Good day my good friend.

There is a lot that depresses me about this article. Not just the fact that psychologist/professional gobs****e Jordan Peterson has any sort of view on what is happening in Oxford, and that Right Said Fred (yes, them) organised a protest against traffic filters. But that this poisons the debate on such schemes. We have the duty to be professional, calm, and reasonable. But if we are to referee public discussions on our schemes, occasionally we have to dish out a yellow card or two. For everyone’s sake.

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

James

Getting the Golden Oldies back on the buses

Some parts of the UK are already celebrating how the £2 flat fare is a very good thing indeed. And I’m not jealous because the local routes of BOTH of my local operators are not taking part (looking at you, Stagecoach East and Grant Palmer). This scheme is a good thing. But a key struggle facing the industry is getting older passengers back after the pandemic. Their numbers are struggling to recover, and considering they can make up a third of passengers in some areas, that is a problem.

Some new research from the West Midlands is shining a bit more light on this, and the nature of the recovery from the pandemic. Simply put, “young” old men from ethnically diverse backgrounds came back to buses quicker than those who were more affluent, who appear to have given up on buses. And while 80% have returned to public transport, they are taking less frequent trips. Sod working from home. This is a profound social and transport change since the pandemic, and one that will have huge impacts for local buses.

Co-modality – a new name for an old solution

As part of some work for a client, I’m currently giving plenty of thought to how passenger and freight can be effectively combined. In the case I am looking at, this is in rural areas. This is not a new idea. It has been done before. It has been studied extensively. But like any idea that seems obvious yet isn’t done for a variety of reasons, it keeps getting studied and not done.

But this study here into co-modality is actually useful, as it identifies where such a solution may actually be useful in an urban setting. You can’t just put any old parcel on a tram or bus, but it seems that for smaller volumes that need to stick to a reliable schedule, co-modality may work. Now for the next challenge: integrating into extremely complex supply chains based upon just-in-time deliveries.

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.

• Engineers on brink of extinction threaten entire ecosystems (The Register)

• Identifying People Using Cell Phone Location Data (Bruce Schneier)

• US Sets 2024 Deadline For 5G Signal Safeguards On Aircraft (Bloomberg)

• CEOs Explain Why They Oppose A 4-Day Workweek (The Onion)

• The UK’s brain drain – and the countries trying to tempt away the talent (The National)

Something interesting

Our World In Data has published a lot of data on Artificial Intelligence, and I agree with them – we need to take this seriously. We scoff at AI due to apparent failures in automated vehicles, and we scratch at its potential to improve models. But the use of AI is about to explode and while a General Purpose AI is some way off yet, we are not prepared for current systems in the pipeline that will automate decisions across the economy, and drive demand on the transport network.

If you do nothing else today, then do this

Eltis, the urban mobility observatory, should be one of your bookmarks as it is a great website. And this example of how the city of Brno is embedding effective monitoring in the delivery of the work to support its transport strategy is something that you should read.