Good day my good friend.

Elections are tricky things to read into. But I very much like this summary of yesterday’s results in London by Jon Burke.

Let’s hope that the rest of the results in England and Scotland (that are still ongoing) continue in a similar vein.

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

James

Transport justice: an idea difficult to move from theory to practice

Reading this op-ed about the legacy of transport injustice from South Africa got me thinking about a common problem in transport, and one that particularly affects the concept of transport justice. That is moving the idea from concept into practice. Transport legacies are long and difficult to shift, but how do we take meaningful action to shift them?

The first step is the easiest: translate into a policy objective. What happens next should be easy as well: just do it. This does not just mean changing funding, processes, and attitudes. This means actually doing things and understanding its impact, to help maintain the desire to change things. And doing this quickly. There are lots of good techniques that help with this, like design sprints and tactical urbanism. In the end, the way that you make change is to do it.

Transport needs to help get out the vote

Democracy is a flawed but great thing. So I just wanted to give a shout out to the transport organisations who helped people to go out and vote. Starting with e-scooters, Lime and Bird offered free rides to polling stations. And that’s where it ends. That’s…really poor.

Ok, perhaps that’s a bit over the top, as there are a lot of polling stations and chances are there is one very close to you. But if democracy is that important, surely participation in it is something that we should make as easy as possible? Maybe free travel when showing your polling card should be something for future elections.

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.

• Demolition Market Devoid of Ships (Hellenic Shipping News)

• Mexico Calls for Latin American Lithium Alliance (Kawsachun News)

• What does the evidence on energy efficiency say? Results from a systematic review and evidence gap map (International Initiative for Impact Evaluation)

• Economists want to see changes to their peer review system. Let’s do something about it. (VoxEU)

• The costs of driver incentives are weighing on Lyft, Uber (TechCrunch)

Something interesting

The replies to this are glorious. The thought of a high speed train going full speed over the Glenfinnan Viaduct is…quite something.

If you do nothing else today, then do this

Ladies, you would be doing something amazing if you can fill out this survey by good friend Karla Jakeman on the day-to-day journeys and lived experiences of women and girls. So go and do it.