Welcome to the May 2019 issue of The Transportist, especially to our new readers. We are testing a new newsletter platform, Substack. If you received this by email, you have been migrated, and no action is required on your part. As always you can follow along at the  transportist.org or on Twitter.

Laws

Like Newton in Mechanics or Tobler in Geography, we ought to have laws in transport. I posit the following:

• Law 1: Everyone complains about transport, independent of the quality of travel experienced.
• Law 2: Everyone is a transport expert.

Transportist(the blog)

• Subsidy | A Political Economy of Access [Excerpt from A Political Economy of Access]
• Access Quartet
• Dealing with the 5 Ps of access. [Review of Elements of Access]

• The 12th Annual Martin Wachs Distinguished Lecture in Transportation with David Levinson: Designing the 30-Minute City [I am going to be in LA, disproving the hypothesis that ‘Nobody Walks in LA’] (To be livestreamed here)
• The automobile as prison. The city as freedom.
• On Hypo- and Hyper-connectivity in Transport
• The U.S. has tried to build high-speed rail for 50 years | NPR Marketplace
• Passenger rail between the Twin Cities and Duluth: How a monster was born and raised | StarTribune

Foreground

• It’s the (political) economy, stupid: when it comes to urban transport, we’re doing it wrong [Excerpt from A Political Economy of Access]

WalkSydney

• Pedestrians are Fine, Don’t Fine Pedestrians
• Channelization of pedestrians at Broadway 

News

• Transit and Microtransit
  • Residents in train-starved suburbs to lose bus lanes
  • From streetcar to BRT: The return of the Selby-Lake transit corridor?
  • Why are subways in the U.S. so expensive?
  • Little Things That Matter: Bus Shelter
• Automated, Autonomous, Driverless, and Self-Driving Vehicles, and Semi-Autonomous Systems
  • Our Frictionless Future
  • Tesla’s autonomy event: Impressive progress with an unrealistic timeline
• Human-Driven Vehicles, Signs, Signals, Sensors, and Markings, and Roads
  • After a stop-start history, Hong Kong is restarting a road-pricing plan for traffic-clogged Central
  • £317m scheme to put traffic lights on motorways has made congestion worse, report finds
  • Why politicians throw money at ‘shovel ready’ station car parks
  • Congestion Pricing Is Coming to New York. New Jersey Wants Revenge.
  • The Streets Were Never Free. Congestion Pricing Finally Makes That Plain.
  • ‘There Is Beauty In Decay,’ Says Head Of Federal Highway Administration While Surveying Nation’s Crumbling Roads
• Shared Vehicles/Ride-sharing/Ride-hailing/Taxis/Car Sharing
  • Uber releases its long-awaited IPO filing
  • Uber Charges More If They Think You’re Willing To Pay More
  • 16 people arrested for allegedly stealing 100 Car2Go luxury cars
• Human-Powered Vehicles/Bikes/Pedestrians/Scooters/eBikes/Last-Mile/First-Mile/Last-Meter/First-Meter/etc.
  • Better city bike maps are made by volunteers
  • On Phoenix’s most dangerous streets, little has been done to address the pedestrian death toll
  • 84 Million Trips Taken on Shared Bikes and Scooters Across the U.S. in 2018[Which is about 1 trip per person per leap year]
• Electrification, Energy, Environment
  • Electric Car Price Tag Shrinks Along With Battery Cost
  • Australia’s electricity grid can easily support electric cars – if we get smart
  • Gas-Guzzling SUVs Become Election Battleground in Australia
  • London prepares for launch of ultra-low emissions zone
  • For the first time ever, electric cars outsold gas and diesel vehicles in Norway
  • Batteries are key to clean energy — and they just got much cheaper
  • Florida utility to close natural gas plants, build massive solar-powered battery
  • Labor’s plan for transport emissions is long on ambition but short on details
  • Labor EV target hailed, but NRMA wants total ban of fossil fuel car sales by 2030
• Land Use
  • Why is Britain so bad at planning cities?
• Retail, Wholesale, Logistics, Supply Chain, Freight
  • A Revolution Sweeping Railroads Upends How America Moves Its Stuff
• Intercity Trains
  • Brightline trains often seem empty. Is it a sign of trouble, or just growing pains?
• Maps
  • Network Evolution Movies, a Twitter Thread
• Equity and Justice
  • Migration blow-out raises doubts about government’s congestion-busting plans
• Fantasy
  • A glimpse into the Hyperloop bullshit feedback cycle
  • 1960: The Year the Singularity was cancelled.
• Aviation
  • Get set for take-off in electric aircraft, the next transport disruption
  • Western Sydney Airport noise levels could be ‘significantly higher’ than predicted, study finds
• Governance
  • NSW transport reshuffle a chance to rethink mobility[NSW (and Vic) are combining the Roads and Transport agencies. The US did this back in the 1970s, Australia has gone back and forth.]
  • Congress Is About to Ban the Government From Offering Free Online Tax Filing. Thank TurboTax.

Professoring

Papers by Us

• Sarkar, Somwrita, Wu, Hao and Levinson, D. (2019) Measuring polycentricity via network flows, spatial interaction, and percolation. Urban Studies. [doi]
• Chaloux, Nick,  Boisjoly, Genevieve,  Grise, Emily, El-Geneidy, Ahmed, and  Levinson,  D. (2019) I only get some satisfaction: Introducing satisfaction into measures of accessibility. Transportation Research part F. [doi] Volume 62, April 2019, Pages 833-843. (First 50 days free download)
• Carlson, Kristin et al. (2019) Exploring how managed lanes and park-and-rides affect transit accessibility

Books by Others

• Guangqing Chi, Jun Zhu (2019) Spatial Regression Models for the Social Sciences. Sage

Books

• A Political Economy of Access. (2019) By David M. Levinson and David A. King (Book 4 in the Access Quartet)
• Elements of Access: Transport Planning for Engineers, Transport Engineering for Planners. (2018) By David M. Levinson, Wes Marshall, Kay Axhausen. (Book 3 in the Access Quartet)
• Spontaneous Access: Reflexions on Designing Cities and Transport (2016) by David Levinson. (Book 2 in the Access Quartet)
• 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. (Book 4 in the Access Quartet)
• Metropolitan Transport and Land Use: Planning for Place and Plexus (2018) by David M. Levinson and Kevin J. Krizek.
• The Transportation Experience: Second Edition Garrison, William and Levinson, David (2014)