Good day my good friend.

Apparently this year is the year of the political traffic stunt. I know because Bloomberg told us. Well, of course going slow in traffic as a political protest has been done for years, but I guess that in the US it has been more visible this year. But whatever keeps headline writers in a job, I guess.

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

James

If you want to travel happy, use a bicycle

I can imagine that many of you active travel advocates love the look of that headline. And that you are enjoying your current hit of confirmation bias on it. But hey, some new research into dockless bikes, and the satisfaction of users compared with other transport modes seems to back this up. But what interested me was this snippet here:

In addition, travelers have higher satisfaction with dockless bike-sharing when used as the primary mode than as the first-mile/last-mile solution.

What this points to is that the primary mode of travel on a trip determines satisfaction for the whole trip. Something that even bikes cannot seem to salvage. So in some instances, maybe how to get more people on bikes is to make the public transport service more enjoyable to use!

New housing estates make travelling by car inevitable.

If you have seen the work of Transport for New Homes, you will know that a lot of places are failing when it comes to designing new housing developments for active travel. Of course, it is not a UK-based phenomenon. New research from Syndey, Australia, points to exactly the same thing. In the words of the study author:

The analysis lays bare the inevitability of automobility’s reproduction in the estate—describing the litany of elements that are both infrastructural and cultural and that, in orchestration, reproduce private car use. These elements are deconstructed to inform future challenges to the hegemony of the private car.

What are these elements? Many and varied, is the answer. Poor public transport, voter choices, images of automobility to name a few. And, in one case highlighted by a great person on Twitter, a lag between housing construction and infrastructure provision.

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 battle for the Pacific: The countries competing for supremacy (Al Jazeera)

• Trade’s resilience to COVID-19 (VoxEU)

• Bank of America sounding the alarm on collapsing freight demand (Freight Waves)

• Tesla Delivers Automotive Delight (Creative Strategies)

• How Cities Became Accidental Wildlife Havens (Bloomberg)

Something interesting

The first solid use case for a smart home?

If you do nothing else today, then do this

Sign up for SRITC’s Virtual Cafe on Friday on How has mobility technology helped to create a smart and sustainable travel network in Scotland’s remote and rural areas? Bring your own cake!