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Transportist Newsletter: April 2019
Welcome to the April 2019 issue of The Transportist, especially to our new readers. As always you can follow along at the transportist.org or on Twitter.
March was notable for the launch of A Political Economy of Access
Book: A Political Economy of Access
Now available: A Political Economy of Access: Infrastructure, Networks, Cities, and Institutions by David M. Levinson and David A. King, in paper and PDF.
ABOUT THE BOOK
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.
PURCHASE
Very High Quality Color Hardback on Blurb … $98.88
Very High Quality Color Trade Paperback on Amazon … $78.88
High Quality Color Trade Paperback on Blurb … $38.88
PDF, Color (with extensive hyperlinks) on Gumroad … $8.88
Transport Findings
The new open access journal Transport Findings continues to add articles. Follow the journal on Twitter. Visit the journal. Read. Submit. Cite. This month's articles include:
Stationless in Sydney: The Rise and Decline of Bikesharing in Australia
Inferred Switching Behavior in Response to Re-entry of Uber and Lyft: A Revealed Study in Austin, TX
Posts at the Blog
Priority for trams will likely make crossing Northbourne even worse | Canberra Times
As Parking Needs Shrink, How Will That Impact The Future Of Housing Design?
Pedestrian safety around light rail a balance: transport experts | Canberra Times
SMART Seminar Series: Evolving and Designing the 30-minute City
8th International Symposium on Transport Network Reliability (INSTR)
My Posts at WalkSydney
News
Elections
2019 NSW Election – The Transport Promises List - Kypros1992
2019 NSW Election: A transport perspective - Bambul Shakibaei
And the winner of the NSW State Parliamentary Elections is ... the COALition (the Liberals and Nationals)
Transit and Microtransit
Which lines are priorities for Sydney Metro conversion? Hint: it's not Bankstown Every major transport study since the 1970s has identified Sydney's western rail corridor as the priority for an upgrade. The latest patronage figures confirm that's where the need is greatest. Matthew Housell at theconversation.com
Construction Costs: Metro Accessibility It is much harder to find estimates of construction costs for elevator access to metro stations than to find estimates for the costs of new tunnels. pedestrianobservations.com
Remix picks up $15 million to help cities make better decisions around transit techcrunch.com
Students don't feel safe on public transport but many have no choice but to use it theconversation.com
Sydney Metro West geotech digging reveals potential stations – including a new “super Central” thestrategicweek.com
Automated, Autonomous, Driverless, and Self-Driving Vehicles, and Semi-Autonomous Systems
Bikes put spanner in works of Dutch driverless car schemes - share.postbeyond.com
Tesla is dealing with the failure to achieve full self-driving by shifting goalposts - Timothy B. Lee / Ars Technica
Tesla's "Full Self-Driving" Pricing Controversy Misses The Point thedrive.com
Waymo Starts Selling Sensors to Lower Cost of Self-Driving Cars bloomberg.com
Sweden to introduce self-driving buses into public transport next year dailysweden.com
Human-Driven Vehicles, Signs, Signals, Sensors, and Markings, and Roads
The radical plan to cut congestion on Sydney's roads smh.com.au
Genoa Bridge Collapse Throws Harsh Light on Benettons’ Highway Billions [Autostrade] nytimes.com
All New Cars To Have Speed Limiters Fitted, Rules European Parliament forbes.com
Shared Vehicles/Ride-sharing/Ride-hailing/Taxis/Car Sharing
Can a Ridehailing App Be Ethical? - motherboard.vice.com
How Bird plans to blanket the world with electric scooters without going bankrupt -theverge.com
The Servant Economy Ten years after Uber inaugurated a new era for Silicon Valley, we checked back in on 105 on-demand businesses. - theatlantic.com
Taxify rebrands as Bolt to expand its transport options beyond private cars - techcrunch.com
Singapore's Grab Raises $1.5 Billion From SoftBank Fund - bloomberg.com
Lyft S-1: 2018 revenue of $2.2B up 100% YoY, gross bookings of $8.1B from 1B+ rides, loss of $911M - CNBC
Zūm, a ridesharing service for kids, raises $40 million -techcrunch.com
Micromobility: Human-Powered Vehicles/Bikes/Pedestrians/Scooters/eBikes/Last-Mile/First-Mile/Last-Meter/First-Meter/etc.
The Five Categories of Micromobility - micromobility.io [Horace Dediu]
[Melbourne] Car-lovers beware: Lord mayor flags wider footpaths, more bike lanes - theage.com.au
[Brisbane] City’s Lime scooter fad sours theaustralian.com.au
Bike-sharing pioneer Mobike is retreating to China techcrunch.com
Electrification
German carmaking giants agree on strategy - electrive.com
A Behind the Scenes Take on Lithium-ion Battery Prices - BNEF
Land Use
Retail, Wholesale, Logistics, Supply Chain, Freight
Uber Freight is expanding into Europe - techcrunch.com
Intercity Trains
Why is east coast High Speed Rail still being taken seriously - Alan Davies at Crikey
Maps
In honor of Metro’s birthday, watch the system’s evolution since 1976 -- Greater Greater Washington
Science Fiction
Fantasy
'It’s a Car in a Very Small Tunnel': Actual Transportation Professionals Unimpressed With Musk's... jalopnik.com
Professoring
Scientists rise up against statistical significance - nature.com
Norway becomes latest country to ditch Elsevier - timeshighereducation.com
How publishers keep fooling academics bjoern.brembs.net
UC terminates subscriptions with world’s largest scientific publisher in push for open access universityofcalifornia.edu
Research
Papers by Us
Yokoo, Toshi, and Levinson, D. (2019) Measures of Speeding from a GPS-based Travel Behavior Survey. Traffic Injury Prevention. [doi]
Carrion, Carlos and David Levinson (2019) Route choice dynamics after a link restoration. Transportmetrica B: Transport Dynamics [doi]
Books by Others
Lecture and Book Launch: Planning Australia's Healthy Built Environments by Jennifer Kent and Susan Thompson
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)
Transportist Newsletter by David Levinson University of Sydney - School of Civil Engineering Sydney, NSW 2006 Australia
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