Exasperated Calculator

Google Reader is down, and has been down for hours now. How did people surf the internet before RSS?

From RiotACT I found this web page calling for action on parking:

The purpose of this website is to channel our frustration with the parking situation into change. Let’s stop whinging to our co-workers and tell someone who has to care - the Government. What we propose is not unreasonable, but the recommendations are designed to fix an unreasonable system.

Specifically, the site mentions or complains about:

Excessive and unfair fines

Limits and No Parking zones

It’s not “just $70″.

The first big problem I have with the site is that it talks about a set of recommendations they want to make to Government, without ever showing these anywhere. I’m not keen on signing a petition without any details of what I’m signing.

But, more broadly, what’s the problem here, and how will the things they seem to be proposing help?

The main complaint is about lack of parking. Now most non-economists probably think this is just a supply issue. But economic tells us that there are two halves to every market: supply and demand. If there aren’t enough spaces to park in, then that’s a result of supply being greater than demand.

The simplest answer is to build more carparks, but there are a couple of arguments against that. Firstly, it’s not always easy to build the carpark near where people want to go. Think about the CBD of any city: where would you put the extra car parks? Cars take up a lot of space, especially the 4WD behemoths. Secondly (and reluctantly), maybe it’s not the greatest idea in the world to encourage more people to drive everywhere. There are congestion and environmental arguments in favour of rationing car parking.

If increasing supply isn’t the answer, then you can address demand. The simplest way to reduce demand for parking is to charge more for it. Anyone from Sydney or Melbourne knows how cheap Canberra parking is, even in Civic.

Fair Parking Canberra notes the government is building more sites, but calls for a few things. Firstly, different fines depending on how long you’ve overstayed your parking. Secondly, change some existing no parking zones and one hour zones into four hour zones (presumably so you can go move your car at lunchtime…). And thirdly, lower prices for parking and parking fines.

So what will these do?

What about making some one hour spaces into four hour spaces? (I’m going to ignore the stupid idea of getting rid of no parking areas. Those lines are normally drawn with regard to public safety or access) Think about a one hour space. In a normal day, 8 cars can park there. Change it to a four hour space, and only 2 can. Even if you argue that the majority of people are looking for 8 hours worth, so long as there are substantial numbers of people who don’t you’ve just reduced the supply of parking. Good for people who get there early, terrible for everyone else. Bad, bad idea.

What about changing the fines? A little bit of law and economics will come in handy here. Say you park illegally, how much do you expect to pay?

E(F) = p * F

WHere p is the probability of being caught, and F is the fine. In order to ensure people follow the law, we need to make:

E(F) > L

Where L is the price of legal parking. The fine is $70, and the probability of being caught appears to be around 1 in 7 (based on the experience of people around work who accidentally stay in a 2-hour space too long). So the expected fine is about $10. Probably enough to discourage people from parking illegally.

But if we lower the fine, then more people are going to park illegally. We’ve effectively reduced the ‘price’ of overstaying in a parking spot. Which means that the supply of available parking is going to shrink.

And what about charging based on how long you’ve overstayed? Well, firstly you can’t do that for any of the free car spots, because you never know how long you’ve been there. The way the parking inspectors work, they often can’t tell if you’ve overstayed one minute, or four hours. So this only works for pay-and-display car parks (as pay-on-exit obviously doesn’t apply). It’s not a terrible idea in that context, but the extra complexity (both legal and administrative) would make it hard to implement.

‘Fixing’ parking isn’t hard. Charge more for it. People won’t like it, especially those who would prefer to always park for free (the subtext I read into the Fair Parking site). But it will fix the problem.

By way of disclaimer, I should note that my workplace has free parking. And I hate it! It’s impossible to get a park after around 9:30am, which makes it very hard to sleep in, or to run out for an errand during the day. I really wish that we could introduce pay parking, because it would reduce the demand.

A 33-story high swing.

Another one of those fun ‘locked room’ games. (Via)

Photographs of terrible parking.

A dashboard gadget holder that may actually work.

EE Doc Smith’s classic Triplanetary. (Via)

…yet.

As at least a few people reading this know, my sport of choice is the NFL. The pre-season kickoff is in a little over a month. Which means that technically speaking the two teams I support (the Washington Redskins and Oakland Raiders) are, right this moment, equal leaders of the NFL. With around 30 other teams, of course…

Which is not to say they have a great chance, of course. The Redskins are currently at 18:1 to win the NFC championship, and the Oakland Raiders are 45:1 to win the AFC championship. The New England Patriots are 6:5 to win the AFC, by comparison.

Oakland has had a few bad years recently. Ever since the complete meltdown in the Superbowl a few years ago they’ve been completely in the wilderness, and they’re showing no signs of getting better. My fondest hope is that they can manage to win as many games as they lose. They’re also in the AFC, which has several dominant teams.

The Redskins look a little more interesting. They went 5-11 last year, which is a lot poorer than they should be able to manage. They have quite a bit of talent, and avery interesting coach. They have a very strong running back in Clinton Portis, and Antwan Randle El has a lot of talent as a wide receiver, and Chris Cooley and Sanatana Moss have a lot to offer. The big problem is a lack of serious quarterback. If they can find a good quarterback, or if their existing quarterback can find a rhythm, then 2007 could be a good year for Washington.

But most likely it’s all downhill from here.

How to make a bottle opener from a piece of paper.

The cutest little paper shredder ever.

A Nintendo Wii made from Lego.

A wire frame sculpture of a Subaru.

A finnish politician is campaigning in Klingon.

The ABC launched a new website today, the most interesting part of which is the ABC News site.

It is, in a word, bold.

Web 2.0 is getting pretty trendy now. Between Digg and Flickr the most common trends have become clear. But would anyone have expected that you’d see a mainstream, conservative website with a tag cloud?

The ABC certainly isn’t diving in head first. This is a small step in a lot of ways. There are very few opportunities for end users to participate, making this a principally one-way experience. And it might just be my familiarity with the old design, but I find the new look quite jarring so far.

Still, I think it’s a sign of how far Web 2.0 has come that some of its central concepts are being picked up in this kind of way. And with such a prominent website using them, I expect that they’ll begin to spread even more quickly within Australia.

Great moments in the history of dipomacy #760.

An animated ping-pong T-shirt.

A train engineer backed over a co-worker. Now he’s suing for trauma.

The Canberra Birdman rally may return in 2009.

Seagate predicts 1 terabyte iPods within a decade.

Helen and I travelled to Melbourne last weekend for a quick holiday weekend. A few highlights…

Firstly, I really enjoy the architecture in Melbourne. I never quite managed to get a photo of the RMIT campus near our hotel, but I was quite taken with this skyscraper:

First day we mainly spent going to see Melbourne Zoo. Overall I think I prefer Taronga: better location, better designed zoo, and better range of animals (especially Penguins!). But two exhibits really stood out. Firstly, there’s a relatively new section for apes which is very nicely designed. The paths are all rough formed, feeling a lot more like jungle paths. Plus they had a really nice looking gorilla.

The other big new thing is the elephant exhibit. I’ve only seen the Taronga version without elephants installed, but I’d have to say that if I was an Elephant I’d want to be in Melbourne! A lot more room to move, better designed enclosure.

One final favourite is the Butterfly house. First, it’s great to just walk through a mist of butterflies. And also, it’s heated to 30 degrees during the day, nice and warm!

Helen’s highlight, as always, is the platypus. Here she is with the platypus statue outside the enclosure.

The rest of the first day we went to see Spiderman 3 at the Imax at the Melbourne Museum. I’ve been to see a couple of Imax films before, but both films designed for Imax. It was interesting to see a film that wasn’t really designed for it on the really really really big screen. The film itself: meh!

Saturday we had breakfast at the Queen Victoria Markets (also next to the hotel), and then wandered around shops for several hours. In the evening we went to see Miss Saigon, the main reason for the trip. Great show, which I’d only heard on CD before. Overall the acting and singing was good, not great (although a couple of individual performers were great). The staging was really creative, doing a lot with what is quite a cramped stage.

Sunday we went down to the National Gallery of Victoria, which neither of us have been to see in years.

I think the NGV has a very interesting modern art collection, as well as some very nice classical pieces. It’s certainly a collection that gives the National Gallery of Australia a run for its money. One of the works that I quite enjoyed from the modern section:

Then we dropped by Federation Square. Had a quick look through the Australian Centre for the Moving Image, but it was very disappointing (between exhibits at the moment). There was the new annex for the National Gallery of Victoria, but we just couldn’t be bothered by that point - sore feet, too much art…

So we dropped by the shops a little more, and then went to see Pirates of the Carribean 3 (also a ‘meh’). Then back to the hotel, one more night of sleep and then back to Canberra.

I love Melbourne, it’s a beautiful city. It’s pretty much the only place other than Canberra I could ever see myself living for an extended period.