Good day my good friend.

Necessity is the mother of all invention. And because it is necessary for me to complete this newsletter inside half an hour, it means there will be more visuals than there will be text. That is what happens when you wake up late. So, what you have below are charts of change. Whilst we love to look to the future, sometimes its worth looking at the past to see how far we have come.

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

James

How we get around has changed, and stayed the same

This is one of my favourite findings from the National Travel Survey in the UK. While the number of miles travelled has increased hugely since 1972, the number of trips and time travelled since that time has not varied that much.

AI is taking off

Research on Artificial Intelligence, including autonomous cars, has gone through the roof over the last decade. While the driverless car dream / nightmare is some way off, AI has come a long way in 10 years, to the point where AI is creating art. How human is that?

HGVs – the backbone of the economy

What amazes me about this chart is not the sheer amount of freight that is shifted by HGVs in the UK, but how little it has varied, with the exception of COVID.

How well meaning action can be meaningless

This is a great article by Our World in Data. For many years, most food miles have been done by ships, which are actually very carbon efficient per tonne carried. Very few are flown in. Therefore, by eating local, the impact on the climate is likely to be minimal. But it is good for local farmers and may reduce road miles.

Your roads have been getting safer

According to my subscriber data, most of you are from the UK, USA, or New Zealand. Well, according to Our World in Data, our roads have been getting safer since 1990. Which is definitely a policy win.

Sometimes, the lack of action is worrying

Transport is finding it really hard to decarbonise. And despite efforts to diversify the sources from which we get fuel, the percentage of all fuel from the likes of biofuels has barely moved.

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.

• No reservations. Restaurants are cutting hours and closing early amid employee and customer crunch (Grid)

• Europe’s Cities Are Getting More Crowded—That’s a Good Thing (Wired)

• China Announces New Social Credit Law (MIT Technology Review)

• With tens of thousands of cars in stock, Tesla will cut prices (Huxiu)

• Zoom Shares Plunge 90% From Peak As Pandemic Boom Fades (Reuters)

Something interesting

I bet you haven’t scenario planned this as part of your transport work. What would happen if the energy grid collapsed? Turns out, it would be pretty bad, and things would unravel quickly.

If you do nothing else today, then do this

Go explore Our World in Data. Its honestly the best website in the world in terms of data journalism, and I use it all the time. Its amazing.