I have always considered myself to be a good problem solver, an outside the box kind of person who likes to question things and find alternatives. So I would like to start this project and propose ideas which I think might help with some of the problems and unanswered questions our civilization faces.
This is something that just comes naturally.
I don't go out of my way to solve problems but when I have spare time I always find myself doing it time and time again. I guess I'm somewhat a theorist.
Some of the problems I find myself continually coming back to is the problems which we face from traffic.
So there is the congestion which almost all cities face.
There is also the problem of pollution due to there being so much traffic, and yes I am aware that animal agriculture is worse. But that's another issue for another day.
Then there is the rate we are burning oil and gas due to the immense strain of transportation, which comes from all modes of transport.
There is also other problems but these three are pretty big.
How on earth do we begin to tackle these problems.
Well lets look at peak hour traffic for a start, almost every car you pass during your commute will have one person stilling in there clogging up the lanes, chewing up fuel and spewing out pollution.
Why on earth does one person need a whole car which can seat four people comfortably, and why on earth doesn't that person ride a motor bike or scooter in to work.
Well this is where governments need to wake up and create new initiatives.
I had a thought and it would be a great way to tackle all three of these problems and reduce the impact they cause.
Why not as a government encourage the use of scooters and motorbikes, instead of charging a higher price for registration drop the price from $100 here in South Australia to $20 or $30 dollars.
With how cheap it would be to get to work people would naturally wan't to use them.
Also we already have quite a large number of free motorcycle parking spots here in Adelaide, but make more of them.
There are also many other benefits of riding a motorcycle, like lane filtering through traffic which for me shaves 20 + minutes of my commutes and much more when traffic is jammed up.
I really like this next image of what it's like to lane filter on my motorbike.
Now if your a government you might be thinking, we'll be losing out on all that revenue but this is not true at all.
Think about the future cost that will be associated with sea level rise. Many of our cities are close to the sea and low lying so as the sea level rises you will be faced with an enormous cost to either defend your city from the encroaching sea or to relocate inland and have to start from scratch again.
Now just imaging the cost which both of these scenarios will cause. Defending the city from being swallowed up from the sea by building levies and flood gates is just a huge cost, and well relocating and having to lay all the new power lines sewage systems roads etc is probably an even larger cost than the first option.
So what is the best approach.
Also just think of if we could get half the population or more to adopt this new mode of transport. Oil consumption would be reduced dramatically, if I travel to work in a car I will chew through $70 of fuel and that's going straight to work and straight home. now travelling to work on my high powered 700cc bike, which is rather thirsty costs only $24 per week and let me add that I don't go straight home but divert down to the beach and cruise along the esplanade which is an extra few kms each day.
Also with burning much less fuel, naturally less carbon dioxide is produced. This will reduce pollution levels dramatically.
If we can reduce pollution levels then that will flow on to benefit the government, as health care has become a real issue and by having cleaner air there will be less of a burden on health care.
Now we all know we need things to change.
This one change could have a real effect on quite a few issues we face, so why not think outside the box.
