxx videos. As I have no idea of statistics I can't quantify it; I do know that as these vids surfaced and became more common then emulated in other countries such as Holland the reports of PT groping went up. This is a major issue in Japan

https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/featu ... 13024.html

To the point where there are bars which have mock ups of carriages where you can pay to grope the schoolgirl of your choice

Schoolgirls
This sexualisation of schoolgirls extends to themed bars in red-light districts and exploitative "JK cafes" (JK stands for joshi kosei or high school girl) where adult men pay to chat to teenage girls, have their fortunes told or have their ears cleaned...…………………………………………. One 38-year-old man, who declined to give his name, explains that he has been to these bars in Ikebukuro - paying 15,000 yen ($133) to enter - including a bar furnished to look like the inside of a subway carriage. Customers choose what kind of woman they'd like to grope - often, the choice is between someone dressed up like a schoolgirl or an office worker. He says he believes the women working there are over the age of 18.

Anyway, this is far removed from cycling; my only point is that it's not always "gangs".

[Thoglette]

And I should bow out at this point, the point having been assaulted, raped, and bashed to death.

thanks for taking the effort with the links. Some weekend reading there.

[warthog1]

! Might have known, pinko that you are.

Go the pinkos
Cleaned up in Melbourne's south east largely on the back of a promise of better public transport infrastructure in those electorates.
That certainly settles the question of capacity v safety as the primary issue.
The law and order line went down like a poo sandwich. lol

[human909]

! Might have known, pinko that you are.

Go the pinkos
Cleaned up in Melbourne's south east largely on the back of a promise of better public transport infrastructure in those electorates.
That certainly settles the question of capacity v safety as the primary issue.
The law and order line went down like a poo sandwich. lol

You are talking about cycling right? Because politics isn't allowed. It would be nice for them to have a look at cycling some time... Meanwhile it might be a while before they work out whether Brunswick is a redish pink or a greenish pink.

[warthog1]

! Might have known, pinko that you are.

Go the pinkos
Cleaned up in Melbourne's south east largely on the back of a promise of better public transport infrastructure in those electorates.
That certainly settles the question of capacity v safety as the primary issue.
The law and order line went down like a poo sandwich. lol

You are talking about cycling right? Because politics isn't allowed. It would be nice for them to have a look at cycling some time... Meanwhile it might be a while before they work out whether Brunswick is a redish pink or a greenish pink.

Yeah I know. I'm a hypocrite.
Couldn't resist though. My working life is now vastly better than it otherwise would have been for at least the next 4 years.

[human909]

I enjoyed the laugh.

[fat and old]

Brunswick, Prahran and Northcote. The 3 sweetest sounds in any language this morning hahaha

[g-boaf]

! Might have known, pinko that you are.

Go the pinkos
Cleaned up in Melbourne's south east largely on the back of a promise of better public transport infrastructure in those electorates.
That certainly settles the question of capacity v safety as the primary issue.
The law and order line went down like a poo sandwich. lol

You are talking about cycling right? Because politics isn't allowed. It would be nice for them to have a look at cycling some time... Meanwhile it might be a while before they work out whether Brunswick is a redish pink or a greenish pink.

And now they have no majority in federal Parliament either:

https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal ... l#comments

They are looking like a very divided and angry party.

[fat and old]

They look stupid actually much the same as Labor did with the Rudd/Gillard debacle, the Democrats when Cheryl Kernot followed her lust, etc etc etc etc....

But bringing this result back into focus from a cycling POV, I see things to make me happy. I see that Victoria has voted for the quiet bloke who doesn’t really carry on much and who builds stuff. Lots of stuff. So now this quiet bloke reckons all he has to do is build more stuff. Bigger, better stuff. Good. More facilities for me. More facilities for our kids.

[Tamiya]

But bringing this result back into focus from a cycling POV, I see things to make me happy. I see that Victoria has voted for the quiet bloke who doesn’t really carry on much and who builds stuff. Lots of stuff. So now this quiet bloke reckons all he has to do is build more stuff. Bigger, better stuff. Good. More facilities for me. More facilities for our kids.

Is there much $$$ to be made in building cycle lanes?

[fat and old]

But bringing this result back into focus from a cycling POV, I see things to make me happy. I see that Victoria has voted for the quiet bloke who doesn’t really carry on much and who builds stuff. Lots of stuff. So now this quiet bloke reckons all he has to do is build more stuff. Bigger, better stuff. Good. More facilities for me. More facilities for our kids.

Is there much $$$ to be made in building cycle lanes?

St. Kilda Rd, river to Linlithgow. App 75k. Albert St, stage 1. App 150k. Swanston St, app75k.

[Thoglette]

Is there much $$$ to be made in building cycle lanes?

Not per km, but there's a crap load of km to be retrofitted.

And much of it is "brown field" requiring all sorts of interesting engineered solutions; resumption of land; and relocation of existing services.

[fat and old]

Aye? Relocation of services? In what world would that happen? It’s all <300mm below FSL work.

[Thoglette]

Aye? Relocation of services? In what world would that happen? It’s all <300mm below FSL work.

I was trying to find a particular photo to go with it.

A photo of a little green power pillar that's been holding up the opening of several km of bike path while the responsible authority "gets around to" moving the bugger.

Beyond the usual suspects (like traffic lights and lighting poles) any decent brown field install will require substantial terraformingcivil works for retaining walls; tunnels and bridges.

[fat and old]

Aye? Relocation of services? In what world would that happen? It’s all <300mm below FSL work.

I was trying to find a particular photo to go with it.

A photo of a little green power pillar that's been holding up the opening of several km of bike path while the responsible authority "gets around to" moving the bugger.

Beyond the usual suspects (like traffic lights and lighting poles) any decent brown field install will require substantial terraformingcivil works for retaining walls; tunnels and bridges.

Ah yes, that I'm aware of. The OP questioned the cost of "cycle lanes" which to me refers to lanes on an existing road. What you're referring to are "cycle paths" as I understand and build them. Your assessment of paths is spot on. They can (and should) be straightfoward, unfortunately that's not always the case. They will always cost more than an on road cycle lane if only due to the basic pavement costs (unless gravel or similar).