Good day my good friend.

It seems that from the emails I have received, many of you like the duck. As I said yesterday, its not a shock why. Its a duck…on a subway. Its just joyous. And he has little shoes as well! If we can’t enjoy a great video about a duck using a subway, then I wonder where your sense of joy is.

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

James

Social routing because we like other people, apparently

Most transport planners will probably shout at me for saying this so simply, but I will do so anyway. A fundamental assumption of transport route choices is that we do it for selfish reasons (or ‘to maximise utility’), usually to reduce the amount of travel time, cost, or many other factors. But what if we made route choices to benefit others? We know the psychology around personal choices to benefit others (and to spite them). What if we apply this to traffic? Welcome to the idea of social routing.

A new research paper explores what this idea could do if applied as policy. Their conclusion? Its hard to quantify, but the theory states that if you encourage people through a collective endeavour then you could get people to shift their routes to benefit others. Maybe. Its based on stated preference surveys, which have a number of issues. And to be fair, the fundamental conclusion of the paper is: more research needs doing. But it is an interesting idea.

Getting meaningful policy insight from social media

This new research paper on identifying barriers to, and drivers for, cycling in Turkey using Twitter stirred an old debate in me. Can we get anything meaningful as policy makers from social media? It has been well-documented that sentiment analysis can be done on social media on transport topics. There was a lot of talk several years ago about the potential of social media to help transport policy makers. So what has it actually done?

You will be shocked to hear that very little research has been done on transport policy making, and not much on wider policy making either. There is recognition that the media-policy making nexus is changing. Social media may be useful in rapidly understanding public opinion. Misinformation is a public policy problem. But maybe the importance of social media in policy making is overstated? There is certainly little evidence that social media is as important to transport policy making as we think it is. Then again, maybe that is not the role social media should be playing.

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.

• Fossil fuel industry dupes media, quietly funds non-profits to block renewable energy (Popular Information)

• Walking backwards has a surprising number of health benefits (The Conversation)

• Tennessee Lawmakers Push $300 Fee for Owning an Electric Vehicle (Gizmodo) – Using EV’s to fund highway expansion? Hmm…

• The Alpine villages producing their own power (BBC)

• How Climate Activists Are Exploiting FTX’s Collapse (The Daily Beast)

Something interesting

That is a lot of lighthouses. In the UK, it is not the government that is responsible for navigational aids such as lighthouses, buoys, and light vessels. It is three organisations: Trinity House (England and Wales, the Channel Islands, and Gibraltar), the Northern Lighthouse Board (Scotland and the Isle of Man), and the Commissioners of Irish Lights (Ireland). All of whom get paid to maintain these lights through “light dues” for any vessel serving a British or Irish Port. Don’t say you don’t learn something from this newsletter!

If you do nothing else today, then do this

I try not to get party political in this newsletter, but the recommendations to the Labour Party of ex-Prime Minister Gordon Brown paper on changing decision making in the UK is an interesting read, notably devolving economic and transport powers. Including proposals to devolve decisions on buses and have greater regional influence for rail. If you want balance, look at existing government policy for the ideas of the Conservative Party, and I’m sure you can Google the policies of the SNP, Liberal Democrats, the Green Party, Plaid Cymru, and whoever else takes your fancy.