On track, at last...

In May 2009, I posted a column that included the paragraph: Just as we have been through the age of the mineral, vegetable, animal and human, the roads will no longer be dominated by hordes of bog-standard vehicles, but instead a mix of bicycles and ‘intelligent’ cars, attuned to specialist and special needs. Redundant plant and surplus labour can redeployed in one of the new ‘green’ industries, e.g., solar panel manufacturing. It is all easy to say, of course, but we have to face the future, and that future might just be now.
At the time, I was laughed from here to Tokyo. Now, newspaper columnist Alex Rayner has written: the golden age of motoring may indeed be over. (On the road to nowhere, Guardian Newspaper, 26 September, 2011) There will always be vehicles on the roads, of course. We have to get about, after all. But it is this ‘motorist as king thing’, that dates from roughly the 1950s, that is fading. For example, the percentage of 17 to 20 year-olds with driving licences fell from 48% in the early 1990s to 35%, last year. Apparently, possession of a licence is less cool of late, young people wanting to be defined by an ipad or smartphone, rather than a snazzy vehicle. However, it could also be a technology at play.
Already in Britain, there are a number of motor ownership and rental schemes in place; Streetcar, Zipcar and Whipcar, where, in place of buying a vehicle outright, you pay a sum of money to Toyota or BMW to buy ‘motoring time’. You can swap vehicles to suit your needs at the time; home removal van, family car for a holiday, or even hire a motor or bicycle. However, with these schemes, you will still need a driving licence, so roll out the ULTra system, driverless, electric ‘pods’ that run on guideways to specific locations, not unlike the Docklands Light Railway.
It will take time, planning and political will before this technology moves out of futuristic novels and into our everyday lives. Rayner quotes German entrepreneur, Stefan Liske: Cities such as London will, in ten years (have these vehicles) going along autonomously and you can hop in and out of them.
I can’t wait, really I can’t. Rayner fills the remainder of the feature with statistics that demonstrates how the wealthier among don’t necessarily want to travel more, but travel better – and ditto for the rest of us. This makes sense. There are only twenty-four hours in a day, three hundred and sixty-five days in a year. Time is too short to live it on wheels. Contemporary society has long needed a range of travel and commuting alternatives ranged between the poles of ground-shakingly expensive, private car ownership, and almost as expensive, inefficient and overcrowded public trains and buses. Let’s get it going – it could be the underpinning of the economy, after all.

Humble Pi...

When I was a little ‘un, I believed that the Greek number pi was called pi because it defined the circumference of a circle in relation to the diameter. Pies are round and so is the circle, see? Every school kid knows that pi = 3.1415….ad infinitum cm. If the diameter of a circle is 10 cm, then the circumference is 31.415….ad infinitum cm. Unlike the square, the circle and its solid, the sphere, occur everywhere in nature. Countless fruits are round, electrons orbit the nucleus of an atom in a circular path, and Earth and its orbit around the sun, are round. Why does the natural world gravitate (ooops!) towards circularity? In a perfect circle (actually quite rare) each point on the circumference is exactly the same distance from the centre. In a natural system where every piece of matter gravitates to the lowest level of energy, the circle pops up again and again.
The circle really is the microcosm that defines the macrocosm. In metaphysics, the circle is an important symbol of eternity, that is, without beginning and without end. Perfect, you might say, but like the moon, the circle has a dark side. A circular argument is one that no one can win because it goes round in circles. You can ride a bicycle (two circles) to get somewhere, but being trapped in a cycle means you are getting nowhere. Where do I finish this article?

Queen Anne Woman & Man

The Queen Anne house can be recognised by the curly-gabled façade. Objects protruding at its sides look like floral cake decorations. They are, in fact, hanging baskets. Queen Anne man is invariably a self-employed builder. He has to be, in order to maintain that fantastic Queen Anne gable. His wife is a cake designer. She derives endless fascinating inspiration from her dwelling place, baking cakes in the shape of a Queen Anne gabled house. Objects protruding at its sides look like hanging baskets. They are, in fact, floral cake decorations. When her efforts are documented in the local newspaper, Queen Anne woman attracts many customers all wanting cakes in the shape of a Queen Anne gabled house. The floral decorations come at extra cost. If you ask when Queen Anne lived or died, the QA family fall silent. That is, except for the youngest member, who is doing history at school. He mumbles something about ‘er who had her head cut off…