Good day friend.
Something that I have recently got back into, after about 15 years away, is Geocaching. Where you are given locations for containers where you can sign your name, and just go and look for them. There are 15 in my small town alone, so my dogs are now going on very different walks to what they are used to.
But what if we created towns and cities for the purposes of exploring them as well as living in them? And we used them to encourage exploration? My town has done this recently with planting multi-coloured rocks around the town, and running a scarecrow festival. We should feed our inner explorer sometimes.
James
Decarbonisation Plans are like buses
After joking about it yesterday, not only did the UK Department for Transport finally publish its Decarbonisation Plan, but the EU published its plans as well. I have yet to digest both, but from an initial skim of the former I can’t help but feel my tests from yesterday may not be met.
Having said that, I know how hard Juhi Verma at DfT and others have worked on a plan that needs to achieve nothing less than a change in the whole system. While we can (rightly) criticise the ambition and the policies, I don’t doubt for a second how difficult a task it was to bring together. Well done to all on such a difficult job.
The War on our Streets - Correspondence from the front line
A thank you to Aimee Whitcroft for sending this to me. As you know, us Brits love satire, and seeing White Man Behind A Desk offering to be a war correspondent for the battle for our streets was an amusing read. Although like good satire, it has a hint of truth about it.
There is some excellent work on telling the stories of how changes on streets are being fought, won, and lost all across the world. The challenge that I find is changing these stories from preaching to the converted for likes and retweets, to changing the narrative around streets for good. Comedy is often a very good way of doing that. Today we have a satirical character. Perhaps tomorrow Saturday Night Live, Mock the Week, Have I Got News For You, or The Bugle could get in on the act?
A Workplace Parking Levy is being planned in Leicester. It’s timing is interesting…
In the last couple of days, the city of Leicester in the UK has published its plans to introduce a Workplace Parking Levy in the city. The foreword to the consultation document states the reasoning for this specifically:
If we are to help meet Leicester’s transport challenges and deliver our vision for the city, then we need the sustained funding supported by a workplace parking levy investment programme.
But this lead to an obvious question - what happens if the commute and working patterns shift fundamentally? Will employers need these parking spaces any more? One can argue that (a) this shift in the commute may be good for carbon emissions and sustainable travel, and (b) the parking spaces will exist anyway, so the Council will get the money regardless. So who cares, right? Well, if the charge is based on a land use, and that land use changes, so does that income stream. And that does matter.
Stat of the Day
Inspired by my friend in New Zealand above. My other title for this is “why the New Zealand public transport network relies on Auckland and Wellington.”
Source: Waka Kotahi
If you don’t do anything else today, do this
Read Victoria Heald’s article on unconcious bias in transport planning. I helped to judge her Transport Planning Society Bursary Paper, and it was very good. This article is every bit as good.