Good day my good friend.
Its not often my transport interests and interest in football cross over. But when the cities who are home to two of the major rivals of my club write to the Football Association to ask that the FA Cup Semi Final be moved from Wembley because no trains are running, I just had to mention it. Personally, I loved the previous arrangement of playing FA Cup Semi Finals at neutral venues located roughly equidistant from the two teams involved. I fondly remember Manchester United and Arsenal playing a classic FA Cup Semi Final at Villa Park in Birmingham. Though mainly for footballing reasons rather than transport ones.
If you have any suggestions for interesting news items or bits of research to include in this newsletter, you can email me.
James
Evaluating evaluations
If transport planning needs to be better at evaluating its impact, it certainly needs to improve how it evaluates how it evaluates its impacts. Usually confined to the realms of academia, and even then usually confined to appraisal methodologies as opposed to studying how impacts were evaluated in a more cultural sense, its unloved but important.
Its why I like this review of past evaluations of the highly controversial Lyon to Turin High Speed Rail Project. It tears into the appraisal process used to approve the project, almost to the point of calling it fundamentally unsound. But it is equally as scathing towards criticisms of the Cost-Benefit Analysis (CBA) of the scheme. That I repeat here for your enjoyment. I laughed at the part in bold.
Regarding the 2019 CBA, the most salient criticisms focused on the Rule of Half and the inclusion of taxes. These criticisms appear, under review, ill-conceived, which suggests a possible misunderstanding of some fundamental outcomes of transport economics.
Do we need a platform for that?
Does transport need to platformise everything that it does? Or shove everything on a website somewhere, usually hosted by the Department for Transport, so that people can access it? This is where a design process is useful, in that one of the first things that is asked is whether or not its worth it.
The UK Department for Transport has just published an Alpha stage report into digitising Traffic Regulation Orders. Its a great bit of work, and a great introduction if digitisation is still new to you, as well as being generally interesting. Take this, and think about how you could apply it to your work.
What policies best reduce the impacts of the likes of Uber? Ones that reduce the number of trips taken by Uber by increasing their utilisation
I am quickly putting this research article in as it seeks to answer an age-old question regarding Transport Network Companies (TNCs, or Uber). What is the best policy response to mitigate their impact. Turns out, its one that reduces the amount of cruising for rides.
We find TNC operations may have a significant congestion effect. Failing to anticipate this effect in the pricing problem leads to sub-optimal decisions that worsen traffic congestion and hurt the TNC’s profitability. Of the three policies, the trip-based policy delivers the best performance. It reduces traffic congestion modestly, keeps the TNC’s level of service almost intact, and improves overall social welfare substantially.
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.
Researchers are finding ways to turn down the heat in cities (Phys.org)
In maglev innovation, Chinese researchers transfer power wirelessly to moving train (South China Morning Post)
How Big Tech lost the antitrust battle with Europe (Ars Technica)
Lithium Prices Have Nearly Doubled In 2022 Amid Insane Commodity Rally (Oil Price)
Something interesting
Good friend Kit Allwinter poses an interesting question on Twitter. Go for the question, stay for the great responses.
If you do nothing else today, then do this
Its not often I insist you check something out. But these 10 Case Studies on 30 minutes cities done by the Centre for Cities you absolutely must see them. This is excellent work, and shows the power of public transport brilliantly.
Mobility Matters 