Transportist: July 2018
Welcome to the June 2018 issue of The Transportist, especially to our new readers. As always you can follow along at the blog or on Twitter.
Posts
Why is Public Transport Use Higher in Australia than America
Signalling inequity – How traffic signals distribute time to favour the car and delay the pedestrian. An edited version of this appeared on The Conversation June 11, 2018 and was picked up by The Guardian.
Chart of the Day: 1929 Signal Schedule and Traffic Flow Diagram - streets.mn
Making Traffic Signals Fair for Pedestrians - Streetsblog
Jobs
Post-Doc: Transportation Justice / Transportation Planning / Emerging Technologies - University of Toronto
The Urban Transportation Center (UTC) at the University of Illinois at Chicago is seeking to hire a postdoc with excellent communication skills to work on transportation policy issues, transit planning and performance measures, and mobility solutions including autonomous/connected vehicles. Requirements include a doctorate in civil engineering, urban planning or public policy. The selected candidate will also be required to work with graduate research assistants and assist the UTC director in pursuing external grant opportunities. The appointment will begin in the Fall of 2018. There will be no teaching requirement. Interested candidates should send a letter of interest and CV to the attention of Dr. Kazuya Kawamura at kazuya@uic.edu with the subject line "UTC postdoc".
Contests and Scholarships
Lendlease Bradfield Urbanisation Scholarship: ($10000) Are you a 1st or 2nd year student with a big vision for Sydney?
Calling all "outside the box" thinkers! Do you have the next brilliant idea to help solve or improve a current transportation policy or system management challenge? Submit a 2,000 word proposal, PowerPoint presentation, video or other media form outlining your creative ideas -- and you could win $10,000! Visit http://outsidethebox.gmu.edu/ for submission guidelines.
Calls
ADD30 the TRB standing committee on transport and Land Development, together with WSTLUR, has issued a call for papers for next TRB meeting titled - Accessibility for Policy and Practice. More details could be seen in this link https://annualmeeting.mytrb.org/CallForPapers/Details/634
News
New Statesman – Issue on Transport
https://www.newstatesman.com/sites/default/files/transport_32pp_8june.pdf
Automated, Autonomous, Driverless, and Self-Driving Vehicles, and Semi-Autonomous Systems
Phoenix will no longer be Phoenix if Waymo’s driverless-car experiment succeeds - Technology Review
Don't watch TV while safety driving - Brad Templeton
At 30kph, this will be the fastest driverless vehicle to hit Australia's roads - ABC
How startups are building driverless cars without Google’s billions - Ars Technica ... The three AV business models:
Startups with slow shuttle services (Voyage, Navya)
Semi-automated and slowly decrease human input (Tesla, Fiat Chrysler)
Full driverless tech but geofenced (Waymo, Cruise)
Bryant Walker Smith "Early automated driving will have at least two of these three: slow speeds, simple environments, and semisupervised operations."
The Battle for Best Semi-Autonomous System: Tesla Autopilot Vs. GM SuperCruise - Alex Roy
Japan looks to launch driverless car system in Tokyo by 2020 - Reuters
Cadillac will put SuperCruise 'hands-free' driver system on all cars beginning in 2020 - CNBC
Shared Vehicles/Ride-sharing/Ride-hailing/Taxis/Car Sharing
As yet another ridesharing platform launches in Australia, how does this all end? - The Conversation
Google Maps removes Uber integration - ArsTechnica
China’s Didi Chuxing continues its international expansion with Australia launch - TechCrunch
Electric Vehicles [and Renewable Energy]
Solar Has Overtaken Gas and Wind as Biggest Source of New U.S. Power - Bloomberg
Free Power From Freeways? China Is Testing Roads Paved With Solar Panels - NY Times
Human Powered Vehicles/Bikes/Pedestrians/Scooters/eBikes/etc
City of Sydney plans to 'thin out' to finish cycling grid - SMH
Walkers over cars: Council proposes drastic changes to make CBD more pedestrian friendly - The Age
Scooter startup Bird is seeking a $2 billion valuation VCs have never before participated in such a rapid and rocketing price spike. axios.com [I am clearly doing something wrong]
The Scooter Economy Scooters are everywhere, and the use case is amazing. stratechery.com
Human Driven Vehicles, Signs, Signals, Sensors, and Markings, and Roads
Portland Deploys Data-Tracking Traffic Sensors to Save Lives - Next City
These Smarter Stoplights Could Be Lifesavers - Governing
Domino's Is Fixing America's Crappy Roads For Pizza Safety And That's Pretty Embarrassing - Jalopnik
"There's only four things we do better than anyone else: music movies microcode (software) high-speed pizza delivery." Stephenson "Snow Crash"
Transit
Massachusetts Sandbags the North-South Rail Link - Pedestrian Observations (Alon Levy)
The real benefits of real-time transit data – Sidewalk Talk – A Sidewalk Talk Q&A with researcher Candace Brakewood - Eric Jaffe
When is a Dedicated Bus Lane Not a Dedicated Bus Lane? - CityLab
Ferries/Ports/Maritime/Canals
Land Use
How an Ambitious Minnesota Eco-Project Became a Density Battleground - CityLab
The Cities That Never Existed What if the urban visions of famous architects and planners had actually been built? - Darran Anderson - The Atlantic
Is Chongqing's 'horizontal skyscraper' the answer to overcrowded cities? - The Guardian
Justice/Equity
Another tale of two cities: access to jobs divides Sydney along the 'latte line' - The Conversation
White supremacy playbook: the law is for you, not for me - Lisa Schweitzer
Trump's bid for Sydney casino 30 years ago rejected due to 'mafia connections’ - The Guardian
Fantasy
The Boring Company’s Chicago project seems awfully cheap for something so big - The Verge
The strange tale of the hovertrain, the British hyperloop of the 1970s - Wired
Kerbs and Sidewalks
Smart Highways – ‘Watch the Kerb’ - Neil Herron
https://flickread.com/edition/html/5b03da28d6fff#50As scooters, bikes, and transit startups flood the streets, cities need to control the curb - Curbed
Retail, Freight, and Logistics
Where Have America’s Truck Drivers Gone? - Virginia Postrel @ Bloomberg
Arizona law gives delivery robots same rights as pedestrians – but they must abide by same rules - Fox Mews
Technology
The Future of Identity in the Mobility Market – Jacob Baskin
LinkedIn debuts Your Commute, navigation and maps to evaluate jobs based on how far they are - TechCrunch
Technology History
Confessions of a Disk Cracker: the secrets of 4am. - Paleotronic Magazine
Research & Data
University of Minnesota Accessibility Observatory (2018) Access Across America: Transit 2017
Tang, W., and Levinson, D. (2018) An empirical study of the deviation between actual and shortest travel time paths. ASCE Journal of Transportation Engineering, Part A: Systems . 144 (8) [doi]
Shaping Conversations about Transit with Interactive Isochrone Mapping - Anson Stewart
Aim for cities of all sizes to give everyone a fair go - Somwrita Sarkar at The Conversation
Traffic is complex, but modelling using deceptively simple rules can help unravel what's going on The Coverversation
Nature's traffic engineers have come up with many simple but effective solutions - The Conversation
Berkeley Open Sources Largest Self-Driving Dataset analyticsvidhya.com
Fed up with always being in the slow queue? That's why queues are being 'designed out' - The Conversation
Growing cities face challenges of keeping the masses moving up, down and across - The Conversation
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)