Good day my good friend.
So, the UK Government in its latest crisis (I mean, it is a day ending with the letter ‘y’, so of course there is a crisis) is trying to plug a big black hole in spending commitments. Far from me to offer up transport cuts, but I think I can offer up a cool £20bn in savings pretty quickly in a way that is beneficial to the climate. Apart from the cycling stuff, keep that, and maybe the funding for maintenance. Easy. And that is my application to be the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Which at the current rate, will be my new job title next Tuesday.
If you have any suggestions for interesting news items or bits of research to include in this newsletter, you can email me.
James
Who owns it doesn’t make as much difference as you might think
Thank you to Dermot Hanney for pointing this out to me. Today, the South Yorkshire Mayoral Combined Authority voted to take the Sheffield Supertram into a publicly-owned operator once Stagecoach’s current contract runs out in 2024. Needless to say that some were jubilant at the news, mainly based on the principle of public ownership being a good thing for public transport. But ignoring the politics of it all, is public ownership better? Doesn’t the like of LNER and pretty much most of Europe show it is best?
Ultimately, it depends how you want to measure success. For example, if you are measuring productivity, there is evidence that the private ownership model is better, though this varies by the operational regime. On other metrics, amazingly, there is very little objective analysis or evidence of the effectiveness of either. Here, I posit a reason for this. The question of ownership is primarily about politics and efficiency. While outcomes (e.g. more passengers) are more affected by wider factors like car ownership, land use planning, socio-demographics and attitudes, and restrictions on the private car. That, in my view, is why the public ownership issue is not that important.
Taxi drivers learn a thing or two
In the UK, I am willing to bet that 90% of transport planners know very little about how the taxi industry operates. To be fair the laws that govern taxis is insanely complex, and there has been the recent passage of the Taxis and Private Hire Vehicles (Safeguarding and Road Safety) Act 2022 and the Taxis and Private Hire Vehicles (Disabled Persons) Act 2022. In case you missed those two acts, explanatory notes can be found here and here. Anyway, we don’t understand the industry enough, nor its drivers.
Which is a shame. Because far from the loud mouths often seen objecting to cycle schemes, there is much to understand about taxi drivers. Notably, how they learn about their trade and how it influences their driving and business behaviours. No, I’m not referring to ‘The Knowledge’ but this interesting study of taxi drivers from Singapore. Simply put, as they gain knowledge, not only does their business acumen improve, but their search for passengers (and consequently driving) becomes more efficient. Reducing miles driven. So maybe a way of reducing congestion is to improve the knowledge and practice of taxi drivers.
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.
All that plastic in the ocean is a climate change problem, too (Grist)
Humans Are Hardwired to Cheat. Here’s How We Stop Ourselves (Daily Beast)
Automated Map Searches, Scam-Busting Tools and Twitter Search Translations (Bellingcat)
New census data shows how the pandemic affected the racial diversity of US cities (City Monitor)
Something interesting
Welcome to the wonderful world of British Rights of Way laws. Where some rights of way literally stop in the middle of fields. Paul and Rebecca Whitewick take you through why this happens, and why time is running out to do something about it, despite government promising to do something.
If you do nothing else today, then do this
I love a good database. And this database of all Rapid Transit systems in the world by the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy is a good database. Go and geek out for a while.
Mobility Matters 