Good day my good friend.

Yesterday this newsletter passed an amazing milestone with the number of subscribers. This number can best be described by this famous lyric from an amazing metal song.

Woe to you, o’er Earth and Sea
For the Devil sends the beast with wrath
Because he knows the time is short
Let him who hath understanding reckon the number of the beast
For it is a human number
Its number is six hundred and sixty-six

By the way, if you want to place an advert in the free newsletter, we have some free slots coming up in a couple of months. Feel free to drop me a line if you are interested! All proceeds from sponsorship go to Brake.

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

James

Its been a hard day’s night

And I’ve been working like a dog. I have a feeling there will be a strong musical theme to this newsletter. But remembering this classic by John, Paul, George, and Ringo was prompted by this research paper on urban commuter stress. Something that is very hard to accurately measure, to the point where we only really know that people generally find commuting stressful.

The research created a tool for self-reporting multi-modal stress. To the shock of nobody, it finds that commuting is stressful – confirming numerous other studies. But it goes further by considering the importance of several factors in determining stress in a muli-modal context. It confirms findings around the importance of reliability, how busy the mode of transport is, as well as links to gender, age, and physical and mental health factors. I look forward to the tool being deployed more.

Smart move?

Its been a while since we have spoken about Smart Motorways. But in a statement to Parliament that was heavily trailed in the press beforehand, it was confirmed that plans for new smart motorways have been scrapped. Apparently it is due to public concern and cost pressures, though I would imagine that the latter had much more of an effect than the former. Is it a smart move?

If you want to delve into the debates about the safety of smart motorways, then be my guest. My only view is that while they probably save lives on the whole, the risk profile of collisions just changes, and we know next to nothing about people’s experiences of smart motorways. But this move is a good thing if you come from one of two perspectives. The first is if you believe in the precautionary principle. The second is if you believe, like me, that we should not be expanding highway capacity in a period of climate change.

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.

• Banks Say They’re Acting on Climate, But Continue to Finance Fossil Fuel Expansion (Inside Climate News)

• The Age of the Crisis of Work (Harper’s)

• The Elephant on the Banks of the Colorado River (Counterpunch)

• Paid work for women and domestic violence: Evidence from Rwanda (VoxDev)

• The Elusive Dream of Fully Autonomous Construction Vehicles (Wired)

Something interesting

The concept of valuation in business has taken a hit now that investment in tech is cooling. But this visual of the most valuable brands in the airline industry is interesting. Even if it is just a lot of American airlines, a few Middle Eastern ones, and British Airways.

If you do nothing else today, then do this

Read this article on the urban planning professor who came up with the 15 minute city idea. And is now getting a lot of flack from various Q-Anoners and conspiracy theorists. Poor guy. Thank you for sharing it, Paula Claytonsmith.