I love the Legend of Zelda

Good day my good friend.

I have another confession. Over the last week, I have become addicted to play games on my old Nintendo DS. What a wonderful little console it is. And of course, my favourite game on it has to have a transport theme to it.

I regret nothing. News.

James

Levelling Up finally takes shape

After years of trying to define what Levelling Up actually is, the UK Government has finally shared with us what they think it is. The transport policy announcements in the new white paper are lacking apart from saying poor infrastructure is a barrier to levelling up and that it plays a key role, without giving policy commitments to it.

This has the feeling of an important document for one key reason. It focuses on how public services are delivered, rather than the headlines of the what is delivered. Devolution of powers to regional authorities is clearly favoured, and I would argue more important than actual funding. Its a boring document with little to no headlines. And that could make it the most important policy document in years.

The kids don’t want new roads, so lets stop giving it to them

A big thank you for the prompt for this goes to the Student Climate Change Group at Redborne Upper School who recently presented to our Town Council on what they want us to do to tackle climate change. Kudos also goes to the always-excellent Sarah Barnes for pointing out this article about youth activists protesting road expansion in Portland, Oregon. All of which come to a central point: the kids don’t want the world we are creating.

They want their world to be greener and more just. They don’t want massive road expansion. Yet like that annoying Uncle who gives rubbish presents every Christmas, we keep doing it. I’m not saying that everyone under the age of 18 should have a veto on the transport budget, nor that they know everything compared to us oldies. But, come on, lets at least think about them.

Transport economic incentives screw the climate: aviation edition

You may have seen the recent articles, where airlines have been forced to fly planes that are empty. The incentive for this is that if they do not operate a certain percentage of slot pairs, those landing and take-off slots can be sold off to other airlines. And considering that at some of the busiest airports in the world those slot pairs are extremely valuable, airlines don’t want to lose. Its use it or lose it, with a load of carbon emissions.

This is where the economic incentive favours carbon emissions. In this case, the price of carbon that discourages flying is clearly not greater than the economic incentive of flying an empty plane. This is a twisted economic incentive that promotes wastefulness and consumption, and is just one of many economic incentives in transport that need tackling if we need to decarbonise.

Random things

These links are meant to make you think about the things that affect our world in transport, and not just think about transport itself. I hope they do just that.

• The US Refuses to Fall in Love With Electric Cars (Wired)

• Inequitable patterns of US flood risk in the Anthropocene (Nature)

• The Great Sand Grab (Foreign Policy)

• Humans vs AI: here’s who’s better at making money in financial markets (The Conversation)

• Boose-Lima mototaxistas (Will Boose)

Something interesting

Yes, I’m late to this party. But this is both funny and terrifying.

If you do nothing else today, then do this

Check out the Paratransit Toolkit, so you can understand the importance of your informal transport networks.