More on scooters

Posted: April 23, 2010 | Author: | Filed under: Cars & traffic, Public transport | Tags: , , | 1 Comment

WordPress wouldn’t let me upload my planned post last night or early this morning about Melbourne City Councils’ proposals for apartments along tram routes, so I’m trying something more modest. Fortuitously, hot on the heels (top box?) of my post earlier this week about motor scooters, The Age has some related stories today. The first is Surge in motor cycle deaths hits move to slash tolls. The second relates to my invocation of Hanoi as what Melbourne might look like in the future (although as one reader points out, whether Hanoi will look anything like it does now is a good question): A (top gear) trip through Vietnam by scooter .

And there’s also a story on yet another proposal for a fast Melbourne-Canberra-Sydney rail link: Green dream: fast-rail link to Sydney. I’ll definitely want to take a closer look at this one.

Will the streets of Melbourne look more like Hanoi than Manhattan in the future?

Posted: April 21, 2010 | Author: | Filed under: Cars & traffic, Cycling, Public transport | Tags: , , , , , , , , | 14 Comments

I’ve believed for some years that motor scooters and motorcycles are likely to become a much more important component of Melbourne’s transport system if the cost of fuel increases dramatically.

Scooters and small motorcycles are extremely popular in cities like Hanoi where, like the probable Melbourne of the future, the cost of transport is very high relative to incomes.

Like cars, scooters offer a very high degree of personal mobility. They also have the advantage that they can ‘thread’ their way through congested traffic, are easy to park and are light on fuel. Read the rest of this entry »