Good day my good friend.

What was once amusing is now starting to become more widespread and common place. Case in point, delivery robots, which have now been picked up by a British supermarket. Its a funny, funny world isn’t it?

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

James

Level Up

Level Crossings. If Network Rail had its way, it would shut every single one of them instantly. Instead it has to carefully manage the risks at thousands of crossing across the network on an ongoing basis. You can’t stop everyone from acting like an idiot, but you can only try. But that isn’t the only impact that level crossings have on their communities. Because removing such infrastructure can have unforeseen consequences on land use.

This barrier effect has been studied in Melbourne, Australia. It was found that when level crossings were removed, it freed up land for development, and there was a noticeable uptick in commercial land uses and open space. We often talk about the removal of highways as an urban development opportunity. Could we see the removal of level crossings in the same way?

Road signs aren’t all that

We don’t give them a second thought, but road signs are pretty cool, really. Sat there, giving out useful info in a digestible format. No doubt those in your country have a long and storied history. Here in the UK, we have to thank the work of Margaret Calvert and Jock Kinnear for many of the signs we have and the rules by which new signs are devised. Their work was so impactful, the typeface, New Transport, is the standard font used on Gov.uk websites. There is one problem with modern road signs, though. They are inaccessible.

Some new research looked at the design of road sign symbols globally. They often have poor contrast, have problems with line spacing and image separation, and are often not legible. Worse still, there is a lack of standardisation globally. Which makes their accessibility really difficult. A small thing that we often forget about, but its still important.

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.

• Bill Gates: AI is most important tech advance in decades (BBC)

• Beavers to return to London as part of urban rewilding (The Guardian)

• Uniquely Urban: Case Studies in Innovative Urban Development (Asian Development Bank)

• Off the Books: Understanding and Mitigating the Fiscal Risks of Infrastructure (World Bank)

• Earth is running out of places for stargazers to do dark deeds in the name of science (The Register)

Something interesting

This is the story of Le Plessis-Robinson, a town in the suburbs of Paris. And its an example of how if you had the opportunity to completely rebuild a town, this may be how you do it.

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