With 130km of bike paths that wind along the region’s beaches, Australia’s 10th-largest city is striving to make cycling the preferred mode of transport. But it’s an uphill battle

Sat 13 Feb 2021 19.00 GMT
If Australians were asked what they most associated with Wollongong, most would probably nominate heavy industries such as coal and steel production. But now the city 90km south of Sydney has been recognised alongside diverse European destinations as it strives to make a new reputation as a centre for both professional and recreational cycling.

A new report commissioned by the Department for Transport has found that each passing generation is driving less within urban areas, in particular were convenient alternatives are provided.
Undertaken by NatCen Social Research, the research reveals a pattern of trends that are already in motion, such as young people’s propensity to avoid car use in urban areas, if alternatives are easily accessible. In rural areas, where far less congestion exists and travel distances often greater, the trend is understandable less pronounced.

Hiring a taxi is expensive. This is mostly because of the cost of the human driver. Replacing that driver with a robot will clearly reduce the cost. That is the one of the key promises of autonomous vehicles (AVs)—in the future, we will be able to travel where we want, when we want at low cost because we will no longer own cars and nor will we have to pay the high costs of human drivers.

February 15, 2021
One of Britain’s oldest paperboys has decided not to retire after being gifted an electric bike to help him on his route.
George Bailey, who distributes newspapers around the village of Headcorn in Kent, said he has been given a “new lease of life” with the e-bike.
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The octagenarian first made headlines at the end of January and had been considering giving up the 2.5-mile round.
However, he has postponed hanging up his bag after British cycling companies Raleigh and Evans Cycles offered him a new Raleigh Motus Crossbar E-Bike, which will give him up to 250 per cent of his pedal power, and speeds of up to 15.5mph.

Laura Laker Sat 13 Feb 2021
Low-traffic neighbourhoods, popup cycle lanes, widened pavements and other walking and cycling schemes introduced in response to the Covid-19 pandemic have not hindered ambulance response times, a series of freedom of information requests has revealed.
Ambulance trust responses to FOIs submitted by the charity Cycling UK revealed that no such schemes were implemented without the relevant trust’s knowledge and that no delays to emergency response times had been identified because of them.

Cycling, e-biking and walking can help tackle the climate crisis, according to a new study led by the University of Oxford’s Transport Studies Unit. “Our findings suggest that, even if not all car trips could be substituted by bicycle trips, the potential for decreasing emissions is huge,” said co-author Dr Audrey de Nazelle.

Everyone on twitter is* dunking on embarrassingly bad road safety awareness campaign tweets. But we should abolish all social media-based road safety awareness campaigns — including the ones which target genuine causes of danger on the roads.
Kent County Council’s Road Safety Campaigns Team are the latest in a long line of road safety twitter campaigns queuing up to get ratioed: 
Twitter now has a whole army ready to dunk on road safety awareness campaigns that are so incompetently designed they don’t even understand the road safety problem that they’re supposed to be addressing — that people get injured on the roads not because they aren’t visible, but because drivers don’t look properly, don’t pay attention, or don’t give a shit. They show up a lot on my feed when, in reply, they cite my own road safety campaign for greater visibility on the roads.

Richard OrangeMon 8 Feb 2021
It was a couple of parking spaces a few days ago. But now the area outside Malin Henriksson Talcoth’s gourmet sausage shop in Gothenburg has a bench, a picnic table and racks for cycles and e-scooters. It also has people talking, eating and enjoying themselves, despite subzero temperatures.
The workmen had arrived the previous week and built the wooden unit with benches facing, importantly, towards the pavement. “When the sun was out on Friday and Saturday, it was absolutely full of people, just having a takeaway coffee and a sausage,” Talcoth said.

As I have mentioned in other posts, the basic UK approach to road rules is that you can do what you like unless there is a legal restriction which is either at the national level (or devolved nations level) such as defining the national speed limits or the local level with traffic orders.