Cattle class
Posted February 22nd, 2007 in Transport
Today’s Daily Telegraph tells us that if it’s good enough for Delhi, it is good enough for Sydney.
Premier Morris Iemma has had to look to the Indian subcontinent to find a solution to the CBD’s public transport problem – a fleet of standing room-only buses.
The Daily Telegraph has learned that a Circular Quay “cattle class” route will lead to five new buses being deployed throughout the city by Christmas.
The standing-room-only buses will cram 115 on board – more than double the capacity of existing buses – ferrying thousands of workers from one end of the city to the other every hour.
Truer words have never been spoken. The attached image is from the new cattle class in Delhi - an image I stole from one of my favourite blogs Ultrabrown, where Manish has posted a few more images of the new Delhi Metro. Delhi is moving ahead in dealing with it’s transport problems by doing something about it.
One of the most interesting aspects of my 2004 India trip was the transport. Planes, trains, automobiles and auto rickshaws, all worked, especially the trains and especially in Bombay. I took peak hour trains in economy cars packed in like a sardine, and sometimes more comfortably in first class cars.
The stock was old and the service stretched, but largely I found the system working, trains arrived on time and the carriages stopped where they were supposed to. Unsurprising I suppose because they absolutely depend on their system to move the vast bulk of people, more than we can imagine, over six million people a day. And that’s the problem, we don’t. Here it’s all about cars.
Of course it goes without saying that one of the main forms of transport in India, (Delhi and Bombay) is the humble bicycle. A necessity for various classes of people, but still an efficient and effective choice given the right circumstances. Yep, If it’s good enough for Delhi, it’s good enough for Sydney.
technorati tags: cycling, bicycles, transport, sydney, delhi
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