The Transportist: April 2018
Welcome to the April 2018 issue of The Transportist, especially to our new readers. As always you can follow along at the blog or on Twitter.
Thank you to all who purchased Elements of Access and Metropolitan Transport and Land Use in recent months. Copies are still available.
Transportist Posts
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
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]
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)
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)
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
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
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 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
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
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
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]
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
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) ... $88.88
Still available ...
The End of Traffic and the Future of Access: A Roadmap to the New Transport Landscape. [3rd Edition] By David M. Levinson and Kevin J. Krizek.
In this book we propose the welcome notion that traffic—as most people have come to know it—is ending and why. We depict a transport context in most communities where new opportunities are created by the collision of slow, medium, and fast moving technologies. We then unfold a framework to think more broadly about concepts of transport and accessibility. In this framework, transport systems are being augmented with a range of information technologies; it invokes fresh flows of goods and information. We discuss large scale trends that are revolutionizing the transport landscape: electrification, automation, the sharing economy, and big data. Based on all of this, the final chapters offer strategies to shape the future of infrastructure needs and priorities.
Purchase
Softcover, Black and White ($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.
As cities around the globe respond to rapid technological changes and political pressures, coordinated transport and land use planning is an often targeted aim.
Metropolitan Transport and Land Use, the second edition of Planning for Place and Plexus, provides unique and updated perspectives on metropolitan transport networks and land use planning, challenging current planning strategies, offering frameworks to understand and evaluate policy, and suggesting alternative solutions.
The book includes current and cutting-edge theory, findings, and recommendations which are cleverly illustrated throughout using international examples. This revised work continues to serve as a valuable resource for students, researchers, practitioners, and policy advisors working across transport, land use, and planning.
PURCHASE
Barnes and Noble (Nook – eBook)