Good day my good friend.
There is a time whenever you get a new puppy which is very much the honeymoon period. When they do cute and daft things and you love them, and any accidents are just part of the experience. Then, they start teething, and the demon dog that never sleeps emerges. If there are spelling mistakes, its because I’m running on 5 hours sleep over two nights.
Also, please note that I am writing this before the UK General Election results are known. So don’t expect any quips about that!
Mobility Camp is back, and the number one transport unconference is heading to York on Friday 20th September. Book your tickets now! 📆
I have co-authored a book on Mobility-as-a-Service, which is a comprehensive guide on this important new transport service. It is available from the Institution of Engineering and Technology and now Amazon. 📕
🌳 Our carbon reduction priorities are all wrong
What if I told you that if we focussed on changing less than 5% of the trips that people take, we could reduce transport’s carbon emissions in the UK by between 60% and 70%? You would probably look at me with a lot of scepticism. That is because there is a false narrative when it comes to reducing transport emissions.
When we look at transport emissions, we primarily think of local trips. According to the National Travel Survey 2022, 71% of trips are under 5 miles. The logic is simple: because most trips are under 5 miles, if we do what we can to change those trips to less carbon intensive modes, we can significantly reduce carbon emissions across transport.
But this logic is flawed. The first suspicions that this may be so is when you look at how people travel by different distances, and the relative carbon intensity of each mode.
Mode share of trips by main mode for different trip lengths: England, 2022 (Source: National Travel Survey)
Carbon footprint of travel per kilometre, 2022 (Source: Our World in Data)
What we can see here is how travel above 5 miles is undertaken by the most polluting modes. And these modes are the most polluting by some magnitude compared to those trips under 5 miles. Notably the dominance of cars, and, within the 10 miles and over bracket, short haul flights. Around 2.7% of trips each person takes are greater than 50 miles, yet their impact on carbon emissions is significant.
Now, a new paper published in Nature has run the numbers, and puts it very starkly. This tiny proportion of trips that are long distance (they refer to long distance as more than 50 miles) results in 69.3% of a persons carbon emissions from transport. For a very simple reason – a persons carbon emissions is directly related not just to how they travel, but the distance they travel as well.
Shares of annual trips, miles and emissions per capita in 2017 by trip distance bands (Source: Wadud et al, 2024)
To use an example. Lets say someone drives a round trip of 5 miles to work every work day for a month (lets say 25 days). While another person cycles every work day for a month, but takes a 200 mile round trip by plane at the end of the month. The latter person emits more carbon emissions over the month than the person who drives every work day.
Many of our plans and strategies focus on getting people to shift behaviours for short distance trips, without much success. When there is potentially a huge prize in terms of reducing carbon emissions by focussing on long distance trips.
Think about this as a decarbonisation prize: by reducing the number of long distance trips and decarbonising long distance travel, between 60% and 70% of people’s transport carbon emissions are gone. Instantly.
How to do this? That is the tricky part. For me, this means investing in high speed rail and rail electrification, severe penalties on short haul flights (except where access is essential like on short island hops), electrifying the vehicle fleet and encouraging greater remote working where feasible. But the fact that we simply do not care about this easy win is amazing to me. Perhaps we should start caring about it.
👩🎓 From academia
The clever clogs at our universities have published the following excellent research. Where you are unable to access the research, email the author – they may give you a copy of the research paper for free.
Interventions to increase active travel: A systematic review
TL:DR – Don’t just do one thing, do a package of things.
TL:DR – Competition may be good for technology transfer, but will hurt companies and people economically.
Tradable mobility credits for long-distance travel in Europe
TL:DR – Carbon trading might be a good way to reduce long distance travel.
TL:DR – If you are trying to get to the kids in school, work with the school schedule.
✊ Amazing people doing amazing things
A huge shout out needs to go out to Kat Heath. She has done amazing work over the years in promoting cycling through various initiatives, including organizing community events and leading bike rides to foster a safer and more inclusive environment. Most notably developing Kidical Mass to apply pressure in building new infrastructure.
📺 On the (You)Tube
Streets are good. Libraries are also good. So why not mix them together? After all, streets are about more than moving people.
🖼 Graphic Design
The prevalence of trip chaining in Melbourne, Australia (Source: Charting Transport)
In an excellent post on gender roles and childcare and their impacts on transport, this graph by Charting Transport stands out. Not only do women take on more child caring responsibilities than their male partners do, but they make more trips and chained trips on school days. We know women travel more overall, but this difference is stark.
📚 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.
- Yes, humans are still evolving (Popular Science)
- The Psychology Behind Buying Bad Airport Food—Again and Again (Condé Nast Traveler)
- ‘SimCity’ Isn’t a Model of Reality. It’s a Libertarian Toy Land (Wired)
- Why nationalist parties don’t always like their national soccer teams (Good Authority)
- Europe faces an unusual problem: ultra-cheap energy (The Economist)
📰 The bottom of the news
I really should have spotted this earlier. But the Londonist has compiled a 4th edition of Tube Drivers saying the funniest things. I particularly like this one, said on a Central Line train terminating at White City:
This train is terminating here because… it’s scared of the dark.
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