The ‘land-scarce’ excuse again

From a recent parliamentary session:

What has not changed is that in Singapore’s land-scarce context, we do not have the luxury of space to develop a comprehensive network of dedicated cycling lanes on our roads. Our focus remains on making it safe for various road users to share the space we have.

The fallacy is in assuming that the introduction of bike lanes cannot be made at the expense of existing car lanes. But bicycle lanes transport more people per unit area of road space. So it would in fact be a better use of land to replace a car lane with a bicycle lane. If you are short of land, it should be all the more important for you to switch from car-friendly American-suburb-style urban planning to dense-population-oriented European-style urban planning. Only cities with lots of space for sprawl to spread can afford to have swathes of highways.

Note again the assumption that prevailing pro-car infrastructure is sacred.

Bleg

Can a Camelbak hold hot water without melting? How hot before it melts? Couldn’t find an answer on their website, and Google is a little ambiguous about it.

Common Commuting Dilemma

Overtake the bus at the bus stop and be passed dangerously closely by it later and end up in a leapfrogging sequence of the latter two events (unless you’re lucky enough to encounter one of those patient drivers who doesn’t mind cruising behind you at 25 km/h), or (if the bus is not stopping for long) slow down and wait for it to move ahead of you, thus possibly (if you have a consistent strategy) putting yourself in the way of its farts for the next N bus stops on that road?

Usually I do the former. Today, having told myself beforehand that I would try to go for a more relaxed commute and not push myself so hard, I tried the latter strategy on my way home and was not terribly pleased with the outcome. The thought of it still makes me want to cough up whatever foreign particles are now in my lungs.