Good day my good friend.
At the moment, I truly believe that we are in one of the great shifts of our time. And its not due to ChatGPT. The global fertility rate has fallen below 2.5 children per woman, very close to the ‘replacement rate’ (i.e. enough people being born to cover the ones who are dying) of 2.1 children per woman. In some countries, it is below that. And they are panicking. Really panicking. I will write something in depth on this for paid subscribers on Friday, but for now I will say this. This is the long term trend you should be paying attention to in your transport policy work, as this is a game changer.
If you have any suggestions for interesting news items or bits of research to include in this newsletter, you can email me.
James
Trust is the currency of change
Its not often that a story about trees in Sheffield peeks my interest. But this is an important one. Very simply, Sheffield City Council delivered an unpopular policy of ripping out trees and replacing them, and employed extremely questionable actions when doing so. Its an episode straight out of Rotten Boroughs. But it speaks to a truism that transport planners must realise. How we do our job is an important as what we do.
Studies into change management reveal something interesting. The emotions felt are stronger when they are negative, than when they are positive. And when there is significant change, trust becomes much more prevelant and affects these emotions more significantly. This is why engaging with stakeholders and the public is key from the outset. It engenders trust first. We focus too much on changing people’s opinion’s to support our schemes (or we say ‘sod it, let’s do what we want’ and burn that trust completely), and not in building trust in our skills and expertise.
Rail increases house prices. Nobody is shocked
Yet another entry into the research database under “confirming stuff which we already know, but its nice to have it confirmed” is this research article. In short, it looks at the expansion of suburban railway lines in Washington DC and the impacts they have on house prices. Shock horror, being close to a rail line leads to a marginal increase in house prices of around 4.6% for a one mile increase in distance.
What do we do with this information? Make Land Value Capture a thing. This has been studied extensively, and there are numerous ways to capture that value in a manner that is beneficial for public transport. The challenge with doing this is a political one. Everyone wants improvements to public transport, but nobody wants to pay for them. Its a tale as old as time.
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.
Graphon Games: A Statistical Framework for Network Games and Interventions (Econometrica)
Within-job gender pay inequality in 15 countries (Nature Human Behaviour)
The Cost of Deglobalization (Noema)
The History of the Chicken: How This Humble Bird Saved Humanity (The Daily Beast)
Something interesting
Want to hear someone talking about the 15 minute city without some crazy lunatic spamming the comments or the conversation with talk of globalists? This Streetfilm interview with Carlos Moreno will see you right.
If you do nothing else today, then do this
Read this excellent paper on the effects of ridesourcing on vehicle ownership in the UK. Contrary to what you might think, in some circumstances the introduction of such services can decrease vehicle ownership.
Mobility Matters 