Monthly Archives: December 2010


AWWTM: Engineering, psychology, and a bus on stilts

Last week I posted about tracked hovercraft and straddling buses — a tongue-in-cheek look at how through the ages engineers have proposed ever more overcomplicated engineering solutions in an attempt to manage our out-of-control transport problems.  I assumed that my learned readers would get the point without labour.  WordPress.com very […]


AWWTM: Can you work out where I am?

I’ve been away from London for three weeks now, taking a break from the noise and the taxi drivers.  I needed to eliminate distractions to get a couple of work and writing projects completed, so I’m doing an extreme telecommute experiment for the winter, while observing the transport and environment […]


AWWTM: Overcomplicating things

In the 1960s, people were convinced that there was a huge and growing problem with transport.  The then Ministry of Transport commissioned engineers and economists to look at those problems and suggest solutions.  The Beeching Report recommended closing all except the very core main lines of the railway network.  The […]


At War With The Motorist: The future that was

I bought a second hand copy of Traffic In Towns, the 1963 Buchanan Report to the Minister of Transport on the future of urban mobility and development.  It’s fabulous sci-fi full of depictions of the future of British cities, except that it was never intended as sci-fi but as a […]


AWWTM: Cycle superhighways: are they a joke?

That’s the most common question asked by people who responded to the GLA survey of London cyclists.  Looking into the raw data I find out just how little the cycle superhighways have achieved, and the one thing that London cyclists say over and over again makes them such a joke: […]