Welcome to the latest issue of The Transportist, especially to our new readers. As always you can follow along at the transportist.org or on Twitter. Covid-19 retains its top spot in the armageddon-of-the-month rankings for three months running, after surpassing fires, and overtaking Middle East war.
Open Access Access Redux
We are pleased to announce that you can now download a PDF version of A Political Economy of Access: Infrastructure, Networks, Cities, and Institutions from the University of Sydney eScholarship Repository. (Free)
A Political Economy of Access: Infrastructure, Networks, Cities, and Institutions
Why should you read another book about transport and land use? This book differs in that we won’t focus on empirical arguments – we present political arguments. We argue the political aspects of transport policy shouldn’t be assumed away or treated as a nuisance. Political choices are the core reasons our cities look and function the way they do. There is no original sin that we can undo that will lead to utopian visions of urban life. The book begins by introducing and expanding on the idea of Accessibility. Then we proceed through several major parts: Infrastructure Preservation, Network Expansion, Cities, and Institutions. Infrastructure preservation concerns the relatively short-run issues of how to maintain and operate the existing surface transport system (roads and transit). Network expansion in contrast is a long-run problem, how to enlarge the network, or rather, why enlarging the network is now so difficult. Cities examines how we organize, regulate, and expand our cities to address the failures of transport policy, and falls into the time-frame of the very long-run, as property rights and land uses are often stickier than the concrete of the network is durable. In the part on Institutions we consider things that might at first blush appear to be short-run and malleable, are in fact very long-run. Institutions seem to outlast the infrastructure they manage. Many of the transport and land use problems we want to solve already have technical solutions. What these problems don’t have, and what we hope to contribute, are political solutions. We expect the audience for this book to be practitioners, planners, engineers, advocates, urbanists, students of transport, and fellow academics.
URI
https://ses.library.usyd.edu.au/handle/2123/21629
[That’s right, we made A Political Economy of Access a free download. Get your copy now. Read it. Make your students and friends and colleagues read it. No excuses. You have the time.]
Conferences
Bridging Transport Research - will be (and always has been) run entirely online. While original aimed at researchers from countries who could not travel for economic or political reasons to the Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting, that is now a much broader category of people, and will be held in August 2020. Papers are due May 15.
In happier matters, I am thinking about a Reviewers Guild to help break academics from their subservience to the for-profit journal publishing hegemony. An editable Google Doc is available to read at the link. Let me know if you are interested in participating.
Transportist Blog
Transport Findings
Travel in the time of Covid-19. Transport Findings welcomes short papers on the impact of the virus on travel behavior and traffic or on the impact of travel on virus spread.
Transport Findings is now indexed in the Directory of Open Access Journals
Willem Klumpenhouwer, Lina Kattan (2020) Principles of Least Action in Urban Traffic Flow
Matthew Graystone, Raktim Mitra (2020) What Makes the Gears Go ‘Round? Factors Influencing Bicycling to Suburban Regional Rail Stations
Marcel Moran (2020) Eyes on the Bike Lane: Crowdsourced Traffic Violations and Bicycle Infrastructure in San Francisco, CA
WalkSydney
Doctors, public health and transport researchers call on government to enable safe walking and cycling during the COVID-19 pandemic and into the future. #SpaceForHealth
News & Opinion
Coronavirus affects
Companies’ use of thermal cameras to speed return to work sparks worries about civil liberties
NSW Transport boss flags potential shake-up of Sydney infrastructure plans
The Pandemic Shows What Cars Have Done to Cities [by Tom Vanderbilt]
Automobiles Seeded the Massive Coronavirus Epidemic in New York City
'A ton of demand': Bike shops in recruitment mode as cyclists flock to the roads
Committee for Sydney urges government to fast-track transport projects
Student known as vocal critic of China faces expulsion from Australian university
Mobility Trends Reports [Apple]
Flights are grounded – is this the moment we give up our addiction to flying?
Road toll worse than last year despite COVID-19 traffic slump [Melbourne]
Fatal crashes surge despite sharp drop in traffic across Minnesota
On streets emptied by coronavirus, L.A. officials crack down on speeding
Coronavirus stay-at-home orders reduced traffic accidents by half [Los Angeles]
For public transport to keep running, operators must find ways to outlast coronavirus
Decongestion Pricing: Singapore roads to go (mostly) free next week
Transit and Microtransit
Human-Driven Vehicles, Signs, Signals, Sensors, and Markings, and Roads
Walking, Biking, Micromobility
Your partner in efficiency by Steve Crandall
Land use
Office workers shrinking space [scroll down]
Interesting Research (by others)
Nello-Deakin (2020) Environmental determinants of cycling: Not seeing the forest for the trees?
King and Krizek (2020) The power of reforming streets to boost access for human-scaled vehicles
Saberi (2020) Traffic jams are contagious. Understanding how they spread can help make them less common
Books
The 30-Minute City: Designing for Access. (2019) By David M. Levinson (Book 5 in the Access Quintet)
A Political Economy of Access. (2019) By David M. Levinson and David A. King (Book 4 in the Access Quintet)
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 Quintet)
Spontaneous Access: Reflexions on Designing Cities and Transport (2016) by David Levinson. (Book 2 in the Access Quintet)
The End of Traffic and the Future of Access: A Roadmap to the New Transport Landscape (3rd edition). (2017) By David M. Levinson and Kevin J. Krizek. (Book 1 in the Access Quintet)
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)