Monday’s Friday Reads – 13 January 2020

1. Reading the article on the cost of car use in Massachusetts, the largest part of the cost is road fatalities. Massachusetts has twice the UK’s road fatality rate per capita, which is actually pretty good by US standards, as the US overall is four times the UK (and about as bad as Mexico, Indonesia, Russia etc). Nevertheless that is something they could in principle do a lot about. But I suspect, like the gunshot fatality problem, there may those US-specific political impediments to doing the things we do in western Europe.

2. @Ivan: one wonders whether the higher fatality rate in the US isn’t simply due to the sheer necessity of driving a car, regardless of aptitude.

3. The only two sentences in that entire BBC trolleybus article that relate to the question posed by the headline are

   ‘ But the boom in private car ownership during the 1960s would spell the beginning of the end. Electricity prices rose and rapidly-growing cities soon outgrew a network of overhead cables in desperate need of investment.’

   I find it sad that that was enough to destroy them, especially given what we know now about the effects of ICE vehicles on air quality in cities. I suppose it reflects a general lack of investment and prioritisation of public transport networks on a national level at the time. Not that today is much better on that front – now it’s all just sugar-coated in hundreds of reports and feasibility studies that ultimately lead to nothing, (Leeds anyone?) instead of any kind of strategy that is at least somewhat immune to the political winds (in both directions)

4. As I understand it one of the major reasons for the demise of trolleybuses was nationalisation of electricity generation in the UK, which meant that trolleybus operators (who were mainly municipal councils, or combined transport and electricity companies) no longer generated their own power, and had to buy electricity at market rate instead of, to some degree, subsidising it from the proceeds of domestic and industrial current.
   Another under-rated element is that in some parts trolleybuses were always seen as an interim concept – a way of using tramway electrical infrastructure that still had life left in it after life-expired track and tramcars had been scrapped.

5. Trolleybuses also suffered from inflexibility (and I write as one old enough for the 662 to have been part of my childhood): they couldn’t pass each other, and couldn’t be diverted for road works or special events. And others may remember the exertions with the bamboo pole when they accidentally de-wired at junctions. Fabulous to ride on, though.

6. Phil E
   I have “been told” ( usual caveats apply ) that the world’s largest Trolleybus network – London, of course – was closed for two “reasons”
   One was the fashion of the times, that had already trashed the trams & was set to overspill into the Marples ( “Beeching” ) railway closures, in that the car was the answer to everyting – that or flying. [ Note ]
   The Second was that the overhead – all the knitting – was close to life-expired & rather than re-invest & keep clean air, it was short-term cheaper to just remove the lot & go over to louder, slower, smaller polluting Routemasters.
   { Yes, I remember Lodon “trolleys” – they were wonderful. Routes: 557 , 623, 625, 669, 685, 687, 697, 699 }

   [ Note: this latter is still around, as in “flying is sexy” hence the IMHO disgraceful “rescue” of Flybe … though
   that is a separate topic, so I’ll stop now. ]

   Second note: Power generation was Nationalised in 1948, so that, I think, the excuse of that for a price increase simply won’t wash.
   The generating authority was called, successively:
   The British Electricity Authority 1948 – 54
   The Central Electiricyr Authority 1954 – 57
   & the “CEGB” 1957 – 1990

7. @Silenos
   Yes, that is doubtless part of what underlies the US’s relative tolerance of bad driving. There’s a perception of a “right to drive” a bit like certain other rights to endanger others that the USA is notorious for tolerating. But it seems to be a separate issue that the US fails to adopt best practice in road design and operation that other wealthy countries have consciously adopted deliberately to make the road environment safer.

   For example, it is common in the USA for right-turning cars to be allowed to proceed through pedestrian crossings at the same time as pedestrians are indicated to cross, as a recent news article on “leading pedestrian interval” (which only makes sense in that context) indicated.

   International studies indicate that well-designed roundabouts are substantially safer than traditional junction designs, but are largely absent in the US. Some other US idiosyncrasies that don’t seem to be very safe to me include lack of presumption of lane discipline on multi-lane highways, and designing grade-separated junctions so that slip roads might enter equally on left or right.

   Boston and its hinterland, where most of Massachusetts lives, has levels of public transport provision uncommon by US standards, much closer to European levels. That might be part of why Mass has only half the road death rate of the USA in general.

8. Bus ticket article–fascinating opinion/philosophy piece.

   By extension, you could say that Edison was a different sort of genius–in that (latterly) he paid an army of other people to have the interest and take pains (including trials of options to prove viability or lack thereof) that the bus ticket article highlights as features of individual genius

9. Turning traffic in most of continental Europe might theoretically conflict with pedestrians, except that (in towns) turning vehicles seem to almost invariably yield to pedestrians, whether or not there are stripes on the road, whether or not there are lights, and whether the turn is left or right. It is only in the UK that such yielding is a bit of a rarity. (I except Italy where, it seems to me, no-one ever gives way to anyone).

10. Wrong turns on red is discussed in the book “Statistics done wrong” by Alex Reinhart. It was legalised in many places in the US in the 1970s (to save fuel) and for many years it was believed not to cause any increase in accidents – but this was simply because the studies were too small to show statistically significant results. When, finally, sufficiently large studies were done, it was found to cause a 60% increase in pedestrians run over.

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