Posts

• A Political Economy of Access – Reviewers Wanted
• Does bike sharing have a future in Australia?
• Dr. Chelsey Palmateer: The Distribution of Access
• To make better streets, we must first measure them
• On the Four Paths

Conferences

• Save the date for the World Symposium on Transportation & Land Use Research #WSTLUR in Portland, OR July 13-15, 2020

Jobs

• University of Sydney – Lecturer/Senior Lecturer in Data Analytics in Logistics & GIS at ITLS

News

Automated, Autonomous, Driverless, and Self-Driving Vehicles, and Semi-Autonomous Systems 

• Waymo topped 9 million miles in August 2018. They are doing a million miles a month in automated mode.
• Waymo just laid out its vision for a driverless future Plus, there’s a way it can actually make money. – qz.com

Shared Vehicles/Ride-sharing/Ride-hailing/Taxis/Car Sharing

• China’s Didi suspends carpooling service after another female passenger is mudered – TechCrunch
• Uber gears up for shift to bikes on short trips – FT
• Toyota Investing $500 Million in Uber in Driverless Car Pact – WSJ
• Mike Munger on non-ownership – Arnold Kling
• McFeely: West Fargo man victim of ‘vomit fraud,’ – wday
• Uber Hit With Cap as New York City Takes Lead in Crackdown – NY Times

Electric Vehicles [and Renewable Energy]

• There are now more than 1 million EVs in Europe after sales soared by + 40% in the first half of the year.
• Using a crane and concrete blocks to store energy for later retrieval – Kottke

Human Powered Vehicles/Bikes/Pedestrians/Scooters/eBikes/etc

• In Charlotte: For July:
  • Shared Bikes: 27,453 trips, 19,430 miles, 0.7 mile average
  • Electric scooters: 100,273 trips and a 139,215 miles, 1.4 mile average
• Horace Dediu (asymco) has a new podcast: Micromobility
• Cycle, walk, drive or train? Weighing up the healthiest (and safest) ways to get around the city – The Coversation
• To Get Ready for Robot Driving, Some Want to Reprogram Pedestrians – Bloomberg [This is perhaps the worst idea. And there are many bad ideas]
• To make streets walkable, empower pedestrians to cross anywhere – Ben Ross
• Push for pedestrian crossings to always be green  – couriermail.com.au
• CityCycle initiative has turned around, with a 35 per cent increase in patronage  – Brisbane Times

Human Driven Vehicles, Signs, Signals, Sensors, and Markings, and Roads

• After 60 Years, I-95 Is Complete – Bloomberg
• Transurban gets green light from regulator to bid for WestConnex – smh
• Our new PM wants to ‘bust congestion’ – here are four ways he could do that – The Conversation
• We hardly ever trust big transport announcements – here’s how politicians get it right  – The Conversation
• Are Australian bridges safe, and can we do better? – The Conversation
• What Brought Down This Bridge in Genoa? – citylab
• ‘Immense tragedy’: Motorway bridge collapse in Italy leaves dozens dead – smh
• End to traffic congestion predicted but we may have to give up control of our cars to achieve it​ – news.com.au . [Centralized control is a bad idea]

Transit

• Melbourne orbital rail proposal – Daniel Bowen
• Sydney’s Airport Line operator seeks greater share of revenue pie – smh [It’s a privately built and run subway line. The fares were initially set absurdly high, til the government subsidized them at non-airport stations. Evidence that profit maximizing ≠ welfare maximizing.
• Inside the train chaos and how a balloon shut parts of the system down [Narrator: It was software.] – SMH
• The Dynamics of Bus Bunching – Alon Levy
• Bus Pollution Is a Blast From the Past [It’s down 90% 2000-2018] – Streetsblog

​Land Use/Architecture

• This Town – SMBC (comic)

Justice/Equity

• U.S. is denying passports to Americans along the border, throwing their citizenship into question – WaPo
• Parents fined for letting kids walk to school unsupervised [Queensland] – SBS
• Undeterred by violence, students close Dhaka’s roads to demand justice [For traffic deaths!] – smh

Kerbs and Sidewalks

• How Coord enables real-time payment for parking

Retail, Freight, Waste, and Logistics

• Rio Tinto delivers first iron ore with autonomous train – Logistics Magazine
• Driverless Grocery Delivery in Phoenix Could Start This Fall – Phoenix New Times
• Food delivery service Foodora to exit Australia – smh

Technology History

• Google map of all trolley lines in US c. 1957.
• Analysis | How 2,000-year-old roads predict modern-day prosperity – WaPo
• What Can and Cannot Be Planned​ – Mike Munger

Education

• Default lecture capture: In defense of academic freedom, safety and well-being – Julie Cupples

Isochrones and Maps

• New York City in Timespace – Gradient Metrics
• Atlas of Urban Expansion – Sydney
• 25 Years of Urban Growth and Density Change in 66 Cities – Reddit

Aviation

• All hail the flying taxi Some of the world’s biggest companies are scrabbling to develop flying cars. Tom Vanderbilt asks whether they are likely to take off – 1843magazine.com

Fantasy

• A hyperloop route between St. Louis and Kansas City is under serious consideration. The Verge

Research & Data

by Us

• These Are the American Cities Where Transit Access to Jobs Is Getting Better – Streetsblog

by Others

• ‘Beware Fake Econometrics‘ by Rob Bain in Infrastructure Investor (pdf)

Books

• Metropolitan Transport and Land Use: Planning for Place and Plexus (2018) by David M. Levinson and Kevin J. Krizek.
• Elements of Access: Transport Planning for Engineers, Transport Engineering for Planners. (2018) By David M. Levinson, Wes Marshall, Kay Axhausen.
• Spontaneous Access: Reflexions on Designing Cities and Transport (2016) by David Levinson.
• The End of Traffic and the Future of Access: A Roadmap to the New Transport Landscape. (2017) By David M. Levinson and Kevin J. Krizek.
• The Transportation Experience: Second Edition Garrison, William and Levinson, David (2014)