Good day my good friend.

There’s been a lot commentary about how COP27 was a failure. Maybe its right, I don’t know. Certainly in terms of reducing carbon emissions its record isn’t great. While multi-lateral action is hard to do and favours the slowest actor, that doesn’t mean that we cannot act as transport professionals. If the necessary action won’t be taken, force it. Otherwise, things will never change.

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

James

Our places mess with our heads

We have known for a long time that cities can have significant impacts on our mental health. This is often considered of in terms of stress, where urban living has a number of things that cause stress. Though the degree to which the city itself is at fault, or the concentration of issues within cities is open to debate. Sadly, the evidence shows that there very often is no straight cause and effect between different factors. So if anyone says that building bike lanes will improve mental health, remind yourself its not that simple.

That’s what makes tools like the Healthy Streets Toolkit interesting. In that, for the first time, the assessment methods are as inter-disciplinary as the problems they are looking at. This study of Tehran using a method specifically aimed at mental health impacts of streets is similar. And it concluded that a lot of things affect the mental experience of different streets and street types. Who knew the human mind is complicated?

E-scooters – where next for the UK?

Officially, the UK’s e-scooter trial will end in a few days. Or, maybe not. Authorities have the option to extend until May 2024, but the Department for Transport will be collecting data to inform future policy until the end of this month. Very simply, e-scooters are in a weird limbo at the moment. The trials have effectively run their course, operators are holding off investment until the government pulls its finger out with the long-awaited Transport Bill, and people still hate the things.

At the moment, its hard to tell where e-scooters will be going. Government appears keen – it wants to legalise them. Cities like Bristol have shown that they can succeed in the right circumstances. The Canterbury experience has not been so good. In the last year, 12 people have been killed in collisions involving e-scooters, based on very experimental self-reporting data from the police, but that hardly means they are unsafe. Oh, and one e-scooter operator has cooked the books, but its far from widespread. Maybe this is a time where, with conflicting evidence, ministers should go with their gut. And for me, my gut is to legalise them.

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.

• A bot that watched 70,000 hours of Minecraft could unlock AI’s next big thing (MIT Technology Review)

• India’s Economic Ascendance May Happen This Time (Bloomberg)

• Empathy & the Economy (The New York Review)

• The US Has a Bomb-Sniffing Dog Shortage (Wired)

• Ship fires increase and climate claims show worrying trend, says Allianz study (The Loadstar)

Something interesting

This is a simple map of the roads of the world. Its also a map of major geographic barriers (note the Sahara and the Amazon), low population density, and arguably economic activity of the world.

For paid subscribers this week

Tackling the long commute could solve a lot of problems. Improving health outcomes, improving our cities, tackling transport-related emissions, and avoiding having to spend hours sat on the motorway or on crowded commuter trains. But as this week’s Extra newsletter highlights, just saying ‘do more home working’ is a simplistic answer.

Mobility Matters

Mobility Matters Extra – It’s time we tackled long distance travel

Good day my good friend. While the reaction on social media to London planning to expand the Ultra-Low Emission Zone has been somewhat mixed. But from some commentators, it appears that many do not want to live in a polluted city, and so are seeking greener pastures elsewhere. Which will result in more long distance travel. And long distance travel is a …

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a year ago · James Gleave

If you do nothing else today then do this

Nature-based solutions to adapting to climate change have long been known about, and been adopted, except in railways. This research article is an excellent overview of current practice.