Good day my good friend.

This is honestly my favourite news article of the year so far. And I cannot believe I missed it. As someone who has had the pleasure of riding Transpennine Express frequently recently, this is something I can fully believe.

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

James

What role does the built environment play in the travel choices of children?

In many parts of the world, the private car is becoming a more dominant mode of transporting children to and from school. It is considered that the primary determinant of mode choice for children is their parents, although it does change over time, and travel choices have a significant impact on the wellbeing of children. But does the built environment play any role at all? New evidence from China appears to indicate that it does.

This study does not explore behavioural choices, instead focussing on socio-demographics and built environment. But it finds that a number of physical blockers like the lack of crossings and intersections do have an impact on the propensity for children to walk to school. Perhaps if this is supported by behavioural research, we may have evidence that the built environment has a significant impact on travel choices for children.

If there is a data gap, especially in terms of equity, fill it

Personally, I have long been an advocate of the position that you are what you measure. And the challenge of Equality Impact Assessments associated with transport schemes is the relative lack of data of the equity impacts of schemes. We have wider evidence that there are impacts, and have done so for a long time. But we have struggled to quantify it. So we have no other option. We have to fill those data gaps.

This nice little research paper, based on the Mobility Data for Safer Streets Initiative by the micro-mobility company Spin, details an initiative that equipped activists with the means of collecting data on use of active travel by under-represented communities. Turns out, they make far more trips by active travel than first thought, and new ways of collecting data show barriers to active travel specific to those communities. Which goes to show: if we don’t have the data that tells us what we need to know, go and collect it.

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.

• Dalian flow battery station is the largest battery worldwide (Interesting Engineering)

• How to Turn the Lights Back on After a Blackout (IEEE Spectrum)

• How heat pumps of the 1800s are becoming the technology of the future (Yale Climate Connection)

• Human responses to climate change will likely determine the fate of biodiversity (Proceeds of the National Academy of Sciences)

• Silicon Valley goes to war (TechCrunch)

Something interesting

If population growth is the most important thing determining future transport demand, immigration and the fertility rate are our most important early warning indicators. And in the UK and much of the developed world, the fertility rate is below the replacement level (2 children per female).

If you do nothing else today, then do this

The personal stories of the impact of bus cuts in Stoke-on-Trent in this BBC article are heart-breaking. And all to regular. So please read this. Then see what you can do about this kind of thing.