Dialling a Ride for Eight

An exposition of the current regulatory travails of Britain’s Community Transport sector, with an exploration of the legal possibilities for operating Dial & Ride style community services using vehicles with capacity of no more than eight. This essay provides insight into why there is so little taxi policy locally, and why the British have such a problem with sharing.

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What is Connectivity?

This essay expounds the policy concept of transport connectivity in Britain from two diverging epistemological perspectives – nation and location. The text characterises the difficulty of managing the midst, before applying the implications to Mobility as a Service.

Aquius – An Alternative Approach to Public Transport Network Discovery

As the complexity of public transport networks grew during the 20th century, so did the inventiveness of the attempts to communicate those networks to users. Angular schematic maps, in the form of the London Underground map attributed to Harry Beck, have since become common for core urban and suburban public transport networks. Since at least the 1990s these maps have infected service design, with high frequency bus networks increasingly structured to be readily communicable as stylised network maps – inevitably limiting the range of direct destinations offered. Inter-regional networks necessarily remain complicated, and, as illustrated by various European attempts at national network flow maps, are challenging to communicate in schematic form. At least on paper.

Reanimating Regional

This essay outlines the regional biases of Spanish railway connectivity, reassesses the role of Castilla in the national railway, and ponders the balance between actuality and perception inherent in Adolfo Suárez’s doctrine of “café para todos“.

Understanding Obligación

This essay builds a model of the human connectivity offered by Spain’s railways, revealing the patterns between Spaniards and the democractic tension therein, with income analysis that explores the import of “Obligación de Servicio Público”.

Deconstructing Estaciones

This essay provides a demographic analysis of Spain’s railway stations, that explores the unserved areas and probes the differences between regions.

Disassembling Trenes

This essay deconstructs Spain’s current passenger railways to expose the deceptions of AVE and nation therein.