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This month’s wider news is largely London and UK based, but starts off with a Berlin couple’s dilemma:
++ “Bikes are a quicker way to get around. We should use them so we can enjoy more of our destination … I prefer to cycle. It’s easier, it’s more fun, and it saves time. My husband disagrees. Should Frida’s husband stop walking everywhere – and get on his bike?
++ Transport & Health speaker Scarlett McNally has created The Bristol Declaration (download here) – signed by the Faculty of Public Health (FPH), the Royal Society of Public Health and partners, to call for the UK’s transformation to a place where healthy transport options are the easiest, natural choice for most everyday journeys, without relying on a car.
++ It’s like Piccadilly Circus around here! Though we don’t tend to associate this phrase with the frightening increase in car flipping!
++ But will pending measures to limit through-traffic at Piccadilly be enough? Should rat-running vehicles be abusing West End streets at all?
++ A somewhat understated article notes that a “retired electrician turned bomb-making extremist”, detonated off a bomb on a public street to destroy ULEZ monitoring equipment –– just “four minutes drive from his Bexley home”!
++ Paris’ rapid emergence as one of the most bike-friendly cities in the world has been aided by measures like new trees and public spaces as by measures to discourage car use. This helps to cretae the desire in people to be outside, and to travel under their own steam. Vision, intention and action.
++ Back in London, Paul Powlesland says: “I guess in some ways it must be good news, as it means @CityPolice must have solved all the robberies, burglaries, fraud, assault, bike theft, dangerous driving and other serious offences.” “How else”, he argues, “could they possibly be prosecuting him for” err.. cycling with no hands’?
++ “London mayor Sir Sadiq Khan wants to reduce by London car driver mileage by by 27% by 2030 towards a capital carbon “net zero”.
“.. People say they want more help to walk, wheel or cycle around the borough” the Court of Appeal heard before ruling that Tower Hamlets mayor Lutfur Rahman acted unlawfully in axing traffic reduction schemes in the borough. “A major precedent has been set for London boroughs” stated relieved and jubilant campaigners!
++ Last words this month are from Andy Boenau’s ‘Don’t underestimate the power of big ideas’:
20th-century Americans abandoned human-scale design for car-oriented sprawl, swayed by masterful storytelling and propaganda.
A 1939 fringe idea became mainstream in a shockingly short time, embedding car dependency into the American psyche. Advocates sold a powerful vision of lifestyle upgrades, not through incremental tweaks but bold, aspirational narratives.
Boenau says: “We shouldn’t be aiming to nudge a few percentage points in public opinion – our goal should be to make freedom of mobility so compelling that people demand it”.
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