The good oil: Putting down a marker

The way Auckland City Council runs its bus lanes contradicts one of the golden rules of the road: get into your chosen lane early. That's Mark's opinion, one of many this column received this week as council did a u-turn and agreed to trial markers to show the 50m mark at which left-turning drivers can enter the bus lane. Transport Minister Steven Joyce talked of council being "overzealous" and "bloody-minded" over infringements. Same with councils in greater London. Website buslanes.com says: "Many London bus lanes are often not marked or signed correctly, yet the enforcing authority continue to issue penalty charge notices - often illegally." The fine for illegally using a bus lane there rose in July 2007 to £120 ($260). "This is 50 per cent more than the fixed penalty in the UK for shoplifting," says the website.

Motorway madness

The Good Oil did 500km on a mix of roads south of Sydney the other day. Accident on the Hume Highway heading back into Sydney in the evening held up traffic but didn't stop it flowing. Text from a mate towards the front of the snarl-up pointed out the problem: "Car hit guard rail - driver probably dozed off. Car off road now and cops doing a good job of keeping traffic moving." Motorway traffic throughout the day was reasonably heavy but orderly. Trucks stuck to left lane, cars to centre and outside lanes. Plenty of police highway patrol cars about. Back in Auckland a few hours later, three trucks and trailers hogged the centre and outside lanes on the Southern Motorway - in the rain.

Transforming motoring

A study into the effect of electric cars on the national grid in the United States concludes that EVs will pose only marginal demands on power production. But it recommends that neighbourhood transformers may have to be upgraded if, for example, two or three homes on a particular cul-de-sac install EV chargers. The study was a joint effort by two somewhat unlikely partners: the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), which is the utility industry's research arm, and the Natural Resources defence Council (NRDC). It found that the roughly 2KW load of one plug-in car is about the same as that of four or five plasma television sets. Automotive analyst J.D. Power projects that by 2015, global production of plug-in EVs will total 500,000 a year, half in China. If they all charged at the same time, that's no more than the load of two million plasma TVs, globally. In short, the study says, EVs will not "bring down the grid".

Hybrids not green enough

For some time now, 85,000 hybrid vehicles in California have been able to use the state's "green" high-occupancy vehicle lanes, even with only a single occupant in the car. No longer. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has ruled that petrol-electric models are not green enough and has cancelled HOV access from December 31. Instead, only fully electric cars (Tesla Roadster, Chevrolet Volt, Nissan Leaf, Toyota RAV4e) and those that run on natural gas (Honda Civic GX) or hydrogen (2010 Honda FCX Clarity) will be allowed to use HOV lanes.

We are the world

Englishwoman Michelle Philpotts has "anterograde amnesia", a condition which robs her of short-term memory. It happened after a car crash 20 years ago, and since then Michelle has to constantly relearn her life. Each morning, says London's Daily Mail, her husband Ian flips through their wedding album - to convince Michelle that the stranger in her bed is indeed her husband.

alastair.sloane@nzherald.co.nz