↔️ Tough Choices - MM#609

Making a better world means making the tough call

Good day my good friend.

Its been a rather strange week. An unwell dog and me being unwell myself will do that to a person. Maybe its a sign for me to slow down a bit (those of you who know me best will know that I am the worst for ignoring my own advice on slowing down). But there is so much good stuff going on, and good work to do!

While I am here, there has been a mini-surge in the number of people signed up to this newsletter. It is great to have you on board, and I hope that you are liking the calls to action, insight, and mistakes in spelling and grammar. Anyhow, onto the good stuff.

If you like this newsletter, please share it with someone else who you think will love it. I will love you forever if you do. ☺️

James

🔌 When to pull the plug

I have to say that I am not pleased at the Americanisation of the plug emoji. The British plug is one of the things about this country that I am truly proud of, and if this Tom Scott video doesn’t convince you nothing will. Anyway, this isn’t about how superior British plugs are. This is about HS2.

The fall out from Rishi Sunak’s decision to stop building the HS2 infrastructure north of Birmingham continues. Including things like levelling up, stories of people selling their homes, and the replacement plan of Network North only being illustrative. I will do something more detailed on Network North, but for now I will just say that this is a political document designed to get the Prime Minister out of a bind and not transport strategy.

Despite this anger, there is a difficult question that we often avoid when we try and build what are considered to be “good” things. At what point does the cost of the good thing not become worth it? This is a decision that is part science, part gut, and there is no right way to make it.

Next stop: not Manchester (Source: Seattle Star)

HS2 is a project with well-documented issues on cost and scope control. It is a scheme that is gold-plated to an almost absurd degree. Now this may be a noble goal. Why would you not have a project that is the best that it can be at everything?

Ignore the fact that on some things the logic is really rather odd (boring a tunnel through the Chilterns to minimise the ‘visual impact’ on hills that are already crossed by the Chiltern Main Line, the West Coast Main Line, and Midland Main Line being just one), this means that you are avoiding making a decision on the classic trade-off inherent in most projects…

Time, cost, specification. Pick two.

For those of you unfamiliar with this, if you choose meeting a deadline and keeping your costs down, you have to compromise on specification. If you choose meeting a deadline and a specification, your budget will be blown. If you want to keep a lid on costs and meet the specification, don’t count on meeting your deadline.

For too long, HS2 seems to have avoided making this choice. The scheme has been gold-plated, and the timescales have not shifted much. So cost has spiralled. From an admittedly low-ball £37.5 billion, to over £50 billion, to even more than that.

In delivering projects that will change the world to what we want it to be, it is necessary to continue asking a tough question: when is doing just enough good enough? When do things get to the point where you will have to compromise on something in order to achieve the wider benefit of having a scheme delivered at all?

I often hear it from professionals and advocates: no compromise on quality. No compromise on cost. No compromise on what we want. All admirable intentions. But they do not reflect reality. Only recently has construction inflation in the UK dipped down into single digits again. Materials inflation was at an astounding 25% last year. It challenging to not compromise at the best of times. But when inflation is running rampant, its foolhardy.

Resources are not unlimited, and just continuing with the scheme with no deviation and no exceptions is a recipe for ultimately cancelling projects. If we as people who want to change the world are not brave enough to make difficult decisions to deliver what we need, they will be made for us. We have to constantly question whether there are other ways to build this infrastructure, achieve this behaviour change, or to deliver the same outcomes of more sustainable and just places.

A failure to do so means that ultimately, we lose. Sometimes, achieving our vision of the perfect scheme is impossible, and chasing that challenging dream leads to nothing being achieved. Its a timely reminder to not let the perfect be the enemy of the good. A good but flawed scheme is almost always better than no scheme at all.

What you can do: A failure to plan is a plan to fail. In developing your schemes or policy road maps, always come up with an alternative plan. Keep that alternative to hand even when you have discounted it in favour of something better. In project meetings, always ask the question about whether what is being planned is good enough to achieve your outcomes. Once again, I highly recommend consulting the pages of the Infrastructure and Projects Authority for good advice.

For advocates, I always give this advice: ask for what you want, settle for what you need. They are often not the same. If you are advocating as a group, ask yourself constantly what “good enough” looks like. Remember this when making your points to the local council on planned schemes.

🎓 From academia

The clever clogs at our universities have published the following excellent research. Where you are unable to access the research, email the author - they may give you a copy of the research paper for free.

Demographic Breakdown of Transit Rider Satisfaction

TL:DR - Reliability is important to everyone.

To share or not to share? Revealing determinants of individuals’ willingness to share rides through a big data approach

TL:DR - More middle class, female, or young residents = more likely to share.

Evaluating the accessibility and availability of public services to reduce inequalities in everyday mobility

TL:DR - A new accessibility methodology is applied to São Paulo and Curitiba, in Brazil.

Fiscal sustainability and the composition of government investment: The case of investment in road infrastructure

TL:DR - Government’s invest in roads when debt markets get jittery about government debt.

✊ Awesome people doing awesome things

This one goes to the City of Edinburgh. Turns out that playing in hard to the motorist isn’t the vote winner that most think it is. Respondents to recent consultations and surveys show that, while views are often polarised and there are concerns on schemes, more often than not people support more walking and cycling in the city. As Councillor Scott Arthur says, while its not a green light to start on Monday, people trust the general direction.

A big congratulations to good friend Daisy Narayanan and her team for steering much of this work through. Often in the face of vile abuse. You rock! 🤘

More of this could be coming to Edinburgh (Source: Edinburgh Chamber of Commerce)

📖 The good book

After many years of wishing to, I finally got to read The Governance of the Smart Mobility Transition, edited by Louise Reardon and Greg Marsden. It was published in 2018, and the thoughts and lessons contained within it are as relevant today as they were then.

Iain Docherty’s chapter on new governance challenges, and Diane Davies’ on government capacity are especially good and relevant now. Its also very accessible for what is largely an academic text, which makes its lessons easily understood by all.

What you can do: Buy it, of course. That way the authors get some commission from the work. If you can’t do that, ask your local library to stock it and then loan it out. Or failing that, you could read the PDF of the book online.

🖼️ Graphic Design

China's metro System is 50% bigger than the next 10 countries combined (Source: r/dataisbeautiful)

Honestly, that is just astonishing. I didn’t know the USA had that high amount of metro systems!

What you can do: Metro schemes come up very rarely, and so need support when they do. So keep an eye out, and lend them your support when you can.

📚 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.

• Building networks: Investigating the quid pro quo between local politicians & developers (Marginal Revolution)

• The art of making good misstakes (Tim Harford)

• European gas prices soar on global supply disruption fears (Financial Times)

• ‘People are happier in a walkable neighborhood’: the US community that banned cars (The Guardian)

• On Hierarchy and the Civil Service (Pedestrian Observations)

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