Mobility Matters Daily #280 - Reusing infrastructure, crime modelling and passengers and freight
Good day my good friend.
This LinkedIn post by Harkanwah Singh (thanks to Aimee Whitcroft for sharing it) rung very true for me, and perhaps even moreso for transport. We collect a tonne of data on things (and none on other things too), but often we don’t question whether or not that that is useful or not. We just…collect data. That’s it. Time to do some data housekeeping, I think.
If you have any suggestions for interesting news items or bits of research to include in this newsletter, you can email me.
James
Don’t get rid of old infrastructure. Re-use it.
The most successful things that humans have every built have not just been continually used, but they have been continually re-used. Adaptability is critical to the success of infrastructure, and so when National Highways announced plans to get rid of bits of the Historic Railways Estate, it caused somewhat of a commotion among active travel bods.
A new report by the Department for Transport has concluded that about two-thirds of the structures could be useful as part of current or future cycle network plans. Including this delightful bridge on Southill Road near me in Bedfordshire. Once infrastructure is disposed of, it is lost to history. Plan its obselescence as much as you plan its creation.
Using agent-based modelling to predict street crime, and its implications for street design
One of the greatest data analytics stories, for both its successes and failures, is that of CompStat in New York. A system that is credited with vastly reducing the number of violent crimes in the city by doing a simple thing: taking analysis of crimes, mapping them, and targetting resources effectively. The two-part Reply All podcast “The Crime Machine” is well worth a listen. And new research from South Africa is taking the principles estabished by CompStat to a new level.
By modelling in detail people’s mobility behaviours, and knowledge of how robbers assess risk and reward, a new agent-based model assesses how crime could change across a city over time. More importantly is how this could be used by policy makers. By making subtle street changes to increase the risk (e.g. greater overlooking), the dynamics of street crime could be radically changed, and compared with actual data reported by the police to ensure robustness. So, if we model new designs for safety, how about we start modelling them for their impacts on crime as well?
You can’t keep a good idea down - mixing freight and passengers edition
A good friend of mine (she knows who she is) will be laughing at the thought of this. New research has been published on a new idea to tackle last-mile logistics. Carrying freight along with passengers. In this case, encouraging people to take parcels with them as they ride on trains and buses. Never heard of that idea before.
Ok, enough with my sarcasm. What did the results say? Well, it seems that young people are up for it, and that the delay involved is likely to be valued lower. In other words, because they are carrying parcels, the penalty is seen as not as severe:
Our results indicate that young(er) individuals, students and (to a lesser extent) employed and self-employed individuals are more likely to participate in the crowdshipping concept…we find the value of time to be slightly higher than the official Danish value for waiting time but lower than the value of travel time delay.
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 they do just that.
Expecting the unexpected: Central bank decision making in turbulent times (Bank of Canada)
Grim experiment tests whether a Tesla will run over a defenceless kitty (Futurism)
This $150 ‘Home Office in a Box’ Is a Game-Changer If You Work From Home (The Daily Beast)
Brandon Stanton’s Empire of Empathy (New York Magazine)
Fossil-Fueled War: Ukraine’s Top Climate Scientist Speaks Out (Undark)
Something interesting
This great graphic is part of a brilliant article on why randomised control trials matter. This is why we should be doing more of them in transport: for robustness and consistency.
If you do nothing else today, then do this
Liani Baglietto Castellares was announced as the winner of the Transport Planning Society Bursary competition on scenario planning last week (you are amazing, Liani!). You should go read her paper on creating an ‘anti-fragile’ transport system.
