Author name: Steven Edwards

News from Elsewhere

Berlin’s car ban campaign: ‘It’s about how we want to live, breathe and play’ The Guardian

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Leander Jones
Wed 6 Oct 2021 13.08 BST
Petition to forbid private car use in area equal in size to London’s zones 1 and 2 has collected 50,000 backers

A citizens’ initiative calling for a ban on private car use in central Berlin would create the largest car-free urban area in the world.
The campaign group Berlin Autofrei has taken the first step in a process known as the people’s referendum, submitting a petition with more than 50,000 signatures calling for a ban covering the 88 sq km (34 sq mile) area circled by the “S-Bahn ring” trainline – an area roughly equal in size to all the boroughs in London’s zones 1 and 2.
People who depend on their cars for their trade or because they have impaired mobility would be exempt, as would emergency services. Everyone else would each be permitted up to 12 rented car journeys a year – in case they need to move house, for example.

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Obsessing over electric cars is impeding the race to net zero: More active travel is essential | University of Oxford

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Globally, only one in 50 new cars were fully electric in 2020, and one in 14 in the UK. Sounds impressive, but even if all new cars sold were electric, it would still take 15-20 years to replace the world’s fossil fuel car fleet.

The emission savings from replacing all those internal combustion engines with zero-carbon alternatives will not feed in fast enough to make the necessary difference in the time we can spare: the next five years.
Tackling the climate and air pollution requires curbing all motorised transport, particularly private cars, as quickly as possible.

News from Elsewhere

Councils not looking at LTN impacts on walking and cycling – transportxtra

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Rhodri Clark05 October 2021

Decisions on the future of Low Traffic Neighbourhoods are being made without sufficient monitoring of changes in walking and cycling, according to Rachel Aldred, Professor of Transport at the University of Westminster.
Some LTNs, and other measures to encourage walking and cycling, have been removed following complaints from some local residents and traders. However, Aldred told LTT: “Part of the problem is that walking schemes like LTNs and pedestrianisation programmes aim to increase walking levels, but authorities rarely measure walking, and so the benefits of more walking don’t enter into the discussion.
“When reviewing monitoring reports on London LTNs, we found that councils were rarely measuring cycling, and walking even less so, even though one of the key objectives of these schemes is to increase walking and cycling.”

News from Elsewhere

Aug, 2020) One in three lazy Brits use the car to travel less than a mile – inews

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 Matt Allan August 28, 2018 6:00 am(Updated August 20, 2020)
One in three people regularly use the car for short trips that they admit could be completed just as easily by public transport or on foot.
A poll of motorists revealed that short trips are completed by car largely for convenience, with 97 per cent of those surveyed admitting they could walk, 50 per cent saying cycling is also an option for them, and 45 per cent revealing they could take public transport instead of the car.
While 40 per cent of drivers questioned by car buying site carwow blamed their decision to use the car on running late, more than half (56 per cent) said their choice was influenced by bad weather and more than a quarter (27 per cent) admitted they were just being lazy.

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Fossil fuel industry gets subsidies of $11m a minute, IMF finds | Fossil fuels | The Guardian

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Trillions of dollars a year are ‘adding fuel to the fire’ of the climate crisis, experts say
Damian Carrington
The fossil fuel industry benefits from subsidies of $11m every minute, according to analysis by the International Monetary Fund.
The IMF found the production and burning of coal, oil and gas was subsidised by $5.9tn in 2020, with not a single country pricing all its fuels sufficiently to reflect their full supply and environmental costs. Experts said the subsidies were “adding fuel to the fire” of the climate crisis, at a time when rapid reductions in carbon emissions were urgently needed.
Explicit subsidies that cut fuel prices accounted for 8% of the total and tax breaks another 6%. The biggest factors were failing to make polluters pay for the deaths and poor health caused by air pollution (42%) and for the heatwaves and other impacts of global heating (29%).

News from Elsewhere

April) Car sharing, ‘subscriptions’ expand in Japan as vehicle ownership loses its shine – The Mainichi

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April 11, 2021

TOKYO — Once upon a time, having a car was a status symbol. But in Japan, young people in particular are leaving car ownership behind, forcing the country’s automakers to seek and strengthen strategies beyond the simple dealership sale. Now, a host of alternative ways to get behind the wheel are popping up, especially in cities, from fixed fee vehicle “subscriptions” to car sharing.
“I want to change this decades-old idea that a car is something you buy.” So said Shinya Kotera, president of Toyota Motor Corp. subsidiary Kinto Corp. during an online briefing on the company’s Kinto One service in January this year.
Kinto was launched in March 2019, and offers three-, five-, and seven-year vehicle “subscriptions.” The customer can use the car as though it was their own, while it legally belongs to Kinto. There is no down payment or vehicle inspection fee, while insurance, registration, maintenance and other costs associated with traditional car ownership are all covered by the fixed monthly subscription fee. Applications and contracts can all be handled over the internet.

News from Elsewhere

Give councils active travel framework, says Sustrans – transportxtra

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Rhodri Clark05 October 2021

 Sustrans Cymru has called for an active travel commissioning framework, to help local authorities overcome a shortage of skilled practitioners.
t is eight years since the Welsh Parliament passed the first legislation in the world compelling councils to plan and progressively implement walking and cycling networks. But Sustrans Cymru told a Welsh Parliament committee last month that councils still lacked the skills to deliver those networks.

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