Good day my good friend.

I’ve been promising to do this for a while, as you all send me through some great links to articles and research that I find endlessley fascinating. So I thought…why not put it all in a special edition of the newsletter? This version is all down to you, so thank you very much for all of your wonderful suggestions!

One thing that I did notice is that my SPAM filter settings appear to be particularly brutal. So I may not have noticed your message if you simply replied to the newsletter. For which I apologise!

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

James

Going Meta

The first thanks go to Kieron Yates, who sent through a couple of great articles on the Metaverse (if you have no idea what this is, then this is a good primer). Notably can it help urban planners as part of their job? Reading through these articles, I can’t help but think we have been here before with Minecraft. What did we learn? They are great at helping kids engaging in co-design, but girls and under-represented groups do not benefit at all. So, potentially a useful tool, but just that – a tool.

The drive to work affects the type of restaurants in a place

Thank you to Rod Fletcher for sending through an article that really surprised me. The Washington Post has crunched the numbers and found that whether or not a chain restaurant is located in a place in America is closely correlated with one thing: the percentage of people who drive to work. Simply: if you spot more McDonalds’, chance are that more people drive to work. This links closely to trip-chaining, and its worthwhile noting that men and women trip-chain differently. What the latter shows is that us guys may be driving this demand for more McDonalds, Wendy’s, and KFC’s.

The role of transport in spreading COVID-19 in China

In the last two years, COVID-19 has been on many people’s minds. And Tony McCool sent through an example of some great research on the impact of intercity travel on the spread of the disease in China. In short: if there were more frequent flights, trains, and coaches between cities, the disease spread much more quickly. Unfortunately, transport was a major transmission vector for the disease, and public health guidelines had to rapidly evolve over the course of the pandemic.

Visualising the presence of different types of cycle infrastructure using good quality data

Thank you to Marie Tucker, not necessarily for the new link – as this research article on cycle infrastructure being equitably distributed across different London Boroughs I have cited before – but for pointing out something I missed. Namely the difference between the types of infrastructure and their geographical spread across London. Simply, physical traffic calming is extremely widespread across London, and cycle signals less so. With on road cycle lanes and cycle tracks being somewhere in between.

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.

• Two Ways of Looking at a Blue Bird: What’s Really Going on at Twitter? (Naked Capitalism)

• Computer powered by colony of blue-green algae has run for six months (New Scientist)

• The COP jamboree desperately needs a reboot (Financial Times)

• Are we really prisoners of geography? (The Guardian)

• Bird brain (Oversharing)

Something interesting

I love the Fully Charged Show, and not just because it is presented by Kryten. Its because they touch on subjects other car shows rarely do. In this case, its why the hegemony of Ford, Nissan, VW etc. should not be taken as written when it comes to EVs.

If you do nothing else today, then do this

David Levinson has produced a post on his Substack in defence of induced demand. It is well worth a read.