ITS Monday: Edition 4, 2024
A small, weekly collection of curated content from the worlds of intelligent transport systems, smart mobility, and associated areas.
Included this week, impacts of/on WFH, autonomous vehicles and safety and ethics, congestion pricing, e-scooter injury (data) trith, and more.
The article headlines below are:
- Three city regions, three different experiences: The impact of lockdown severity on working from home and the potential implications for cities
- Autonomous Vehicles: Friend or foe (or both)?
- What moral principles should self-driving car algorithms follow in situations where harm is unavoidable?
- From London to New York: Can quitting cars be popular?
- Congestion pricing offers potential alternative to gridlock
- Why hot Australian cities keep laying dark heat-absorbing asphalt, and not pale ‘cool roads’
- Electrifying Everything Will Include More Of Aviation Than You Think
- Are E-Scooter Users More Seriously Injured than E-Bike Users and Bicyclists?
And just in case you hadn’t caught it yet, we have a recent series of interviews with transport professionals – Effects of COVID on the transport sector – what they see now, what they would like to happen post-pandemic, and what they think will happen. If you’d like to be join this conversation, drop us a line!
This week’s articles
Now, scroll down, and see what’s in this week’s edition. Oh, and before you do, be sure check out the quickest way to receive our new content via the subscription box just below …
First up this week new academic paper on the topic of working from home, by Matthew Beck, David Hensher, and Camila Balbontin, all of the University of Sydney’s Institute of Transport and Logistics Studies (ITLS).
From the abstract:
“We find that irrespective of the degree of severity of the lockdown and the duration thereof, employee preferences for working from home, and importantly productivity, remained unchanged. Rather than diminishing the desire to WFH, evidence indicates that as periods of lockdown extend the desire to continue WFH only seems to intensify. While all workers express a preference to continue WFH in an unrestricted world, more often than they did prior to the pandemic, we further identify three broad segments of workers based primarily on how much of a balance they can strike between the benefits and challenges of WFH, which dictates how often they would like to WFH. Given that the desire to WFH more and the positive externalities of increased WFH, we argue that measures to support ongoing WFH are important to sustainable cities and the people who live in them, across several dimensions.”
Related iMOVE project outcomes:
Autonomous Vehicles: Friend or foe (or both)?
More content output from the good people of ITLS, from its ‘Thinking outside the box’ series. In this piece Abdullah Zareh, Andaryana, Michael Bell, and Mohsen Ramezani think on the question posed in the title.
Related iMOVE articles:
Related iMOVE project outcomes:
- Safely deploying automated vehicles on Australian roads
- Ipswich Connected Vehicle Pilot: Final reports
Yes,of course the trolley problem is mentioned here, as is Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill. This is from the ABC website in the Religion & Ethics section, and is authored by Milad Haghani, Senior Lecturer at the University of New South Wales, specialising in disaster risk and public safety.
READ THE ARTICLE
From London to New York: Can quitting cars be popular?
“Cities around the world reveal surprising truths about getting the public on board with cutting car-use. Despite the ongoing pushback, cities around the world are continuing efforts to reduce traffic and improve air quality by encouraging drivers to switch from polluting cars to greener transport.”
Related iMOVE articles:
- FACTS: A Framework for an Australian Clean Transport Strategy
- Traffic Congestion Info, Projects & Resources
Congestion pricing offers potential alternative to gridlock
“With increasing congestion in major cities, UNSW Sydney suggests that congestion pricing may offer an alternative strategy to managing gridlock in peak-hour traffic.”
An interview with Dr Christopher Standen, a research fellow in applied urban development at the School of Population Health at UNSW Medicine & Health.
Related iMOVE articles:
- Traffic congestion in Australian cities: What’s really happening, what can we do?
- Road pricing reform: a thorny issue
Why hot Australian cities keep laying dark heat-absorbing asphalt, and not pale ‘cool roads’
“Sebastian Pfautsch doesn’t hesitate when asked what he would change first to cool Australian cities in summer. And it’s not what you might expect. It’s not the seemingly endless expanse of black roofs, soaking up the sun beneath a shimmering haze. It’s the roads. About a third of any outer suburb is thermally dense black asphalt that can reach 75 degrees Celsius, according to Professor Pfautsch, an expert on urban heat at the University of Western Sydney.”
READ THE ARTICLE
Electrifying Everything Will Include More Of Aviation Than You Think
“As we’ve seen in this series on electrifying everything everywhere all at once, all ground transportation — except for tiny niches like vintage cars — will be grid tied or battery electric. Bulk shipping will plummet with peak fossil fuel demand and batteries will power all inland and most short sea shipping, and biodiesel will power the rest.
But what about aviation? Those aluminum pressurized tubes hurtling through the air, 38,000 feet high, at a significant portion of the speed of sound, carrying hundreds of souls?”
Related iMOVE articles:
READ THE ARTICLE
Are E-Scooter Users More Seriously Injured than E-Bike Users and Bicyclists?
“Policy makers are grappling with the advent of a variety of new transportation technologies known as micromobility. These include e-scooters, e-bikes, as well as conventional bicycles. While these modes of travel offer many opportunities for more sustainable mobility there are concerns about the risk of injury, particularly those associated with e-scooters. In New Jersey, conventional bicycle and/or pedestrian-involved crashes make up just 3% of motor vehicle crashes but represent 30% of fatalities (Younes, Noland, Von Hagen, et al., 2023). E-scooters are often perceived as more dangerous than other micromobility modes, and we have begun to examine these issues.”
Related iMOVE articles:
Related iMOVE project:
READ THE ARTICLEWe used to send out a weekly newsletter, ITS Weekly Roundup, a collection of ITS- and mobility-related news from across the world. ITS Monday is a replacement for that, a collection of links to news and opinion pieces, academic papers, and more. Additionally, you can follow us on Linkedin and Twitter, both of which have a focus on iMOVE news and projects, or subscribe to our bi-monthly newsletter.
*Inclusion in ITS Monday does not equal iMOVE endorsement. It’s more aimed at discovery, thought, or discussion … or all of those and more. And while for the most part I expect content to be current, a little age doesn’t mean diminished interest.
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