The walking bus
Auckland has recently been focussing on its
traffic woes. Compared to London traffic you wonder what they are worrying about. It can get congested, but only at peak times. If you're careful about when you travel it's easy to get around the city. You just need to time it so that you go against the flow.
What Auckland needs is more flexible work times. Considering how hot the summers get they should adopt the
La Siesta approach instead of British working hours. I always work nights in the summer when the heat has gone out of the day. Another quick fix would be to have less people working from a 'Central Business District' and allow staff to work some days from home. As
Alvin Toffler said - "the single most anti-productive thing we do is ship millions of workers back and forth across the landscape every morning". One great idea is
the walking bus where parents take it in turn to walk groups of children to school. It's been dramatically reducing local traffic and pollution caused by the twice daily school runs.
As a teleworker I don't contribute to the traffic problem, so have a smaller impact on the environment. I save money and eat healthily as I cook my lunch at home. I save a fortune in work clothes as I can wear my joggers to work, and I love working across time zones. I'm not a morning person and working late helps me overlap with the UK. But the best thing is being able to go to the beach in the middle of the week, on a glorious sunny day.
