Good day my good friend.

I agree with this article by Chris Mason, the BBC’s Political Editor. Governing is about difficult choices. The problem here is that the choice to give the green light to a new coal mine is not a difficult choice. You can support the development of new, exciting, high growth industries that will help save our world. Or you can give a dying industry a few more years. These choices are not hard.

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

James

Does competition make public transport better?

Govia Thameslink Railway are being taken to tribunal, being accused of breaching competition laws by getting people to pay twice for their journeys. Simply, the case is that because London Travelcard holders have already paid for travel in the Travelcard area, they should be offered an extension fare to cover the cost of their trip when travelling outside. For example, if a Travelcard holder took a Thameslink train from London St Pancras International to St Albans City, they should only be charged the ‘extension fare’ from Radlett.

Any ruling has all sorts of implications on National Rail Conditions of Carriage, and I do recommend reading the Competition and Market Authority’s guidance on how it assesses competition. But is competition good for public transport users? Well, there is evidence of substitution between different modes. And competition can be good in terms of operator efficiency. But there is a notable lack of academic evidence of impact on customers. So the short answer is: don’t know!

Being gender blind is being gender biased

Its not often a research article challenges how you think about how you approach problems and issues in your work. But this article analysing seven years of gender-related research into sustainable transport in Chile does just that. This is a meta-analysis of a variety of mixed method approaches, but an interesting observation of how framing approaches as gender blind runs the risk of repeating past mistakes that favour the current norms, that favour us guys.

Forgive me for adding commentary here, as opposed to links. This makes me uncomfortable, but in a good way. Whilst at my core, moving away from a profoundly scientific method, and basing policy off research that can be robustly challenged is still a bad thing. It needs recognising that this can result in a mindset that favours status quo solutions. Therefore approaches that challenge this should be welcomed, particularly when it comes to recognising profound social issues such as gender-transport issues. There is a lot more learning ahead for me on this, and it makes me uncomfortable to read these sorts of papers. But that is no bad thing.

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.

• We might finally harness the limitless fresh water vapor hidden above the oceans (Interesting Engineering)

• The Last 747 Ever Built Has Rolled Off Boeing’s Production Line (The Drive)

• Why did we wait so long for wind power? Part I and Part II (Construction Physics)

• After US Prevents Railway Strike, South Korea Moves to Crush Truckers (Common Dreams)

• Land rental markets: Experimental evidence from Kenya (VoxDev)

Something interesting

This junction in the New Forest was covered by Tom Scott, and for a while was arguably the most famous road junction in the UK. Well, now it’s been fixed!

If you do nothing else today, then do this

Transport for Cornwall’s Believe in Bus Christmas Campaign is brilliant, and its a really good example of using social media influencers for something positive for transport. Chloe Leach O’Connell’s LinkedIn post gives links to many, excellent examples from the campaign.