I had a wee rant. Sorry

Good day my good friend.

I’m currently writing this, sat on a bottom bunk in a cabin on a sleeper train. I do love train travel. I hope that you love these links that I have put together just for you.

James

Thank you for being a paid subscriber. Remember to check out this week’s in-depth article on the link between rural accessibility and deprivation.

Getting the elderly around is hard work

With access to services in rural areas being increasingly challenging (as I touched upon in my bit of analysis for my paid subscribers on Sunday), and the rural population getting increasingly elderly, more work is needed to understand their changing needs. They aren’t all like Mrs Miggins at number 42 using her bus pass. Ravensbergen et al took this literally1, looking at how mobility by public transport is hard work.

In some ways their research confirms what we already know. There are physical and mental barriers to using public transport that are more likely to be prevelant amongst the elderly. But the ‘spatiotemporal’ (translation: people do certain things in certain places when certain events happen) element is an interesting concept that would be good to see applied in transport and spatial planning more generally. This is some interesting initial work, but lets start translating it into tools policy makers can use.

Tackling biases isn’t some woke rubbish, its based on solid evidence of our own biases and who we ultimately work for

Rebecca Fuller has published a blog post that summarises the excellent Gender on the Agenda webinar series that is currently being delivered. On a personal level, I have found the series to be very informative, and if the measure of a series is how much it challenges your own knowledge it has done very well. But, offline, I have heard too many mumurings, from people who will remain nameless and who should know better, about this being an example of being increasingly woke and wariness of whether it is a good thing.

Let me put it to you straight now, and this will be uncomfortable for you. Decision making biases are real and are a studied scientific phenomenon, including the “similar to me” bias. Every one of us regardless of gender, colour, creed, or whatever else, needs to challenge these as part of the work that we do, and recognise when it exists. Engaging users is a fundamental part of our work, and we know that at least half of them will be women, so you need to understand their needs and you need to go the extra mile to understand them to and support them. For those reasons alone you should support the work of the likes of Women in Transport. If you don’t, they are not the ones with the problem.

Rant over.

Blockchain and the shipping industry

Remember when blockchain was a big thing? So much so that the usually-great Government Office for Science released a report on it saying how it could revolutionise public services? As with all such technologies, its gone from changing the world to real use cases. One of them is shipping.

This study by Balci and Surucu-Balci sets out how the technology is being applied in shipping. Its a really simple idea – replace paper ledgers through which shipping is currently tracked with a virtual ledger using blockchain tech. While there has been a lot of start-up activity excited at the potential, large scale application is still some way off. Although legacy systems are grinding progress to a halt.

Random things

The usual random nonsense from across t’Internet:

• COP26: Fossil fuel lobbyists outnumber any nations delegates (Consortium News)

• Mobile Internet and Political Polarization (Nikita Melnikov)

• Delays in [Dublin’s] transport plan slammed as ‘abdication of responsibility’ on climate (Extra.ie)

• Transport and Building Emissions Are Not Separate—They Are ‘Built Environment Emissions’ (Treehugger)

• Motional and Lyft to launch driverless commercial robotaxi service in Las Vegas in 2023 (TechCrunch)

Interesting things

This is something depressing from the Centre for Cities. Basically, in European cities more people can get to central areas within half an hour by public transport than in UK cities. Its just a reminder that while infrastructure is essential, services are key.

If you don’t do anything else, do this

Dr Greg Marsden has published an alternative Transport Decarbonisation Plan. You should take a look at it.