Author name: Steven Edwards

In the 1960s, I-81 ploughed through a historically Black neighborhood in Syracuse, displacing hundreds. Organizers’ dream of seeing it torn down may get new life under Biden

Rachel Ramirez Fri 21 May 2021
Just south of downtown Syracuse in upstate New York, a stretch of highway has long divided surrounding neighbourhoods.
On the east side are large buildings where university students live, well-maintained green spaces, and a wall that blocks the highway from view. On the west side is a predominantly low-income and disinvested Black neighborhood where the pollution from the highway exacerbates many residents’ existing health conditions.

asthma than their white counterparts, according to a recent report by the New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU).

Gary Fuller 4/6/21
The decision to reroute instead of rebuild the earthquake-damaged Cypress Freeway in West Oakland, California, eased the air pollution burden experienced by local communities and opened new areas for housing and the creation of parks.
Other examples include the unbuilding of part of the Inner Loop in Rochester, New York, the removal of a 12-lane motorway in Utrecht, the Netherlands, to restore the canal that once surrounded the city centre, and the Cheonggyecheon River project in Seoul, South Korea; where a multi-lane expressway was removed to reveal a buried river, creating a green-transport corridor and a place to picnic and relax. These schemes could provide a blueprint for our major urban roads.

The roads funding plan came days after the government pledged £2 billion to boost cycling
Tuesday May 26 2020

We live in a disequilibrium world, where chaos is always close and business as usual an illusion. Model-based assessments are under challenge, says Phil Goodwin. In these circumstances, the roles of scrutiny and challenge are supremely important

Embedded in decades of transport modelling is the assumption that the future will be sufficiently like the past that any relationships observed (or thought to be observed), were stable enough to use as a guide to the future, and reliable enough to support decisions, with a few modest caveats. This philosophical starting point underpinned the rationale for the key transport models used to forecast future movement and support major projects. Brexit, Covid19, and climate change all challenge the credibility of that view. 

We put it to you lot…how can we stop beauty spots being mobbed by drivers? The question comes after this morning’s video from Richmond Park and the photos from the Lake District over the bank holiday. 

cqexbesd gave it a lot of thought…
Provide a decent bus service, bike hire scheme, train service (that carries bikes). Ban cars entering without permits. Permits available for short periods and long periods. Permits require you scoring enough points (because we all like a good points system). Points for disability and infirmity. Infirmity can be both temporary or permamnet (i.e. through old age, very young age, pregnancy etc). Points for genuinely having to carry a lot of stuff (e.g. tradespeople working in the area). Maybe limited short term permits for full vehicles (i.e. you can drive as long as there are at least 4 people in your car). Points for people who actually live in the area…
Thoughts? 

We asked the world’s press to commit to treating climate change as the emergency that scientists say it is. Their response was dispiriting
The TV newsman Bill Moyers likes to tell the story of how Edward R Murrow, the pre-eminent US broadcast journalist of his time, insisted on covering what became Germany’s invasion of Poland in 1939. Murrow’s bosses at CBS News had other priorities; they ordered Murrow’s reporters to cover dance competitions in Hamburg, Paris and London, explaining that Americans needed some happy news. Murrow wouldn’t do it. “It’ll probably get us fired,” he told his colleagues, but he sent his correspondents to the German-Polish border; they arrived just in time to witness Hitler’s tanks and troops roar into Poland. Suddenly, Europe was at war. And Americans heard about it because journalists at one of the nation’s most influential news outlets defied convention and did their jobs.