Thank you to all who purchased Elements of Access and Metropolitan Transport and Land Use in recent months. Copies are still available.
Transportist Posts
- Why I am leaving TheFacebook. See you on the Internet
- Sydney University should get a Sydney Metro station
- Speed vs. Safety [With this follow up Tableau]
- Uber’s self-driving car killed someone today
- Quotes/Interviews on the Uber AV:
- Oliver Moore in Toronto Globe & Mail “Uber pulls driverless cars off Toronto roads after pedestrian fatality in U.S.“
- Laura Bliss in Citylab “Fatal Uber Crash Raises Red Flags About Self-Driving Safety“
- 2SER Interview The Wire: Uber Death Drives Discussion Around Autonomous Vehicles
- Quotes/Interviews on the Uber AV:
- Stealing the Presidency: A Scenario
- Normalizing Citations – Beyond the H-index [With this follow up by Tom Sanchez] [Note (Years since degree), rather than (Years since degree – 2) really favors new academics, although any normalization will help]
- How traffic signals work: Some terms
- How much time is spent at traffic signals?
Transport News
Uber’s AV Killed Someone
I’m beginning to think Uber gives capitalism a bad name.
(in reverse chronological order, oldest at bottom)
- Former Uber Backup Driver: ‘We Saw This Coming’ – Citylab – Laura Bliss
- Uber’s autonomous test cars had Volvo’s safety systems disabled: report – Jalopnik [Az Gov. Rescinds Uber’s testing] (Also Bloomberg)
- Nvidia suspends self-driving tests globally – source – CNBC
- Uber’s self-driving car project is struggling—the company should sell it – Ars Technica – Tim Lee
- On crosswalks and safety driver interventions for robocars – Brad Templeton
- Cracking Down on Automated Vehicles Would Mean More Death and Destruction – Marc Scribner
- Uber-Herzberg re-teaches the Tesla-Brown lesson. And it will happen again. – Bern Grush
- Almost every thing that went wrong in the Uber fatality is both terrible and expected – Brad Templeton
- Uber’s Self-Driving Cars Were Struggling Before Arizona Crash – NY Times
- LIDAR Maker Velodyne Blames Uber In Fatal Self-Driving Car Crash – Jalopnik
- Self-Driving Cars Are Being Tested on My Community’s Streets, but I Didn’t Have a Say – Slate
- Video suggests huge problems with Uber’s driverless car program – Ars Technica – Tim Lee
- It certainly looks bad for Uber – Brad Templeton
- Uber Video Show the Kind of Crash Self-Driving Cars Are Made to Avoid – Wired
- What Uber’s autonomous vehicle fatality tells us about the future of place – Adie Tomer (Brookings)
- Elaine Herzberg’s Death Isn’t Uber’s Tragedy. It’s Ours. – The Drive (Alex Roy)
- Video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8MqXIqoTraM …
- Was the Fatal Uber-Accident Result of a Classification Problem? thelastdriverlicenseholder.com – Mario Herger
- How Uber’s Self-Driving Technology Could Have Failed In The Fatal Tempe Crash – Forbes – James McPherson
- Searching for the City in the Self-Driving Car – Self-Driving Cars – Sarah Jo Peterson
- Toyota suspends US driverless car tests – BBC
- Legal lessons for Australia from Uber’s self-driving car fatality – The Conversation
- Exclusive: Tempe police chief says early probe shows no fault by Uber – sfchronicle.com
- The First Pedestrian Has Been Killed by a Self-Driving Car. Now What? – CItylab – Laura Bliss
- Uber robocar hits and kills pedestrian in Arizona – Brad Templeton
- Uber self-driving car hits and kills pedestrian – Ars Technica – Tim Lee
- Uber halts self-driving tests after pedestrian killed in Arizona – The Verge
- Uber self-driving car crashes with bicyclist in Tempe – CNET
- Uber self-driving car crashes into another car in Pittsburgh: It’s not clear if Uber’s driverless car did anything wrong. – Ars Technica – Tim Lee
AVs
- Self-Driving Car Ticketed; Company Disputes Violation – Jackie Ward, CBS SF Bay Area
- Meet our newest self-driving vehicle: the all-electric Jaguar I-PACE – Waymo
- Waymo and Jaguar Team Up With 20,000 Car Self-Driving Fleet – Bloomberg
- Steps to autonomy – Ben Evans
- The Real Story of Automation Beginning with One Simple Chart – Scott Santens
- China gives Baidu go-ahead for self-driving tests after U.S. crash – Reuters
- Apple expands self-driving car initiative, now has more testing vehicles than Uber and Tesla – Boy Genius Report (Rumour and innuendo)
- General Motors: Autonomous Vehicle Production Begins Next Year. – The Drive
- Uber self-driving car crashes into another car in Pittsburgh – arstechnica
- The unexpected thing that happens inside Waymo’s self-driving minivans – WaPo
- Waymo goes totally unmanned, arbitration and other news – Brad Templeton
- Lyft to Bring Driverless Car Tech to Broader Auto Industry – NYTimes
- Uber’s self-driving trucks are now delivering freight in Arizona – The Verge
- Toyota Announces New Company Devoted to Self-Driving Cars – WSJ
- Smartcar raises $10 million from NEA and Andreessen Horowitz for developers to build apps – VentureBeat
- Uber launches Uber Health, a B2B ride-hailing platform – TechCrunch
SVs/Taxis/Car Sharing
- Uber Agrees on Southeast Asian Sale to Grab – Bloomberg
- Lyft is testing a Netflix-style monthly subscription plan 30 rides for $199 a month. Or is it $300? theverge.com
- Lyft says its revenue is growing nearly 3x faster than Uber’s – techcrunch
EVs
- Lithium-ion Battery Costs and Market (2017) – Bloomberg
- UPS moves to using only electric vehicles in London A ‘smart grid’ will allow a large fleet to charge at once ft.com
HPVs/Bikes/Pedestrians
- First full prototype of pedal-electric Podbike unveiled in Norway – New Atlas
- Alibaba Leads $866M Financing Round In Ofo, Increasing Control Of Bike-sharing Firm – chinamoneynetwork
- The Unhelpful Ways Cities Talk About Bike Helmets – Citylab
- the costs of stop and go as well as spinning – tingilinde.typepad.com
Roads
- Infrastructure Australia reveals top priorities to fix Sydney’s $15 billion congestion problem – SMH
- Drivers Are Breaking the Law, Slowing Commutes and Endangering Lives. [Double Parking] – Alex Bell
- Is Your E-ZPass the Key to Congestion Pricing? – NY Times
- Become a parking savant with Sidewalk Labs’ new curb visualization tool – The Verge
- 24 per cent drop in road casualties since 20mph rolled out in Edinburgh – The Scotsman
- Traffic deaths continue to soar despite cities’ pledges to get them to ‘Zero‘ – WaPo
- ‘Stop Killing Kids,’ Traffic Safety Advocates Protest – Citylab
- Highway Robbery – the cuff-linked kind – michael west.com.au
Aviation
- Amazon issued patent for delivery drones that can react to screaming, flailing arms – SMH
- Boeing Is Getting Ready to Sell Flying Taxis – Bloomberg
Transit
- The genius of the London Tube Map – Michael Bierut (TED)
- $425m IT upgrade for transport agencies veers off the rails – SMH
- Eastern Suburbs and Illawarra Line to stand alone in a decade: report [privatisation] – SMH
- Falling transit ridership poses an ‘emergency’ for cities, experts fear – Washington Post [US Transit is in perpetual crisis]
- The Gateway Project Doesn’t Need Trump’s Approval – Alon Levy (Citylab)
- Brisbane trams: Why we no longer take them to work, and where to go for a ride today (ABC)
- Stormy seas ahead as TfNSW loses critical Opal Card privacy case – salingerprivacy.com.au
- TriMet changes fare evasion penalties – KOIN
Ferries
Intercity Rail
- Another 30 miles of California’s bullet train route must run at lower speeds, documents show – LA Times
Land Use
- Future Transport 2056 vs Metropolis of Three Cities – Transport Sydney Bambul Shakibaei
- Are the jobs in the centre of the city? – Alan Davies
- Zoning Increases the Price of Housing in Australia by a Lot – Marginal Revolution
- Is peak construction over? Seattle development declines at fastest rate in more than a decade – Seattle Times
Science
- The Simple Algorithm That Ants Use to Build Bridges – Quanta Magazine
- Ship exhaust makes oceanic thunderstorms more intense – Phys.org
Economics
Justice/Equity
- Extensive Data Shows Punishing Reach of Racism for Black Boys A study of 20 million children shows the fragility of the American Dream. nytimes.com
- Airbnb makes service more accessible to people with disabilities – TechCrunch
- ‘Wheelchair Accessible’ Routes Incorporated Into Google Maps – droidlife
Security
Research & Data
- Ermagun, Alireza, and Levinson, D. (2018) Spatiotemporal Traffic Forecasting: Review and Proposed Directions. Transport Reviews. [doi] [free – 50 copies]
- Measuring Multimodal Network Connectivity
- Carlson, Kristin; Murphy, Brendan; Ermagun, Alireza; Levinson, David; Owen, Andrew. (2018). Safety in Numbers: Pedestrian and Bicyclist Activity and Safety in Minneapolis. Center for Transportation Studies, University of Minnesota. Series/Report Number CTS 18-05. Retrieved from the University of Minnesota Digital Conservancy,
http://hdl.handle.net/11299/194707. - Le Vine, Scott, Kong, Y, Liu, Xiaobo, and Polak, John (2017) Vehicle automation and freeway ‘pipeline’ capacity in the context of legal standards of care. Transportation
- sidewalklabs/sumo-web3d sumo-web3d – Web-based 3D visualization of SUMO microsimulations using TraCI and three.js. github.com
- Behind the Curbs: Building the Curb Map – Jacob Baskin, Coord
Books
Now available:
- Elements of Access: Transport Planning for
Engineers, Transport Engineering for Planners. By David M. Levinson, Wes Marshall, Kay Axhausen. 342 pages, 164 Images (most in color). Published by the Network Design Lab.
Nothing in cities makes sense except in the light of accessibility. Transport cannot be understood without reference to the location of activities (land use), and vice versa. To understand one requires understanding the other. However, for a variety of historical reasons, transport and land use are quite divorced in practice. Typical transport engineers only touch land use planning courses once at most, and only then if they attend graduate school. Land use planners understand transport the way everyone does, from the perspective of the traveler, not of the system, and are seldom exposed to transport aside from, at best, a lone course in graduate school. This text aims to bridge the chasm, helping engineers understand the elements of access that are associated not only with traffic, but also with human behavior and activity location, and helping planners understand the technology underlying transport engineering, the processes, equations, and logic that make up the transport half of the accessibility measure. It aims to help both communicate accessibility to the public.
Purchase:
- PDF (Electronic Download) (on Gumroad)… $8.88
- High Quality Color Trade Paperback (on Blurb)… $28.88
- Very High Quality Color Hardcover (on Blurb) … $88.88
- The End of Traffic and the Future of Access: A Roadmap to the New Transport Landscape. [3rd Edition] By David M. Levinson and Kevin J. Krizek.
- Softcover, Black and White ($US 18.88)
- Softcover, Color ($US 28.88)
- Hardcover, High Quality Color ($US 67.49)
- PDF via Gumroad ($US 8.88)
- Kindle ($US 9.99)
- iBooks ($US 9.99)
- Metropolitan Transport and Land Use: Planning for Place and Plexus [2nd Edition] By David M. Levinson and Kevin J. Krizek.

PURCHASE
- Routledge
- Amazon
- Barnes and Noble (Nook – eBook)
Previous Issues
- The Transportist: October 2016
- The Transportist: November 2016
- The Transportist: December 2016
- The Transportist: January 2017
- The Transportist: February 2017
- The Transportist: March 2017
- The Transportist: April 2017
- The Transportist: May 2017
- The Transportist: June 2017
- The Transportist: July 2017
- The Transportist: August 2017
- The Transportist: September 2017
- The Transportist: October 2017
- The Transportist: November 2017
- The Transportist: December 2017
- The Transportist: January 2018
- The Transportist: February 2018
- The Transportist: March 2018