Good day my good friend.
It’s the end of the week. Let’s keep this short. Oh, and sign up to Mobility Camp whilst you are at it. 🙂
If you have any suggestions for interesting news items or bits of research to include in this newsletter, you can email me.
James
Boys and their toys
It’s a question I never realised I wanted the answer to until today. Why do boys do wheelies and bunny hops on their bicycles? Amazingly, there has been a study on this, and the results are far more fascinating than they have any right to be. And I love it, and these two study highlights are just the tip of the findings:
Adolescents sometimes engage in risky bicycle stunts due to their risk underestimation. Some adolescents erroneously believe in their superiority and consider themselves able to manage risks due to their beliefs in their superior skills, quick reaction ability, physical characteristics, and good bicycling equipment.
Perhaps this is now an argument in favour of bike lanes? Boys will do stupid things on bikes, and its our duty to ensure that we minimise the risk of them being killed while they do it. I, for one, am convinced.
Does public art need to have a point?
Reading this article about the role of public art in placemaking got me to think about the whole question of what is the point of art? I can’t help but think about my art teacher saying that good art makes you think of the perspective of the artist and makes you feel something. In this context, the conclusions of this study feel somewhat bland:
Findings from Townsville, Gold Coast and Toowoomba reflect international experiences, where public art projects improve spaces and remediate a range of disorderly urban conditions.
Maybe, in some ways, that is the point. Art making you feel something. Even if that feeling is underwhelming.
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.
Vietnam’s cable car craze is driving environmental decline (Globe_)
Cosco To Invest US$3 Billion In Peru’s Chancay Port (Silk Road Briefing)
All of Those Quitters? They’re at Work. (New York Times)
How the Brain ‘Constructs’ the Outside World (Scientific American)
Something interesting
Oh no, TfL. Don’t do this. You’re messing up the Underground map enough as it is.
If you do nothing else today, then do this
Share this video from The Guardian on why bike lanes don’t cause congestion with anyone who doesn’t believe you.
Mobility Matters 