Keep out of the Olympics' way, earn a haircut from TfL app In the race to get London's road and tube network ready for the Olympics, Transport for London has endorsed a new app called re:route: a map app with reward vouchers. The idea is that Re:Route (on iTunes here) plans your journeys in the capital and then rewards you for taking low-carbon, calorie-burning and overburdened-public …
An out-of-context quote but certainly not a misleading one.
An app with "route" in the title, for planning routes, that can't plan routes. And the bit it does show is pointless. And that's assuming it works when you take that route. And, I assume, the coupon-led bit requires you to "check in" along the route to show you've taken that route at a slow speed (otherwise they're just giving away coupons), so it not working is pretty critical to the function of the app.
A coupon-giving route-planning app to avoid carbon release that may not give coupons, can't plan routes and actually advises worse ways of travelling.
The Government IT slogan should be: "You couldn't make it up."
Erm, forgive my squirrelly ignorance, but surely a route is more than just the beginning and end points? Aren't those what you start with, and the route is the bit inbetween?
I just love how TfL's primary response to the Olympics screwing over the capital seems to be "just walk." They wrap it up in the usual help-us-out/save-the-planet/this-is-doing-you-a-favour bullshit, but at the end of the day all this massive ad campaign says to me is: "we really fucked up with transport for this massive event half of you don't want, so we're asking all the people that paid for our network to not use it."
Yes, I am really glad that I don't need to go anywhere near London for these weeks. I don't need any patronising platitudes in exchange for my not using London roads, and I'd be pretty offended if I did. I have little interest in these games and, if recent history is anything to go by, we will regret our offer to host them in so many ways.
Just how many haircuts do they expect one person to need? Or do they expect you to spend all day in a spa?
If they offered something that might possibly classify as useful it might be worth looking at it.
But presumably the people who developed it think haircuts and spa days really are what Londoners are all desperate for. At least the Londoners who think it's a good idea to take a bike onto a tube.
If all these Olympic tourists are going to be paying TFL top whack for daily travel cards (£8.40 a day if used during peak hours) they'll be raking it in for a network they haven't significantly upgraded for the event. A zone 1 + 2 travelcard is £1168 a year and if they're seriously asking people to work from home/cycle everywhere for 3 weeks then that represents then taking about £67 from the pockets of anyone who buys an annual tube ticket.
I think that if you can show reasonable proof that you've been working from home for the duration, they should be offering to refund that amount. A haircut voucher ain't gonna cut it :-)
As an IT contractor in London, whenever I cycle to work I get to:
i) claim 20p / mile
ii) burn 700-800 calories each way
iii) prevent £3.10 (each way) from making its way to TfL's grubby mitts (to match the grubby commute)
iv) have a smug feeling that lasts hours, once the memories of the near-death experiences fade
I once read one of the readers' letters in that fine weekday publication, Metro (<cough>Daily Mail proxy</cough>. It was an anti-cyclist rant and they were attempting to compare (unfavourably) the extra carbon dioxide exhaled by a cyclist to that of a car.
The mind boggles at either
i) the quality of science teaching at their school, or
ii) the number of science lessons they would have to miss in order to have formulate such an ill-informed argument.
Well, it *has* been about 38 years since I was sitting in front of a burette with my manometer readings and a flask of lime water in front of me, but I think I could probably work it out back-of-fag-packet style if I was being entirely serious.
I seem to remember a Biology teacher almost asphyxiating a mouse in a demonstration of how carbon dioxide was a definite product of respiration. Silly bugger forgot to turn on the water that powered the air pump that supplied the conical flask the mouse was trapped in with air and the mouse passed out while she was blabbing on about controls and the need for pure chemicals. Once the situation was pointed out she squeaked and turned the tap on full blast. The lime-water in the detector went milky in about 1/10 of a second as the mouse's chest heaved to draw in volumes of life-giving air now blasting it with hurricane force. A great triumph.
Said mouse survived to further the cause of science again, but it tried to bite anyone attempting to put it in a conical flask from that day forth, which only goes to show a deep understanding of scientific principle is not automatically a product of being exposed to the science itself.
Sometimes, showing science to others just ends with you getting bitten.
Drive up to Alaska. Go across the Berring Strait, in winter anyway, or perhaps a ferry is allowed. Drive across Russia and Central Europe to Calais. Wait 4 hours at the immigration queue for the Channel Tunnel. Go across the channel and spend some more time on the M25 car park [parking lot]. Somehow get into London while avoiding the zil lanes.
They have offered a application for Apple users only that will route them out of the way of the main route you would normaly take.
So as far as I see this they will be forcing Apple users to congregate at unpopular stations, dark alleys etc, sure this will work out realy well for muggers etc.
The other aspect is that after they have moved all these people out of hot-spot area's they will then get them to queue up for a haircut with all the other people who thought they were unique and special with there vouchers, causing new hot-spots.
Pisses me off, the only legacy over 99% of London users will get to experience and did they upgrade it, no there idea of capacity planning the public transport is over the years since being awarded the Olympics was to raise the price, reintroduce the old design bus they replaced with a disaster and to ask people who regularly pay for this shit to carry on paying and either please dont use the service your paying for or we will route you the long way.
Seriously just reintroduce Trams into central London, pave over few more roads and the trams will easily cut down on idiot driver as they do in Holland and we will have transport options that only get delayed by accident reports.
Can we replace Bojo with an application, probably be more productive but wasn;t a option on the voting ballot last week alas, maybe next time somebody will get a application standing for Major, we have 4 years to create our monster of choice - is The Register up for the challange?
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