Mobility Matters Daily #269 – Speed, public meetings, and volcanoes

Good day my good friend.

There can be such a thing as too much news (apart from this newsletter, which is all the news you need :)). I know that everything is a lot to take in right now, but remember to give yourself time and space to think and to enjoy the little things in life. Nobody will hold it against you if you focus on what makes you happy for a while.

As for what makes me happy, its this craziness.

a picture of my west highland terrier with a towel on his head

Help me.

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

James

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Speed is not everything, even when it comes to automated trucking

The top speed of many passenger jets is around Mach 0.8 (around 590mph), however they typically cruise at around Mach 0.7 (around 520mph). Why is this? Because getting from one airport to another quickly is just one factor when it comes to operating an airline. Fuel consumption, wind speed and direction, and airspace congestion are all other factors at play when determining the most effective operational speed. Such logic is also applied to trucking, and now to autonomous trucking.

A new research paper applies the logic that because driver time would no longer be a factor in autonomous trucking, costs and carbon savings could be achieved by lowering the operational speeds. The work concludes that fuel consumption and carbon emissions could be reduced by 26% by reducing the speed, without affecting delivery times. This is a theoretical exercise at present, but it shows the potential of this technology to reduce costs and carbon emission.

a driverless truck driving through desert

The worst things to say at a public meeting

The Restless Urbanist put out a very amusing post on the worst things that you can say at a public meeting. In summary, they are:

I am from the Government and here to help
We have two plans and we need you to select one
We master planned your entire community in just one day
We do not have a budget yet
The comment box for tonight’s meeting is located at the back of the room
We are in the construction phase. We really needed your input 6 months ago when we were in the planning phase
We have hired a world famous consultant to solve all our problems: Translation, We hired an expensive consultant to deal with you
We hired a communications expert to explain what we are doing
We are showing these plans to you (the community) as a courtesy
We are required by (any government agency) to hold this meeting

To these, I would add the following as general rules, as opposed to specific things:

Talking too much about your objectives
Saying how much your scheme is a “win-win”
Saying how much your scheme will benefit traffic flow using technical jargon

Modelling how people will behave after a disaster shows that the old ways can be difficult to let go

A natural disaster forces you to evacuate from an area, which may have been destroyed in the process. How do your travel patterns change as a result of that? An interesting research paper from the 2010 Mount Merapi volcanic eruptions in Indonesia tracked how people’s travel patterns changed after being told to evacuate. And the results were only partly as I expected.

I expected for some to seek to return to work in the affected area, especially agricultural workers. The data revealed, and the subsequent model that was built predicted, a significant diversification of livelihoods. As the research concludes:

Middle-aged farmers with upper median incomes and risk-taking behaviors were found to venture home businesses that contribute to rural labor. A 63% share of livelihoods diversified by farmers and 30% travel utility savings rendered a robust microsimulation system.

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.