No quantum leap towards a car-free city

Fri, 14 Jun 2019 00:00:00 +0000

The public transport company of the Finland’s capital region (HSL) has moved to a new fare system . The system was previously based on the city borders. This was unjust: A one-kilometre trip cost you more than 4 Euros if it happened to cross a city border while a 20-km trip (e.g. from Lauttasaari to Vuosaari) might have been only 2.2 €. Now the capital region is divided into concentric zones around the city center of Helsinki and the fare is determined which and how many zones you are entering during the trip. The trips are paid with an electronic travel card, which can be loaded with “time” (weekly, monthly or seasonal ticket) or “value” (to pay individual journeys).Insignificantly cheaper for most, but not allThe implied promise was that the system does not get more expensive, but this is obviously not true for everybody. For those people that use single tickets, the rise is noticeable. The price of a single ticket within the AB zone rose from 2.2€ to 2.8€ which is more than 27%. On the other hand the ticket is now valid for 80 minutes (instead of 60 minutes) and the region that can be travelled with the new ticket has expanded (mostly into the Western direction to Espoo). However these additional improvements are relevant only for a limited number of customers since the bulk amount of journeys stay within 60 minutes and within the Helsinki area of the AB zone. Moreover, the single tram-only tickets have been abolished. These tram tickets were much cheaper then the regular tickets that entitle you to ride any type of public transport. There are several media stories about the loosers of the ticket reform in the Finnish press, e.g. at Talouselämä: https://www.talouselama.fi/uutiset/hsln-lippu-uudistuksen-haviajat-ratikkamatkustajat-kolmannen-vyohykkeen-kautta-kulkevat-ja-vain-helsingissa-matkustavat/703ca51a-c6b8-3b71-9804-9f35ad89eeaa . PromisesMy own public transport expenses have been sharply rising (by about 25%) as I primarily used single tickets within the Helsinki part of the AB zone. This wouldn’t be a big issue if HSL had kept its promise to offer a substantial discount on users that keep the auto-renewing subscription ticket valid for a year or longer. However, I cannot even find this promise any more on the HSL website. When I asked the customer support of HSL, they told me that they are working on the implementation of such a discount, but they cannot say when it will be ready. This reminded me of the previous fare system update, when HSL promised to introduce a supplementary ticket for owners of monthly tickets valid within Helsinki in order to extend its range without the need to buy a full-price ticket for the whole greater Helsinki Region (“seutulippu”).No quantum leap towards a car-free cityWhile overall perhaps a tiny step into the right direction, the fare-system renewal is far from an attractive offer for car drivers to become public transport users. Much more courage and bigger steps are needed if Helsinki seriously wants to make private car ownership pointless by 2025 . For families with children living in the C zone, the car is even financially still too competitive compared to public transport (ABC ticket for 2 adults & 2 children for one year: ~3500€).

Increased resilience

Tue, 27 Nov 2018 00:00:00 +0000

I strongly believe that companies are genuinely interested in getting critical feedback. At the very least, it should be part of their corporate survival instinct. When dissatisfied customers simply switch to an alternative vendor without giving feedback, the damage is already done. That’s why I always give feedback if a product does not meet my high-quality expectations.However, this time I am writing about a product I have been very satisfied with, namely the new GE Healthcare Superdex 75 Increase 10/300 GL . It is a gel filtration column and an iteration of the previous Superdex 75 10/300 GL , which we have been using for the last 30 years. The biggest advantage of the “Increase” is the higher pressure-resistance. A few weeks back an overworked grad student forgot to close the column after use and returned it to the fridge, where the 20% ethanol slowly evaporated over the following 2 weeks. The fridge is ventilated and when I needed the column, the damage was already done: There was a perhaps 8 mm gap and a dry zone of approximately once inch had been developing. I immediately filled up the dead volumes with degassed 20% ethanol and started a very slow run (0.05 ml/min) for several hours, after which is switched to degassed water and then to buffer. After letting it run for about 2 days the gap was reduced to about 3 millimeters. The remaining gap was removed by adjusting with the top adapter (I needed to screw it down as much as possible).Now I needed to test the “repaired” column. I did both a functional test (separating two proteins in PBS) and the acetone test (injecting 100 µl 2% acetone in water). I was massively surprised when the aceton test showed about 19000 theoretical plates (which is more than we ever got with our old Superdex 75 columns). And the separation of the two proteins (RNaseA and BSA) showed that the column is still fully functional. However, we cannot tolerate any gel compression, since the ability of the adapter to correct for it is maxed out (GE Healthcare used to produce a longer adapter, which would allow us to compensate even further, but they chose to discontinue this product).Both the grad student and myself were relieved after getting these results because buying a new column would have set us back by 2200€ and since we have no dedicated funding to operate our core facility , I would have been forced to offload this expense to the grad student’s laboratory. Unfortunately, I did not take a picture of the damaged column as my instinctive reaction was to immediately start the rescue. However, the column in the picture below is the damaged column after the rescue operation was complete.

Increase on Michael’s Domain

No quantum leap towards a car-free city

Increased resilience