I haven’t being following the discussion on the Eddington report into Melbourne’s transport needs all that closely. It’s always a bit hard to get to the bottom of the issues in these big reports that end up splashed all over the newspapers.

The proposals that have caught my eye are the big ticket items; the proposed road tunnel linking the eastern freeway to western melbourne, and the railway tunnel linking caulfield to footscray. These both feel like `big box’ solutions. Spend a huge amount of money to provide huge infrastructure projects.

I’m not convinced that either of these proposals are justified - but then I haven’t done the numbers. Sir Rod isn’t an idiot, and I’m sure that there are valid justifications to back up these proposals.

Unfortunately, from a big picture point of view, these projects will just continue to feed societies growing desire for mobility. Another example of a `predict and provide’ approach to transport planning rather than managing or retarding demand. This approach has a tendency to induce more demand. I know that living in Carlton I would have driven to work in Glen Waverley much more often if Eastlink had been open, rather than taking the train. Heck, I’d even think about living in Footscray if I could drive via a tunnel to the eastern freeway and then onto eastlink.

I feel that a more restrained approach to transport infrastructure planning in Melbourne would be more effective. There seems to be plenty of room for more trains within the current infrastructure before we start thinking about huge tunneling projects. But then, hey - I haven’t read the report yet!

I am working through my Quantitative Methods coursework today. Got up to a section on Index Numbers, which discussed how price indexes such as the NASDAQ, CPI and Dow Jones are calculated.
It seems odd that these sorts of measures aren’t more widely used outside economics and the stock market.
Imagine if an index number was used in traffic reports on the radio, rather than the typical “the ring road is heavy”. Maybe “the ring road is at 110, and the monash freeway is at 140″ would have more meaning.
It would require up to date volume figures, which aren’t too hard to get from modern traffic counting equipment installed at a permanent site.

I am giving Twitter a go. No particular reason to give it a try, other than it sounded new, hip and cool.
Turns out I only know one person who is on twitter, and he is currently in San Fran. Not all that useful to know when Martin is on Castro St, as I a) can’t meet him there and b) don’t even know where it is.

So if anyone else who knows me is on twitter, add me too. Otherwise this will end up being yet another web-craze site that I have an account on but never use.

In other news, study is going well. I am ploughing through the reading material at a decent rate. Feeling a bit sick at the moment though Off to Sydney next weekend for the Terrigal Towel frisbee tournament, and then back in Melbourne for one day on Monday the 10th.

I noticed Barak Obama’s campaign slogan on the tv news the other night. “Change we can believe in”.

Appears to be a case of ending a sentence with a preposition. I didn’t listen to his speech very much - because the slogan was posted at the bottom of the screen and the grammar was driving me nuts.

Maybe it should be “Change in which we can believe”. I prefer the approach taken by Walter Slovotsky which would render it “Change we can believe in #$%%hole”. Probably not a winning campaign slogan, but it is grammatically correct.

PS Feel free to point out my poor grammar and spelling in this post. I am nothing if not inconsistent.

Went for my first flight in a small aeroplane yesterday. Very exciting.
I’ve been thinking about learning to fly for a while. The amount of driving I do for work is ridiculous at times. Averaged about 1000km a week during November. It would be so much nicer (and probably safer) to just fly from place to place. And a lot more fun too! (who cares about whether it’s practical or not)

Anyhow, I went up in a 2 seater out of Swan Hill aerodrome. Flew around for about an hour or so, including over our house. Did a couple of landings and takeoffs and that was it.
It was pretty exciting, but once you’re up there it seems a lot like sailing. Point the thing in the direction you want to go, and then just leave it alone until it balances out lift, power and the like. Make some minor adjustments and then enjoy the view.

I was holding the stick for the whole trip, although the instructor certainly did a lot of subtle pushing and pulling on various controls as we came into land.

It would be moderately expensive to get a private pilot’s license, (a little under $8,000). However, could be a lot of fun and something to break up the full time study during 2008.

The time has come to depart our current abode. We will be moving out of Royal Parade early in January. I will be heading to Yarraville for a short time, and then onwards to Lake Boga for the majority of 2008.

Not quite sure how I feel about the full time study thing at the moment. I’m looking forward to the change of focus and the opportunity to do other things - like sail, get fit, garden, walk the dogs and so on. Bit worried about being on my own up there all the time though. However, I don’t think it will be a huge change from how things are at the moment. I mean, its not as if I spend all that much time with other people at work or anything at the moment

Look at this last weeks schedule:
Monday - alone in office most of the day, played beach ultimate in the evening
Tuesday - drive to Port Campbell for site audit
Wednesday - hang out at Ross and Meredith’s house writing reports
Thursday - Late into the office, talk to a part time employee who was in the office to write a couple of letter, loose the frisbee league final (by a lot), drive to Lang Lang and back for night audit, home at 1am
Friday - another day in the car … 2 x audits on sites at Lang Lang and Frankston

So, over the course of 5 days I spoke face to face with one other person from work. The only thing that will change next year while studying is that there will be less frisbee

I went to the final session of the Career Lifecycle Management seminar last Tuesday night. This is the 4th of these sessions that I’ve been to. The sessions are run by Engineers Australia, and aimed at young engineers - like me! They’ve generally been pretty good. Although occasionally the presenters have focused on “here’s my experiences” rather than discussing the issues in broader terms.

As well as being a wrap up summary session, this session had a speaker who focussed on the “mid-20s career crisis”. The speaker postulated that every young engineer goes through some form of career crisis in the middle of their 20s when they ask the awkward questions of “Why am I doing this?, “Is this whole engineering thing really for me?” and “Maybe I should go be a () instead?”.

I’m certainly asking those sort of questions - and have been for a while. I’m pretty certain that engineering is what I enjoy (and am good at), but as for the other two questions….

The 5 suggested strategies in dealing with all career-crisis this were:
1. Travel.
2. Do further study.
3. Seek other challenges within current job.
4. Seek another job within engineering with new challenges.
5. Change careers.

Well so far; I’m thinking about option 1, doing option 2 next year and also considering option 4 (in conjunction with option 1). Option 3 has been thrust upon me during the last 12-16 months at work, which has been good and bad.

There was a panel discussion at the end of the session. During which, the big company vs small company question came up. Interesting discussion and a question that I’ve been thinking about for a while. I like the flexibility of my current small company - no one hassles me about leave forms, being in the office at 9am sharp, team building exercises or office politics.
That said, the lack of administration support is frustrating - I didn’t go to uni for 5 years to answer phones, sort mail and do filing - as is the lack of social contact and informal mentoring. The responsibilities I’ve been given are bigger than I’d get in a large company, which is good experience but can be stressful at times.

I’ve been think about whether I want to stay in consulting or move back into the public sector. Consulting is good in that I have had a range of projects in different place. Every day is different too. I never know what I’ll be doing next week.
Unfortunately, this means that its hard to have ownership of my various projects. Once we get to the end of my budget, or present the “deliverable”, that’s it - all over. My work there is done and I no longer have time to care about the outcomes. It’s nice to be able to move on, but sometimes I don’t really feel like my work has made a difference. There has a been a fair few reports that I’ve written that must have gone straight into storage without being read, as nothing has changed on site.

A move to the public sector, be it at a council, VicRoads or DoI would probably also mean a significant shift into a project management focus. Public sector organisations are not particularly set up to do design in-house anymore (except VicRoads I suppose). Hence, any role would be developing strategies, concept plans or project managing jobs. Unless I headed into something highly specialised like network operations I suppose.

Oh well, doesn’t really matter too much for this next 12 months, as I’m locked in to full time study. As for 2009, we’ll see.

October already, so that makes about 3 months of full time work left before I switch back into the full time study mode. I’ll be living at the family home in northern Victoria, which will be a big change from being in Melbourne. Not to worried about not seeing people regularly - I work in a 3 person office, so there will not be any change in my social contact during ‘working’ hours. It’s just the ‘off’ hours that will be the problem. Down here in Melbourne there is usually someone around to play disc golf with, movies to see etc. Northern victoria offers sailing and TV. Oh well, plenty of trips to melbourne and it should be fine. I’m also hoping on doing as many frisbee hat tournaments as possible next year!!

Played the mixed national ultimate championships with the melbourne uni alumni team last weekend. It was a good weekend of ultimate frisbee and I’m pretty happy with how I played. We finished 11th, which was a good improvement on our 23rd seeding, but probably not spectacular compared to our 06 result.

This weekend has been a bit slow. Had a couple of parties, but really wasn’t in a partying mood.
Onwards towards monday I suppose

I’ve been playing around with my GPS receiver a fair bit. Haven’t quite got the hang of all the data processing parts of the operation, but I can geocode my photos and see the tracks in google earth now. Still need to get my head around editing the various gpx and kml files to remove some of the rubbish data.

Spending a lot of time playing scrabulous on facebook. Probably a sign that the lack of study this semester has given me a lot of free time to waste.

Its looking more and more like I will travel during 2009. Apart from our small family, there’s nothing really holding me in Australia any more. Time to get out there and see some more of the world.

Hans Monderman sounds like an interesting person. I definately need to go and visit some of the places he has designed and influenced. Seems very similar to the Local Area Traffic Management approach (LATM) which is used here in Australia, but much more innovative.
I have been wanting to get involved in this area of traffic engineering for a while. Written a few reports which have recommended implementing a LATM program, but haven’t had a chance to actually be involved in one myself as of yet.
It seems in Australia that we a still stuck in the “vehicle is king” mindset as far as traffic goes. As a society we allow 4WDs to drive into school car parks. In fact we design them so that they are large enough. Whereas, his approach, as outlined in this link is much less friendly to drivers of large vehicles. You’d get eaten alive by the local politics if you tried that in Australia though.

Seems like I just can’t stop writing about CityLink and ITS.

I drove home from work today (which is a rare event) and hit the typical congestion between the Domain tunnel and the WestGate. About a kilometre after the tunnel I passed under a Variable Message Sign (VMS), which warned me of an accident on the Bolte Bridge. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much I could do with that information. I had already gone past the Kings Way exit (a viable alternative route home at that time of night). In fact, the next exit was the Bolte Bridge exit. My only option at that point was to take the Bolte Bridge exit, or to drive across the West Gate Bridge and try to make my way home through Yarraville. Unfortunately the VMS didn’t tell me which option to take, or give me enough information to make a decision myself.

However, it wasn’t that big a deal. The accident was mostly cleaned up and had only closed one lane. Maybe the Citylink control room had figured out that diverting traffic was not necessary. I was past the blockage with only about a 5 min delay, all of which I spent moving rather than parked in a queue.

Anyway, I think that the system needs to change to give more advanced warning of what is going on ahead. If I had known about the accident on the Bolte Bridge prior to entrying the Domain tunnel, I would probably have exited at Kings Way. I’m certain that the incident had already happened when I was about to enter the tunnel, they don’t clean up a car accident that quickly. For these systems to work they need to inform drivers earlier enough to allow effective decisions to be made. Similarly, the system may be more effective if it tells drivers what to do, rather than just telling them what is happening and letting them make decisions on their own.

Certainly is a new and interesting field that has great potential though.