Mobility Matters Daily #144 - This is a public service announcement

Your attention is appreciated

Dear friend.

Today’s newsletter will be very different to your usual newsletter. I am sharing my thoughts on the future of this newsletter, and I have an ask of you. Read this newsletter, think about what I have to say, and get in touch to let me know your thoughts.

Normal newsletter service will be resumed on Monday. In the meantime, please read on.

The last few months have been an interesting experiment

This newsletter has been going for over 6 months now. I love doing it, and from what feedback I have received from you all, it seems you like it too. Subscribers are now over 600 people, from just over 70 at the start, and an average of 27% of you open each of my emails (which is about the average open rate for e-newsletters). Of those, an average of 20% of you open a link, and its almost always the one under “If you do nothing else today, do this” which is the most clicked.

Number of people signed up to the newsletter

The proportion of people who open the daily email

I had no idea where this newsletter would be going, but I am pretty happy with those sorts of numbers and the feedback I have received. But I just feel that something is…missing. Over the last few months, I tried numerous tweaks to the newsletter. This included focussing on different types of stories, focussing on research findings, analysing responses to different themes (you lot like active travel it seems), changing the layout, titles, position of buttons, adding more commentary, removing commentary, and much more.

The one thing i learned? None of it mattered.

Regardless of what I did, the number of sign ups still ticked upwards, and the average open rate for emails stayed static. The two things I have kept - the visualisation of the day and if you do nothing else today - were the ones that received positive feedback, and got a lot of clicks. Other than that? It seemed nothing changed.

Rather than seeing this as 4 months wasted, I now know what doesn’t work in terms of what you like to see. But I do want to know what does work, and I am willing to continue experimenting until I find out what does.

The space that I see for something new, and what this means for the future of Mobility Matters Daily

Writing this newsletter has given me somewhat of an oversight of some of the key issues facing transport planning in the future. The whole sector faces huge challenges in terms of climate change, equity, social justice, air pollution, economic recovery, and placemaking. Particularly how it departs from the current norms.

As I see it, the issue is not one of knowledge or evidence of what works and how things can be done. We have far more tools than we could ever possibly use. We have all the evidence of what works and what doesn’t work. And we have far too many opinions on it all (my own included). We know a lot. So why don’t we do?

Transport planners debating how hard it is to change politicians’ minds (Source: Archiobjects.org)

Some say we need strong political leadership to make change happen. But I find that explanation somewhat simplistic and too Great Man Theory-like. Others say we need to reframe our thinking about how we plan for the future, which I sympathise with. Others are thinking more revolutionary thoughts in that the actions justify the means, which I sympathise with.

But not much is said about fixing the plumbing - literally our process of transport planning. The conversations in teams, how we talk to people about transport and its outcomes, how tools are actually used and the experience of them, how evidence is used, and the personal relationships that make things happen.

There is a saying that culture eats strategy for breakfast. I would say in transport planning, culture eats our tools and evidence as a starter, and dines on our towns and cities as a main course. With serious and under-appreciated consequences.

Some ideas for the coming months

Reflecting this, I want this newsletter to be more useful in giving people the evidence for change and the practical experience of changing a culture to make it happen. I will still share what is going on in the world, and my give my two pence worth on the issues of the day, but I will tie it back to how things are done.

Of course, I want more people to sign up to the newsletter, and have more people reading each one. But what I want to help achieve is broader than that. Reflecting that, I have some of my own ideas in terms of additional things that I want to try out over the coming months. These are as follows:

A special post each week, summarising the evidence for change and how to do it

Think of this like Adrian Lord’s always excellent Essential Evidence on a Page (which I highly recommend you read). But rather than just looking into bespoke issues as they arise, this takes the next logical step of connecting together these different strands of evidence into a coherent picture of how change occurs within a transport system. In other words, as well as focussing on the impact of change, it provides evidence on how to successfully enable the process of change and how it links with other processes, and how to do it. In other words, systems thinking made understandable.

A story each month on how an organisation changed its approach to transport planning, and its impacts

This would be the time-intensive option. More on the impacts of that later. But this would focus on a key organisation each month - like a Transport for London or similar - and give insight into how radical changes in approach to transport planning delivery were enabled. What tools were used, what culture change happened, and how that continues to this day.

This is not about the outcomes, but about what enabling things are put in place to make change happen.

A post each week of a data visualisation relevant to a key transport issue

Every day I post a link to an interesting data visualisation, which I love researching and posting to everyone. But it has inspired me to take the next step, and start doing some visuals of my own. I have a list of questions I am looking to answer with existing datasets, including:

• Have different regions of the UK reached peak car, and what is the evidence for this?

• What impact do school crossing patrols have on safety of school children?

• How have different regions of the UK and the world bounced back from the pandemic?

Much of this data I have already requested or have downloaded. I have a good knowledge of Excel and Tableau, and an improving practice when it comes to data presentation. So this weekly post would summarise this work, how I did it, and present the results.

Then, it comes back to one other important thing

These newsletters take time to produce. I love doing it, don’t get me wrong. Not including the reading, the newsletter takes me about an hour each day to put together. One thing I learned several years ago is that burning yourself out for no reward is not worth it. I cannot push what I am doing much past what I am doing now. Anything more substantial means that I will have to seriously consider having a paid option for additional content.

A dramatisation of future Mobility Matters Daily readers

I should stress now that I am not going to make this newsletter paid-only. Everything I do will be freely available to all. But there is a limit to free. I have to make serious choices about what stacks up in a financial sense (time is money and all).

There are many different ways to potentially generate income and keep things free, and even keep the ads to a minimum. I just have to think about what works best.

So, what to do?

Whatever this actual doing looks like, I have a deadline. I want to start doing it from 1st October this year. What I need from you all in the meantime is simple - your views.

• I want to know what you find good about this newsletter.

• I want to know what you hate about it.

• I want to know whether my ideas are great or crazy.

• I want to know what other thoughts you have been having about what is needed in transport planning to meet the challenges ahead.

Most importantly, I would love a conversation about it. Via email, comments below this story, WhatsApp, whatever. Please reach out and get in contact, and lets chat about this. I would love to speak to as many of you as I can over the next month, to make sure that what I provide to you is valuable and useful.

Before I sign off, I have to say thank you all so much for sticking around over the last 6 months. Your continued support really makes a difference on the days when I have to drag myself out of bed to publish another newsletter (and I have had to do this more than once). I cannot thank you enough for that.

You now know my perspective on the future. I want to know yours. Lets chat.

James