The usual nonsense, then

Good day my good friend.

Firstly, a huge thank you to everyone who came and said hi at the Local Transport Summit last week. It was great to see you. I have to be honest, half of your names I remember, and the other half have completely slipped my mind!! To save myself embarrassment, I will not name those whose name I remember. I will only say thank you for your kind words.

Now, less of that, more of the links.

James

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It turns out, designing e-scooter parking for women is kind of like designing cities for women. Who knew?

This article by Georgia Yexley and Jillian Kowalchuk summarises research that they have undertaken into how to make e-scooters safer for women, particularly in relation to parking e-scooters. I eagerly await this research being shared more widely than Transport for London, London Borough’s, and the City of York Council, as the headlines sound pretty good to me:

Our research finds that eight out of ten women want to park their vehicle in a well-lit area, three quarters of women in UK cities only like to park where there is CCTV, and women prefer to take a safer route, not only the fastest.

The frustrating part is we know this stuff already. We even have the best practice examples on how to do this. We just haven’t mainstreamed it as best practice quite yet, and even when we do changing every street to fit it will take time and significant effort. But just because its hard, doesn’t mean we shouldn’t. So lets just get on with it, ok?

What game designers and planners could learn from each other

One of my hobbies is playing video games. Consequently, I have spent my time in plenty of imaginary worlds. So seeing this article in Bloomberg on the rules of urban planning for game developers interested me a lot. It focussed a lot on the complexity of cities that need to be integrated into video games, and not just relying on the striking visuals.

But there is one thing that planners could learn from game developers – plan for the city you want people to feel. The article references one of my favourite game cities – Silent Hill. The game uses planning tricks – such as overly-wide streets covered in fog – to make the place feel terrifying. Planning for the subjective and experience is not a new concept. But it seems game developers do it well.

If planners among you want inspiration from cities in video games, my personal favourites are Luca (Final Fantasy X), Whiterun (Skyrim), Rapture (Bioshock), and Citadel (Mass Effect).

Crunch time for passenger-based public transport business models in the UK

The coming weeks are going to be make-or-break time for public transport in the UK. With the Integrated Rail Plan and the Government seemingly picking a fight with the entirety of northern England in the process, and Transport for London raising the real risk of managed decline returning to the capital’s transport network, an unanswered question is coming into sharp focus. With passenger numbers still down and with running current transport networks costing more than the farebox revenue, who will pick up the tab once the government’s funding ends?

The Treasury has made itself clear: it won’t be doing it and COVID-19 support funding will end by 1 April 2022. Local authorities across the UK are having trouble affording statutory services, let alone money to pay for tendered buses and trams. By January, I forsee that unless the cash is stumped up by someone, thousands of bus routes will be cut, rural rail services will be slashed to the minimum to meet the contract, and even frequencies of trams and metros in the UK will be cut back to balance the budget.

Random things

Some links for you following a web trawl:

• COP26 focused on long-term climate goals. But what does this decade hold? (Open Democracy)

• Where Did All the Public Bathrooms Go? (CityLab)

• Insight: Future of CalMac ferry service under scrutiny as islanders’ frustration mounts (The Scotsman)

• Rising transport costs fuelling cost of living pressures (Mirage)

• America’s Crypto Conundrum (Foreign Affairs)

Interesting things

Dubai is a parody of the 21st Century. This is a very funny video, although the language is very colourful.

If you do nothing else today, do this

Read this work by Open Innovations on transport accessibility in the North of England.