This was an interesting article. As it itself acknowledges, we probably wouldn’t totally get rid of planes or flying. But for climate reasons, we should definitely look to replace as many flights as we can with train journeys (high-speed and/or overnight sleeper trains), teleconferencing, electric bus coach journeys, etc.

As an Australian, it definitely seems clear to me that there will always be airports and flights here. To reach any other land from here will require flying (or, as the article suggests, a return of passenger ships – but the time-consuming nature of that means it’s not very likely to become popular again). Far-flung cities like Perth, Darwin or Cairns will also probably need scheduled passenger flights. But that said, currently a huge chunk of Australia’s aviation emissions are short-distance flights between cities in Australia’s southeast (Melbourne-Sydney, Sydney-Brisbane, etc. – and Sydney-Canberra is absolutely not a route that should ever have existed, the cities are like three hours apart by car!) and this is where high-speed rail would absolutely be a boon. Among infrastructure wonks here it’s kind of a meme, everyone loves the idea of high-speed rail, politicians love promising “feasibility studies” for a temporary boost in the polls, but it’s just not economic. Well, maybe if we actually factored in the externalities of all these fucking short-distance flights, suddenly it would be economic 🤷🏻‍♀️

Apparently, car tyres are responsible for almost 2,000x times the amount of pollution as emissions from the tailpipe. Just another point in support of the argument that electric vehicles are no silver bullet for the environment damage of car dependency.

Good post about how we need increased investment in public transport and cycling infrastructure to get people out of cars. Some particularly good points included:

• The value of a network is proportional to the square of the number of nodes in that network, so if you double the number of buses (or computers connected to the Internet, or whatever) you quadruple the usefulness of the network.
• It’s tempting to look at the slow, infrequent, buses that run for a short span of hours, or the piecemeal bits of safe cycling infrastructure that are separated from each other by car-dominated hellscapes, and say “Look, nobody’s using what we’re providing now! Why would we invest more money into it!?” But you can’t judge the need for a bridge by counting the people swimming across the river, and you can’t judge the demand for PT or cycling when the options provided are crummy.

Interesting piece. From what I hear, most of the Midwest is a car-dependent hell – just think what could have been!

Good post highlighting what I think is one of the major strengths of Sydney’s public transport system – the high service frequencies (10–15 minutes) all day, every day! God I wish we had that in Melbourne.