Peter Walker
A four-day loop around the King Alfred’s Way gave ample time to test the claims of faster speeds and greater off-road ease
The world of leisure cycling is nothing if not inventive when it comes to ways to sell bikes and associated bits of kit, and two of the most popular new – or theoretically new – concepts are bikepacking and gravel bikes.
As with all such ideas there is the inevitable marketing guff, but both are nonetheless interesting, if sometimes misunderstood. Earlier this week, on trend as ever, I managed both, with a four-day ride around the King Alfred’s Way, a 218-mile primarily off-road loop through the lanes, tracks, woods and ridges of Hampshire, Wiltshire, Berkshire, Surrey and West Sussex.
Cyclists are safer car drivers says insurance specialist – Ci4C
Posted on March 3, 2020
A UK car insurance provider has finally proved what we all suspected – that road cyclists are safer car drivers than non-cyclists.
Specialist broker, carinsurance4cyclists.com (Ci4C), is the first in the UK to observe the relationship between road cycling and a clean driving record, rewarding cyclists with significant savings as a result.
Cycling car drivers are safer, claiming half as often as non-cyclists
What’s Wrong With Free Parking at Work? – Bloomberg
Subsidising employer-paid parking clogs streets, boosts emissions and isn’t fair to commuters who can’t use this perk. But there’s an easy way to fix it.
“The DfT will soon be issuing ‘statutory guidance’ – Chris Heaton-Harris Minister of State (DfTresponse to question from Andrew Slaughter Labour, Hammersmith)
“The DfT will soon be issuing ‘statutory guidance’ which will mean that cycling and walking schemes will not be able to be removed until they have been in place long enough for their impacts to have been “properly assessed”.
Chris Heaton-Harris Minister of State (Department for Transport) responding to a question from Andrew Slaughter Labour, Hammersmith
Natural predator of the car? Turns out it’s the car – transportxtra
Richard Dilks 13 July 2021
What little experience I have gleaned has taught me that far too much of the discussion and decision-making about cars in the UK falls into one of these camps:
1. Camp Dalek: Exterminate! Cars are bad. We must price them off and design them out. There are nearly 40 mn cars and vans so we’d better get cracking.
2. Camp Ostrich: Cars are bad. That’s why we are doing so much on cycle lanes, bus subsidy, lowered kerbs (delete/add to list as appropriate).
3. Camp Fatalist: Cars are bad. But we have nearly 40 mn of them. If we make it harder, more expensive, asocial even for people to use them then they just will not like us.
4. Camp Vroom: Cars are good. They enable us to do all sorts of useful things, they give us freedom, protection and pride and they play our favourite music.
That’s why we have nearly 40 million of them. Anyway, aren’t they all going to be electric soon?
Climate scientists shocked by scale of floods in Germany | The Guardian
Deluge raises fears human-caused disruption is making extreme weather even worse than predicted
The intensity and scale of the floods in Germany this week have shocked climate scientists, who did not expect records to be broken this much, over such a wide area or this soon.
After the deadly heatwave in the US and Canada, where temperatures rose above 49.6C two weeks ago, the deluge in central Europe has raised fears that human-caused climate disruption is making extreme weather even worse than predicted.
Girl, 7, dies after bike crash with lorry in Wiltshire – BBC News
14 July 2021
A “beautiful and kind” seven-year-old girl has died after a crash with a lorry while riding her bike.
The girl, named only as Eloise, was taken to Salisbury District Hospital but died a short time later.
It happened on the A338 Church Street in Collingbourne Ducis in Wiltshire shortly before 18:30 BST on Tuesday.
She attended Collingbourne Primary School and headteacher Dan Crossman said the school sent her family “our sincerest sympathy and support.”
Cars are fuelling our isolation from strangers – Guardian
Letters Fri 16 Jul 2021
In his otherwise insightful article about how our interactions with strangers have changed (Remember hand shakes and small talk? The lost art of living with strangers, 10 July), Joe Moran omits to mention another important influence: cars, and our relationship to them. In the suburban neighbourhood where I now live, it is virtually impossible to encounter the strangers who are my neighbours, apart from those immediately next door.
Almost everyone else is only ever seen stepping from their front door to their car, parked a couple of feet away in what was the front garden, driving off, and then returning later to scuttle from car to front door. Few people walk to the local shops. One 88-year-old resident I chatted to at a community event confirmed this impression. When I asked why she didn’t know as many people in the street as she had in the past, she gave a one-word answer: “Cars.”
Isabella Stone Sheffield
Electric car “obsession” to see Net Zero goals missed, writes Oxford Uni Transport Professor – Cycle Industry News
Mark Sutton15 July, 2021
There is no feasible way the transition to electric cars can take place fast enough within the window “we can spare – the next five years,” writes Brand. It is estimated that it will take three to four times that period of time for a complete transition of the world’s fossil fuel car fleet.
“Tackling the climate and air pollution requires curbing all motorised transport, particularly private cars, as quickly as possible,” he writes.
Is the Government’s Transport Decarbonisation Plan up to scratch? | Campaign For Better Transport
16.07.2021 | Silviya Barret
While launching the Plan the Transport Secretary was at pains to say that people’s lives won’t change much: “We will still fly but in more efficient aircraft, using sustainable fuel. We will still drive, but increasingly in zero emission cars”. The good news is that – by contrast – the Plan itself recognises the need for modal shift and to reduce how much we travel, as well as how we travel. It reiterates the government’s ambition for public transport, cycling and walking to be “the natural first choice” for people.
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