Good day my good friend.

In the UK, tomorrow it is the local elections. If you are in one of the areas of the country holding a local election tomorrow, of course you should vote (and take your dog with you to the polling station). Of course, I encourage you to vote for candidates who put sustainable travel and changing our streets for the better at the heart of their policy pledges. But more importantly, just vote. Change never happens without it.

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

James

Those in low income and minority ethnic communities are disproportionately more likely to be injured as pedestrians

Another study confirming previous studies, this one. A review of data in Oregon found that people on lower incomes and from minority ethnic communities are more likely to be injured as pedestrians. This confirms the results of previous research, and there has been a lot of it over the years. This disparity is clearly unacceptable, but this line in the research interested me:

These variables may be proxies for other traffic exposure and deficient built environment variables, which may reflect a lack of historic investment in the neighborhoods where these populations are concentrated.

The evidence shows that people on lower incomes and in minority ethnic communities live in areas with higher traffic exposure. And so by reducing traffic levels in these areas as a priority, we potentially have a disproportionate impact on casualty rates for these communities. Sounds like a sound social investment to me.

A bridge in Australia and doing engagement well

A small Australian town caught my eye yesterday, as plans for closing a bridge in Tooleybuc for maintenance were put on hold following backlash from residents. The closure for 6 weeks would have meant that residents would have had to do a round trip of nearly 50 miles to the next crossing of the Murray River. Clearly a significant inconvenience for anyone in the town.

For what its worth, the technical advice supporting a 6 week closure is sound. And the heritage aspect of the bridge is a complicating factor. But high impact changes such as this need close engagement with affected people, something that appears to have only been done at a basic level here. The result is delays to essential works on an important bit of infrastructure that continues to decay. Time invested at the start on this sort of thing, is time saved later.

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.

• Netflix is not a tech company (Ben Evans)

• Airbnb’s design for employees to live and work anywhere (Airbnb)

• The Ownership Economy 2022 (Li’s Newsletter)

• How to Stop Speeding Drivers? Scare Them. (New York Times)

• How Exposed Is Your Supply Chain to Climate Risks? (Harvard Business Review)

Something interesting

Yep, another Tom Scott video. But this feat of engineering really is quite something.

If you do nothing else today, then do this

Read this article in The Times on how owning a car could be a thing of the past. I have been reading these sorts of articles since I graduated in 2004, so I’m somewhat skeptical. But it’s an interesting read regardless.