Someone also likes a tool I created!

Good day my good friend.

Today has been a day of number blindness and one of my dogs taking a liking to cheese. I also found out that a tool i created some years ago now is in the CIVITAS Tool Inventory, which I am stoked about!

Anyway, here are today’s links curated just for you. Enjoy.

James

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London is going Ultra-Low

Yesterday, London’s Ultra Low Emission Zone expanded from the same area as the Congestion Charge Zone to all the way out to the North and South Circular Roads. If your vehicle doesn’t meet the low emission requirements (e.g. if your petrol car was built before 2006) you will have to pay an extra £12.50 on top of parking and the Congestion Charge. All the details on who pays what can be found on Transport for London’s website.

People’s reaction has been mixed to put it mildly. But we are professionals! So what has the policy’s impact actually been? A mixture of mixed and too early to tell. Earlier versions of the low emission zone saw greater falls in Particulate Matter compared to areas outside the charging zone. Evidence in The Lancet has shown the impacts on children’s lung health has been limited. A report by the Mayor for London has reported that compliance with the Low Emission Zone is generally good. So, one to watch and to study.

Twitter is useful for research, sometimes

In case you didn’t know, we now have a Twitter account. But that’s not what this is about. Some new research published by Shirgaokar et al used Twitter to understand reactions to roadspace reallocation in the US and Canada. This wasn’t asking a simple question of whether people liked the changes or not, but whether or not it prompted people to think of streets differently. The general conclusion was: yes, it did.

Social media is a…tricky beast to get meaningful insight. A sound understanding of the platform dynamics are needed to understand what the data is telling you. Research has shown how the conversations about streets change as the change is taking place, and how online conversations are generally poor indicators of where the demand for change is. As with any tool, know what its strengths and weaknesses are first before using it to come to conclusions.

Welcoming the era of the Superapp

How many transport apps do you have on your phone? After a recent cull on my phone, I am down to 4 (Google Maps, Waze, the CrossCountry app for train tickets and times, and CityMapper). But in Asia, things are going one stage further, with superapps now becoming huge. This is not just ride hailing or hiring e-scooters. This is everything in an app that is essentially an extension of an operating system.

Take a look at the additional services offered on WeChat, for instance. Over 580,000. They are in effect their own operating systems, where everything in your life is paid for and planned through a single system with ease. Access to these broad markets offered by superapps is partly why Grab was able to see off the challenge of the all-conquering Uber. Why install another app when you can book a Grab through WeChat? Maybe seeing Mobility as a Service as a dynamic ecosystem is not the future.

Random things

Here are some random things that popped into my news feed that you may find interesting.

• HS2 trains to run on existing track as part of government scaling back (City AM)

• The Force of Scientific Authority (The Philosopher)

• Abu Dhabi: Newly-completed smart services to support school buses (Khaleej Times)

• Electric vehicles show the trade-offs of net zero (Reaction)

• The Transit Upgrades America Needs to Build Back Better (Transit Center)

Interesting things

I’ve deliberately left the axes off this graph. Can you guess what the axes are based on these changes in price? The answer will not be good if you want to tackle climate change.

If you do nothing else today, do this

Check out the Shifting Streets spreadsheet, that has tracked changes in streets during the COVID-19 pandemic across the world. Its HUGE. (And a big shout out to my good friend Carlos Pardo who was behind this!).