Good day my good friend.

Today (24th July 2022) I have spent most of it making minor tweaks to my e-bike. Just to make it slightly more amazing than it already is. Adjustments to a slipping gear, changing out a slightly worn brake, as well as the old spit and polish. But a hole that connects my new trailer to the bike is slightly too small for the screw on the rear wheel. I was thinking it was about time I ordered a drill. You know, this e-bike may make me a DIY enthusiast!

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

The pressure to develop and affordably house v. sustainable transport – is it something impossible to balance?

Thank you to Kate Mackay for sending me this article on the end of Sydney’s visionary green belt plan, following last week’s post covering green belt housing. As I have stated before, much has been writted about the car-dependency of green belt sites. Yet more homes need to be built in order to tackle issues associated with the affordability of homes. Including, ironically, longer and more car-dependent trips.

This is a good example of a clear policy trade-off. Assuming that housing acts like an economic market, an over-supply will reduce prices. But over-supply means building on green belt which is unsustainable for a lot of reasons, including travel, hence why transport planners prefer transit-oriented development that at least implies a brownfield-first policy. So, this may be a case whereby we may not be the most important consideration on a tough policy issue.

Helping women in developing countries by building roads, but its complicated

This excellent article in The Economist about the impact of building a new bridge in Dhaka, Bangladesh, gives some interesting insight into the economic opportunities for women presented by new infrastructure. This reflects other evidence that shows that, for women in many such nations, the best thing to do is to build infrastructure. Note, this is not the act of having women involved in building the infrastructure (though that is good too), it is literally the act of just building the infrastructure.

Of course, this does not overcome every issue, with the original article in The Economist noting that conservative attitudes towards women will take much more than building roads to solve. But building roads in rural areas of developing countries is a major boost for economic development, and I daresay one of the few occasions where building roads is a good thing.

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.

• Inside Apple’s Eight-Year Struggle to Build a Self-Driving Car (The Information)

• Trucker protest shuts down operations at California port (Associated Press)

• Switzerland Moves Ahead With Underground Autonomous Cargo Delivery (IEEE Spectrum)

• Tesla Gets Its Own, Exclusive Crossing Lane at the Texas-Mexico Border (Gizmodo)

• New System Creates Jet Fuel From Water, CO2 and Sunlight (The Byte)

Something interesting

On average, we consume 119.3 tonnes of coal and 236.8 tonnes of petroleum in our lifetime. If you are American anyway. We need to reduce this.

If you do nothing else today, then do this

The Institute for Transportation and Development Policy have written a blog on breaking the exclusion cycle for women in cycling. It has a lot of good data, good ideas, and links to good case studies to take action on this. You should read it.