Welcome to Reconnections’ Friday Reads. • So what’s this franchising for? (PassengerTransport) • Wireless augmented reality audio Tube navigation standard (ITUNews) • Underground lines vertical profile maps (DanSilva) • TfL to cut road speeds to boost safety (MayorWatch) • Paris Métro car made from old train tickets (TransportDesigned) • Toronto’s killing streets – a pedestrian hit every 4 hours (Globe&Mail) • You cannot join the World Bollard Association ...

A landmark deal has been reached between the governments of Australia and New South Wales to build the first stage of the North South Rail Link. The line will connect St Marys, a suburb in western Sydney, to Western Sydney Airport ahead of its planned 2026 opening. The two governments have agreed that they will construct the North South Rail Link as equal partners, each contributing 50 per cent of the funding. Both governments will commit $50 million (∼€40 million) for a business case on the ...

How failing to manage electric vehicles could inadvertently promote congestion and pollution, not reduce it… The age of owning a private car has passed its peak. Fewer Londoners own a private car than ever before, with young people even less likely to do so. Instead, citizens are more reliant on public transport, cycling and private hire vehicles to get around the capital. But despite this shift in behaviour, London’s toxic air pollution remains high with congestion sat above pre-Congestion ...

Bus speeds are to be limited in order to help boost the safety of cyclists – transport bosses are preparing an “ambitious” plan to boost the safety of cyclists and pedestrians on London’s roads. Due to be published this Summer, the document will outline how Transport for London will deliver on two targets set down by Mayor Sadiq Khan – that 80 per cent of all trips are made on foot, by cycle or by public transport by 2041 and that no-one is killed or seriously injured on London’s ...

In New York’s slow zones, speed humps are the only physical traffic calming measure. London uses a greater variety of traffic calming measures, installed more intensively. New York’s quick and cheap approach to creating “neighborhood slow zones” isn’t working, according to a new paper from Columbia University graduate researcher Jonas Hagen. NYC DOT launched its slow zone program in 2011, inspired by a similar effort in London to create 20 mph zones. There are now 28 slow zones ...

On June 12 the Office of Rail & Road (ORR) issued its draft determination setting out its initial opinions on Network Rail’s £34bn strategic business plan for Control Period 6, which the infrastructure manager had published in February. The draft determination is a key stage in the Periodic Review 2018 process, through which ORR will set out what Network Rail is required to deliver in CP6, which runs for five years from April 1 2019. It builds on the High-Level Output Specifications in ...

Welcome to Reconnections’ Friday Reads: • TfL bidding to run Buenos Aires Metro (Guardian) • London black cabs to take on Uber (Wired) • Montréal’s iconic old Métro cars becoming creative spaces (NextCity) • How I learned to stop worrying and love electric scooters (NYTimes) • San Francisco bridge toll hike to fund BART railcars (ProgressiveRailroading) • The key forces that shape cities (CityLab) • The little-known behavioural scientist who transformed the world’s ...

The second Thursday of the month brings with it our meetup, which happens next on 14th June from 6pm. As always, these are informal affairs where the beer flows, offering an opportunity to put faces to the names of a few LR writers as well as regular commentators. All are welcome, and conversation is often as much general as it is transport-specific. Where to find us We will be in the upstairs backroom at The Royal Oak on Tabard Street. Its location makes it easy to get to from a number of ...

In 2011, businessman Sir Robert McNulty was tasked by the Department for Transport (DfT) and the Office of Road and Rail (ORR) with assessing how the taxpayer could get better value for money from Great Britain’s railways. In his findings, McNulty reported that the cost of running the country’s railways would need to be reduced by 40 per cent to reach the levels spent on systems in France, the Netherlands, Sweden and Switzerland, recommending that savings of at least £190 million could be ...

The wild logistics of Heathrow Airport will instantly devour its much-needed third runway. Heathrow operates at close to 99 per cent capacity. Every day, 213,000 passengers land or depart, with a plane taking off or landing every 45 seconds. And a third runway isn’t going to release the pressure There is no other airport that does so much with so little as Heathrow. The constraints on its capacity have made it the busiest two-runway airport in the world, leading to catastrophic delays if ...

The main purpose of this workshop on Monday 18th June 2018 is to bring together specialists in tropical mathematics and mathematical optimisation applied in railway engineering and to foster further collaboration between them. It is inspired by some applications of tropical mathematics to the analysis of railway timetables. The most elementary of them is based on a controlled tropically linear dynamic system, which allows for a stability analysis of a regular timetable and can model the delay ...

Tracking cargo: the next step for rail freight operators? Heralded by many commentators as the fourth industrial revolution, digitalisation has become a buzzword for rail freight operators looking to enhance their services. One particular trend has been a move towards tracking freight, with companies including Deutsche Bahn and SNCF Logistics investing in new monitoring technologies that provide real-time updates on the status of wagons. What are these technologies, and what benefits can they ...

Welcome to Reconnections’ Friday Reads, our curated list of topical and quirky transport links. • Croydon’s trams go cashless by summer (IntelligentTransport) • The Tube’s psychology experiments (Wired) • 1950s battery train to Balmoral (AnonymousWidower) • Dedicated bus lanes without the extra lane (CityLab) • Shifts in the Short Trip: Latest trends in shared mobility (TalkingHeadways podcast) • Washington stars ride Metro to their game (SportsNet) • National (US ...

Autonomous boats that offer high manoeuvrability and precise control could help to reduce congestion in cities that rely heavily on their waterways, such as Amsterdam and Bangkok. MIT researchers have developed the boats which can be rapidly 3D printed using a low-cost printer, making mass manufacturing more feasible. “Imagine shifting some infrastructure services that usually take place during the day on the road – deliveries, garbage management, waste management – to the middle ...

The first of 13 Class 61 inter-regional diesel multiple-units for services along Malaysia’s east coast corridor has been largely completed at [Chinese rolling stock manufacturer] CRRC Zhuzhou’s plant in China. The DMUs have been designated Class 61 by KTMB. CRRC is producing two of the trains in Zhuzhou before transferring production of the remaining 11 to a local assembly plant in Perak state. The first trainset is expected to be handed over to national operator KTMB by early July. After a ...