Good day my good friend.

Oh Private Eye, you really have got the number of many transport consultants. This is a wonderful picture from this week’s edition shared with me by Jo Ward.

By the way, I heartily recommend a subscription to the wonderful organ.

If you have any suggestions for interesting news items or bits of research to include in this newsletter, you can email me. I know that plenty of you have suggested articles – I will get to them soon!

James

Is it fair to tax electric vehicles?

The big transport announcement in yesterday’s Autumn Budget (apart from HS2 and Northern Powerhouse Rail being announced for the 478,240,574,953,936,332,923th time) was that electric vehicles would lose their Vehicle Excise Duty exemption from 2025, and will be charged up to £165 per year. The RAC Foundation says its probably ok, and the AA don’t like it. But is it fair?

Extensive research on early adopters of EVs shows that those who buy them are not short of a few pounds. So, perhaps it is fair they lose a tax exemption. And studies on Income Tax Credits for EVs from the US show that high income households benefit from them the most. But that doesn’t mean tax breaks are bad, so long as they are targetted at low income households, and modelling in the US has indicated that this could increase EV sales. So whilst the decision by the Treasury may be good at taking money from the rich, its does nothing to benefit the poorest.

If you don’t have the data, guess. But guess well

Collecting data is hard, and expensive. Even if you install an automatic counter you have to pay someone to do it, and fix it when it breaks, and analyse the data. And in my experience, people never volunteer to count anything. So to make up the shortfall, we estimate. And this new research paper outlines the ways by which we do this, essentially concluding that we estimate it in a lot of different ways, and each have their own strengths and weaknesses. And sometimes, as in the Propensity to Cycle Tool, we use those estimates to build models.

Estimating isn’t bad. So long as you know the pitfalls of your estimation method and data source. For example, exercise data is very good at estimating where people cycle for exercise, but maybe not where they commute. Even a few isolated counters can be used to build a model, like in Vancouver. The experience of Vancouver shows that estimates can be quite robust so long as the method is clearly explained, and importantly improved over time. Good data for estimates validates itself over time not because it is right, but because people are able to understand why it was wrong. And so it is made better.

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.

• Twitter refugees seek asylum in an unusual place: The Matt Hancock app (The Register)

• 20% of EV drivers willing to share their home charger: New JustCharge and Zap-Map partnership now means they can (automotiveEV.com)

• Telling Stories to Advance Shared Mobility (Shared Use Mobility Center)

• France to require all large parking lots to be covered by solar panels (Grist)

• Ozzy Osbourne “Performed” in the Metaverse and It Was Comically Horrible (The Byte)

Something interesting

If you have ever wanted a map that has put Newquay on the same level as Cape Canaveral, here it is. Its a map of all space ports in the world. Apparently, we have 7 in the UK, which is news to me!

If you do nothing else today, then do this

Transportation for America is running a pretty cool series on eliminating driver error. Part 1 focusses on education, enforcement, and tech, and Part 2 focusses on designing solutions. Give them both a read.