Good day my good friend.

With the scandals around cable cars to nowhere, buses that cook in the summer, and spending over £40m on a bridge that wasn’t even been approved, lying about having a series of parties in a pandemic is the thing that brings the former Mayor of London down. This is the UK’s Al Capone moment.

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

James

The wisdom of old

Those who have worked in transport will know of the concept of ‘zombie schemes.’ Schemes that, no matter how much you try, just won’t bloody die. And they come back to haunt every public consultation since then. But there is a similar type of scheme that we don’t talk about very often. That of the ‘mummy scheme.’

This is the type of scheme that was previously a great idea, was killed off years ago, but is now making a comeback. Without Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz. One such scheme is one that I previously worked on, East-West Rail. Looking to connected up Oxford, Milton Keynes, Bedford, Cambridge and beyond, part of the scheme between Oxford and Milton Keynes is under construction, while the link between Bedford and Cambridge has just had a preferred route announcement. And much of this uses a former railway alignment that ran between Oxford and Cambridge, known as the Varsity Line.

So why is this line suddenly back in fashion? Well, it never really went out of fashion. Even the famous Dr Beeching spared the line his axe. But with revenues exceeding operating costs, British Railways closed the line despite the expanding towns of Bedford and Oxford. With little in the way of road-based competition (try driving from Bedford to Oxford – its a pain), and with masses of new housing development at Oxford, Bicester, Milton Keynes, and Cambridge, the case for re-opening is strong, even if the commercials are still not that.

Lots of people take such examples and others like the Borders Railway as making the case for re-opening old lines. That can sometimes drive policy to an unnecessary degree. The truth is, the success of many such schemes is driven by a favourable planning context (i.e. lots of new homes), poor quality alternatives, and in some cases a bit of luck and political courage. Just because something was a success in the past does not mean it will be in the future.

But I wonder what other mummy schemes there could be out there? And what role they could play in a low-carbon and socially just future? Surely there is more than old railway lines to help us toward such a future?

Graph of the week

Good news. The average emissions of new cars continues to go down. Bad news. We are still selling too many of them.

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.

• Western lawmakers spot opening in smoke crisis (Axios)

• State Policies During COVID Associated with Increase in Tele-Mental Health; Disparities in Access to Care Persist Despite Expansion (RAND)

• First It Was Quiet Quitting, Now Workers Are Facing Off With Their Bosses (Wall Street Journal)

• How the UK is getting AI regulation right (The Conversation)

• We all age differently: approaches to understand the diverse lives of older people (Policy@Manchester)

Something interesting

National Air Traffic Services always have great videos. This one shows the failed landing attempts during a storm at Heathrow Airport.

If you do nothing else today, then do this

Read this article on how cars create inequality. Much of this you may know, but this article articulates it all brilliantly.