Sustainable public transport

We've heard it all before "rural bus service cuts". We'll it's happening in Elvington and it's all quite silly.

To give bit of background. We have a bus service (195) that runs a few times a day. The busiest times are at 7:30 to York and 5:15 from York. This service gets about 6-12 commuters from Elvington plus another 12 or so from other villages. So, it's hardly full, but it's keeping 24 cars off the road.

During the day, the other bus services (apparently subsidized by the council) have a "few" (3?) people on them.

Anyway, the morning and evening runs of the 195 will be stopped from 5th September 2011 because it's not financially viable (while the empty daytime runs continue).

The cynic in me thinks that the company would rather run an empty bus paid for by the council than one that's actually well used but doesn't have a bum on every seat.

I'm sure that the day time buses provide an irreplaceable service for the OAPS, and others who do not have a car to get into York! But stopping the morning/evening commuter services so that people end up buying a car to go to work seems completely at odds with the York City council's recently published strategy on transport! All 5 themes in the document are basically saying that it's important to stop people using the car to get to/around York.


A few suggestions:

• Think about the services that we subsidize.
  
• Plan timetables better: think about what services people will use, not what services happen to fall neatly within the bus company's schedule when they have a spare bus that's on its way back from somewhere else.
  
• Make it 30 minutes later in the morning (7:50 in York is a fraction early really for many commuters)
• Advertise it! According to the transport policy, we have to encourage behavioural change - so let's go out of our way to promote it, make it actually a viable service. Many, many people in Elvington work in York, why don't they take the bus. Who pays for the advertising? Council? Bus companies? Word of mouth? Elvington Parish Council? Actually all should play a part.

Blowing in the wind

It used to be the case that on 'recycling day', as I walk to work on a windy day, I'd see lots of bags of recyleable materials blowing down the streets, onto the fields and generally causing more problems than putting them in landfill. After quitely grumbling about them for a year or so, I'm really pleased that the council has replaced them with good strong plastic boxes with lids for sorting and separating the recycling.

After a few weeks of using the boxes, I can say that they are excellent and far better then the old system. Horray!

All we need now is to switch from a 2-weekly landfill rubbish collection to a 3-weekly one, with recycling collected every week and I'll start to feel like recycling is really important.

It would be good too if it became cheaper for businesses to recycle than to landfill....

On another note, Elvington (and nearby) residents, have a look at this fantastic opportunity: Alpha in Elvington.

Bells and bees

This afternoon, I spent a happy few hours cleaning a belfry. It's a very tiny tower, only about 3 or 4 square metres. There are four floors including the ground floor. I only managed to clean the ringing room (first floor) today, and a little bit of tidy up of the clock chamber (2nd floor). It was really quire filthy. I feel like I've vacuum cleaned away hundreds of years of cobwebs, sandstone dust and bees...

Most of the mess happened to be thousands upon thousands of dead bees. Apparently, some years they swarm into the top of the tower, live there for a bit then die during the winter. I'm not looking forward doing any maintenance in the bell chamber (top floor) during the summer.

So, now we have a belfry that people can go in without overalls. So, what's the next step? Ringable bells?

Tube

Someone put a video of me on You Tube.

Fame at last.

Buzz off!

There has been a great increase in flies in the last few days. Presumably due to the warmer weather. Living next to a cow field, you expect a fly or two. However, the number at the moment is just, just...just buzz off!

Bovinophobia

When we moved in, at the bottom of our garden was:

1. 2 metre high wooden fence
2. Barbed wire
3. 2.5 metre high hawthorn hedge, about 1 metre deep
4. Holly hedge

What was this high security perimeter for? I can only assume that it was to stop the cows in the field behind us looking in the garden for greener pastures.

What were the previous occupants thinking? Should the cows manage to scale the fence (without getting caught on the barbed wire) and survive the vicious spikes in the hawthorn then the holly would put them off...

I have now removed most of the features from the bottom of the garden, reclaiming a good 8 square metres of garden and a pleasant view of a few friendly cows.

Early Riser

A couple of days ago, for the first time in months, it was almost dawn when I got up for work. In fact, apparently the sunrise tomorrow is at 6:46am. On the 9th March, I will be getting up exactly at sunrise and then after that, it will already be light when I wake up!

When we lived in York, I had the luxury of getting up at whatever time I liked. It was a short cycle to work, and flexible working hours. This was a luxury that I took full advantage of!

At that time, I was around some very respected and influential people who were early risers. They were people who seemed to be in the office and full of energy before everyone else in (my) world were awake. They were generally knocking off, having done a full day's work, about the same time that I was just getting my brain warmed up.

At one point, I began to wonder what was wrong with me! I really wanted to get up earlier. I could see all the practical reasons why I should! However, despite trying to convince myself that I was going to get early, when the alarm goes off I always re-convinced myself that going back to sleep was always more sensible.

When we moved further away from work, I did it with the full knowledge, slight excitement and a very real fear that the bus timetable is little lean, the only practical bus to work leaving at 7:30am. Would I be able to do it?

Looking back, the change was remarkably easy. When you don't have a choice (get up now, or don't go to work at all), you get up. And you soon get into a rhythm. It all seems similar to this approach to becoming an early riser. I am not sure that I would have had the motivation to do it without an external influence, but the principle is the same.

I am now an early riser and I wish I had done it years ago.

Good night.

Olive Ice

After protestations from Spanish people around the world when I planted an olive tree in our garden last year ("It won't grow in your cold English weather") I can confirm that not only did it survive the winter, but that it even produced a crop of olives in the autumn.

I admit that the olives were only the size of peas, but I didn't really expect to harvest any once I realised that you can't eat them off the tree - they take lots of preparation.

The Price of Power

In Monopoly, the probability of paying anything to the the electric company (by virtue of landing on it) is about 0.026040 per turn (assuming that you don't own the electric company). If you do have to pay anything then you have to pay 10 times the value of a roll of two dice (assuming that both utilities are owned by the same owner, which nowadays seems pretty likely). The expected value a single payment is £70 and therefore expected value of payments to the electric company is £1.82 per turn.

Not in Monopoly, things are a tad more expensive (£600) and a lot more likely (1).

When we moved into our house, some 18 months ago, we arranged to take over all the utilities (gas/electric/water/phone). However for electricity, we got a nice letter back saying that they were not able to setup our account because the current supplier had objected and that we should find out who the current supplier is using a look-up service and contact them for an explanation.

We discovered that it was British Gas, so I phoned the customer helpline and listened to lots of music dubbed with "Your call is important to us". After 30 minutes, I had to attend to other things (my time not free!). Thoroughly frustrated I tried again another time. After 10 minutes, I gave up.

(I did notice several letters from the supplier addressed to the previous occupant over the next months, these were returned to the sender since we do not have a forwarding address.)

And that was where I left it. We did not receive a single bill for electricity.

Today, someone arrived to disconnect our electricity supply (according to the note through the door). As it happens, the meter is indoors and we were all out.

The caller had left his mobile telephone number, and it turned out that he was a nice man called Ray who helpfully worked out that the arrears was just under £600 and that I could pay half of it now and the rest by direct debit over the next 12 months.

This seemed like a very good option to me. We'd had 18 months of free credit but mostly I was pleased to have an instant fix without wasting any time in a telephone queue.

Next time I have a problem with a service I might just be tempted to stop paying and wait for them to contact me.

Wellington boots

Following the recent wet weather, Elvington main road was flooded again this morning under about 6" of water in places.

I noticed this Evening Press news article: Elvington celebrates as flood defences are finally completed, 3rd January 2008.

I suppose it's a slightly misleading headline. The key part of the flood defenses is a pump to move water from the beck in the village into the river Derwent, which presumably can have a higher water level than the beck. According to the article, the pump will be connected to the electricity supply tomorrow.

As a software engineer, I am used to working with the assumption that connecting something to the electricity is somewhere near the start a project, not the completion! There then follows significant testing, bug-fixing, adjusting, tinkering and redesign.

Back to Elvington: apparently, there is a temporary pump working though. I wonder what's gone wrong.

Today's worry is that last time the road was flooded, the bus home took a detour, turning off the road before the flood. No problem, except that I would normally get off the bus the other side of the flood.

I wasn't awake enough to think about wellies when I left the house at 7:15am.