Recently, I’ve been taking public transit around town more and more. The advent of the Canada Line is one reason, and another is that since I’ve been carrying the Android-flavored Internet in my pocket, travel time isn’t necessarily downtime. Plus, as I steer thousands of pounds of steel and glass and so on around town, the proportion of my mind that’s thinking about carbon-loading keeps increasing unnervingly.

Also, I happen to live in a spot that gives me superb access to public transit heading pretty well anywhere. (Vancouver cognoscenti: In the 16th/Main/King Ed/Cambie quadrangle).

Also, when you’re not driving, you can take pictures, for example of rainy gleaming streets.

Rain-soaked Vancouver streets at night

Damn, it’s getting dark early these days.



Contributions

Comment feed for ongoing:Comments feed

From: Avi Bryant (Nov 26 2009, at 15:02)

That particular quadrangle needs a name. For my money, it is one of the best square miles in which to live, anywhere.

[link]

From: dr2chase (Nov 26 2009, at 16:00)

Plus, of course, there's the problem that cars are through-and-through anti-social. Whether it's funding the jerks that sell us oil, or the inability to carry on a civil conversation with other people ("beep! beep!"), or the completely self-centered safety tradeoff, cars fail. Worst of all, the safety tradeoff is itself a fail -- failing to get enough exercise, is much more dangerous than choosing to walk or ride a bicycle, and vastly more dangerous than the not-caused-by-cars-risks of walking and cycling.

[link]

From: Pete (Nov 26 2009, at 16:07)

I specifically use my time on public transportation to forgo connectivity. I get a lot of good interrupt-free reading done without the distractions of email/IM, etc. It's a myth that "doing email" == productivity, and most of us can improve ourselves and the products we work on without being hyper-connected.

[link]

From: Jim Harvie (Nov 26 2009, at 17:43)

Congratulations on becoming somewhat car free! Freeing oneself from the "carbon debt" is liberating.

And its a fine example to the little ones.

[link]

From: Derek K. Miller (Nov 26 2009, at 18:45)

Love the sunstars on the headlights.

[link]

From: Genevieve (Nov 27 2009, at 16:16)

Beautiful image, like a stained glass window.

[link]

author · Dad
colophon · rights

November 26, 2009
· Arts (11 fragments)
· · Photos (983 more)
· The World (151 fragments)
· · Places
· · · Vancouver (158 more)

By .

The opinions expressed here
are my own, and no other party
necessarily agrees with them.

A full disclosure of my
professional interests is
on the author page.

I’m on Mastodon!