Transportist: October 2019

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.

Jobs

• Multiple Academic Opportunities with the School of Civil Engineering, University of Sydney

Master of Transport

• Masterclass for Master of Transport, October 8

Transportist (the blog)

• The Precarity of Our Situation

• Observations of Melbourne

• Late Democracy

• Gradial, or the Unreasonable Network

• Sydney Could Go Dutch | CityHub

WalkSydney

• WalkSydney’s List of Aims

• Submission: NSW Road Rules

• Submission: Pulse of Greater Sydney

• Membership

Transport Findings

• Predicting a vehicle’s distance from short duration data

Conferences

• World Symposium on Transport and Land Use Research

News & Opinion

• Transit and Microtransit

  • Metros and Marshrutkas – taking a ride in Tbilisi: part 1

  • Stuttgart 21’s Impending Capacity Problems and Timed Connections

  • Don't fence me in: commuters rail against tram stop safety barriers

  • The Future is Not Retro

  • Why are fewer people riding the Underground? The reason is not what you think

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

  • Calls for congestion charging to be introduced to de-clog city roads

  • Does TTI Underestimate Historic Traffic Levels (They are at it again, this response is from 2013, but still basically right)

  • Drive-thru brothels: why cities are building 'sexual infrastructure'

  • Lane Ends, Merge Right: 10 (More!) Redesign Ideas for the W4-2 Road Sign

  • Paris is testing 'noise radar' that will automatically ticket loud cars

  • London 20mph plan: TfL green light plan after consultation

• Vehicle Automation

  • Navigating through Pedestrians (video)

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

  • The Impacts of Uber and Lyft on Transportation (video)

• Electrification, Energy

  • Australia is the runaway global leader in building new renewable energy

  • EV Startup Canoo Debuts First Subscription-Only Vehicle

  • The new normal: Electric vehicle sales double in Australia, petrol car sales slump

  • San Francisco makes $2.5 billion offer for PG&E electric system

  • Saudi Arabia oil output takes major hit after apparent drone attacks claimed by Yemen rebels 

  Bikes etc.

  • New Miami Hurricane Hazard: Dockless Scooters as Projectiles

  • Melbourne blue bike share scheme scrapped after poor patronage

    • Is ending Melbourne Bike Share the right decision?

  • Bird shutters bike lane program due to misuse of funds

  • Pros And Cons Of Banning Cars In Cities

  • The Unsettling Rise of the Urban Narc App

  • Fewer cars in Sydney CBD opens way for cycleway, more pedestrian space

  • How I Learned to Cycle Like a Dutchman

• Curbs and Footpaths and Crosswalks

  • The FARS Side: Distracted Pedestrians [do not cause many crashes]

  • A city is only as accessible as its sidewalks. This map shows DC’s are often blocked.

• Land Use

  • Talking Headways: A Streetsblog Podcast: Episode 246: Access as a Metric

  • Takeaway chain El Jannah ready to rip down Sydney’s ‘chicken curtain’

  • Flexible working, the neglected congestion-busting solution for our cities

  • Will the Western Sydney Aerotropolis really deliver on jobs?

  • Sydney’s moment of truth: In a decade, Sydney will be home to an extra 1.3 million people. How we accommodate them is causing angst in our suburbs and presents a huge challenge to government.

  • How Radial is General Travel in Melbourne

  • Caltex [Gas Stations] Divests 50 ‘Apartment-Ready’ Sites

• Retail, Wholesale, Logistics, Supply Chain, Freight

  • U.S. threatening to pull out of Universal Postal Union

  • Amazon’s Next-Day Delivery Has Brought Chaos And Carnage To America’s Streets — But The World’s Biggest Retailer Has A System To Escape The Blame

• Intercity Trains

  • Virgin Trains USA to begin work on $4bn Las Vegas to LA rail link in 2020

  • 'There's No Such Thing As Cold, Hard Reality': Meet The Hyperloop's Truest Believers

• Aviation & Space

  • Lithium Metal Batteries Power Drones For 70 Percent Longer

  • A space elevator is possible with today’s technology, researchers say (we just need to dangle it off the moon)

• Miscellany:

  • Maine to allow ranked votes in general presidential election

  • Speaking Out Against Student Evals

  • The Rise of Peer Review: Melinda Baldwin on the History of Refereeing at Scientific Journals and Funding Bodies

  • Almost one-third fewer birds in North America than in 1970

• People

  • 2020 TRB Annual Meeting: Sue McNeil, 2019 Roy W. Crum Award Recipient

Research by Others

• Boeing, Geoff (2019) Urban Spatial Order: Street Network Orientation, Configuration, and Entropy,  Applied Network Science

• Hale, Chris (2019) The Transit Transformation Australia Needs

• Hendrigan, Cole (2019) A Future of Polycentric Cities
  
  

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 (3rd edition). (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 Garrison, William and Levinson, David (2014)