Welcome to the October 2018 issue of The Transportist, especially to our new readers. As always you can follow along at the blog or on Twitter.
Transport Findings
“If I had more time I would have written a shorter letter.”
Transport Findings is an interdisciplinary, open access journal focused on short, clear, and pointed research results. Follow on Twitter or RSS. Let me know if you are interested in participating (as an author or editor/reviewer).
Posts
- Sport in Australia: A Primer for Americans
- Eleven Sydney council areas where pedestrians die more than motorists
- When pushing the pedestrian button works and when it doesn’t | SMH
- Towards a Transport Accessibility Manual
- The Future of Transport and Access (graphical summary of talk)
Conferences
Books
- Laura Vaughan – Mapping Society: The Spatial Dimensions of Social Cartography (free PDF available)
News
Macromobility:
Transit
- Why trackless trams are ready to replace light rail – Peter Newman in The Conversation
- More Americans Now Telecommute Than Take Public Transportation to Work – Governing
- Experts warned on high costs of Sydney light rail project six years ago – smh
- Sydney light rail to get high priority over motorists at intersections – smh
Automated, Autonomous, Driverless, and Self-Driving Vehicles, and Semi-Autonomous Systems
- Elon Musk reportedly asks Tesla employees to test full self-driving version of Autopilot – Verge
- Elon Musk reaches deal over Tweets, fined, gives up Chairman role – BBC
- Ikea is now interested in self-driving cars – Fast Company [It’s a terrible idea, cars should get right-sized, not living-room sized]
- The dance between pedestrians and robocars – Brad Templeton
- Self-Driving Car Developers Should Put Pedestrians First Opinion – Peter Norton, Wired
- Driverless Hype Collides With Merciless Reality The bubble around self-driving cars is turning into a “trough of disillusionment.” – WSJ
- A message from the new CEO of comma.ai – Medium
- How Self-Driving Supergroup Aurora Plans to Make Robocars Real – Wired
Electric Vehicles [and Renewable Energy]
Human-Driven Vehicles, Signs, Signals, Sensors, and Markings, and Roads
- Jakarta aims to introduce electronic road pricing in 2019 – Straits Times
- Privatising WestConnex is the biggest waste of public funds for corporate gain in Australian history – Chris Standen – The Conversation
- In the era of new mobility, the streets of the future must change – Remix
- Placebo buttons: Australian pedestrians press for no reason at traffic lights – The Guardian
- Hierarchy of Japanese Streets – Jane Jacobs Japan
- Making roads work harder (smart roads, materials) – Foreground
Mesomobility:
Shared Vehicles/Ride-sharing/Ride-hailing/Taxis/Car Sharing
- Lyft hits a major milestone: 1 billion trips It took the company six years to reach that goal – theverge.com
- How Uber is making traffic even worse History is repeating itself. – axios.com
Micromobility:
Human-Powered Vehicles/Bikes/Pedestrians/Scooters/eBikes/Last-Mile/First-Mile/etc
- [1] Fatal e-scooter accident emerges just as California legalizes riding without a helmet: Texas authorities say a 24-year-old Dallas man died from blunt force injuries to his head after falling off his Lime electric scooter, likely making him the -washingtonpost.com
- [2] Scooter rider fatally struck by SUV in Dupont Circle, officials say Officials said it is the first fatality in the city involving a shared scooter service. washingtonpost.com
[EVERYONE, NOTE, Bikeshare was around for years before the first and only Divvy bike fatality in 2016 and the first and only Citibike fatality in 2017 (I can only find 2 US bikesharing deaths to date in over a decade of use, Scooters had 2 last week). The danger levels of bikesharing is nothing compared to scooters under current designs, usage patterns, and poor infrastructure.]
- Segway is back, and it’s coming for your last shred of dignity – Fast Company
- California adults get OK to ride motorized scooters without helmets – sfgate
- Sabotage suspected after brakes fail on Seattle bike share injuring teen – KOMO
- 700 shared electric scooters to be let loose on Christchurch streets – Stuff [Scooter bubble arrives in Oceania]
- MoBike suspending service in Manchester UK – MoBike
Land Use/Architecture
- Bold plan to build new Sydney stadium suspended above Central station – Guardian
- Sending migrants to the regions is exactly the wrong idea – The Age
Justice/Equity
Kerbs and Sidewalks
- NACTO Shared Streets Initiative
- Pedestrian Signals – Motion by Councillor Thallis, City of Sydney
- Why there’s no GTFS for curbs (yet) – Jacob Baskin
Retail, Freight, Waste, and Logistics
- Outside the box truck: Innovations in delivery that could change our cities – Anne Goodchild
- Amazon just bought 20,000 delivery vans. [1/5 size of UPS]
- Uber Is in Early Talks to Buy Europe’s Deliveroo – Bloomberg
Technology History
- A brief history of the numeric keypad – UX Collective
- New York’s Elevators Define The City – 538
Environment
Research & Data
Working Papers by Us
- Effects of Timetable Change on Job Accessibility
- Disparity of Access: Variations in Transit Service by Race, Ethnicity, Income, and Auto Availability
- I only get some satisfaction: Introducing satisfaction into measures of accessibility
- Accessibility, Equity, and the Journey-to-Work
- Link-based Internal and Full Cost Analysis
- Dockless in Sydney: The Rise and Decline of Bikesharing in Australia.
- Walking and Talking: The Effect of Smartphone Use and Group Conversation on Pedestrian Speed.
- Optimum Stop Spacing for Accessibility
by Others
- Do Digital Platforms Reduce Moral Hazard? The Case of Taxis and Uber – Erik Brynjolfsson
- Historical Railroad Data – Jeremy Atack
- How Connected Is Your Community to Everywhere Else in America? – NY Times
- Private Security Robots, Artificial Intelligence, and Deadly Force – Elizabeth Joh
Scientific Methods
- Google launches new search engine to help scientists find the datasets they need – Verge
- European science funders ban grantees from publishing in paywalled journals Bold move is intended to trigger open-access tipping point sciencemag.org
Other People’s Newsletters
Read the Transportist, but don’t just read the Transportist, also read:
- Movements A weekly newsletter covering emerging trends in mobility services and transportation. movements.substack.com
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)
David Levinson, Transportist 