Welcome to the February 2019 issue of The Transportist, especially to our new readers. As always you can follow along at the  blog or on Twitter.

I spent much of the last month in the Northern Hemisphere, visiting the relos in California, Arizona, Maryland, and Pennsylvania, as well as attending the Transportation Research Board conference and seeing many old friends and colleagues. We presented a bunch of papers. Let me know if you want copies.

TransportLab

• We are pleased to launch TransportLab, a new interdisciplinary research group at the University of Sydney, aimed at finding solutions to transport problems, independent of domain.Members of the group come from the Faculties of Architecture, Design, and Planning (Somwrita Sarkar and Jennifer Kent) and Engineering (David Levinson, Mohsen Ramezani, Emily Moylan, and Mengying Cui). Our research themes are: Access, Connect, Control, Design, Rely, Sustain.Current question we are researching include:
• System Impacts of Autonomous Vehicles
• Transport and Land Use Interactions
• Transport System Performance Measures
• Traffic Operations and Control
• Network and Spatial Inequalities

Let us know if you want to collaborate on or sponsor research.

Follow us on Twitter @TransLab_Sydney. Subscribe to our Newsletter. Visit the website.

Conferences

• TransportCamp Sydney 2019 will be held on the University of Sydney campus. TransportLab is pleased to host and sponsor.

WalkSydney

• Countdown 
• If you care about walking in Sydney, and want to get involved, go here.

News

Macromobility:

Transit and Microtransit

• Metro Transit plans big rollout of more rapid bus service – strib
• #microtransit is dead; long live micro transit – David Block-Schachter
• Ford is shutting down its Chariot shuttle service – techcrunch
• Meme Weeding: Unions and Construction Costs – Alon Levy
• 10 years and $2B later, what is the future of light rail in metro Phoenix? – azcentral

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

•  Is 2019 The Year That Robot Delivery Takes Over The Retail World? – Forbes
• Self-driving vans will deliver Walmart groceries in Surprise – azcentral.com

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

• Roads melt as temperatures break records across NSW – smh [Concrete is better]

Mesomobility:

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

• Volkswagen to write off Gett investment – Reuters

Micromobility:

Human-Powered Vehicles/Bikes/Pedestrians/Scooters/eBikes/Last-Mile/First-Mile/Last-Meter/First-Meter/etc.

• Limes not lemons: lessons from Australia’s first e-scooter sharing trial – theconversation.com
• Bike share operators face up to $2750 penalty for bikes in the wrong place – smh.com.au
• Dockless Mobility Data – Nathan Stevens
• $30 plug-and-play kit converts a Bird scooter into a “personal scooter” – boingboing
• Lime ordered to remove scooters off Gold Coast streets ‘in two hours’ – LimeBike
• Bike-sharing firm Ofo’s dramatic fall from grace a warning to China’s tech investors – SCMP

Electrification

• Records ‘blown away’ as rising power bill fears trigger solar PV surge smh.com.au
• ​NSW largest solar farm gets government’s green light A solar farm which will be the largest in NSW and be big enough power a city of almost a million people is a step closer to reality after getting the green light from planning authorities.  smh.com.au

Kerbs and Curbs

• 5 numbers that surprised us at TRB– Jacob Baskin
• Will scooters find a (curb) space of their own in 2019? How scooters can learn how to fit in – Kenny Durrell
• Does your city need more parking, or just better maps?​  – Kenny Durrell
• City’s Traffic-Clogged Streets Drive Need for Parking-Ticket Professionals – wsj
• Cincinnati’s Curb of the Future – Uber Under the Hood

Land Use

• The Australian Dream Died Alone in an Apartment – bloomberg
• No skyscrapers, mega-malls in Xi’s Xiong’an New Area – atimes.com

Intercity Trains

• The travails of Germany’s rail passengers A quarter of long-distance trains are late – economist.com
• Rising Waters Are Drowning Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor bloomberg.com

Aviation and Space

• People Pay More to Fly Delta for One Simple Reason – View from the Wing
• Flying Car Predictions Are More Pessimistic in the Age of Trump – paleofuture
• Delivery Drones Cheer Shoppers, Annoy Neighbors, Scare Dogs – WSJ

Infrastructure

• Chicago Dug the World’s Biggest Flood-Stopping Tunnel. What if the City Got It Wrong? The Deep Tunnel was supposed to provide “a total solution to the flood problem.” It hasn’t. slate.com

Equity and Justice

• Chicago Seizes And Sells Cars Over Tickets, Sticking Drivers With Debt – wbez
• ​Yellow vests knock out 60% of speed cameras: France’s interior minister says protesters have rendered more than half of speed cameras useless. bbc.co.uk
• Fatal Force: 2018 police shootings database – WaPo

Funding and Finance and Governance

• L.A. may charge drivers by the mile, adding freeway tolls to cut congestion – LA Times
• Fewer than 20% of the American population voted for DJT. 62,979,636 / 328,953,020

Climate

• Sydney’s Desal[ination] plant to be switched – The Australian

History

•  Historical Map: Sydney Railway Map, 1939  transitmap.net

Behavior

• Sidewalk Labs Plans to Package and Sell Location Data on Millions of Cellphones theintercept.com
• Update on Australian transport trends (December 2018) – Charting Transport
• What explains variations in journey to work mode shares between and within Australian cities? – chartingtransport.com

Fantasy

• Public servants run the numbers over Musk’s ‘bargain’ Blue Mountains tunnel – smh
• Flying taxis within five years? Not likely – the conversation

Media

• Roma: A Thread

Professoring

Publishing

• New Hack of the Scholarly Publication System: Danger to Google Scholar By Town Peterson and Jorge Soberon

Research & Data

Papers by Us

• Huang, Jie, David Levinson, Jiaoe Wang, Haitao Jin (2019) Job-worker spatial dynamics in Beijing: Insights from Smart Card Data. Cities 86 89-93 [doi]

Papers by Others

• Derrible, Sybil (2019) An approach to designing sustainable urban infrastructure

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)