Transportist: June 2019

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

designing the 30-minute city

I briefly made an incursion upon the USA, and gave the 12th Annual Wachs Lecture, designing the 30-minute city, available on YouTube. (Note: There are some sound issues for the first few minutes, but those get resolved quickly.)

The Conversation

• How to increase transit ridership by up to 35 percent with one weird trick.

  • (Full report: Lahoorpoor, Bahman and Levinson, David (2019) Catchment if you can: the effect of station entrance and exit locations on accessibility). [The Conversation article was hugely popular, with over 70,000 views, but definitely read the full report if you are into data or into Sydney].

  • (See also Redfern Station Upgrade - New Southern Concourse.)

• How close is Sydney to the vision of creating three 30-minute cities? (By Somwrita Sarkar, Hao Wu, and me, based on this paper: Sarkar, Somwrita, Wu, Hao and Levinson, D. (2019) Measuring polycentricity via network flows, spatial interaction, and percolation. Urban Studies. [doi])

• Strangely enough, I also wrote this: Tanda lampu lalu lintas manjakan mobil, hambat pejalan kaki (This article was originally published in English)

Transportist (the blog)

• Sydney Metro Opening Day: A Review

• In praise of brief articles

• The Magic of Streetcars, The Logic of Buses , excerpt from A Political Economy of Access

WalkSydney

• Pedestrians count / Count pedestrians

Transport Findings

• Carrion, Carlos and David Levinson (2019) Uncovering the influence of commuters’ perception on the reliability ratio

• Moylan, Emily and Sarkar, Somwrita (2019) Defining urban centres using alternative data sets

• Schmid, Basil and Axhausen, Kay W. (2019) Predicting response rates of all and recruited respondents: A first attempt

• Volker, Jamey and Handy, Susan (2019) Projecting Reductions in Vehicle Kilometers Traveled from New Bicycle Facilities

• Noland, Robert B. (2019) Trip patterns and revenue of shared e-scooters in Louisville, Kentucky

Professoring

Papers by Us

• Carlson, Kristin, Murphy, Brendan, Owen, Andrew, Ermagun, Alireza, and Levinson, D. (2019) Safety in Numbers for Bicyclists at Urban Intersections Transportation Research Record. [doi]

• Carrion, Carlos and David Levinson (2019) Uncovering the influence of commuters’ perception on the reliability ratio. Transport Findings. [doi]

• Ermagun, Alireza, and Levinson, D. (2019) Spatiotemporal Short-term Traffic Forecasting using the Network Weight Matrix and Systematic Detrending Transportation Research part C.  104, July 2019,  38-52 [doi] [free until June 21, 2019] (working paper is always free)

by Others

• Bain, Robert (2019) Call Yourself a Forecaster? "At its worst, the situation today results in technically-competent modelling professionals treating demand forecasting as an end-of-process inconvenience; the remaining and somewhat rushed to-do before the final invoice can be submitted. Wrong! "

• Conway, Matthew (2019) How transit fares affect accessibility

• Henao, Alejandro (2019) The Good, The Bad and the Unknown of Uber and Lyft

• Victoria Walks (2019) Fall-related Injuries While Walking in Victoria

• Carlson, Kristin (2019) Research Brief: Park-and-ride transit gives suburban commuters higher access to jobs

Research

• Survey for Uber Pick-up Times (A PhD student is trying to determine the actual distribution of schedule delay for Uber pickups, you can help expand human knowledge by sharing your data. It will not be used for nefarious purposes.)

Revived Open Access Journals

• The Journal of Public Transportation is back

News

• Transit and Microtransit

  • Sydney Metro North West: Day One

  • Why Write About Elon Musk? (by Jarrett Walker)

  • 'Stop it!': Anti-groping app a big hit for Japanese commuters

  • Despite national security concerns, GOP leader McCarthy blocked bipartisan bid to limit China’s role in U.S. transit

  • Metro [LA] is hemorrhaging riders. It needs to stop studying obvious fixes and start acting

  • End of the line for two on-demand bus trials in Sydney amid cost concerns “According to Transport for NSW, the average cost per passenger of operating the on-demand services across the trial areas is $34.56 per trip.”

  • Crowded trains? Planning focus on cars misses new apartment impacts

  • Changes to Opal fares for peak periods in regulator's sights

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

  • Stanley Robotics The first outdoor valet parking robot ... a bit niche, but interesting application enabling even more people to drive and park at airports.

  • Self-Driving Trucks Will Carry Mail in U.S. for the First Time [Which recalls the air-mail subsidies that the US government used to promote aviation]

  • Hand Gestures And Horses: Waymo’s Self-Driving Service Learns To Woo The Public

  • What if self-driving cars will actually hurt Uber and Lyft?

  • One more note on the Uber fleet -- it makes surge [supply] go away*

  • A Confused Police Officer Pulled Over a Self-Driving Vehicle on Its First Day Carrying Passengers

  • Tesla shares drop after report says its Autopilot system was engaged during a fatal crash

  • Australia is ramping up autonomous vehicles – but we are on track to make the same mistakes we made with cars

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

  • Fiat Chrysler Set for Renault Deal That May Lead to Merger

  • 'Pothole Vigilantes' come out at night to fix Oakland streets

  • Of all the problems our cities need to fix, lack of car parking isn’t one of them

  • Poll: 61 percent of D.C.-area residents favor plan to add toll lanes to Beltway, I-270

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

  • Uber, Lyft drivers manipulate fares at Reagan National causing artificial price surges

  • GM Scales Back Maven Car-Sharing Business

  • Uber ends its first day of trading down more than 7%

  • Lyft fights to avoid Americans with Disabilities Act in federal court

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

  • Sydney's New NW Metro - A Micromobility Opportunity Lost or Grabbed?

  • 3 Charts on the rise in cycling injuries and deaths in Australia

  • How China’s ‘Unicorns’ Shook a Bicycle Town

  • Melbourne's 'Little' streets could be closed to cars at times under council plan

    • CBD drivers could spend more time at red lights under council plan

• Electrification, Energy, Environment

  • Six Years Ago, He Helped Expose VW’s Diesel Fraud. This Year, G.M. Let Him Go.

• Land Use and Maps

  • Here Grows New York City, a Time Lapse of NYC’s Street Grid from 1609 to the Present

  • The Medieval Town Generator

  • The London Green Belt

• Retail, Wholesale, Logistics, Supply Chain, Freight

  • Cooking As A Service

  • Burger King’s latest plan to reach customers: Whoppers delivered right to your car.

  • Startup WeekDay Space aims to solve the issue of long commutes

  • Amazon’s Freight Push Rattles Logistics Sector

• Equity and Justice and Privacy and Ethics

  • London’s Tube network to switch on Wi-Fi tracking by default in July

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 1 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 (2014) Garrison, William and Levinson, David