The Birthplaces of China’s Leadership
Internal Chinese Geopolitics, part 1
The Geopolitics of Chinese M&A
North Korea and the Olympics Curse
The Bus Train Bike Lane: A Bus-Bike Lane for the Smartphone Era
Shared bus-bike lanes are an imperfect compromise. They get buses and cyclists away from cars, but also often limit buses’ maximum speeds and force cyclists to wait behind buses at bus stops.
With today’s smartphones, though, people have two new tools at their disposal that could change how bus-bike lanes are configured: bus apps and bike-sharing (or scooter-sharing, etc.) apps.
Imagine, for example, a bus-bike lane in which a bus comes every 10 minutes on average, but with there sometimes being a much longer wait between busses. In the olden days, that long, uncertain wait could be an agonizing experience. But with bus apps and bike-sharing apps, you can:
— wait for the bus without any uncertainty as to when it will actually show up
— walk to a nearby shop (or transit oasis)to wait for the bus indoors, use the bathroom, etc.
— not wait for the bus at all, but instead rent a bike to use on the bus-bike lane
— wait somewhat longer than you otherwise would, to avoid an over-crowded bus
Obviously, these apps might make it easier to get around a city by bus or bike. But they could also, perhaps, allow for the creation of an excellent and extreme type of bus-bike lane:
The Bus Train Bike Lane
Now imagine that instead of one bus coming once every 10 minutes on average, three buses come closely bunched together in a bus ‘train’ once every 30 minutes on average. For cyclists, this would mean there would, in effect, be only a third as many buses to make them stop at bus stops. For buses too, it could mean that cyclists would no longer slow them down: whenever a bus train approaches, cyclists could simply pull over to the curb in order to let it pass.
This would not have been possible in the past of course, as waiting 30 minutes for a bus (or more, in case of delays which would inevitably occur sometimes) would not have been practicable. But with today’s excellent batch of waiting options – no uncertain wait times, the ability to walk somewhere close by to get shelter from the outdoors or to use a bathroom, the ability to rent a bike, etc. – it might actually work. Indeed, it might have several other benefits too:
- Bus-bike lanes tend to be wider than bike-only lanes, which may be increasingly useful as the Baby Boomers age and as mobility-sharing services proliferate. A wide bus-bike lane could allow faster cyclists or e-bikers to safely overtake slower cyclists, rollerbladers, e-wheelchairs, scooters, etc.
- A smartphone-era bus train bike lane could also make bussing and cycling more efficient by facilitating express bus routes. Bus stops could be farther apart since people would have the option of using a bike to get to or from their bus stop. Having bus stops farther apart would help cyclists as well as bus riders, as there would then be fewer bus stops to slow down both types of vehicles. With fewer bus stops, you could also make the bus stops wide enough to allow cyclists to overtake the stopped buses.
- It’s easily weather-adjustable: when the weather is bad for cycling, you can easily use the lane as a conventional bus-bike lane instead, by simply disbanding or at least shortening the bus trains, so that buses arrive more frequently. This would also be useful since people do not like to wait a long time for buses in bad weather, and they do not like to walk further to get to or from express bus stops in bad weather, rather than walk a short distance to a local stop.
- Eventually, the bus train could perhaps become a partially automated platoon, with only the lead bus in each group driven by a human. This would be a benefit at least in financial terms, and it might be more technically or politically more viable than wholly driverless buses. Plus, even if all buses do remain human-driven, bus trains could perhaps help make bus drivers’ jobs easier by allowing all but the lead drivers to use auto-pilot features for a decent chunk of the time. Bus drivers might also find driving in bus train formations less lonely.
- With extra-long bus trains (say, a ten-bus bus train, arriving once or twice an hour on average), you might be able to differentiate a bus or two in each train, in useful or interesting ways. For instance you might have a RoRo (roll on, roll off) Bus for cyclists, wheelchairs, rollerblades, or scooters, which would have no seats, floor-level doors, and handholds.
To sum up, then, it’s a time-sharing, weather-adjustable, potentially semi-autonomous express bus-bike lane, where bikes and other ultra-lightweight forms of mobility are used as a first mile-last mile option for bus riders, in addition to being an excellent means of transport in their own right.
Instead of resisting the ‘bus bunching’ that occurs so frequently in our cities, the bus train bike lane would embrace it, turning bus bunching to its advantage through the use of bus apps and bike-sharing.
All aboard!
All Geopolitics Articles
Adventures in the Age Dependency Ratio: A Demographic Overview of the World
Guest Post: The Universal Spider
Too Much Heaven: A Brief Look Back at 1979
The Birthplaces of China’s Leadership
Countries to Watch: El Salvador
Humans, Computers, and Telecommuters
When Autonomous Vehicles Leave The Nest
The League of the Overshadowed
Peace and Prosperity in Israel’s Future?
North Korea in the Next Five Years
North Korea and the Olympics Curse
The Father, the Son, and the Holy Mackinaw-what-a-comeback-for-the-Liberals!
Spanish Geo-Economics: Past, Present, and Future
The Giving Tree: Tu Bishvat and Israeli Economics
A Look Back At Barack Obama’s Foreign Policy
Presidential Beginnings and Regionalism in AmericaIn Politics, the Triple Crown is Even More Elusive
In Politics, the Triple Crown is Even More Elusive
Ontario: The Borderland Economy
The Geopolitics of Saudi Arabia
Political Dynasties and their Discontents
Complacency over Coal’s Collapse: Five Factors to Consider
Fasten Your Snowbelts – Technology and the Great Lakes
The Geopolitics of Chinese M&A
Guest Post: Political Turnover Rate in the US
Eurozone Geopolitics (and the Future of “Czechia”)
Satellite Geopolitics in Eastern Europe
Seniors Discount? Oil Prices and Old Rulers
Finally Passing Gas: 10 Winners and Losers of the Panama Canal Expansion
The Geopolitics of Cheap Energy
Why Iraq is Still So Important
10 Consequences of US-Iranian Reengagement
Europe and Arabia: A Geopolitical Perspective
Estonia in 2015: Energy, the Euro, and Elections
Why Israel Won’t Let the West Bank Go
America’s Domestic Environmental Geopolitics
The 10 Largest “Relative” Trade Networks
The Physics of Japanese Economics
Internal Chinese Geopolitics, part 1
Top 10 Myths about the Global Economy
Coming Soon (Hopefully)
Geopolitics and the English Language
Mackinder and Keynes in 1919
Founders and Friends (1700s World Leaders)
The Cedar-Sinai Region
In 1492, Other Stuff Happened Too
The Future of Shortcuts
Geopolitics 101: A Suggested Reading List
Game of Thrones’ Lessons For Cycling Advocates
I know, I know, but I’ve decided to do this anyway. Here are the lessons:
1. Winter is Coming
In the North, cycling advocates may need to make a choice between separated bike lanes and seasonal bike lanes. While separated bike lanes are preferable, seasonal ones may be more politically viable. A seasonal compromise between cars and bikes could consist of cyclists getting a bike lane for three quarters of the year, and then that bike lane becoming a car-parking lane in winter. This would allow older drivers to park near their destinations, in order to lessen their risk of slipping on ice when walking to or from their cars.
2. Beware of Dragons
Another choice cycling advocates may sometimes face is between bike lanes on streets versus bike infrastructure at intersections (lanes, or boxes, or signals). While bike lanes on entire streets are obviously preferable, it might be more politically viable to focus on intersections first. It is in the lineup to red lights, after all, where in cyclists’ minds cars can resemble sleeping dragons: an unfurled mass of danger, with a curvy, slithering shape, their scales pushing up tightly against the curb in some places, threatening to crush you when they finally wake from their slumber when the light turns green.
3. Your Allies May Kill You…
While cars are often the fundamental cause of bike accidents, it is other cyclists themselves, the ones who think they are Lance Armstrong, who are often the proximate cause. As a normal cyclist, you may sometimes spend so much attention trying to safely navigate car traffic, that you will let your guard down and forget to be prepared for a much faster fellow cyclist trying impatiently to overtake you. Or, in GOT terms, coming to stab you in the back.
This is a problem, particularly if we want the Baby Boomers to be able to continue cycling into their seventies and beyond — and especially as faster e-bicycles proliferate. Ideally, we would have bike lanes wide enough for faster cyclists to safely overtake slower ones, or else have slower car speeds in order to allow fast cyclists to safely use car lanes to overtake slow cyclists. But advocating for wide bike lanes or slower car speeds is obviously no easy feat. Which brings us, finally, to:
4. …But You Still Need Allies
With car-sharing, many people may soon have the option of using electric micro-cars — ultra-lightweight, relatively slow ‘cars’ that are far more environmentally and economically sustainable than conventional vehicles — that they would not want to buy but would be happy to use. This, of course, would be just one part of the technological phenomenon that is also bringing cities devices like e-scooters, e-bikes, modern e-wheelchairs, and perhaps many other mobility options as well.
As usual, while it might be preferable for cyclists to have a lane for themselves that is separate from all these other vehicles, it might be much more politically viable to advocate for a single wide lane in which cyclists, micro-cars, e-bikes, electric-assist pedal cars, and any other such device would all be able to use. This might also be more environmentally beneficial, as many drivers will probably be more willing to start using a comfy micro-car themselves, rather than start using a bicycle.
Chutes and Ladders: A high-tech and low-tech idea for subway stations
Chutes
Companies like ThyssenKrupp have lately been developing maglev elevators: elevators powered by magnetic levitation rather than hoisted by cables. The possibility that maglev elevators might become widely used has created excitement because, unlike conventional elevators, maglev elevators could be used efficiently even in extremely tall buildings. Even more exciting, can move horizontally in addition to vertically, like a Wonkavator.
One of the most significant potential uses of maglev elevators, however, has been overlooked: their potential to clear subway platforms far more efficiently than normal elevators, and in some cases maybe even more efficiently than escalators or staircases.
Normal elevators, of course, are terrible at getting people out of crowded subway stations quickly. They tend to cause lineups (or scrums) to form outside their doors. This is because only one elevator can operate within an elevator shaft at any one time.
Maglev elevators however could act more like vertical escalators. They can allow multiple elevators to run within the same elevator shaft, which means that so long as you have at least two elevator shafts side by side, one with elevators going upwards and the other with elevators going downwards, multiple elevators can circulate so as to reduce lineups. As soon as one elevator has started to move upwards, another can immediately arrive and open its doors to let in new passengers.
This does not necessarily mean that it will be any faster to use the elevator – though it could become much faster, in cases where the elevator shaft spreads out horizontally at surface level in order to allow multiple elevators to let people off and on at the same time. But what it does mean is that people would be able to get off of their subway platform and onto an elevator more quickly. This, in turn, could mean more comfort and safety within crowded subway stations, and the ability to have trains pulling into stations at shorter intervals.
These elevators could also be very useful for disabled subway passengers, not only by reducing platform and elevator crowding but also because the ability for elevators move horizontally as well as vertically might, in some subway stations, mean that passengers would no longer need to transfer from one elevator to another in order to travel between street level and the subway platform.
One type of station where maglev elevators might be particularly useful could be for trains or bus lines that run in the median of a highway. Maglev elevators could help people access these stations by moving up, across, and then back down (or, if the elevator ran in a tunnel under the highway, down, across, and back up) in order to get people from the side of the highway to the station.
Eventually, perhaps, maglev elevators could also help allow subway lines to be built deeper underground, and at odd angles to the streets above them. This might, in some cases, allow subway lines to be built as diagonal shortcut routes below their cities’ grid-patterned streets, deep enough to avoid the basements of the buildings above them.
Ladders
Of course, the use of maglev elevators remains annoyingly speculative at this point. In certain situations, there may be lower-tech ways to achieve similar goals:
- Retractable staircases
Downtown subway stations tend to have passengers getting off trains in the morning and back on trains in the evening. As a result, they have a much greater need to clear their platforms quickly in the morning than they do in the evening, and a much greater need to provide spacious platforms in the evening than they do in the morning. Having some of their staircases be retractable (verybasic examples can be seen hereor here), so as to provide a greater number of staircases to help clear platforms in the morning, but fewer staircases taking up precious platforms space in the evening, could perhaps be a decent idea
2. Space beneath staircases or escalators
Another idea to address the trade-off between the number of staircases (or escalators) and the amount of platform space available could be to better utilize space beneath staircases or escalators. Here’s an example of space being used below an airport escalator, for example:
3. Actual Ladders
The worst, but also most fun, solution of all could be to have a bunch of short, sheltered ladders to allow people to climb up and out of a station at the same time.
In theory, ladders are the most space-efficient way to move upwards. In theory, you could have hundreds of ladders fit in a single subway station, allowing a platform to be cleared immediately. Theory is great.
All Transit Articles
Some of these ideas are much sillier than others. I’ll leave you to decide:
Transit Oases
The Bus Train Bike Lane: A Bus-Bike Lane for the Smartphone Era
Car-Sharing Vehicles Doubling as Sheltered Bus Stops
Game of Thrones’ Lessons for Cycling Advocates
The Three Card Monty
Next Man Up: The Passenger-Driven Bus
Bus-Bike Lanes: Can I Interest You in a Time-Share?
Trolley-Trucks and Autonomous Cargo Handling
Like Night and Day (E-Commerce Transit)
An Electric Car/Bike Lane Plan, for Cities like Toronto
Toronto’s Railways to Nowhere (Semi-Autonomous Cars)
The Witching Hour
RoRoRo Your Car
Superhighway in a Box
Numerology and Public Transit
The Private Sector
The Intersection of Yonge and Danforth
Devil’s Advocate: Elon Musk
Travel by Hibernacula
Night Moves
Chutes and Ladders
Coming Soon (Hopefully):
The Roombus
Facelift
Tortoise v. Hare, 2K19
The Wine Cellar
The Lucky Bus
Unferries
The Parkway
Double-Decker Buses for Short People
Gaga For Gondolas
Customs-Built Transit
Modi’s in Luck Now: The importance of good luck, and Uttar Pradesh, in the political success of Narendra Modi
With a slowing economy, a rival Congress Party forming alliances with regional parties in states like Tamil Nadu, and a separate alliance being formed between two former Chief Ministers of India’s most populous state, Uttar Pradesh, many had expected Narendra Modi to risk losing his majority government, and perhaps even his position as prime minister, following the elections held in India this month. Instead, Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) increased the size of its majority, winning 56 percent of seats—or 65 percent, when combined with smaller BJP-allied parties—in the lower house of India’s parliament. BJP’s rival the Congress Party, which had held the office of prime minister in 55 out of India’s 67 years prior to Modi’s being elected, won just 10 percent of seats. Congress’ alliance won 17 percent of seats, mainly thanks to voters in Tamil Nadu.
Figure 1– Note: the All India Trinamool Congress, the leading political party in India’s most populous coastal state, West Bengal, is incorrectly included in the Mahagathbandhan (“Grand Alliance”) in the right-hand map above. That alliance, which was formed recently between the Bahajun Samaj Party (BSP) and the Samajwadi Party (SP), is led by two former political rivals of one another — Akhilesh Yadav and Mayawati – who had consecutively been Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh from 2002 until 2017
As in the previous election in 2014, the BJP and its alliance dominated the north and west parts of India, leaving Congress’ alliance, along with several parties unaffiliated with either Congress or the BJP, to split the smaller south and east[*]. The unaffiliated BSP-SP alliance in India’s north, meanwhile, which was formed in response to the BJP sweeping Uttar Pradesh in 2014 and winning state-level elections in Uttar Pradesh in 2017 (for the first time since 1996), won just three percent of seats[**].
[*]More so than in 2014, however, the BJP now made inroads into the south and east, notably in West Bengal, Odisha, Telangana, and Karnataka
[**]Despite receiving a sizeable chunk of India’s popular vote, because of how populous Uttar Pradesh is. This occurred to an even greater extent in the previous election: in 2014 the BSP received more than 20 million votes, the third most of any party in India, yet did not get even a single seat in parliament
Modi’s BJP was thus able to be re-elected with a majority government for the first time in its history. The only politicians who had ever previously been re-elected with a majority were India’s founding prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, and Nehru’s daughter Indira Gandhi. By defeating Indira’s grandson Rahul in the past two elections, Modi has now joined this illustrious list.
Modi has many skills that have contributed to this political success. He is notoriously hard-working and uncorrupt, for example. Yet Modi has also been in possession of an even more important attribute thus far during his political career, the most important a politician can have: luck.
A Quick Analysis of Modi’s Career
Modi’s political career, first as Chief Minister of Gujarat from 2001 to 2014 and then as Prime Minister of India since 2014, has been based on two pillars:
- Economic Ability
- Gujarat was often the most dynamic economy in India while Modi was leading it
- India, despite slowing along with much of the world economy, has maintained a decent economic performance since 2014, and recently overtook China’s growth rate
- Hindu Nationalism
Arguably, some of the most extreme examples of this include:
- Modi’s reaction to (or even deliberate failure to prevent) the 2002 Gujarat riots
- Modi’s selection of Yogi Adityanath to be the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh in 2017
These two aspects of Modi’s appeal have contributed to his political success in northern India in particular, where Hindi(-Urdu) is spoken relatively widely and where, especially in inland states like Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, poorer populations live who may be more susceptible to BJP-style nationalism or promises of economic growth (or at least, of reduced corruption). Modi himself represents the constituency of Varanasi, in Uttar Pradesh. 20 percent of BJP seats are from that state.
With more than 200 million people, Uttar Pradesh is by far the most populous state not just in India, but anywhere in the world. Its neighbours too are populous: Uttar Pradesh directly borders India’s third and fifth most populous states, Bihar and Madhya Pradesh. It also directly borders India’s capital city-state, Delhi. Modi, in addition to being MP for the holy city Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh, has had his political career intertwine with this state in other significant ways. Notably, by way of the 2002 Gujarat Riots’ direct connection to the Ayodhya Mosque/Temple Dispute (a long, complex story that is analogous to, though in many ways different from and even more tragic than, the Middle East’s dispute over Jerusalem’s holy sites), and the continuing involvement in that dispute by BJP leaders such as Modi’s designated Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, Yogi Adityanath. The BJP’s rival, the Congress Party, also has roots in Uttar Pradesh. Its city of Allahabad (now renamed Prayagraj by Yogi Adityanath’s government) was the home of the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty (unrelated to the Gandhi), a family that has supplied four generations of Congress’ leaders. The current scion of the family, Rahul Gandhi, is however an MP for a constituency in Kerala, in India’s far south. Rahul also contested, but lost, his family’s historic seat in Amethi, Uttar Pradesh (located just outside Lucknow, the state’s capital).
This has led to an obvious, arguably misleading debate in Western media, over whether Modi’s economic pros justify his political cons. This might or might not be a legitimate debate, but it also overlooks one of the key realities of Modi’s career: the fact that much, maybe most, of his economic success has been due to factors beyond his control. Modi has been extremely lucky in relation to factors such as global economic growth, oil and gas prices, and the utterly different economic characteristics of Gujarat (the state where Modi rose to fame) compared to India as a whole.
Gujarat, 2001 to 2014
Modi was Chief Minister of the state Gujarat from October 2001 until May 2014, when he became India’s prime minister. Two facts must be recognized to put Modi’s time in Gujarat into context: the exceptional status of Gujarat, and the exceptional nature of the period from 2001-2014.
The period from 2001 to 2014 was the 2000s commodity boom, the period that followed the early 2000s recession when, apart from a sharp dip during the 2008-2009 recession, energy and other commodity prices were high and global economic growth was significant, particularly in China and other developing markets but also in North America and (before the 2010s) Europe. Brent crude oil, for example, rose from all-time lows of $9 in 1998 to $144 in 2008 and $128 in 2012. Modi came into office in Gujarat when oil prices were $20, exited office with oil at $110, then watched from his new office in New Delhi as oil prices fell to $46 in the subsequent seven months.
The characteristics of Gujarat’s economy are similarly exceptional. Together with its next-door neighbor the city of Mumbai, the state of Gujarat is India’s leading commercial hub. This is largely a result of Gujarat’s uniquely long and naturally sheltered coastline, which has allowed it to account for an estimated 69 percent of all cargo volume handled at India’s private ports, as well as being home to India’s busiest public port, a remarkable feat considering that Gujarat’s 60 million people are only 5 percent of India’s population.
Just as remarkable is the Gujarati diaspora, which leads in commercial activity throughout much of the Indian Ocean, particularly in eastern Africa. (The most famous Gujarati abroad was, of course, Mohandas Gandhi, who lived in South Africa for more than two decades). The diaspora thrives as far away as the US, where 20 percent or so of US-Indians are Gujaratis, and are one of America’s most successful groups.
The Gujarati diaspora has historically also been prominent in the nearby Gulf region of the Middle East. It remains active in the Gulf today, particularly in Oman and the coast of Pakistan. Gujarat itself, moreover, holds the most prominent position in India’s oil and gas industries, in terms of oil production, oil refining, oil pipelines, gas pipelines, LNG regasification, and petrochemicals.
As such, the commodity boom and global economic growth helped Gujarat remain the fastest-growing Indian economy in the 2000s, apart from the small Himalayan states Uttarakhand and Sikkim.
India, 2014 to 2019
India’s economy is the opposite of Gujarat’s. It is relatively insular rather than dependent on global economic activity, the major exception to this being the large amount of oil it imports, more than any country apart from the US or China. Global economic conditions since Modi became prime minister are unlike those which existed prior to 2015, however. Oil prices have fallen to a range of $30-$70, benefiting India. Global and developing markets have slowed, which has hurt India but not nearly as much as it has hurt most other economies, in particular commodity exporters like Brazil or Russia. Indeed, India has become the fastest-growing “BRIC” economy.
There is even a possibility that India’s slowing economy has helped Modi. It may be that the slowing was not severe enough to undercut Modi’s reputation as a great economic steward, yet was significant enough for people to want a great economic steward – Modi – to remain in charge in order to deal with it. In other words, the lucky timing that helped Modi to build up his economic reputation in Gujarat, combined with the luck which has prevented India’s recent economic slowdown from being severe like many other countries’, may have helped lead to Modi’s huge victory.
—
This is not a unique situation. Politicians, no matter how praiseworthy or skilled, often do not control their own fortunes. Modi remains in luck now. More troublingly, perhaps, so does Yogi Adityanath.
