Good day my good friend.

The annual TPS Quiz is tonight. And so I have been swotting up on all sorts of transport trivia. I warn all you participants now, I get VERY competitive.

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

You should also join me and a lot of like-minded people at Mobility Camp in Bristol in September. Tickets are on sale now.

James

Does emissions trading work in reducing the supply of carbon-intensive transport? Yes it does.

This article got the economist in me very excited. For those of you who don’t know, emissions trading is where organisations in a market have permits for a set maximum level of pollution. So organisations are incentivised to reduce their emissions by being able to sell excess credits. Airlines have been part of the European Emission Trading System, and the first results are astounding. Very simply put, the scheme has not reduced aircraft size, but has increased the frequency and loadings on short haul and low cost airlines. Could this be an emissions reduction policy that is actually working?

It has caused a reduction of total airline seat capacity and flight frequency, with the percentage of airline seat capacity reduction reaching above 20% at its peak. The overall effect of the policy has a remarkable impact on low-cost and regional airlines, short-haul routes, spoke–spoke markets and monopolistic routes.

Should workers return to their desks to help the High Street?

This has been a debate that has been raging for some time now – should workers return to work to help out the economy? As someone who has worked remotely for 4 years now, I say give people the choice and flexibility – the High Street will adapt and it always has done. But that may not be the best solution economically. Now, the Centre for Cities has done some great analysis on this.

The findings are somewhat obvious – if your High Street was particularly reliant on workers, then your recovery is going to be harder. This is especially the case for the hospitality sector, where less people buying coffee and a snack will have a huge impact. But what to do? The conclusions – make it a good place to do business, improve transport links, but ultimately the city centre will adapt whatever the outcome is. Sometimes, we need a reminder that we are incredibly resilient.

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. A massive thank you to Naked Capitalism who have bailed me out today, as for some reason my RSS feed reader has gone down.

• Fertilizer prices are soaring – and that’s an opportunity to promote more sustainable ways of growing crops (The Conversation)

• How Light and Noise Pollution Confound Animals’ Senses (The Atlantic)

• Sri Lanka government workers get Fridays off to grow food ahead of shortages (The Guardian)

• Hacking Tesla’s Remote Key Cards (Schneier on Security)

• Murder-Suicides by Pilots Are Vexing Airlines as Deaths Mount (Bloomberg)

Something interesting

In construction, nature has a tendency to be a complete bugger. And that is especially so for water, which tends to ruin everything it touches. This video by the always-excellent Practical Engineering explains how it acts.

If you do nothing else today, then do this

Read this very interesting paper on the impacts of COVID-19 on urban mobility in the Philippines. It does a great job of comparing mobile phone data to other sources of data to understand the impacts of lockdowns.