No, not the honey bees. I had an environmentalist raising funds at the door the other day who was assuring me that since his organization had stopped neonicotinoid pesticides, the bees were about to come back. Not so sure about that. But I'm talking about the B licence plate in Ontario, now running out its decade.
In Ontario they have been rolling out new licence plates in alphabetical order for about 20 years, starting with AAAA 001 in 1997. A certain trainspotting mentality can become intrigued by following the progress of the letters on long car trips or walks through parking lots.
In late 2006, we noted an early B:
Now that BZ is starting to roll out onto the streets and highways, there should be a C in six months or so.
I could argue that some big data historian should work something out about number of plates available for each letter combination, times the months required to move to a new second letter, in order to calculate something about the pace of automobile purchase and re-registration. But mostly it's just trainspotting.
I've only found one other website that takes an interest; happily, they took an interest ten years ago too.
