Musings on software development, bike infrastructure, public transport, and urban planning.
On my way to the State Library for the rally against the cuts to the NDIS.
A 71yr old women was hit-and-run while crossing Sydney Rd (near Barkly St) yesterday.
Police are yet to locate the driver but have CCTV footage of them.
Sydney Rd is a major shopping street where people need to access shops on both sides of the street. This women was crossing 100m from the nearest southern pedestrian crossing and 150m from the nearest northern crossing.
Sydney Rd is busy and difficult to cross because there is no space in the middle to safely wait. When I cross I wait a long time for both ways to be clear or for traffic to backup.
For a 71yr old this isn't possible because it requires that you can move pretty fast.
The fact that it's 40km/h is probably what prevented this crash from being instantly deadly.
For such a dense shopping street (there are 1800 shops along here) it's absurd that there isn't a crossing every 50m.
#Brunswick #SydneyRd #VicPol #CarsRuinCities
https://brunswickvoice.com.au/police-investigating-sydney-road-hit-and-run/
A kid asking on /r/melbourne about how to use a train station.
I wonder how many people don't use public transport simply because nobody showed them how to use it as a kid, then they started driving, and they never felt comfortable asking later in life.
https://www.reddit.com/r/melbourne/comments/1t342pr/how_do_i_use_a_train_station/
Merri-bek council is offering a $500 subsidy for new or refurbished e-bikes starting tomorrow (4th May).
"$500 off the purchase price of a new or refurbished bike, or 50% off a weekly subscription for 3-months (up to value of $500)."
It's only available from 2 specific stores and a limited range of bicycles.
The cheapest new bike under the scheme is the Veloomi Daily at $2199
#merribek #brunswick #coburg #Fawkner #glenroy #bicycles #melbourne
I only recently found out that the 2020 covid pop-up bike lane project was only $13 million for 100km of bicycle infrastructure. Only $130K per km.
For comparison this is about the same cost as 4 train stations car spaces for every km of bike lane (from the $610m Car Parks for Commuters program that delivered 21,000 car parks at train stations again Melbourne).
You could built 2km of bicycle infrastructure to get people to a train station and if 8 people used it then you're already ahead of building car parking.
Even barely used bicycle infrastructure is worth the cost because the alternatives are so expensive.
https://www.weride.org.au/announcement/victorian-government-announces-100km-of-pop-up-bikeways/
Crewing the Merri-bek BUG table at Glenroy Festival.
#Melbourne #bicycles #GlenroyFestival #Glenroy
"The car registration rebate is expected to cost the government about $750 million in foregone revenue."
They could build most of the Strategic Cycling Corridors for that.
Or upgrade 70% of the remaining inaccessible tram stops to be accessible tram stops.
There is always enough money when they want to do something.
RE: @jakecoppinger@mastodon.social
We should be rolling out lots of quick build popup protected bike lanes again.
Every primary school child is within a short bicycle ride of their school, most secondary school kids are too.
A huge number of people are within a short bike ride of a train station, even in the outer new developments.
Quick build bike lanes are stupidly cheap to build and even cheaper if they're provided via quick build modal filters on local streets.
Every other intervention to address the oil crisis is a staggeringly expensive ongoing cost that build doesn't actually build any kind of resilience and just pushes the problem down the...ughh...road.
"Public transport free for another month, then half-price until 2027"
A better cost-of-living policy would be expanding public transport so more people can use it and more people can make permanent choices that reduce their transport costs over the longer term.
The major cost of a car is in the having of the car; it's insurance, registration, depreciation, maintenance, garage etc.
Enabling a family to go from having two cars to only 1 car is a huge long term difference to their budget.
The $400 million this is costing could be spent on a lot of buses.
"Advocacy sounds noble, but in reality it’s just doing someone else’s job for free. "
Hayden from Streets Alive Glen Eira on the Advocacy to Burnout Pipeline.
https://highcapacityhayden.substack.com/p/i-give-up-on-making-our-streets-better?r=3p6njp
It would be funny if it wasn't going to result in large numbers of people dying.
Australia has the wealth to buy oil at any price. We'll be still using tax payer money to subsidise Ford Ranger drivers so they can keep driving even at $5/L.
But people in places with less wealth are going to have economic collapse and famine.
Bike Rave is a moving rave around the CBD on bicycles with music and costumes.
May 2nd , 4pm Start
Birrarung Marr, Naarm/Melbourne
Theme is Deluxe Disco.
I'm currently looking for work. I've been a software developer for 14yrs mainly working in small start-ups that make a webapp product (Ruby, Typescript, React) where I wear a lot of hats (support, devops, development, mentoring, and telling you that all the problems you're having is because your microservice architecture is over-engineered and insecure).
I'd like to work on something actually useful to people and I'd be less concerned about what I'm paid if I did.
Something that I'm less likely to burnout on would be great.
The AI slop phenomenon has really put me off so I've been thinking about changing careers, although I'm not sure what I'd do yet
Governments always telling consumers not to stockpile toilet paper, hand sanitiser, or petrol but never telling capitalists not to stockpile housing.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-03-24/japan-consumers-panic-buying-toilet-paper/106490370
Teacher's strike.
What do we think about putting the premier on a teachers wage?
Macaulay Rd protected bike lanes from Boundary Rd to Langford St now exist. It's only one block but it looks like a good start.
It's great to see this project finally get to construction after years of delays by DTP.
That's some bullshit.
It's worrying for people to be convicted of hate speech for hate speech that might have been happening in the head of someone else that isn't paying attention to what you're actually saying.
It's the reverse dog whistle.
It's like DashCamsAustralia...but if it was all happening to just one guy.
#bicycles #Geelong
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FsVfaLoUNrc
"Shadow Energy Minister Dan Tehan has seized on warnings about potential blackouts, arguing that it is an example of how the energy "transition is failing""
The Liberal party spent a decade delaying the energy transition, pushing up energy prices and creating difficult to solve problems that we now have to deal with.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-12-01/energy-grid-not-ready-eraring-coal-aemo/106085200
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-12-01/federal-politics-live-dec-1/106078396
