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April 28 · Issue #83 · View online |
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Hey urbanists, Plenty of bus love this week as U.K. Labour announced plans to invest in the bus network if they win the next election and Vancouver posted great new transit figures. Elon Musk is also in the news for making big promises on autonomous Teslas that we know he won’t follow through on. Plus, there’s a lot on New Zealand this week, the international Green New Deal sounds pretty essential, and I highly recommend both Daniel Denvir’s interview with a Communist mayor in Chile and the trailer at the bottom for a new doc about housing financialization. The switch to Substack will likely happen next week as I didn’t have time to get everything ready with all the end-of-semester work I’ve had. Have a great week! — Paris
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I think it’s fair to say that buses, for all the benefits they provide, don’t get nearly the attention they deserve — and I’m guilty of that too. Buses are the backbone of a great transit system and the workhorses that move people in cities large and small around the world. Buses are on my mind because Jeremy Corbyn, the U.K. Labour leader, announced that if his party forms government they’ll reverse the Conservative cuts to 3,000 bus routes across the country at a cost of £1.3 billion. In the UK, 4.36 billion bus journeys are taken every year and bus users generate £64 billion in economic output and spend £27 billion per year on shopping and socializing made possible by bus accessibility.
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"Margaret Thatcher once said anyone on a bus over the age of 25 is a failure.
"We've moved on from that – I think people on a bus is a success."
- @ https://t.co/vJKYPSavVB
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Buses weren’t just in the news in the U.K. though. Vancouver, where more than 50% of trips are on foot, bike, or transit, unveiled a new plan to get to two-thirds by 2030 and buses are a huge part of it: transit ridership was up 7.1% in 2018, and buses beat the trend with 8% growth. In the past week, high gas prices and transit ridership have been the biggest stories in the city, and CBC’s Justin McElroy explained how they’re related. Remember Vancouver doesn’t have Uber, and as the province debates legalizing ride hailing, I’m worried about what will happen to transit in future.
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hits 437m annual transit boardings (177 boardings per capita). will hit 100m boardings in 2019 (59 boardings per capita), exactly 1/3rd of Vancouver. While Auckland has come a long way from 50m trips in 2006, we have a long way to go. https://t.co/tSnqGdkXwd
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Oh, Elon. I feel exhausted just writing his name. The Tesla CEO and one of the most dishonest people in tech held an event to announce that, actually, self-driving Teslas will be ready by the end of 2019 and by the end of 2020 more than a million “robotaxis” could take over the streets. Where to start? Musk claimed Tesla would be able to achieve what every other company cannot in such a short timeline because of a new AI chip, but, again, a lot of experts were quick to note that a chip alone can’t do everything Musk is promising. And The Verge’s James Vincent reminded us Musk said Full Self-Driving would be ready in 2016 and that a Tesla would autonomously drive across the U.S. by the end of 2017 — neither actually happened.
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Musk: "we do see strong demand for the vehicles, S, X and 3."
Narrator: Tesla's deliveries fell by 31% quarter-of-quarter in Q1.
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🎥 Push pulls the curtain off the global financialization of housing, how it’s hurting residents, and hollowing out cities. Listen to an interview with the director and UN Special Rapporteur Leilani Farha, see it if you’re in Toronto this week, and watch the trailer at the end of this newsletter. Transit 🛑 “Transportation experts say that if Uber grabs a big chunk of [public transit’s] market cities would grind to a halt, as there would literally be no space to move on streets.” Bikes and scooters
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Driving should be a privilege. Walking should be a right.
Somehow we've gotten it backwards.
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Cars and roads 🇻🇳 Grab expected to dominate once it monopolized ride hailing in Vietnam, but local competition emerged and new regulations are being drafted Trains
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Mozambique is in a humanitarian emergency.
It's been 42 days since Cyclone Idai It's been 2 days since Cyclone Kenneth
Never before in recorded history has Mozambique been hit with two storms this strong in the same year, let alone within 5 weeks. https://t.co/grbtMGwkwm
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Climate change ☀️ From Bill McKibben’s new book: “each degree Fahrenheit we warm the planet increases the number of lightning strikes by 7 percent, and once fires get going in our hot, dry new world, they are all but impossible to fight.” Inequality 🌍 Yanis Varoufakis and David Adler propose an International Green New Deal that “would redistribute resources to rehabilitate overexploited regions, protect against rising sea levels, and guarantee a decent standard of living to all climate refugees.”
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Housing Other great reads 🇨🇱 Daniel Denvir spoke to the Communist mayor of Recoleta, Chile about governing locally from the left; increasing access to health and education; and fostering community through public space
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PUSH (2019) OFFICIAL TRAILER
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