Good day my good friend.

Another day, more time spent writing this newsletter on a delayed train. But there is a big problem on this train. They have taken the Bridge and the Second Hall. We have barred the gates, but cannot hold them for long. The ground shakes… Drums. Drums in the deep. We cannot get out. A Shadow moves in the dark… We cannot get out… They are coming.

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

James

No Free Lunch

Its been a few months since this was covered. But this Insider article on free public transport in Luxembourg has kicked off the usual debate on the merits of free public transport for all. If you want something in depth about the experience in Luxembourg, this article in Bloomberg is a good place to start. The counter-arguement is that free public transport is nothing without the basics. But let me put a different spin on this.

It all depends on how you define success. Because free public transport isn’t a transport policy, its a social policy. If success is reducing costs for those on the lowest incomes, it will be brilliant. If its modal shift, well, its not as convinicing a policy on its own at least. Not to mention the fact that even a free, infrequent, unreliable public transport service won’t be attractive to many. So before judging its suitability as a policy, lets define what success will be first.

The Economics of Our World

Transport Economists among you will know about the concept of externalities (summary: the external or indirect costs or benefits of economic activity), and the significant effort being put into internalising these external costs. Such as charging for carbon emissions. This is important stuff to understand for a simple reason. As reports such as Limits to Growth indicate such costs are not absorbed by other systems, but can be thought of as building up a debt. And when that debt is owed to a natural system, that system gets us to pay by, well, no longer working.

An excellent recent report on the Economics of Biodiversity (its huge – 600+ pages, but worth the read) puts this starkly. If we extract, as transport does so often, we have to bear the full economic costs of doing so. Going even further back, the Stern Review put it even more starkly. If we do nothing on climate change, including charging for carbon, the economic costs of doing nothing are astronomical. Maybe, we need to start applying a carbon tax on road building.

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.

• Venice is Saved! Woe is Venice. (New York Times)

• What Is a Brother? (Esquire)

• ‘Flash droughts’ are growing increasingly common (ScienceNews)

• TikTok Is Obsessed With Water. Experts Are Concerned (Rolling Stone)

• Plastic-eating backyard fungi discovery boosts hopes for a solution to the recycling crisis (ABC News)

Something interesting

Every wanted to know what was inside a car battery? Well, the lithium is one of the smallest parts of it.

If you do nothing else today, then do this

I don’t usually recommend a book to read, but At Work in the Ruins: Finding Our Place in the Time of Science, Climate Change, Pandemics and All the Other Emergencies by Dougal Hine is something I can heartily recommend. It’s not an easy read, and many of the arguments you won’t want to hear. But if you have been thinking of the world that we should be creating when the current one goes down in flames, its worthwhile reading.