| > Having left London, I really do miss Ocado. Unlike the
> silly timing restrictions you suggest, they delivered at
> any hour between about 0700 and 2300 with one hour
> windows. We really do deal with six-hour windows here (and the delivery people tend to miss even those and come late). One-hour windows sound great, especially if they never missed them. You're still stuck waiting around for a delivery person, though, even if it is just for an hour once a week. > This is just the tragedy of the commons at work. Outside
> of the City there are bus lanes (shared with cabs). It
> isn't the job of society to subsidize drivers in
> congested areas. There's simply no political will to
> squeeze private autos. Sorry, I should have been more clear. I wasn't saying that driving was faster than taking a bus in my city, though it is. I was actually thinking of the local rail system, the MTR. Taking a taxi anywhere or driving yourself is almost always faster than taking the MTR. By it's very nature, public transport, which has to run on a schedule and leave gaps between runs to allow passengers to accumulate and then make multiple stops is, is often going to be slower than an individual getting into a personal vehicle and driving themselves to their destination. > You're tilting at a straw man. Single family houses and
> high rises aren't the only options. Greater London, for
> example, is full of four story row houses. I'm not British and haven't been to London (I just live in a former British colony whose development was planned by British civil servants), but the reference to Greater London seems to refer to London plus its suburbs. Hong Kong has a lot of three-story "village houses" in what passes for rural areas here but which in reality are more like suburbs or outer boroughs. HK village houses don't have elevators. Do the four-story row houses in Greater London have them? If so, then great. If not, then I would imagine it must be quite unpleasant for the people on the higher floors to carry their groceries (or anything else) up to their flats. |