As any cyclist will tell you, there’s something strangely uplifting about being on the road early. Mostly it’s a case of enjoying empty roads and morning light, but perhaps there’s a smidgeon of self-righteousness, too. Mamils have a lie in? Never. As we wheel our bikes out of the Olde Ship in the village of Seahouses, nothing seems to be moving. With a gentle westerly blowing in from our left, we pass the deserted crazy golf course, shout good morning to a lone dog walker and head north close to a lazy expanse of sand dunes.
Amsterdam’s Removing 10,000 Parking Spaces: See what’s possible! – Streetfilms – YouTube
On my swing to The Netherlands to visit Utrecht, I planned on just trying to gather up enough footage and talk to a few people in Amsterdam regarding the transportation headlines they made a few months ago when they announced they would be removing from 10,000 to 11,000 parking spaces from the city’s core.
Swapfiets lands in UK with monthly bike subscription service – Cycle Industry News
Mark Sutton9 July, 2021
Swapfiets, an Amsterdam-based pioneer of the bike subscription model, has now landed in the UK with a service accessible from only £12.90 per month.
Building on a trend of hire businesses launching into the market, Swapfiets hopes to tap into a customer base that either prefers to hire, or struggles to own a bike due to space constraints. It is a trend that is particularly notable in the younger generations who have become accustomed to subscriptions rather than ownership.
RIS2 Roads & Carbon – Transport Action Network
Building new roads increases traffic, leading to more carbon emissions. The Government claims new roads will not significantly increase emissions so we decided to find out using their own data. We used Freedom of Information laws to ask Highways England for the carbon impact of its 50 RIS2 schemes. So far we have data for 45 out of the 50 listed schemes, which reveals that Highways England estimates the extra traffic will lead to almost 32 million tonnes of extra carbon emissions, whilst construction adds another 4 million tonnes.
Paris takes bold action on clean air. Now it needs to be effective and fair – Clean Cities
June 28, 2021
Pellerin: In praise of cargo bikes on the streets of Ottawa | Ottawa Citizen
As usual in Canada, we’re rather behind the curve when it comes to active transportation, but at some point we’ll catch up — and this innovation will catch on.
Brigitte Pellerin Jul 05, 2021
Here’s a fun question to start your summer the right way: Do you believe we should make it easier for people to be happy and safe when they move around town, especially in the busier areas closer to the core? And how much do we want to reduce traffic and carbon emissions while we’re at it? A lot, right?
‘Ocean on fire’: Flames erupt in Gulf of Mexico after gas pipeline ruptures (video) | The Independent
12 hours ago
Footage of the fire – appearing to boil the ocean’s surface with bright orange flames – went viral on 2 July before the fire was extinguished roughly 150 yards from a drilling platform in Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula, the company reported.
The company said that “no injuries or evacuations are reported.”
Pemex reported a leak at 5:15am on Friday in the submarine pipeline near its Ku-Maloob-Zaap’s Ku-C satellite platform in the Campeche Sound.
Leo Murray on Ealing Councillors failure to act on multiple environmental crises – Twitter (thread)
Replying to Leo Murray @crisortunity This thread will have a go at explaining why, and what @_petermason and @EalingCouncil would do instead if they actually cared about the multiple environmental crises bearing down on us, or had any intention of doing anything about them. I’ll try to keep it positive. Sigh 2/
Nowhere is safe, say scientists as extreme heat causes chaos in US and Canada | The Guardian
Matthew Taylor and Leyland Secco
The devastating “heat dome” has caused temperatures to rise to almost 50C in Canada and has been linked to hundreds of deaths, melted power lines, buckled roads and wildfires.
Experts say that as the climate crisis pushes global temperatures higher, all societies – from northern Siberia to Europe, Asia to Australia – must prepare for more extreme weather events.
Sir David King, the former UK chief scientific adviser, said: “Nowhere is safe … who would have predicted a temperature of 48/49C in British Columbia?”
A sale every 3 minutes: Electric bikes outsell electric cars in UK during 2020 – Cycle Industry News
Mark Sutton24 June, 2021
Electric bike sales outstripped sales of electric cars in 2020, according to an annual review of the market presented by the Bicycle Association today.
Revealing that 160,000 electric bikes were sold in extraordinary conditions last year, the recap on the year reveals that one e-bike sold every three minutes. Electric cars tallied 108,000 sales with a subsidy to buy attached.
Utilising its Market Data Service, which pools anonymised retail sales data, the BA has forecast that the trend is only just warming; a forecast to triple sales is now outlined in just three years.
As part of this trend, electric cargo bikes are identified as one area that stand to grow in the face of fast growing van mileage; a 30% contributor to NOx and particulate emissions. Bike shops, possibly due to the space burden of stock, are not committing big as yet – 8% will invest more in 2021 than previously, according to CI.N’s market report. The BA assisted in the Government in the creation of a £2 million eCargoBike Grant scheme, designed to give businesses the chance to buy in for business use.
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