Good day my good friend.
This week has definitely been a writing week. Not just the newsletter of course, but at work, where I estimated yesterday that I had already written 7000 words that week. So my is now not working….so….good. I think. Maybe. Best wrap this up before it really goes badly wrong.
If you have any suggestions for interesting news items or bits of research to include in this newsletter, you can email me.
James
For business cases, we value the wrong thing, and debate the wrong thing
Most transport planners will be well aware of the debates that have been going on for years about the values of time in the business case for major schemes. In case you aren’t aware, as the case for the scheme ultimately comes down to the Benefit:Cost Ratio (BCR, or what return is achieved for every £1 invested), the value of travel time is important.
The debate has often raged around the value of travel time saved being too high, particularly in a manner that favours road schemes. Additionally, this favours projects that speed up journeys as opposed to projects that give an overall improvement in utility. I have no problem with these arguments. My issue, however, is that they miss the massive elephant in the corner – access is more important than time.
Take an example of a new railway line, passing near a town, and a parkway station is built to serve the town. Building that scheme generates a value to surrounding land uses, and thus increasing their development potential. Why? Because that site has become more accessible. That improvement in accessibility has generated a value, not just in terms of land value uplift, but on the economic benefits of development. Probabalistic forecasts about development potential, and value to be captured from that, never factor into the economic appraisal of sites, even though accessibility clearly has an economic benefit.
The argument against is that this is partly covered by improving journey times, and there is the risk of double-counting values. However, in a world where future demand forecasts are driven by population growth, and there has been no change in average daily travel times since we started collecting data on it, this argument does not fly with me. Access is more valuable than cutting journey times. Lets value schemes based on that.
Congestion is its own random beast. And that’s not a bad thing.
An unwritten rule of traffic schemes is that any congestion will, usually and given time, sort itself out after a while. All sorts of explainers are given for this: people change modes, change the times when they travel, or they just give up altogether. It is why it is difficult to judge the impacts of schemes immediately after they open. But why does this happen really? Is it all inevitable, or does this happen purely by chance?
This new research paper posits a theoretical framework called self-organized criticality. Its a bit techie, but I will do my best to explain. Essentially, never-ending and constantly-changing patterns present in traffic flow, combined a sheer bloody-mindedness to get to where we need to go to, means that traffic eventually organises into a critical equlibrium that balances it all, but in a largely random way. This has heavy Chaos Theory vibes to it, and I’m all for it. We can generalise traffic well, but as a whole, it acts weirdly. Because we are weird.
Progressive cities? Look at the whole record. Not just what you like.
Anne Hidalgo. Let’s be honest, she is a darling or urbanists everywhere. And to be fair she has done a lot over the years to earn it. Removing cars from the right bank of the Seine. A massive expansion of bike lanes in the centre of Paris. Good stuff. She has also overseen a reduction of Paris’ population by 5.5% over 10 years. I bet you didn’t know that? Nor did I, and I find that strange for what is increasingly being seen as a progressive city.
I know that Paris, and the wider Ile de France region, is more complex and nuanced than a single observed fact, assuming you think depopulation is a bad thing too. But it shows that understanding the impact of what you do is important, even if monitoring for something may tell you a message you don’t want to hear. After all, a place could have an amazing public transport network and lots of bike lanes, but if its effectively a museum with a lot of social issues then what’s the point? Cities are for everyone. Remember that.
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.
Community groups are a lifeline in the cost-of-living crisis (British Politics and Policy)
Nature-Based Solutions in Cities are the Future of the Fight Against Climate Change. Here’s How to Fund Them. (The City Fix)
International spillover effects of air pollution: Evidence from mortality and health data (VoxDev)
Ukraine railways more punctual than BART (Systemic Failure)
Graph of the Week
Translation of this graph: building stuff is getting more expensive. Maybe we should build things that require less building. Like, i don’t know, bike lanes.
Something interesting
America has a lot of railways. The problem is that the passenger trains are constantly stuck behind freight trains travelling at impossibly slow speeds (when not derailing). All thanks to one small law.
If you do nothing else today, then do this
Watch this video on why you should become a transport planner. I agree with a lot of this! See what you agree with. Personally, well done to all who mentioned climate change. And as for the project I am most proud of, definitely this one. No doubt at all. With this one running it a close second.
Mobility Matters 