In summary: the High Court in the UK did something bad for Uber, High Speed Rail is good for regional development, and activism is making a comeback.

Good day my good friend.

Anyone else’s to-do list slowly being worked down in advance of Christmas? Or is that just me? Hmm…well today’s has on it ‘serve up another round of Mobility Matters goodness.’ So here it is!

James

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Uber is basically illegal in the UK. No biggie.

Well, that was unexpected. The trials and tribulations of Uber in the UK have been well known, but now the courts may just have finished the whole thing off. And taken down ride hailing generally whilst it was at it. As always, read the judgement of the court itself before commenting. Ultimately, the High Court found that the current model of plying for hire for Uber and FreeNow does not meet the criteria to be considered an agent.

Whilst they will not say it explicitly, the court is essentially saying “look, it really looks like you run a taxi business, so you can’t say you are just an agent, okay?” This legal fight will run and run. But to me this points to something else: how badly the UK needs to sort out its taxi and private hire laws. Not so that it makes Uber legal, necessarily, but just because it does.

China finds expanding high speed rail helps to level up economies. UK studiously ignores the results.

A lot has been spoken over the years about China’s high speed rail network rapidly expanded from almost nothing to the largest high speed rail network anywhere in the world. But more recent analysis, such as this published by Fan et al1 found that doing so helps to more rapidly develop less industrialised parts of the country:

We…analyzed the economic productivity and -equilibrium of the urban agglomerations affected by introducing the [High Speed Rail (HSR)]. Those results suggested that the Triangle of Central China, Chengdu-Chongqing, and Central Guizhou urban agglomerations performed well as the HSR developed.

It should be stressed that the fastest growth in development does not always correspond with those areas of China ‘catching up’ to coastal cities. Whilst other policy measures are needed to achieve truly transformational change, this study corresponds with other evidence that shows one thing: High Speed Rail is generally good for less developed areas.

A new generation of road activism is here, and it looks a lot like the things of the past.

How do you stop a highway? It’s easy, you fight it where it isn’t. As experience from the likes of Houston is seeing, taking on highways and expansion projects is looking a lot like how previous battles were fought. Not on the evidence around highway expansion, but on the impacts on communities and the process of assessing that impact. The Transport Action Network in the UK is following similar lines in terms of challenging the assessments underpinning road expansion projects. And with more projects planned, maybe a re-run of the Battle of Twyford Down is all but inevitable?

Random things

Sleuthing the internet is like fishing. You cast your line, and you mostly get old boots. But occasionally, you snatch a few goodies. Here they are:

• This is why you should have unrealistic expectations (Fast Company)

• Boston’s new mayor promised free public transit. Can she make it happen? (Grist)

• Can the governance paradigm survive the rise of populism? (Policy & Politics)

• Travel by car and by public transport in West Yorkshire returning to pre-pandemic levels (Halifax Courier)

• Cars crushed in Coventry as ‘mobility credits’ scheme starts (Transportxtra)

Interesting things

This is a cool map, and it also harks back to a marine autonomy project I did at Transport Systems Catapult. It’s insane how little we know about the sea floor even just a few miles offshore.

If you do nothing else today, then do this

My good friends over at Voi are running a Micromobility Disability Summit in February next year. You should sign up to it.