The Eye of Patrick

I was just on the engadget.com homepage and noticed an article about Hokkaido. It was talking about a new dual mode bus, which would be able to run on both rail and the road. The reason is that in Japan many of the small towns have decreasing populations and as a result it is hard to keep many of the train stations financially viable. So supposedly this dual mode bus would be able to continue to provide service in these smaller towns.

This sounds like an interesting concept, as my town is not dying but has had the train station closed a few years back. So the only way to get to a train station is to drive or to take a bus that does not run that regularly. So if this dual mode bus were to come to Hokkaido, it may help to reduce the population drain to the large cities, as people could commute easily to the larger metro areas from the smaller towns.

I love trains, hate bus and liking my car.

Patrick