Author name: Steven Edwards

Peter Walker Fri 23 Apr 2021 07.00 BST

If you were to read certain newspapers for long enough, the message would seem clear: the main cause of traffic congestion is measures to boost walking and cycling – that is, separated cycle lanes, and so-called low-traffic neighbourhoods, or LTNs.
LTNs, schemes to dissuade through traffic on smaller residential streets by filters permeable to people travelling by foot or cycle, but not by private motor vehicle – whether camera-enforced or in the physical form of planters or bollards – are at the centre of a particularly fierce transport-based culture war.
The regular focus for this is access for emergency vehicles. Stories about ambulances or fire crews supposedly held up by badly implemented or not consulted-on planters are a near-daily staple of some news outlets.
This article is an attempt to get to the facts, and in turn to use the row about emergency access as a microcosm for the wider, and often depressingly toxic, debate on LTNs. The examples and studies cited will, I’m afraid, come from London, given the recent spread of LTNs in the capital, and the resultant fact that the research tends to be focused there.

Of those surveyed, just over three fifths (62%) don’t think adults are doing enough to tackle climate change, with 71% of the pupils admitting to feeling worried about climate change, and just over half (53%) believing that adults don’t listen to children’s concerns about the topic.
40% of pupils thought that encouraging more people to walk, cycle or scoot to school was the best way to bring down levels of air pollution near their school, and 38% thought that walking and cycling for local journeys was the most important thing that adults should be doing to tackle climate change overall.

Researchers with Imperial College London’s Department of Mathematics, among other academic institutions, have found that London’s Cycle Superhighway lanes do not negatively impact traffic speed.
In unwelcome news to a handful of mayoral candidates touting that myth that cycle lanes worsen traffic at present, the findings are based on data analysis stretching back further than the existence of even the blue painted schemes first laid down when Boris Johnson was London’s Mayor. The Transport Secretary Grant Shapps has likewise previously suggested he may believe the myth of cycle lanes “causing congestion”, though has likewise shown some support for their improvement.

Jorge Fitz-Gibbon April 18, 2021 

Two men perished inside a Tesla Model S that authorities believe was set to autopilot with no one behind the wheel — when the car crashed into a tree in Texas and sparked a massive fire.
The deadly smash-up happened aroudn 11:30 p.m. Saturday night in The Woodlands, a neighborhood in Houston.
“Our preliminary investigation is determining — but it’s not complete yet — that there was no one at the wheel of that vehicle,” he said. “We’re almost 99.9 percent sure.”
The blaze continued to burn for hours, with firefighters pumping more than 30,000 gallons of water onto the flames before they were put out.

Adrian & Catherine and their two kids have recently given up their household car (Hackney)

Adrian: “Our car was quite old and we found we weren’t using it very much so we decided we’d try to manage without it when it was no longer road worthy, which actually happened a lot sooner than we’d hoped! But going car-free has been much easier than we expected. In fact, it’s relieved us of quite a bit of expense and stress.

Communities shouldn’t give back the street space that they reclaimed during the pandemic.
April 16, 2021The Biden administration can help to some degree, and it is saying the right things. “You should not have to own a car to prosper in this country,” Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg tweeted last month, “no matter what kind of community you’re living in.” President Joe Biden recently unveiled a $2 trillion infrastructure plan that would double federal spending on public transportation systems in cities, to $85 billion, and devote another $20 billion to improving roadway safety. It also includes $20 billion to undo the damage highways have inflicted on cities, particularly in Black neighbourhoods.

The climate emergency is bigger than many experts, elected officials, and activists realize. Humanity’s greenhouse gas emissions have overheated the Earth’s atmosphere, unleashing punishing heat waves, hurricanes, and other extreme weather – that much is widely understood.

If seas rise 20 feet over the next 2,000 years, our children and their descendants may find ways to adapt. But if seas rise 20 feet or more over the next 100 to 200 years — which is our current trajectory – the outlook is grim. In that scenario, there could be two feet of sea level rise by 2040, three feet by 2050, and much more to come.

A Met Police officer has been taken to hospital after being hit by a car while on duty in north London.
The officer was standing by a stationary police vehicle on Dartmouth Park Hill, Camden, when he was struck just before 15:00 BST.
He suffered injuries to his lower body and was taken to hospital by the London Ambulance Service (LAS).
The Met said the driver fled the scene and officers are trying to trace the driver and the vehicle.