Transportist: June 2026
Welcome to the latest issue of The Transportist, especially to our new readers. As always you can follow me on Mastodon, BlueSky, or RSS.
I have also uploaded a lot of our shareable code and data to Github recently, you might follow that.
I will be at WSTLUR 2026 in Beijing this June, and then visit Chengdu and Hangzhou, maybe I will see you there.
Pointers
Transit
London and New York public transport use seems to have settled at 70–80% of the pre-pandemic peak, reflecting (mostly) WFH. Fridays are down 40%. [LONDON] [NYC] (h/t Ben Evans, Benedict’s Newsletter)
Sydney’s first electric ferry two years off as ambitions for entire fleet sink
Egypt opens high-speed monorail linking Cairo to desert capital
Transit Data
Timetable World — an archive of historical timetables, with a research section worth poking around in.
Parking
Security
Iranian hackers responsible for Los Angeles transit system breach, Israeli researchers say
US Education provider (KKR-owned) Instructure (d/b/a Canvas) was hacked, bringing the system down globally. ShinyHunters were paid. I really liked Moodle. I feel there has been no substantive progress in Canvas in nearly a decade, so they are just engaged in extraction, and that Universities (and High Schools!) keeping their student data remotely is just begging for trouble.
Infrastructure
Albanese government slashes funding for Inland Rail project — but HSR continues
Aviation
Spirit Airlines went under. My review from 2015 must have done it.
Vivid Sydney Drone Incident (Drones fall from the sky)
Bottlenecks
Strait of Hormuz payment system in the works (Spatial monopolies be spatial monopolising)
Austrian protesters shut vital motorway connecting Germany to Italy
Ridesharing
Ridesharing Institute Conversation, 22 April — Paul Minett’s lightly-edited recording of a conversation on fuel-crisis responses in Norway, the UK, Germany, and Australia, and on pooling as a demand-side policy lever. I might have said some things.
Reality television and its deleterious consequences for civilisation
Speed
Hazelwood road signs vandalised over reduced speed limits, Victoria
The Embedded Defaults of Cars [A nice blogpost from a UCLA student]
AI
Could AI’s leading men become as powerful as Ford or Rockefeller? — The Economist.
It would be highly ironic if stories about evil AI, warning of the risks of AI, were the parts of the training set that caused AI to act evil. And yet here we are.
Your regular reminder
Two killed, multiple injuries after car hits bystanders in Leipzig
Eight injured, four critically, as car rams into pedestrians in Italian city
Posts
Publications
Press
Australia’s $90 billion high-speed rail plan faces major hurdles — 7News. I was quoted.
But the challenging terrain means at least 70km of tunnels, making it the most tunnelled high-speed rail line in the world.
“We have more experience with tunnelling, and tunnel boring machines have gotten better. But this is a significant leap,” said Professor David Levinson from the University of Sydney’s School of Civil Engineering.
Professor Levinson warned the cost per kilometre is higher than any other high-speed rail in the world, including California’s troubled project.
Previous road closure traffic study suggests commuters more flexible than expected - WAVE. I was interviewed
LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WAVE) - For the upcoming I-65 summer shutdown, KYTC says plan to add 15 minutes during rush hour. But the question hanging on commuters minds, just how bad will traffic be?
Traffic engineers have been able to study major closures to learn about the impact on traffic flow. A professor who wrote a reporton what happened after the I-35W bridge collapse in Minneapolis in 2007 said traffic patterns here may not be as dire as expected.
The I-35W bridge carried 140,000 cars a day. But after it collapsed in August 2007, researchers didn’t find those cars choking up traffic on every other road. They only saw 90,000 cars from that interstate.
“50,000 vehicles disappeared. They no longer crossed the Mississippi River. Now, that doesn’t mean that the people didn’t make trips, but they made trips to different destinations,” said David Levinson, a University of Sydney Professor of Transport.
Levinson said their research after the Minneapolis bridge collapse learned drivers are more flexible than previously thought. “Carmageddon” in Minneapolis didn’t actually occur.
“And things would, of course, be more congested if everyone had traveled the same way, but everyone expected everyone else to travel the same way. So they decided not to travel that day if they could avoid it,” Levinson said.
No one planned for I-35W to collapse. Levinson’s study says there is a difference for construction closures like the I-65 summer shutdown, but not how you might think. Drivers adjust pretty well when they’ve had time to plan.
“I mean, there’s no question that there’ll be more traffic on the parallel roads. But I don’t think it’ll be the worst case scenario. I think people will have some flexibility about when they travel,” Levinson said.
He points out schools are out and people go on vacation. Unlike 20 years ago, GPS is also commonplace. More people may be willing to try a totally new route in place of I-65.
“People are more willing to go places because they know that they will not get lost. And I think fear of getting lost was a huge deterrent to a lot of travel before we had Google Maps and other types of live information,” Levinson said.
Levinson’s study found the traffic network was able to find balance around a planned closure. It took six weeks for traffic to find balance after the I-35W bridge collapse.
Monday’s commute may be influenced by how many people pay attention to the signs, the stories and the warnings about the I-65 summer shutdown.
