Brian Micklethwait

You can now connect your idiot toy to the internet in a South Wales bus.  There’s a great picture there at Idiot Toys of the back of the bus which explains everything, and it includes a link to this website, where you can learn more.  Good news for me.  If I’m in South Wales.  In a bus.

Brian Micklethwait

One of the technological developments that Patrick and I talked about in this conversation was how much better and stronger glass has been getting lately.  Window pains have gone from flat transparencies that shatter into fragments if you so much as nudge them to giant hi-tech heat and light control systems that you can drop a car on without damage to anything but the car.

Soon, it would appear, we will be able to alter these membranes (membrains?) for ourselves, at any rate when travelling by bus:

Think user-controlled Transitions lenses, but for automobiles.  Got it? If so, then you’ve got a pretty decent idea of what makes Hino Motor’s concept motorcoach - which was being shown off at this year’s Tokyo Motor Show - unique. Developed by Research Frontiers, the SPD-Smart technology covering those expansive panels there on your right “allows vehicle occupants to instantly, precisely and uniformly control the amount of sunlight, glare and heat passing through the windows, sunroofs and other glazings.” Additionally, it blocks over 99-percent of harmful UV radiation and can be darkened or lightened with the press of a button. ...

Cool.  Literally, if cool is what you want.

Rob Fisher

Yesterday I observed an interesting public transport failure mode.  Floods had closed many tube stations, so people took to the buses.  The buses filled up.  People making journeys that would otherwise have been unaffected by the tube station closures were left stranded as the full buses drove past their stops.

This situation should be a good business opportunity, but with all public transport in London provided by the same organisation, I doubt the incentives are strong for extra bus services to be laid on.  No doubt taxi drivers did very well.

Brian Micklethwait

Apparently feral cats often get themselves into severe problems by creeping inside recently active and therefore warm motor vehicle engines.  So, when the vehicle start up again, trouble.  Often they die.  Pierrepoint, however, was rescued.

Macavity is far more on top of things.

The feline, which has a purple collar, gets onto the busy Walsall to Wolverhampton bus at the same stop most mornings - he then jumps off at the next stop 400m down the road, near a fish and chip shop.

He is no trouble:

Passenger, Paul Brennan, 19, who catches the 331 to work, said: “I first noticed the cat a few weeks ago. At first I thought it had been accompanied by its owner but after the first stop it became quite clear he was on his own.

“He sat at the front of the bus, waited patiently for the next stop and then got off. It was quite strange at first but now it just seems normal. I suppose he is the perfect passenger really - he sits quietly, minds his own business and then gets off.”

Perfect passenger then, apart from the fact that he presumably doesn’t pay.

Brian Micklethwait

Iain Dale doesn’t specialise in transport issues, but there have been a couple of postings there recently on transport themes.  On Monday there was a big chunk of Simon Hoggart, writing about the interruptions that train passengers (sorry: “customers” (I hate that)) are subjected to.

I settle in the quiet coach. Except it isn’t.

And, today, there is this coach, of the road sort, which says this on its side:

I don’t know why it says this.  Judging by the EUro stars to the right of that, it’s either a very pro EU message or very anti.  I imagine it’s the usual thing of Germans sounding scarier than they really are.  Usually.

Patrick Crozier

“A lie is half way around the world before the truth can even gets its boots on.” I was put in mind of this saying by this Times report.

Private bus operators will be stripped of their powers to set fares, frequencies and timetables, under proposals aimed at reversing 20 years of decline.

This isn’t an out and out lie it just fails to mention that decline didn’t set in in the 1980s.  If anything bus liberalisation arrested the rate of decline.

Mind you it does manage to mention how much is lost on London buses every year: £480m, in case you were wondering.

Patrick Crozier

So you’ve got this government agency.  And this government agency is trying to flog milk.  So, it puts up some ads at bus stops.  And then it thinks (if “thinks” is the right word): “What if we could entice the people standing at the bus stop to buy some milk with a smell?” So, they decide to try the smell of cookies. 

Only a 16-year old schoolgirl can spot the flaw:

“It’s going to smell like cookies and bums,”

(Hat-tip: LFTTR)