Mixed Bag - MMD#376
Good day my good friend.
Just a quick heads up to you all. Next week I will be at the annual Transport Practitioners Meeting in London. As well presenting on Day 1 (Room 1, Session 2 - hint, hint :)), I will be chairing a session on Day 1 on planning for the future with what promises to be some excellent presentations from Glenn Lyons, Steve Gooding, Andy Clark, and Oli Davey.
Anyway, PSA out of the way. Let’s get to it.
If you have any suggestions for interesting news items or bits of research to include in this newsletter, you can email me.
Mobility Camp is taking place on 29th September 2023 in Birmingham. It would be great to see you there. Get your tickets now.
James
Injury time for public transport
Many of you probably were not aware of this (can’t say I blame you), but a couple of days ago some rather farcical scenes took place at Hampden Park in Glasgow, as the Scotland v. Georgia Men’s European Championship Qualifier was suspended for 90 minutes to clear a waterlogged pitch. With the match now ending very late in the evening, travel chaos ensued as fans tried to get home after the match. No doubt many of you who have experienced trying to get home after a midweek match with sympathise.
Planning for such disruptions when it comes to sporting events is more complicated than it seems. Many good reasons are given for promoting accessing major sporting events by public transport, but public transport needs to balance anticipated peaks and the availability of resources. If your staff are rostered to drive additional services at a set peak hour that is now 90 minutes late, its hard to just get them to stay an extra two hours at such short notice. All the while ensuring that the long term viability of the network is ensured (you don’t want to sacrifice the daily service to staff services taking football fans home). Very simply, there is no easy solution to such issues.
Choosing where to juice
Considering that refuelling vehicles is an essential journey when you own a vehicle, there is not much research on it. As in I searched Science Direct and found very, very little on what petrol stations people choose to use. But that is not the case with newer fuels like electric cars. For a number of years there have been various studies on choices in sparse environments and developing models for identifying potential demand. But for the first time, there is now a framework set out for electric vehicles that gives insight into choices of charging infrastructure.
So what determines such choices? Turns out, its time of day, the range of the battery (no shock there), the physical characteristics of the charging point, and price. Most of that may not come as a shock to you. But in a time where we are planning electric vehicle roll outs, understanding choices is essential to helping locate 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.
Al Gore: The Intersection of A.I. and Climate Change (Ground Truths)
On Marshy Ground (London Review of Books)
What does the geography of remote job postings across cities in the UK mean for Levelling Up? (Centre for Cities)
African cities and climate change: The real debate is who should pay to fix the problem (City Monitor)
Easily replaceable phone batteries might be back, and I’m here for it (The Verge)
Something interesting
There is a lot of justification for why things can’t change in our towns and cities. This video is a good compilation of them.
If you do nothing else today, then do this
A shout out to my old boss Joan Hancox, who has a public call-out for some landscape gardeners to volunteer some of their time at the Random Cafe in Watford. Can you help? If so, message her!