Good day my good friend.

Have I told you yet that I have started dipping my toes not just back into Twitter (@cllrgleave) but also into TikTok as well1? I’ll cover a mix of transport stuff, and things relevant to my role as a Town Councillor. You are free to follow me if you like. I can’t promise that videos of me preparing for a planning committee will be an enjoyable watch.

If you have any suggestions for interesting news items or bits of research to include in this newsletter, you can email me.

James

Clean Air Zones make air cleaner, and do affect trade in city centres, possibly

An interesting post by the Centre for Cities crunches the numbers to show the impact of implementing a Clean Air Zone on a city centre. In this case, Birmingham, and its impact on Nitrogen Dioxide levels and footfall in the city centre.

The overall impact, when comparing against the performance of Manchester, shows that footfall and spend in the city centre does decline, but it is short term and is typically most pronounced at the weekend. Furthermore, it reduces Nitrogen Dioxide emissions. This appears to validate some of the initial findings of business cases to implement Clean Air Zones. But don’t rush to judgment. This is based on a sample of one, comparing with a very different city centre. But it is encouraging.

We are still finding out the intracacies of the impact of COVID-19 on travel

Its no shock that when there has been a massive system shock such as COVID-19, then we are still coming to terms with its impacts. This is reflected in emerging research. To start with, new analysis from the US shows that cuts to public transit in the US has disproportionately affected the most vulnerable groups in society, based on a travel survey of 500 people. In their words:

Our survey results highlight differences in how the pandemic has affected different types of transit riders, many of whom have reduced their transit use despite their continued need to travel and their reliance on transit to reach essential destinations. The pandemic has highlighted how transit riders from different backgrounds adapt to major disruptions as well as disparities in the impacts they experience. It also highlights how existing revenue models can put riders’ access to essential destinations in jeopardy during a crisis.

Meanwhile, evidence from Seoul in South Korea reveals that improvements in air quality had almost no impact on using shared bicycles. Not a shock in some respects, as while it was probably more pleasant out, severe lockdowns and worries over systems being COVID safe may have influenced ridership just as much. But still, its a knowledge gap filled.

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.

• Scientists Map the Dark Matter Web Surrounding the Milky Way (Wired)

• Permission Giving Urbanism (Restless Urbanist)

• Nissan to end most development of new gasoline engines (Nikkei Asia)

• The inside story of Facebook Marketplace (Lenny’s Newsletter)

• College Seniors Prepare to Enter a Work World in Flux (New York Times)

Something interesting

Imagine for a minute if you plane came down in the South Pacific, and you survived on an inflatable. Talk about hard luck.

If you do nothing else today, then do this

You’ve always wanted Wordle, but using the UK’s local authority ward boundaries, right? Don’t deny it. Thankfully, Giuseppe Sollazzo has created Wardle that does just that. Simply guess the local authority ward by its boundary.