Along for the Ride #276
Tuktuk-ing across Tanzania 🛺
Heya friends, happy Friday!
I am writing to you from Dar es Salaam where I’ve just taken a tuktuk for the first time in my life to a lil cafe to write my newsletter about transportation. I’m really excited to give the transportation here a big ol’ debrief when I return because so far it’s been fairly multimodal: lots of walking, a ferry to and from Zanzibar, one tuktuk, half a dingy boat ride, and a [redacted] number of Ubers. Next time I write to you, I’ll add some trains, a safari van, and hopefully a BRT journey to boot. I’m here visiting friends from London who grew up in and around Dar, so it’s been really special to see the sites (past schools, homes, favourite restaurants) with them. More on ze travel adventures in bits + bobs.
Sending more links than thoughts this week since I’m mostly committed to being on vacation! On y va.
Jacksonville launches autonomous shuttle service (Railway)
Why are Dutch children the happiest (spoiler: has something to do with independence to move around on their own safely without the (real and perceived) fear of being squashed by motor vehicles) (CNN)
How extreme heat causes roads to buckle (NPR)
Berlin contemplates banning cars from city (Streetsblog)
Goldman and Sachs has an article about how the AV industry is set to grow (disclaimer: Do I agree with their findings? No. Am I sharing because reading different opinions can help us have well-rounded POVs? Yes.) (GS)
Tesla delivered a vehicle from the factory to its owner via autonomous driving. The car parked itself in a demarcated Fire Lane (Jalopnik)
Elon Muck bet on camera vision, thinking that using LiDAR is “lame”, only for Tesla’s Austin robotaxi pilot to be a big ‘ole flop (The Guardian)
Automakers are pushing regulators to move faster on AV regulations (Reuters)
Barriers to car-free streets: Identifying opponents of pedestrianization in Montreal (Cities)
The ways in which our cities aren’t built for mothers (Architectural Digest)
Tesla is in disarray, and Elon Muck has stopped caring about cars (WSJ)
Malcolm Gladwell has one of the worst takes on AVs, starting with “are they too safe” (Inc)
This article opens with “Fear of death is the only thing keeping pedestrians in line in cities, at least that’s what Malcolm Gladwell would have you believe.” which naturally made me say “what the fuck” out loud. The whole article is him victim blaming and not understanding an ounce of street safety.
No job board while I’m on vacation, but if you’re hiring, please send along jobs!
It took over 16 hours to get from London to Dar, and I was travelling with friends which made the day go by quickly. Al, Max and I watched Zootopia on the plane (a perfect movie, tbh) and played numerous crossword puzzles to pass the time. Our friends Mehak and Adnaan met us at the airport (💓), and the next day we began our adventures!
On Saturday morning we got up very early to catch the sun rise over the Tanzanite Bridge, which is closed every Saturday from 6-9am to allow people to walk, run, bike, skip, dance, and stroll over the 2.4km stretch. I could only find one article about it, but the Minister of Health advocated to close the bridge once a week to allow people to exercise before the heat gets too strong. We saw kids learning to ride bike, running groups chanting and singing, cycling groups warming up for longer rides, and plenty of families / couples / individuals just strolling for the sake of it. The community that has developed around this space is beautiful and made my lil’ heart burst ten times over.
We spent four days in Zanzibar enjoying the stunning coastal views and bustling Stone Town. We walked, we ate, we swam, and we experienced low-key corruption at its finest. As I’m travelling with my friends’ lil 7 month old bb, we started but did not finish our boat ride to Changuu due to the big waves. Changuu is also known as Prison Island as British colonisers originally built a prison complex on the island, however, no prisoners were ever housed on the island so instead it became a quarantine station for yellow fever cases.
I’m off to take a train (!) to safari, so next week’s edition should include plenty of pics of wildlife! I plan to listen to the new Lorde album while on the train and will let you know my fav singles :)
That’s all from me. Have a beautiful weekend friends.
Sarah
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So committed to vacation you can't tell Monday from Friday! 🤣 Really glad you're enjoying yourself. 😄
Yay adventure! Boo Malcolm Gladwell! He has bad opinions about running too!