Good day my good friend.

We often hear of the stories of famous people who have died in air crashes – Buddy Holly and Kobe Bryant being two such examples. But rarely about those who survived them. But this is an excellent account of how a famous voice of baseball – Jerry Schemmel – survived the crash of United Airlines Flight 232. For those of you who don’t know it, the crash footage is insane (it is worksafe, but as a word of caution – it is footage of a plane crash). A must-listen for sure.

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

James

Planning for de-growth

A failing of many planners, and anyone working in strategy, is that planning for growth is the default. We know that growth has its limits, so why do we act as if it is limitless? Also, it is not as if we have not experienced decline in the transport industry. Cities have shrunk. We are dealing with legacy infrastructure that has long since been well used. And, as I have referred to before, we are facing an issue of population stagnation and decline.

Thankfully, at least academia is thinking about this. Notably this recent article on city shrinkage in Japan. It explores the complex interaction of factors explaining city shrinkage in Japan, and discovers there is more to it than demographic factors – the size of the place plays a crucial role as well. And understanding such dynamics will help us plan for the future where shrinking may be more plausible than it is now.

Time to rethink Fuel Duty

I don’t know why everyone continues to be shocked at the fact that in the UK, Fuel Duty is frozen. Again. For the 13th year in a row. Yes, we know that doing so is not good for the environment. But raising duty is hard enough to do politically in the good times. Let alone in the time of a cost of living crisis. And of course the top half of households save more as a percentage of the total saving (they drive more), but at a household level for those struggling that rise could make or break their finances.

A discussion on funding is well overdue. The Treasury won’t have it because that involves tampering with known income streams, and politicians won’t do it because that will go down badly with the Daily Mail. I have yet to see a decent analysis of the impact of alternatives to fuel duty as a way of reducing the carbon impact of transport, helping hard-up families, and not depriving the Treasury of their precious gold. That is what is needed to break the deadlock on the discussion we should be having – how we fund transport.

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.

• Liberal Commitments (Dissent)

• Where’s the safest seat on a double decker? 5 questions from Hong Kong’s tilted bus accident (South China Morning Post)

• Abstract thinking matters (Klement on Investing)

• German government in crisis over EU ban on car combustion engines (The Guardian)

• So what exactly is a smart city? (City Monitor)

Something interesting

Insane road technologies? Or insanely good? I’ll leave you to be the judge.

If you do nothing else today, then do this

Some of you have sent through some articles and research, and I have not been good at sharing them. Let me rectify that.

Thank you to Stephen Joseph for sending this research on inclusive transport in Pakistan. Basic solutions make the difference.

Thank you to Adam King for pointing to this new research and guidance by England’s Economic Heartland on Mobility Hubs. It focusses on business cases, so is very practical indeed.

Finally, thank you to Nick Reed for pointing me towards this presentation by the always-excellent Robin Chase, who makes the case against the transport policy priority being electric vehicles.

Remember, you can sign up to the paid version of this email, for free for the next month, by the end of this week. To celebrate achieving 500 newsletters, I am offering each of you a free trial of a paid subscription to Mobility Matters Daily for a month. To claim it, you just need to do one thing: sign up by clicking on this link by this Saturday.