Good day my good friend.
With there being plenty of ‘discussion’ over plans in the UK to bring back imperial measures, I would like to share how utterly irrelevant it is by demonstrating how we measure different things on cars. The speed is in miles per hour and kilometres per hour, while the distance is in miles. The power is in horsepower. The price of petrol is in pence per litre while the fuel efficiency is in miles per gallon. We measure emissions in grams. We measure the weight in tonnes AND tons, and the length and height in metres. And we understand all of it.
I like being British.
If you have any suggestions for interesting news items or bits of research to include in this newsletter, you can email me.
James
The challenges of embedding equity into what we do
To be honest with you, I’m having a challenge. The tools that we have for building equity into our work as transport planners are great, and we have loads of them. The challenge that I find with people I work with is how to make it relevant to them, and not be just an assessment that needs doing.
Seeing examples such as this project on active travel in New Zealand inspires me to do more, and be better. But I wonder if there are any examples out there of working with clients and partners to empower THEM to make the changes needed to be more equitable? Does anyone have any good examples? Email me to let me know!
The social aspect of transit-oriented development finally gets the light it deserves
Something that I have always been uneasy about is how when it comes to a Transit-Oriented Development (and to a lesser extent Mobility Hubs), we focus almost solely on the technical aspects of it. Which is fine I guess, we are engineers in the most part. But we are engineers in a society, right?
A new paper exploring the “socio-cultural”” characteristics of people and transit-oriented development in Indonesia is a welcome break. Turns out, then when you survey and talk to people, housing preferences are pretty important, and not just access to quality public transport. Who knew that decisions on where to live are complicated?
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.
Giant Deep Ocean Turbine Trial Offers Hope of Endless Green Power (Bloomberg)
A Face Search Engine Anyone Can Use Is Alarmingly Accurate (New York Times)
The White House has one problem that rules them all: Gas prices (Politico)
Plastic Recycling Doesn’t Work and Will Never Work (The Atlantic)
Something interesting
This is a half an hour documentary on why the French electrified their rail network. It is well worth the watch.
If you do nothing else today, then do this
Read this article by Koen Smets on whether the solutions to behavioural issues are behavioural. An interesting challenge to the idea of individual actions to change the world. Thank you to Aimee Whitcroft for sharing this on LinkedIn (she’s becoming a freelancer by the way, so if you are doing work on open data, ethics, smart cities and what not and you need help, she’s awesome – drop her a line).
Mobility Matters 