200 and still young

Good day my good friend.

200 – I guess we should celebrate that shouldn’t we? If you bring the candles and the drink, I have the cake.

Seriously though, thank you for sticking to 200. It has gone so quickly. And like most of the others, here is your selection of articles and interesting things, curated just for you.

James

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Electric vehicles won’t solve our transport problems. But we should roll them out anyway.

Over the last couple of days, Transportation for America have articulated, through two excellent blog posts, the case for investing in electric vehicles with an inclusion lens. The short answer is that simply transitioning what we have to electric vehicles is bad, and current incentives for electric vehicle ownership are socially regressive. But there is pragmatism in their thoughts on policy from now on. As in, they aren’t perfect, but we should do it anyway.

The question now is where we go from here. My tuppence worth is that we should structure rebates in a way that benefit those on low incomes, and have significant discounts for replacing fossil fuel fleet vehicles (especially car clubs) and trucks. A new CityFix article also suggests some excellent non-financial policy ideas too. In the context of a lot of comment about COP26 and the prominence of electric vehicles, we should not throw the baby out with the bathwater when decrying their role in a low carbon future.

Money for potholes may not be going to where the problem is

The Department for Transport recently released statistics on local road conditions across the UK. Or simply where problems associated with potholes are likely to be found. Based upon a mix of manual surveys and scanning the road, so there is some dispute about how to compare different regions effectively, the data really sets out clearly where the problems with road maintenance can be found. In short, while the strategic road network is doing well, the unclassified road network has a lot of issues with potholes. And lets be generous here, the problems with road conditions don’t appear to be getting worse.

This raises a question about public money is spent on road maintenance and where. Let’s park the whole value of preventative maintenance issue for now. Do we focus the investment on where the problem is – the unclassified network – that makes up a higher percentage of the total road network length? Or do we focus effort on the strategic roads and the local authority A roads, that experience higher traffic levels? You can see how that question has been answered for over 10 years.

Wales is at it again

What is in the water in Cardiff? While everyone else talks, Wales just does. After establishing a Future Generations Commissioner and pausing road projects because of the climate impact, they are now building an online community to ask people to help shape transport in the country. And of course it has a Welsh name with no vowels.

Sgwrs – or chat in English – doesn’t seem to be like your normal customer panel system. With actual online discussion forums for the meaty subjects, snap poles, and instant messaging, it sounds a bit like a community. I am very much looking forward to finding out how this will progress.

Random things

I like the internet, so do you. So here is the best of it.

• Nestrans formally adopt new Regional Transport Strategy (Grampian Online)

• Glasgow city centre new ‘car free’ zone announced (The Herald)

• Governing the rocky beginnings of a resource boom: how do local governments respond to oil discoveries? (World Bank Blogs)

• Ofcom announces plan to protect endangered species – the Great British phone box (The Register)

• EU to Lay Out $46 Billion Technology Plan to Counter China (Bloomberg)

Interesting things

This is a video on how climate scientists model risks and the outcomes of policy interventions through their work. I just found it really interesting!

If you do nothing else today, then do this

Have a good one. That’s it. Go and enjoy yourself. Take it as a thank you for all of your support over the last few months.