Good day my good friend.

No fuss and bother today. Straight to the good stuff.

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

James

Karma comes for Clarkson

Many of my UK readers have probably been following the saga of Clarkson’s Farm. For those of you unaware of it, loud mouth and petrol head Jeremy Clarkson is running a farm called Diddly Squat in the Oxfordshire countryside. The TV show associated with is a hit (and to be fair, tells a far more accurate picture of rural life than Countryfile ever has), while the farm shop has also been a hit. And that’s the problem,

The planning and transport issues are a perfect window into the life of transport planners in the UK. The farm shop was built without permission, and the car park expansion plans are now going to a planning appeal. There have been angry local planning meetings, traffic chaos at weekends, and even death threats against a Councillor. And apparently, ‘Jezza’ hates it all. One could say that karma is paying a visit to Chipping Norton.

Is there a link between parking standards and car ownership?

Now that is a chicken and egg question if I have ever seen it. Followers of Donald Shoup will no doubt have some strong opinions on this. When I first started in my career, and saw that Planning Policy Guidance Note 13 recommended maximum parking standards as a way of reducing car ownership, I was never convinced of the link. So this study of the link between minimum parking standards and car ownership in Sweden peeked my interest.

The study indicates that there is a positive relationship between higher parking standards and higher car ownership. Or, in English, where there are more cars there’s more parking. But that does not mean there is a cause-and-effect relationship here. What drives car ownership decisions is far more psychological and cultural in nature. And thus more complicated. So beware a simple solution to a complex problem, always.

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. Thank you to the always-excellent Naked Capitalism for these links.

• From Frankfurt to Fox: The Strange Career of Critical Theory (Hedgehog Review)

• Why the Mental Health of Liberal Girls Sank First and Fastest: Evidence for Lukianoff’s reverse CBT hypothesis (Jon Haidt)

• You Are Not a Parrot (New York Magazine)

• These Interactive Tools Reveal Your Home’s Future Flood, Heat, and Wind Risk (Life Hacker) – Note: This is US-centric

• The Austerity Train Wreck (Defend Democracy)

Something interesting

Lots of American cities are pulling down their highways. And this is a short documentary on some of them.

If you do nothing else today, then do this

The City of The Hague in the Netherlands has done some excellent work in developing future transport visions using Appreciative Inquiry. You should read the research paper that summarises it all.