Good day my good friend.

Well, that was a lovely day in Scotland, talking all sorts of things about rural mobility with the lovely people at the Scottish Rural and Islands Transport Community. Plus with people from seemingly half of Europe, which is a very good thing indeed! Lots of buzzwords were said, but with a focus on putting them behind us and putting stuff into action. I will say more words on this next week. Needless to say that Jenny – you did an amazing job!

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

James

Knowledge economy

Phil Goodwin is always a good person to listen to. And in this lengthy article on transport knowledge dissemination, he is bang on the money. The core of the thesis is this: we find it hard to share knowledge as professionals, when there is so much knowledge out there. Application of this knowledge is a whole other issue, but there is a whole host of issues in sharing it that isn’t limited to the absurd academic publishing model.

The only thing I will add, which Phil refers to as grey literature, is this. Some of the best analytics, number crunching, and leading edge knowledge sharing is being done outside of academia in start-ups, the public sector, and even consultancies (rent abstractors though they are). And we now live in a world where there is almost too much knowledge sharing (this newsletter included), and what is needed is ensuring that knowledge is valuable and can be deployed at the right time. Otherwise, its just another link not visited on the Internet.

Why do we choose THAT road?

Imagine the situation. The way is shut. It was made by those who are dead…sorry, where was I? Ok. The road ahead of you is shut. What determines what route you choose? Apart from Waze, obviously. If most of you said that it was whatever is the quickest way, well that is the most common answer. But it is not as common amongst all people as you might think. And that’s important when we want to understand the impact of road closures.

Some new research shines a light on this subject. And you know what, apparently young men are less likely to follow the SatNav for reasons I can’t fathom. And knowing the diversion route isn’t that much of an influence on behaviour either. Could it be that we are finally beginning to trust our SatNavs when it comes to navigation?

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.

• Warehouses Outperform in Cloudy Commercial Real Estate Environment (Chief Investment Officer)

• Everything Google Announced About AI, Bard, and PaLM 2 at I/O 2023 (Gizmodo)

• To Oppose All Forms of Bans in the Name of Democratic Values Is a Liberal Virtue (The Wire)

• Why not scientism? (aeon)

• Cybertruck Prototype Gets Stuck In Field (The Byte)

Something interesting

Looks like I will be finding a reason to go to Oslo soon.

If you do nothing else today, then do this

I wrote something! Its on serious games and how we should do more of them. Thank you to Katie Lamb for giving me the chance to write it. You should go read it.