Mobility Matters Daily #181 - Satisfaction with trains, capability gaps, and the TPS
With a nice little graphic about fuels
Good day my good friend.
Well that was a jolly nice weekend. A huge thank you to all of you who attended Mobility Camp in Glasgow on Saturday. It was wonderful to see you, and we will be in contact again soon.
In the meantime, here are your links, especially curated for you.
James
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How close you live to the station affects how satisfied you are with the rail service
I had never thought about this before, but Zhai et al undertook research in China that shows that when you live closer to the station, you are more likely to be satisfied with the train service itself. So maybe, if its less of a pain to get to the train, then you like it more.
This concept has been touched upon in an indirect way through other research. The National Rail Passenger Survey shows 80% of rail passengers being satisfied with local transport connections. Also, Jason Cao researched the link between satisfaction with life and proximity to the Hiawatha Line in Minneapolis, and found that the closer you are to the line, the happier you are.
The capability to do things is as important as the policies to do it
One of the biggest weaknesses of Local Transport Plans in the UK is that while they talk a lot about what Councils plan to do, they don’t talk about how Council’s will ensure they have the capabilities to do it. So a new paper by Lui et al touching on just this subject immediately stoked my interest. They concluded:
The analysis revealed five inter-related factors are required to ensure the resilience of transport assets: (1) leadership; (2) reflexive (organisational) learning; (3) support from senior management; (4) a culture adept to resilience; and (5) continuous improvement (also investment) in asset absorbability, adaptability and vulnerability.
Translation: culture eats strategy for breakfast. I also recommend reading the National Infrastructure Plan for Skills which also touched upon this subject.
The Transport Planning Society says “nice Decarbonisation Plan you got there. It’s a shame about all the roads, though.”
As the title suggests, the Transport Planning Society has published its response to the Transport Decarbonisation Plan. While on the whole they like it, they pull no punches in how the Department for Transport can do better. My favourite recommendation is this:
Transport projects which increase carbon emissions must be withdrawn and funding for low and zero carbon transport projects and networks increased. The Governments should reduce the cost of using public transport and allow local authorities to do so in their areas.
Random things
Here are some random things that I found while scrawling the internet.
More low emission zones banning older cars could be introduced in Glasgow (Glasgow Times)
Is the goal of Parex to create more traffic? (The Manila Times)
Virgin Atlantic unveils new carbon targets to help reach net-zero by 2050 (Edie)
Why Record Numbers of Workers Are Quitting and Striking (Naked Capitalism)
Out-of-Practice Airline Pilots Are Making Errors Back in the Air (Bloomberg)
Interesting things
This is a wonderful visualisation by Our World in Data, that summarises the issues with fuel perfectly and can also be applied to how we get around. Substituting one type of fuel for another can lead to other problems.
If you do nothing else today, do this
Read this article making the case for a carbon price on Our World in Data. This came up a lot at Mobility Camp, and this article puts the case succinctly.