Good day my good friend.

Oh science, you are absolutely wonderful sometimes. Whilst the last few nights have been uncomfortable when it comes to sleeping, the pictures from the James Webb Space Telescope have been more than enough to pass the time with. Talk about an awe-inspiring yet humbling experience.

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 a lot of like-minded people at Mobility Camp in Bristol in September. Get your tickets now. Seriously, they are starting to really sell now.

James

Why paywalling heated seats matters

This story about having to need a subscription in order to use heated seats on BMWs has stoked a bit of debate online. With a lot of the comments made seem to boil down to having a subscription being a perfect example of how everything-as-a-service being annoying. Plus people discussing the possibility of micro-transactions becoming a thing (oh, you want to start the car do you? Watch this ad or pay 50p, please).

The use of an as-a-service subscription model – or flexible consumption models to use the correct term – is not unheard of to anyone who knows Mobility-as-a-Service. But the example of BMW raises an equity question. BMW have clearly indicated that it is willing to pass off the cost of installation of heated seats to all consumers (both installation costs, and the operational cost of extra weight) without those consumers necessarily benefitting from it. Is that equitable? Why should consumers – arguably the rest of society when the extra emissions from the additional weight are considered – pay the cost without the benefit? I eagerly await the first court cases to debate this.

The key to a net zero transport model is breaking the back of car ownership

Transport planners have known for a long time that breaking the cycle of car ownership is critical to switching to sustainable transport. Once you own a car, your use of non-car modes falls substantially, even if some evidence has found the relationship to not be quite as straight-lined as we assume that it was. Plus, notably, once car ownership is reduced it does not necessarily mean that people use public transport more.

But this recent research article shows that once car ownership is locked in, it is extremely hard to transition back to sustainable transport. More amazingly – perhaps worringly – is how having a free-floating car club available does not impact on the probability of people transitioning back to sustainable transport.

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.

• The Real Reason I Don’t Talk As Much About Housing (The Black Urbanist Weekly)

• How Are New Informal Transit Routes Formed? (The City Fix)

• Menopause in the workplace – breaking the taboo (En Avant!)

• Stronger together: the indispensable role of human relationships in economic security (Joseph Rowntree Foundation)

• The Social Dynamics of Conspiracy Rumors: From Satanic Panic to QAnon (The Skeptical Inquirer)

Something interesting

As I tweeted the other day, the initial results of the 9 EUR a month unlimited use of public transport tickets in Germany are in. And they are promising both for traffic and for sustainable travel. You can check out the results yourself (they are published in German, so you may need to use Google Translate)

If you do nothing else today, then do this

Read this article on the economic costs of ‘Not Zero’ or not doing anything to transition to Net Zero. If my fellow Brits have been somewhat disappointed by the quality of the Net Zero debate in the Conservative Party leadership election, this article states clearly why not backing net zero is economic insanity.