And I hate it.

I live 20 km or 40 minutes from work by car and probably a little more than an hour by public transport.  One of the big problems for me is the nature of the public transport I would have to use: two or more crowded buses or a bus, a roundabout subway ride and possibly a third bus.

One problem is that my university high up on the side of a mountain.  I am from Gangwondo (well, seven years there; it feels like home) and Gangwondo is known for rugged mountains, but I haven’t seen a city like Busan before.  A coworker who’s lived in San Francisco says the steep roads are comparable.

Anyway, I remain interested in alternate modes of transportation but I’m having trouble committing to them right now.

My previous blog had several posts about traffic and transportation.  I saw two articles recently that I recommend and this post seems the right place.

In Slate, Vanderbilt, author of Traffic, a fascinating book that I have yet to review properly, describes efforts to make a better stop sign.  I think there may have been a contest but I set the idea aside until I saw today’s article about traffic and connected the two.  Maybe tomorrow I will have time to look at the contest or the results.

In Scientific American, there is an article about encouraging walking through careful urban planning.  I wrote in 2008 about weak planning in Korea discouraging pedestrian traffic.

I hope I soon get back into writing real posts and not mere placeholders.