Good day my good friend.
If you look at the state of much of our politics, and our public discourse, it is easy to get downhearted. But yesterday I spent some time around some people who are going the extra mile to get good stuff done. Thank you to the organising team for Mobility Camp and the good people at the Centre for Net Zero. You don’t know how much you helped yesterday!
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. Sponsorship slots are also available.
James
The transport needs of refugees – not understood despite them being in the news
Whether it be climate refugees or people fleeing the conflict in Ukraine (not to mention the other 89.3 million forcibly displaced people all over the world), transport can play a significant role in how refugees integrate and feel accepted within their new surroundings. This new article, the result of a multi-disciplinary study of the needs of refugees in Tucson, Arizona, really shines a light on quite how important a role that we as transport professionals play in helping newcomers feel a part of the community.
Very simply, refugees are significantly reliant on public transport, that needs to be accessible for them. Also, as public bodies see refugees as a transient and temporary population, the solutions are also often temporary. Oh, and the cost of fares and the language barrier are pretty important as well. But overall, its a really poorly researched area. Which is shocking, considering the displaced population of the world is larger than that of Germany.
The Centre for Cities kick the pricing hornets nest
In an almost casual blog post by their standards, the Centre for Cities raised the idea that compared to other cities (notably Singapore), London doesn’t do so well in raising revenue from car restraint policies. 10% of Singapore’s transport budget comes from car restraint policies, compared to 4% of London’s. There are plenty of reasons why Singapore is able to do this that are not directly applicable to London. But this isn’t about whether Singapore is doing the right thing compared to London, but how we finance our transport system.
In the UK, we finance transport through a mixture of government grant, private finance initiatives, and a tiny bit of revenue raising through parking in the most part, although with notable exceptions such as the Workplace Parking Levy. There are very few mechanisms through transport is financed significantly and sustainably (even the Workplace Parking Levy in Nottingham is struggling to cover the costs of tram), and local revenue raising is almost non-existant in the UK. To be honest, I’m not sure if national road pricing will fix any of these issues. How we finance transport is broken, and that is a different issue to the cost of financing 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.
Powdered sodium battery design promises a 15% leap in energy density (New Atlas)
US Tech Rally Won’t Last, One Bank Suggests (Heisenberg Report)
The future of farm and food policy (The Hill)
Something interesting
Shipping containers are…a housing trend? Jeez. You learn something awful every day. I wonder if people who live in them make more trips purely to get out of living in a shipping container.
If you do nothing else today, then do this
It seems hardly a day goes by without some sort of news about how our supply chains are still completely broken after COVID. But this report by the International Transport Forum pulls the whole issue together and analyses its impacts, causes, and effects. Its a very good report.
Mobility Matters 