Good day my good friend.

You know, I always thought that James May was the best of the three ex-Top Gear presenters. And now that he has announced that he is a fan of e-scooters, I think I like him more. Thank you to good friend Lucy Yu for sharing this article!

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

James

When does a town become a city?

In the UK, this is simple: its on the government’s list of cities that have been granted a Royal Charter or Letters Patent (and no, its nothing to do with Cathedrals). There are some criteria associated with this, but they are rarely enforced, and increasingly seem to be given out on a whim (see Southend).

Does this sort of thing really matter in a transport sense? In many respects, not really. Apart from that the bigger cities do have different trip profiles compared to smaller settlements. Plus city regions are tending to get a lot of funding such as CRSTS. But you can call it a little quirk of being British. Whereas being a city bestows power and authority over transport in many countries, in the UK it means absolutely nothing. Rule Britannia.

Free and open source tools for better urban planning and urbanism

I don’t need to say much more on this article. It contains links to 70 open source tools, and finds that the entire planning process can be facilitated with open source software. They are just not taken up.

Tools focusing on street networks and geographic spatial analysis are the mainstay of current implementation. Sixty percent of tools are only accessible through an application programming interface, while 43% rely on Python for development.

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.

• When Shipping Containers Sink In The Drink (The New Yorker)

• 125 years ago, bicyclists paved the way for the Lake Washington Path — Seattle’s first long, paved bike path (The Seattle Times)

• Reshuffled Rivers Bolster the Amazon’s Hyper-Biodiversity (Wired)

• A better way to warn of flash floods (The Economist)

• Plug-in grant for cars to end as focus moves to improving electric vehicle charging (Department for Transport)

Something interesting

This is a great Twitter thread by Dr Ian Walker on the psychology of changing habits and why this matters for fuel prices and sustainable transport. A great read.

If you do nothing else today, then do this

If you are coming along to MOVE on Thursday, it would be great to say hi! If you are around, drop me an email.