Mobility Matters Daily #403 - Flying and Investment Zones

Good day my good friend.

It would seem that the government’s plans for poor headlines about cut bus services haven’t worked as well as they had hoped. While Stagecoach in Cambridgeshire (and Bedfordshire) have hit the headlines, other operators have also snuck out cuts in services such as Trentbarton and Skylink. Its not exactly plain sailing in buses at present, sadly.

Oh, just one thing. Next week, you will all still get a daily newsletter. But as I am helping to run Mobility Camp I need every spare hour I can get next week. Next week’s newsletters are all prepared and ready to go now. So they may not be quite as on the ball as you would normally expect. Normal service will be resumed in October.

If you have any suggestions for interesting news items or bits of research to include in this newsletter, you can email me.

For those of you coming to Mobility Camp in Bristol on 29th September, I will see you there. Tickets are sold out, but if you are still interested you can put your name on a reserve list. Or, sponsorship slots are still available.

James

Thank you Landor. Your sponsorship is helping families in need!

Do people who fly care that their airline is going green?

Some of you will probably think that the very fact that they are flying means they don’t care about going green. But airlines are putting some effort into selling themselves as caring about the environment, even if their actual delivery record isn’t great. So even if their passenger’s aren’t taking the train, they must surely know that some of them care enough about the environment to choose them as an airline compared to other airlines, right? Turns out, there may be some truth to this.

This new research, focussing on the Finnish airline Finnair, found something interesting. If they considered that the airline was doing good things on the environment, there was a demonstrable improvement on their satisfaction with the airline. And they were more likely to recommend the airline to a friend. Now, this is just over 1000 people from a single airline, and does not account for frequent fliers. But maybe taking meaningful action on the environment and showing it will be a good thing for airlines?

Not environmentally friendly (Source: Wikimedia)

Investment Zones and improving transport

I am writing this section of the newsletter slightly later, and the UK government has just given its ‘Mini Budget.’ I’ll save more detailed comments on this for next week, but a big thrust of the document is on removing barriers to infrastructure delivery through Investment Zones. Which leads to a question - does deregulation speed up transport infrastructure delivery?

To put it very simply, the evidence is very strong one way or another, whether you look at the speed of delivery or the economic impacts of such zones. The reason why this evidence is so hard to collect is because everyone does this differently. On the investment side, it only seems to work where there are large firms and a strong regulator. But the fundamental challenges of delivering infrastructure remain.

Thank you Markides Associates. Your sponsorship is helping families in need!

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.

• What Long COVID Is Like For These 14 People (Teen Vogue)

• How Bad Will the German Recession Be? (Der Spiegel)

• ‘Sorry, only snacks and souvenirs’: China Railway’s refusal to sell sanitary pads slammed and renews debate on women’s rights (South China Morning Post)

• Science Thinks It Has Found the Best Wordle Starter (Life Hacker)

• Yes, Windfall Taxes on Big Oil Are Warranted—But That's Not All (Common Dreams)

Something interesting

It won’t be us who pay for climate change (Source: u/david-berlin)

This is your occasional reminder that those who pollute the least pay the most for it. No wonder climate change is a social justice issue.

If you do nothing else today, then do this

You like open source tools, right? You also like walking too? Then check out OS-WALK-EU, a plugin for QGIS that assesses walkability of urban neighbourhoods. You should also read the research and watch the video on how to use it. Then you should use it.