postnataldrip

A few things come to mind, with the caveat of course this is all from a layman's perspective and may be misinformed, dumb, or otherwise not feasible.

Basic stuff:

• More frequent services. Aside from the sardine tins they can become during peak times, lengthy waits, particularly in bad weather, aren't great. It also softens the blow if there's a service fault (only a few minutes until the next one comes by).
• Disincentivise service cancellations, a late service is better than one that doesn't run at all. It won't always be possible to avoid cancelling, but I'm told the cancellation penalty can be less severe than the punctuality one.
• Chain/rework service SLAs with an "overall service" goal. It's frustrating when your service has been delayed, and the connecting service you would have caught leaves empty but on time to meet their own timeliness metrics.
• Perhaps linked to that, I have to wonder how wise it is to contract these things out. Not sure what the answer is as having it all be govt-run doesn't fill me with optimism either, maybe rethinking how contracts are written and awarded needs a rethink - but moving the focus from serving the public need to minimising cost/maximising profit cannot possibly be in the best interests of the commuter.

More ambitious:

• There need to be trains that go between the existing lines, concentric circles around the city essentially. To visit a friend who lives only about 15km from me, using PT the train-only option involves travelling into the city, swapping trains, then travelling out of the city on his line. It's over 2 hours of travel. Adding buses brings that down to about 75-80 mins. Driving there takes me 20.
• Smarter express services that make a meaningful difference to trip times. Eg buses where the pickup/dropoff stops are preset (bookable?), maybe even dynamic routes based on the stops required? Dunno, this is a tough one but on my commute the current "express" option saves only 3 minutes lol.
• More separated roadways for buses, so they are less at the mercy of other traffic. That has the added benefit of reducing the volume of that other traffic, so things get better for both PT and private vehicles.
• More 3+ line rails, to allow for passing. That would reduce the flow-on impacts of delays to a service, and would allow for more express services that don't have to accommodate catching an all-stops one.
• Better start-of-trip options. Park and ride sounds good but they are always packed, and are basically just a shopping centre for car thieves who know the owners will likely not be back until 5pm or so. We've already lost one car this way, insured but it was a massive headache. Airport-style shuttle buses perhaps? Something that might allow a pushbike to be transported too, as that might help with the last-km issues.
• More of a societal thing than being PT-specific, but move away from the "one big CBD" model. Everybody wanting to converge on more or less the same point puts a huge amount of concentrated pressure on a system. That system has to be designed and funded to accommodate these enormous peaks, but will be massive overkill at other times. Distributing the destinations reduces that concentration, but also helps to justify better services in areas that everyone currently leaves because they have to go to the city instead.

There are no doubt tons of others but that's a start.

Yeah cost is only one consideration, for me there are a lot of reasons that I generally choose not to take PT. It works ok for certain scenarios, but is usually the worse option by a significant margin. Even being free isn't enough to tip the scales the vast majority of the time, particularly when non-cost considerations are included.

My motorcycle gets me to work in less than half the time, leaves on my schedule, I know I'll get a seat, I can use the one vehicle for the whole trip, it's far more reliable, I get sick less often (thanks, people who take PT when they are clearly unwell), not to mention that I enjoy riding anyway which is in itself a decent incentive. Taking the car still ticks these boxes - it takes longer than the bike but is still far quicker than PT, plus I can take bulky/heavy things that simply aren't feasible to take on PT, and it's a negligible additional cost to take others with me. That said I'm lucky to have parking at work, if that wasn't the case it would be far less feasible.

And that's for the city-and-back trips that I assume PT has been optimised for. For any other trips, PT rarely makes sense, though PT being free does address the issue of paying separately for each passenger (eg 4 people going to the city and back costs ~$45 on PT, ~$10 in the car).

If I'm to actively choose PT over bike/car it needs to be the better choice. And it needs to do that by improving, not by simply adding barriers to alternatives.

I just run on two mini PCs.

One running OPNsense, fanless N5105, 4x 2.5Gb, it doesn't need much disk or memory but at the time it was a negligible additional cost to go to 16GB and 500GB.

The other is running Proxmox, on a Ryzen 7 7840HS, 96GB RAM, 500GB SSD, and with two 5TB USB HDDs plugged in (rotated with a third that I keep at a friend's place as a cheap but fit for purpose offsite backup).

It's just them plus a managed 2.5Gb switch and a couple of wifi routers in AP-only mode. It costs very little to run power-wise and is more than enough grunt for my needs.

Came here to mention rally, Group B in particular. As well as things like the Isle of Man TT.

Everything about them is just a big middle finger to the bubblewrap mindset of today, whether that's a good thing will depend on individual perspectives but it certainly makes it more raw and exciting as a spectator.

Cami Secret, aka Boob Apron

I used sandpaper on mine, a few different grits down to a 2000 I think it was. Then applied a UV-resistant clear. It has gone well over 5 years now.

Sigh. I haven't actually run a non-standard firmware for a while now, but I'm finding the mindset of a lot of these big companies exhausting, the relentless push for them to control every aspect of everything. Particularly when they're charging huge amounts for the device and to my mind at least can't claim they've somehow subsidised the hardware.

I was forced to bin my original C64, tape deck, disk drive, joysticks, a couple of printers (one was a daisy wheel lol), many many games and apps and my own projects etc. It still saddens me thinking about it.

These stories rub a bit of salt in the wound but it's pretty cool that there's still interest in them. They were a fantastic thing - easy to use for the basics, powerful enough that once you moved past those basics (and BASIC itself) it still had plenty to offer. And crucially, in a modern context, it's not so advanced that it leaves nothing for you to do - you still need to figure things out for yourself, and there's a lot of satisfaction in figuring out a hack to make it do something. So good.

I'm tempted to get one but that's a rabbit hole I'm not sure I have the time for these days!

Came across this which I've not validated but does seem to make sense at a glance: Comparison of WLTP and CLTC

Based on that the WLTP range would be 828-900km (515-560 miles).

Real world, 6-700km at a guess?

I'm not an expert but have worked in these kinds of environments on and off over the years.

It's hard to offer broad advice as every encounter is different. Your workplace might offer training though to give you some tools, which will likely also teach you the things not to say (eg promising a result, stoking the fire, preaching, etc).

Calming someone down isn't always the goal either, sometimes people just need to process difficult information or grieve for the loss of a loved one. All you can do in this situation is to offer a safe place to do that, and maybe a sympathetic ear if they need to talk, and perhaps to validate their feelings. Otherwise just being present is often enough, as is knowing when to give someone space.

The Milkshake

Behold my artistic genius