BBC News 4 hours ago
A memorial to the 10 men known to have died during construction of the Queensbury tunnel has been installed.
Work on the now disused 1.4-mile (2.3km) railway tunnel between Bradford and Halifax began in 1874 and was completed in July 1878.
Now campaigners hoping to reopen the disused tunnel as a cycle route have remembered the navvies who built it.
Two rows of wooden railway sleepers stand either side of the path and each is dedicated to a man who died.
The tunnel was delayed by two years despite a 600-strong workforce, with dozens of injuries, many of them life-changing, and 10 deaths, said the Queensbury Tunnel Society.
Huge boost to active travel in Scotland as SNP and Greens pledge to spend nearly £60 per person per year | road.cc
Massive hike in budget for walking and cycling revealed in shared policy document published today
The SNP won 64 of the 129 seats contested in May’s elections to te Scottish Parliament, one short of an overall majority, while the Green Party won eight seats.
Cycle Tracks In Tight Spaces – The Ranty Highwayman
One of the issues we sometimes come up against is where we have a road with traffic volumes requiring cycle tracks to enable people to cycle, but where there isn’t enough space – what are the options?
Of course, there is always enough space if we are willing to be radical, but for lots of reasons, a road may still be needed to move motor traffic and making wider network changes may be way beyond a project scope or funding. It would be better to be working to detailed plans, but we have to be pragmatic.
Never mind going electric, where will we park? – BBC News
18 August 2021
A sleek, shiny car breezes along an open road, zipping easily through narrow city streets. Its paintwork is pristine, its electric engine is clean and silent. When it arrives there is parking right outside the front door.
So much for the advert. In reality, traffic in the UK is often slow and the roads can be clogged. A 60-mile (96km) journey on 60mph roads is reckoned to take 85 minutes – an average speed of 42mph (67km/h).
Drivers already own 32 million cars – that’s up 28% since 2001, during which time the population has only risen by 13%. And by 2050 there will be 44 million cars in the UK – so start looking for that parking space now.
Last year, the government announced a £2.8bn package to encourage drivers to switch to greener vehicles. This included a £1.3bn investment in charging infrastructure as well as discounts of up to £2,500 on low emission vehicles costing under £30,000.
Why is life on Earth still taking second place to fossil fuel companies? | George Monbiot | The Guardian
:excerptstart The human tragedy is that there is no connection between what we know and what we do. Almost everyone is now at least vaguely aware that we face the greatest catastrophe our species has ever confronted. Yet scarcely anyone alters their behaviour in response: above all, their driving, flying and consumption of meat and dairy. During… [Read More]
We have hit “peak car” – Big Think
Tom Standage17 August, 2021
• Car production may never exceed its level in 2017.• Car usage has been falling in Western countries, particularly in cities.• Ride-hailing and public transit likely are the future of transportation.The following is an excerpt from the book A Brief History of Motion.
In the 2020s there are clear signs that enthusiasm for cars is finally waning. Even some people within the industry now acknowledge that the world is now at, or has passed, “peak car” — the point at which car ownership and use level off and start to decline. Car production may never exceed its level in 2017. “It could well be that we passed the peak in global automotive production,” said Volkmar Denner, chief executive of Robert Bosch, the world’s largest maker of car parts, in January 2020. And that was before the coronavirus pandemic whacked car sales.
The climate science behind wildfires: why are they getting worse? | The Guardian
Meital Miselevich;Fri 20 Aug 2021. We are in an emergency. Wildfires are raging across the world as scorching temperatures and dry conditions fuel the blazes that have cost lives and destroyed livelihoods.The combination of extreme heat, changes in our ecosystem and prolonged drought have in many regions led to the worst fires in almost a decade, and come after the IPCC handed down a damning landmark report on the climate crisis.But technically, there are fewer wildfires than in the past – the problem now is that they are worse than ever and we are running out of time to act, as the Guardian’s global environment editor, Jonathan Watts explains.
100+ Bike Statistics & Facts of 2021 [E-Bikes Included) – bicycle-guider.com
Well, it’s time to publish the bike statistics that we have been gathering for some time. We tried to find the freshest data possible and present it to you. There is lots of information from the 2000s, but not much from 2020. Nonetheless, we’ve managed to get a pretty nice selection of numbers, so enjoy below.
How Many Bikes Are There in the World?
Nobody knows exactly how many bikes exist in the world, but it is estimated that there are somewhere around 1 billion. It’s a huge number. For comparison, there are around 1.5 billion cars in the world.
Belgian city puts brakes on deafening drivers by enforcing noise limits | Belgium | The Guardian
Ghent authorities threaten to impound noisy vehicles, as residents protest about engines and exhausts
Jennifer Rankin
Drivers who play booming music, slam on the gas or screech around town have been put on notice by the Belgian city of Ghent: their vehicles could be confiscated for breaching noise limits.
The Flemish city introduced a new regulation last month allowing police to impound vehicles whose drivers were causing excessive noise, either by playing loud music – dubbed boom cars – aggressive driving, or tampering with engines and exhaust pipes to make their vehicles noisier.
Letters: to halt global heating, we must change our society (1) | Climate change | The Guardian
:excerptstartRobin McKie writes of a “society-wide vision” covering policies in transport, power generation, home heating and farming to cut climate emissions (“It’s now… or never”, Focus). Of course we need all of those policies. But what’s missing is the understanding that we can’t have “business as usual with different technology”. We need social innovations, such as a… [Read More]
