Good day my good friend.

As much as I complain about the joys of using public transport in the UK (and its fun to write), you need to give credit where it is due. Not for exemplary service of course, but for the times when it is just plain boring and does the job. Namely to get you from A to B. So thank you Grant Palmer and Thameslink, for being spectacularly boring yesterday. And that is a good thing.

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

James

On the importance of transport as a health check on the economy

Its not often I actually read an opinion piece and consider it in depth, mainly due to the whole opinion / facts thing. But this opinion piece in Project Syndicate about rising shipping costs being the canary in the coal mine when it comes to inflation did get me thinking. Do long running inflationary costs affecting transport make for a good economic indicator? It should be noted that currently, inflation in the transport sector is running at 11% in the UK.

We know that there is a link between transport and the competitiveness of the economy. Historic evidence also links reducing transport costs with increaasing bitlateral trade flows. We also know that the choice of inflation index to forecast future inflation significantly impacts on the cost evaluation of transport schemes. But the evidence that transport is an indicator of of the future of the economy is lacking, probably because its not considered important. At the moment, there is no evidence supporting the canary.

Being near a road has long term impacts on the economics of a place

If you know the history of almost any town or city, two things usually result in them becoming established. The first is access to a constant supply of drinking water, usually a river, which also usually gives access to plentiful food through fertile land to farm and game to hunt. The second is access to trade routes. Where I grew up was established on a trade route because it was the easiest place to ford the River Taw. Maybe it is because of this instinctive knowledge that we estimate the long term impacts of new road infrastructure on the economy. But historic research indicates there is a logic to it.

This really fascinating article on the impact of colonial-era roads in Puerto Rico indicates there may be. In the early 20th Century, the USA undertook a big road building campaign to connect the cities and towns in Puerto Rico. And the ones who benefitted the most economically were the towns and cities previously connected by roads established by the Spanish. For logical reasons: these places had established economies facilitated by the historic roads, that were turbo-charged by the new ones. So while the economic benefits of roads may be over-estimated in some instances, to say there is no impact at all is a foolish position.

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 aerodynamics of velvet: What humans can learn from owls (AlterNet)

• The Financial Party Is Coming to an Abrupt End (Naked Capitalism)

• Satellite Billboards Are a Dystopian Future We Don’t Need (Gizmodo)

• Why We Should All Be Worried About ‘Chokepoint Capitalism’ (Time)

• Elon flips the script (Platformer)

Something interesting

Well someone has to make batteries, don’t they? Turns out that someone is CATL, mainly.

If you do nothing else today, then do this.

The history of the London Underground map is well known to many of us transport geeks. But you can count on Jay Foreman to make it amusing. It also seems that about half of transport YouTube is in the video.