Author name: Steven Edwards

Why is this important?
Minecraft have combined with National Highways to launch a game to indoctrinate children into believing that it is acceptable to build hugely damaging road schemes. It specifically works to “gamify” the building of the Lower Thames Crossing, the biggest carbon-emitting project in the UK and major contributor to the air pollution that kills 40,000 people per year. And it makes a game of the destruction of large parts of the World Heritage Site of Stonehenge. UNESCO now threatens to put Europe’s premier prehistoric site on to the endangered list if National Highways goes ahead with this scheme. 

The All-Party Parliamentary Group for Cycling and Walking (APPGCW) has released its inquiry report into the Government’s upcoming 2nd Cycling and Walking Investment Strategy (CWIS2).
The inquiry, exploring what CWIS2 should look like, took place in July and the list of witnesses can be found online. Three evidence sessions were held.
The report makes a number of detailed and wide-ranging recommendations – which are based on evidence received from a variety of stakeholders, provided both in virtual sessions and in writing. 
The inquiry was supported by Brompton Bicycle.

March 13, 2015
San Francisco is moving forward with a plan to add protected bike lanes on Polk Street, one of the busiest cycling corridors in the city, but the decision didn’t come easy. The San Francisco Examiner reports that the plan endured about 2.5 years of debate. At the center of the dispute was an objection to the loss of on-street parking spaces by local merchants (our emphasis):
Some business owners had argued that a proposed loss of 140 parking spaces in the area would lead to financial losses, and they had pushed hard for studies on possible economic impacts in order to pause construction of the bike lane.

Children from Brighton & Hove have been designing their ‘dream streets’ to celebrate this year’s Car Free Day.
Young people from Carlton Hill, Elm Grove and St Luke’s primary schools were asked to draw what their perfect street would look like and have them displayed as part of an exhibition at Jubilee Library in Jubilee Square.
Now, children visiting the exhibition are getting the chance to add their own designs and dream streets to the display. There are templates available for children to draw and colour on, a real chance to design a street fit for the future.

Jonathan Watts

A short bureaucratic note from a brutally degraded microstate in the South Pacific to a little-known institution in the Caribbean is about to change the world. Few people are aware of its potential consequences, but the impacts are certain to be far-reaching. The only question is whether that change will be to the detriment of the global environment or the benefit of international governance.

In late June, the island republic of Nauru informed the International Seabed Authority (ISA) based in Kingston, Jamaica of its intention to start mining the seabed in two years’ time via a subsidiary of a Canadian firm, The Metals Company (TMC, until recently known as DeepGreen). Innocuous as it sounds, this note was a starting gun for a resource race on the planet’s last vast frontier: the abyssal plains that stretch between continental shelves deep below the oceans.

The confirmation, in response to a question raised on Twitter last month, will hopefully put an end to confusion on the issue, with a number of cyclists having been fined in the past for riding in excess of a speed limit which applies only to motor vehicles.
Cyclists are not subject to speed limits on the public highway, but the special status of the Royal Parks, with separate bylaws in force, has muddied the waters, particularly in Richmond Park, which is hugely popular with road cyclists, particularly at weekends.
Indeed, as far back as 2013, after reports of cyclists being fined in Richmond Park, road.cc’s John Stevenson undertook a lengthy dissection of the regulations, coming to the conclusion that “there’s grounds to fight a cycling speeding fine in Richmond Park” – although some have been fined since then.

Dodge the queue
We’ve seen the queues, heard the honks and dodged the traffic jams (hopefully). For car-dependent Londoners, it’s chaos out there and now with talk of bringing in the Army to help manage the fuel shortage, it doesn’t take an expert to see that our transport system is deeply flawed.
This crisis reveals an increasingly fragile system and the extent to which we are reliant on fossil fuels to keep London moving even when there are easily accessible alternatives. Low-traffic neighbourhoods and cycle tracks can’t continue to be the scapegoat for chaos on our roads when it’s so clearly our over-reliance on cars causing the problems.

The fourth local transport plan (LTP) was due to be examined by Norfolk County Council on Monday but was pulled by the council leader.
The LTP covers Norfolk-wide plans, such as improving highway conditions, encouraging walking and cycling and delivering major projects like the Norwich Western Link, Long Stratton bypass and Great Yarmouth third river crossing.
Andrew Proctor, the Conservative leader of the council, said he was no longer moving the recommendations forward after the government published a transport decarbonisation plan.
The government’s plans require councils to set out how their LTPs will deliver carbon reductions in transport in line with national carbon budgets.