Good day my good friend.
Not much for me to say by way of intro. Partly because my brain is fried, but mainly because I typed out the previous newsletter and Substack didn’t save a word of it. So I’m having to do this all again. Not happy.
One more thing. Due to the unexpected public holiday on Monday in the UK, there will be no Mobility Matters Daily on Monday. Back to business as usual on Tuesday.
If you have any suggestions for interesting news items or bits of research to include in this newsletter, you can email me.
For those of you coming to Mobility Camp in Bristol on 29th September, I will see you there. Tickets are sold out, but if you are still interested you can put your name on a reserve list. Or, sponsorship slots are still available.
James
Policing cyclists behaviour doesn’t make things safer for them, and may be discriminatory
This is a good report by the National Association of City Transportation Officials. Very good indeed. Simply put, it looked at laws against cyclists, and who they are enforced against and their impacts on safety. In news that won’t shock anyone, Black and Latino people are more likely to get a ticket. But there is no evidence that this improves cyclists safety, partly because data collection is so poor.
On the latter point, the only research done is on how well different enforcement methods catch people. As well as understanding what different types of cyclists are likely to break the rules. As for the former, sadly this confirms previous research. Cycling by ethnic minority groups is woefully low, partly due to dominant narratives as to what cyclists should be. Far more work needs doing, and police should stop ticketing cyclists without evidence showing it improves safety.
We don’t give a stuff about noise, so we may as well look at how we talk about it
I think the title says it all. We REALLY don’t care about noise pollution as a profession. Unless its to do with airport for some reason, not to mention cancelling loads of flights because a coffin is going past (words fail me). We know what impact it has on our health. We know that transport is the major source of noise in cities. We just do nothing about it, despite COVID showing us how nice life could be with less of it (in most places). One of the many blind spots that we have as a profession.
Still, this article on discussions about noise in the built environment is interesting. In short, we talk about noise in a very constrained way, and we should start considering sound in the round. Which makes a lot of sense to me. Personally, less talking and more actual doing would be good, but sometimes you have to sit back and think about these things. Which the article does very well.
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.
$35 Billion Worth of Real Estate Could Be Underwater by 2050 (Scientific American)
AI Isn’t Ready to Make Unsupervised Decisions (Harvard Business Review)
How Wright’s Law Can Right the Climate (Project Syndicate)
A Totally Different Form of Living: On the Legacies of Displacement and Marronage as Black Ecologies (Black Agenda Report)
Something interesting
A completely different Geoff Marshall video this. But one that really strikes home. Regardless of how you travel, sometimes you just need to travel to feel something, and to feel yourself again. Those kind of trips stay with you.
If you do nothing else today, then do this
Check out the Shared Mobility 2030 Action Agenda. A bit ‘pledgy’ if you ask me, but the heart is in the right place, and it seems interested in developing a community of action. Believe me, that is extremely hard to do. All power to them, I say.
Mobility Matters 