Wednesday, October 20, 2004

Quote of the day True stability results when presumed order and presumed disorder are balanced. A truly stable system expects the unexpected, is prepared to be disrupted, waits to be transformed. - Tom Robbins Thank you David Allen. (He's writing about personal productivity, but this applies equally well to the wise design of 'sustainable' systems -- whether ecological systems, business systems, social systems (or the hopefully narrowing divide between them). 1:16:28 PM    comment []  trackback []

What would traffic be like without mass transit? [Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART)]: An analysis by the University of California, Berkeley, shows that without BART traffic jams from Bay Area bridges would spill back to most of the East Bay and San Francisco street networks. Drivers would spend one or two hours just getting to the closest freeway and an extra few hours in freeway traffic. Half hour to one hour commutes turn into three to four hour commutes! I can't speak to the study methodology, but it sounds pretty compelling. For my part, in addition to ditching car for mass transit as much as possible, I find that biking cross-twon (Berkeley CA, ~120,000 people) takes very little more time than driving -- if any -- and is much more fun. I discover parts of this town that I've lived in for two decades -- sights, sounds, smells -- that I never encountered before. 11:50:23 AM    comment []  trackback []