Just arrived in my hotel in Belgium. There's a two day conference starting tomorrow that I'm also speaking at, and I'm pretty stoked about it. Someone said that a conferences' value is almost entirely based on its ability to bring together interesting peopke, and so far this may be the best conference I've attended in that regard. Relatively small crowd (160 ish), and every attendee must have contributed an essay so it's only those who really care who attend. Bytheway - if one ever needs public speaking tips, I found this neat overview. Saw Vampire Weekend yesterday. They were pretty baller, the show went in a bunch of interesting directions, from hard rock to punk to a love song, all with a sense of fun that's hard to explain.
On the idea of fairness in transportation. The benefits of transportation are not always distributed fairly over people and places. The way we plan transportation has inherent flaws and assumptions that lead to structural injustices if not properly counterbalanced. It's normal to think of fairness when we're talking about healthcare, or education, or other public goods, but transporation is traditionally spared from such concerns.
It was maybe the most enjoyable conference I have attended? Small-scale, quite a lot of familiar faces, and the biggest congregation of people who think about this topic I've seen yet. I was one talk in a series of six about the topic. It was all in drunk Germ-...I mean, Dutch though. Would be hard to understand for you...