"Pro-life" - MMD#531

Good day my good friend.

A few weeks ago, I gave a shout out to anyone willing to write something about a transport matter that they want to write about. I am pleased to say that a few of you are lined up already, ready to share your views on the world. But the invite is always open for contributions the newsletter, particularly from young professionals, women working in transport, and persons from ethnic minority backgrounds. I can even offer a small fee for writing! If you are interested, more details can be found here.

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

James

Thank you, QRoutes. Your support is helping vulnerable families.

Abortion as an accessibility issue

Unless you have lived under a rock for the last year or so, most of you will probably have heard about the overturning by the US Supreme Court of Roe v. Wade, that guaranteed women the right to an abortion under the US Constitution. I won’t go into the ethics of this debate right now (if you actually care about my position, women must have that choice, end of), but I do want to touch on an unexpected consequence of that ruling. It is leading to a cascading effect on prenatal and antenatal care and similar healthcare services in rural areas. Simply put, its accelerating the closure of natal units and making access to such care increasingly difficult for women in rural areas.

Research on the effects of geographic proximity to pre-natal care shows it is stark: if its harder to access such services, fewer women use them, which increases the risks of complications. We often think about accessibility planning in terms of providing public transport links. And that’s important. But providing the services in local communities is often the better solution. And in this case, if a law is making access to such care hard, providing a bus link will be an increasingly-think sticking plaster over a gaping wound. Heal the wound, don’t stretch the plaster.

Hopefully not too far from the nearest hospital (Source: Vladimir Pustovit)

Bus bunching is a bugger

Why do buses always come in threes? Its not because planners working in the bus depot can’t timetable a bus if their life depended on it, or because the bus company decided to have a laugh one day. Nope, it is because it is a mathematical certainty. The logic goes like this. The first bus sets off, and fills up with passengers from the stop, causing it to get delayed. The next bus comes a few minutes later, picks up fewer passengers at the stop, and catches up with the first bus. The next bus flies past the stop that has nobody standing there and catches up with both buses. This great game shows bus bunching in action, and it is well worth your time playing it.

It has been well-studied over the years. Different solutions have been tried to mitigate the issue once it has started. Including the use of crowding data, terminating buses early (very effective this one), and holding buses to give the chance for preceding buses to get more of a head start. Not sure how the last one will go down with area traffic commissioners, but there we go. To truth of the matter is that it is an extremely tricky problem to predict, and even more tricky to tackle. So it is one that will be around for some time to come.

Thank you to The Accessible Link. You are 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.

• Study Finds the Best Way to Call a Cat (Gizmodo)

• China’s ‘Ugliest Buildings Survey’ Showcases Weird Architecture (Bloomberg)

• New cars, once part of the American Dream, now out of reach for many (Washington Post)

• Fear and Loathing on the F Train (NextDraft)

• Click here: Twitter alt text meme that isn't funny for blind people (BBC News)

Something interesting

The moquette’s of the London Underground are legendary. And I may or may not have purchased a throw made out of the moquette for the District Line for my new sofa (I regret nothing). In this video, Geoff Marshall talks to the designer of the moquette’s used on London Underground.

If you do nothing else today, then do this

A new report by the International Transport Forum recommends performance indicators for new mobility policies. And they are running a webinar on it. You should check both of them out.