Welcome to the seventh issue of The Transportist. As always you can follow along at the blog or on Twitter. I am pleased to report I am now in Sydney, as long promised. Contact information is at the bottom of this newsletter. Due to the move, it should have been a bit lighter than usual, oh well.

Transportist Jobs

• Recruiting Post-doc

Transportist Posts

Sydney

• Observations of Balmain, Rozelle, Lilyfield, and Leichhardt​
• The Royal Easter Show
• De-Duplicating Sydney’s City Road
• Sydney-side

Minnesota

• On Megaregions
• Richard P. Braun

Atlanta

• On the I-85 Bridge Collapse in Atlanta

Professoring

• On Access and Citations
• Handbook on Transport and Development … Now in Paperback

Transport News

Untied Airlines

• United: Broken Culture – Gassee
• United’s Unfriendly Skies – New Yorker
• United Airlines Passenger Is Dragged From an Overbooked Flight  – NY Times
• United Part 2: Misconceptions and realities – Brad Templeton
• What went wrong and how could United do better on bumping a passenger? – Brad Templeton
• It’s time for some game theory, United Airlines edition – Tyler Cowan
• Today is a good day to remember the great Julian Simon​ (who developed the auction for bumped passengers, among other things) – Alex Taborrak

Deleted Airlines

• Delta’s Meltdown – From the Airline Pilot’s Forum

Untied Railroads

• Train Stuck in Tunnel 3 Hours, Then Stun Gun Sparks Stampede – NY Times
• Snarled Commutes, Squabbling Agencies and Amtrak’s Penn Station Responsibilities – NY Times
• Explosion in St. Petersburg, Russia, Kills 11 as Vladimir Putin Visits – NY Times
• AAR: Rail Traffic increased in March – Bill McBride [But way down from 2006, goodbye coal]
  • First coal-free day in Britain since Industrial Revolution – BBC

Well-tied Railroads

• Grupo Mexico to buy Florida East Coast Railway for $2.1 billion – TCPalm.com (h/t Paul Druce)
• First China-bound direct freight train leaves London Xinhua (h/t Marginal Revolution)
• How Tube stations got their unusual names – BBC
• Labor’s $400m rail promise that would connect Badgerys Creek airport to suburbs from day ONE​ – Daily Telegraph

Untied Highways

• MARTA Prepares For More Riders Due To I-85 Collapse – WABE
• Sure. Blame The Crackhead. – Georgia Pol.com
• Atlanta interstate fire recalls Philly I-95 fire 21 years ago – Philly.com
• Atlanta’s 29 Counties Have Helped Spur on a Traffic Disaster – NY Mag

Untied Policy

• Australian Government considering decentralization of departments. – Canberra Times
• Infrastructure overhaul may top $1 trillion, cut red tape: Trump – Reuters [h/t Yonah Freemark]
• Australian Government to fast-track infrastructure in budget – ABC

Untried Policy

• Can we ever get road user charging to work? – Thomas the Think Engine
• Friedrich Hayek on Carbon Taxes – Niskanen Center
• Drivers get repair vouchers instead of tickets for broken car light – Star Tribune
• The endless circular airport runway – BBC
•  The many reasons ATC should be corporatized – Reason

Untied Taxis

(and you thought March and February were bad news months for Uber.)

• Uber tried to fool Apple and got caught Apple – The Verge
• Sometimes It Really Is the Cover-Up “*It’s not the crime, it’s the cover-up*” is a cliché, but in the case of Uber’s South Korean “karaoke/escort” bar scandal, it’s true. – Daring Fireball
• Road Pricing: A Solution to Gridlock – Uber Under the Hood – Andrew Salzberg on Medium
• Uber Executive Invokes Fifth Amendment, Seeking to Avoid Potential Charges – Daring Fireball
• How Uber Uses Psychological Tricks to Push Its Drivers’ Buttons – NY Times
• Uber’s’ response to NY Times Article – Andrew Salzberg on Twitter
• New York City Drunk Driving After Uber​ – Research Article
• Alphabet’s lawsuit against Uber, explained​ – Recode
• A new self-driving car startup just spun out of Udacity to challenge Uber with its own autonomous … – Business Insider
• LAX Is Raking In Millions From Uber And Lyft – Buzzfeed

There’s no bubble. Really, there’s no bubble.

• Commission your own traffic and construction studies without ever leaving bed – TechCrunch
• Tesla Hits a New Milestone, Passing G.M. in Valuation – NY Times
• Tesla, on a Hot Streak, Passes Ford in Investor Value  – WSJ
• I Stared Into the Political Heart of the Hyperloop – Gizmodo
• Google Maps picks up mapping analytics and visualization startup Urban Engines – Tech Crunch
• Ford Hires 400 BlackBerry Employees for Connected Cars Work – Bloomberg
• Here’s how much of America is occupied by big box stores.  Strong Towns
• Inflation for urban transit and parking running faster than overall CPI (Canada) – Jamie Carson (Twitter)
• AAA launches car-sharing service ‘Gig’ for drivers in Oakland, Berkeley – East Bay Times

After this Bubble

• Alphabet’s Waymo Offering Families Rides in Self-Driving Cars – WSJ
• No, Detroit is not winning the robocar race. – Brad Templeton
• Cars and second order consequences. – Benedict Evans
• Lillium Jet – Electric VTOL – YouTube
• Apparently, the Charming Backstory of Pixar’s “Cars” is that Autonomous Vehicles Killed Off the Human Race thenewswheel.com

Research

By us

• Measuring the transportation needs of people with developmental disabilities: A means to social inclusion (free version)
• Model Accuracy Data for Post-Construction Evaluation of Forecast Accuracy in Minnesota

By others

• Transportation Lifestyle Trends in the United States, 2006–2015 by Sarah Jo Peterson

Contact Information

David Levinson,
Professor of Transport Engineering
School of Civil Engineering, University of Sydney
david.levinson@sydney.edu.au
davidlevinson.org
transportist.org

THE UNIVERSITY OF SYDNEY
Mail to: David Levinson c/o School of Civil Engineering,
Rm 418, Civil Engineering Building (J05) | The University of Sydney | NSW | 2006

Office: Room 314, School of IT Building (J12) at the Corner of Cleveland Street and City Road

Office Phone Number:
Campus 7-6136
Australia: 0286276136.
International +61 286276136.

This month’s episode brought to you by the Glyph and Induced Demand (via David King).