Author: Raimonds Aronietis

An furniture store without parking would seem a rather unusual sight, but there indeed is one planned like that – IKEA’s city-centre Vienna Westbahnhof store.

It is currently under construction and aims to address the “radically changed customer and mobility behaviours”. This could be because the costumers are less and less eager to tackle the delivery of purchased furniture themselves, and mostly rely on the delivery service.

According to IKEA “around two thirds of Viennese people living in the inner city districts of Vienna do not even have a car any more. They come by public transport, walk, ride bicycles or take a scooter. IKEA Vienna Westbahnhof serves all these changed behaviours.”

In my view it is because people living in the capital cities of Europe who do not own a car have a higher level of disposable income (a car is a substantial cost). This allows those customers spend more money on other things like home improvement, and IKEA sees it.

This month a new train service has been launched between Brussels and Vienna. This is an opportunity that I have been waiting for a while, and I really hope they do not cancel it before I have a chance to take it.

Weekly train frequencies along the route:

UPDATE (17.02.2020): As a result of the successful launch and high demand for the train service, the frequency of the train will be increased at least to three times a week from December 2020.

According to the UK press, London is getting its first emission free street, where cars with internal combustion engines will be banned for 18 months and air quality monitored.

The drivers of petrol and diesel cars on this street will be fined £65 and if not paid within two weeks the fine could be increased to £130.

If successful, the 18-month trial, organised by the City of London Corporation and set to be imposed this spring, could become permanent. 

This is an interesting demonstration of an option that municipal policymakers could consider for improving air quality in cities. And if done properly, in my view, technologies exist to ensure passenger and goods transport in those areas as before. I wish for the streets where I live and cycle to become emission-free soon.

It was an honour to be on the on the PhD jury for Valentin Cârlan. His thesis “Maritime supply chain innovation: costs, benefits and cost-effectiveness of ICT introduction” has some valuable insights on ICT innovation in transport.

It is a good read if you are interested in the field, because this research is based on a number of unique case studies of ICT innovation, data on which is almost never public.

The abstract of the thesis can be found here.

It is nice to read in the news this week that Tesla has decided to build its next Gigafactory in Berlin area in Germany. It was known that Tesla is looking for a location and several countries had launched bids to attract the EV manufacturer.

The news was announced at a car industry awards ceremony on Tuesday night hosted by the German tabloid Bild.

It is planned that the factory will produce EV battery cells and the vehicles. Also, the carmaker plans to locate a research and development base in Berlin. The factory could be employing up to 10 thousand people in the region.

This is certainly a strategic move from Tesla and I hope it will be a push for Germany to stop hindering sales of Tesla, as it did in 2017 when it excluded Tesla vehicles from the subsidy list. Or by trying to circumvent EU legislation on vehicle emissions for the benefit of German car manufacturers.

Until the end of September Brussels public transport company MIVB was testing a small self-driving bus called SAM-e on the paved paths in the Woluwe park. They were taking passengers on board and I would not miss such an opportunity, so I went to take a ride.

The bus was only taking six passengers (there are six seats) and it went slowly – at walking pace, because it was sharing the paths with pedestrians an cyclists. It would actually be very nice to have such a slow speed service in the big park permanently for situations when you are just too tired to walk back, especially with children.

Continue reading “Riding a self-driving bus in a park in Brussels”

A very well-written article that drew my attention has just been published on cycling in the Netherlands. It is written from the perspective of someone from the US, but a lot of people from around the world would have similar observations.

I hope that some day cycling will be a natural part of daily life everywhere. Not just in selected places like the Netherlands, Denmark and other selected few.

Read the article here: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/personal-history/how-i-learned-to-cycle-like-a-dutchman

What Car? has published its research results on passenger car reliability. Their aim is to help their readers choose a more dependable car. The data is assembled based on a survey of 18 thousand vehicles for 31 brands and 218 vehicle models.

A summary by brand is as follows:

I was surprised to see that the traditionally perceived reliable brands (at least in my mind) are so low on the ratings.

You can read the full article here: https://www.whatcar.com/news/2019-what-car-reliability-survey/n20042

I have talked about this for years – if you look at the costs that are associated with vehicle use nothing beats electric vehicles. A new report from BNP Paribas has just been released that quantifies these impacts for oil price.

Knowing what an EV daily user like me knows, one could have guessed, but the calculation from the report cited in Forbes says it best:

The long-term break-even oil price for gasoline to remain competitive is $9-$10pb, and for diesel $17-$19pb.

Although this sounds far-fetched today, this is what a disruption looks like before it happens. Well-developed technology and sound economic performance are behind it.

In real life… In August in order not to fly I drove 2342 km, charging my car from solar and in public locations on longer stretches. And for the times that I had to pay for public charging the total was 22.43 €. Can you beat that on a fossil fuel car?

It has been a pleasure to be a part of the organising team of the International Transport Forum’s 2019 Summit, which is traditionally held in Leipzig.  https://2019.itf-oecd.org/

I was responsible for preparing two Summit sessions this year.

The discussions in session Towards safe, efficient and sustainable road freight transport – infrastructure and vehicle fleet perspective were based on two recently published ITF Working Group reports: Policies to Extend the Life of Road Assets, By mitigating deterioration caused by trucks (PELRA) and High Capacity Transport: Towards Efficient, Safe and Sustainable Road Freight. The challenges that most countries face in addressing growing transport demand and increasing environmental costs with limited resources for infrastructure investment were discussed in this session. In this context the international experience with proactive infrastructure policies to extend the life of road assets and mitigate road infrastructure wear, and the use of high capacity vehicles to increase the operational efficiency of road freight, are relevant.

The panel session Connecting vehicles and infrastructure focused on the enormous transformative potential of vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) and vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) technologies and the associated challenges for stakeholders including equipment manufacturers, telecom operators, governments and road users. The implications for freight and passenger traffic, including technological requirements for connectivity, international standardisation, safety and enforcement implications were also discussed.