Good day my good friend.

Just a little housekeeping for this week. Due to the extended holiday weekend in the UK, I will not be publishing a daily newsletter either on Friday, or next Monday. Paid subscribers will receive their weekly post on Sunday as usual. But until then, its the usual nonsense.

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

James

A driver’s mindset affects how they drive through intersections

The Simpsons has parodied many things in its 30 years on the air. But one of the funnier ones, and one of the ones most relevant to us, is the episode They Saved Lisa’s Brain. In it, members of MENSA changed the traffic lights in Springfield to just red and yellow lights, as people moved faster with yellow lights. So why is this relevant?

Turns out, there has now been some research on a similar matter – how people react the yellow phase. In a simulator, they measured driving outcomes such as speed, braking, and throttle as drivers crossed intersections. Results showed that mindfulness was highly related to the safest driving, while impulsiveness and anxiety were related to more aggressive driving. The Simpsons does it again.

Bike advocacy groups are doing good, but could be better on matters of equity

Just to finish off by touching briefly on this research of cycle advocacy groups in the US. The conclusion gives food for thought, as many advocacy groups would love to do more for hard-to-reach groups. But…

The capacity for delivering programming to underserved populations throughout the community is lacking. In order to address bicycling disparities among underserved community populations, bicycle coalitions should attempt to implement strategies to provide equitable programming.

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 that you enjoy them.

• The Fragile Open Source Ecosystem Isn’t Ready for ‘Protestware’ (Wired)

• From Reddit to Wall Street: the role of committed minorities in financial collective action (Royal Society Open Science)

• Exponential Risk: The Only Two Black Swans That Matter (AG Web)

• A Pipeline Election? (The Lever)

• Spain’s Energy Ambitions Are Looking Like a Pipe Dream (Foreign Policy)

Something interesting

Just another bike lane helping out the emergency services. Nothing to see here.

Things for a better world

This is a weekly collection of transport strategies, experiments, and cool projects looking to create a better world that you should find out more about. Not only that, you should think about adapting and doing yourself.

Strategies (a Bus Service Improvement Plan special this week)

• Cornwall Bus Service Improvement Plan (Transport for Cornwall)

• Portsmouth Bus Service Improvement Plan (Portsmouth City Council)

• Derbyshire Bus Service Improvement Plan (Derbyshire County Council)

• Greater Manchester Bus Service Improvement Plan (Transport for Greater Manchester)

Experiments

• SmartBus in Aalborg (Aalborg Municipality)

• Inclusion Pilot Labs (Inclusion Project)

• Nuturing Neighbourhoods Challenge (Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs, India)

• My-T App (Seoul Metropolitan Government)

Cool Projects

• You study, you travel free in Catania (Eltis)

• Effect of Machine Learning on congestion handling in Derebcen, Hungary (Derebcen University)

• PRACTICS, a pilot project for cultural mobility (PRACTICS)

• African Mobilities (African Mobilities)

If you do nothing else today, then do this

Read good friend Glenn Lyon’s summary of a recent PTRC Fireside Chat on Road Pricing.