Good day my good friend.

I don’t know about you, but I was quite enjoying those 3 day weekends that we have had over the last few weeks. Maybe there is something to this 4 day working week after all.

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

James

We can promote sustainable travel however much we want, but people are influenced by what we do

This should not come as a shock, but people are influenced by people, particularly our close social groups. And this study of sustainable travel behaviour in rural China really confirms this. The conclusions really could not be much clearer than they are:

Significant and positive impact exist in the social influence from the neighbors who adopt the green travel behavior, while significant and negative impact also exist in the social influence from the neighbors who adopt the non-green travel behavior.

How to ensure price discrimination in ride hailing doesn’t discriminate

It’s an economic concept as old as bartering. You seek to maximise profit according to a customers willingness to pay, as opposed to charging prices based purely on cost. Also known as price discrimination. And as this paper on price discrimination shows, ride hailing companies have taken this to a new level. Recommending, ultimately, that cities specify how fees could be redistributed to meet equity goals.

This is one of the occasions where I am actually with the free market. If a customer is willing to pay more for the same service, then companies should be able to charge an appropriate price for that. If cities wanted a cut for equity purposes, a sales tax could be levied on this excess charge and be used for equity programmes.

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.

• How the Shipping Industry Sails Through Legal Loopholes (Hakai Magazine)

• Arts-Based Residencies Influence Rural Communities Both Culturally And Economically (The Daily Yonder)

• The Smash-and-Grab Economy (Mother Jones)

• Creaky U.S. power grid threatens progress on renewables, EVs (Reuters)

• Google announces new Pixel phones, teases first smartwatch (Axios)

Something interesting

It’s a cool cycle bridge next to a railway bridge. What more do you need?

If you do nothing else today, then do this

Read this interesting article in the New Yorker on how Oslo learned to tackle climate change.