Homes Without Jams: join the campaign
Planning needs to be reformed. But the Government’s proposals threaten more traffic and pollution. Transport for New Homes is calling for Homes Without Jams.
Our country needs more homes. What we don’t need is more sprawling, car-dependent estates far from town centres and public transport links.
Right now, too many housing developments lack local shops and services, decent public transport and cycle routes. Some streets even lack pavements. The result is that the people who live there must drive for almost every journey: a recipe for traffic, air pollution and climate change.
Now the Government wants to reform the planning system – but its proposals threaten to make things worse. The outcome would be more big housing estates in the countryside connected by more roads.
MPs investigate zero emission vehicles and road pricing – TransportXtra
“A consequence of the transition to electric vehicles is a potential £40 billion annual fiscal black hole, due to the reduction in Fuel Duty and Vehicle Excise Duty. Something will have to change. We will be exploring whether radical road pricing or ‘pay-as-you-drive’ schemes can offer a revenue-raising solution to this problem. We will explore the practicalities of different schemes, the level of public support for them, and best practice from other countries. We will also assess whether new technologies and pricing can both be utilised to incentivise consumer behaviour change, reduce congestion and promote active travel.”
The third edition of the Sustainable Safety vision – Bicycle Dutch
Bicycle Dutch 6 January 2021
Sustainable Safety is one of the corner stones of the Dutch road safety policies. Its ultimate goal is to make traffic so safe that everybody can get home safely. Not only fit able-bodied people or drivers in protected vehicles, but every road user – the schoolchild, the commuter, the commercial driver and the active senior, whether they walk, cycle or participate in traffic in any other way. I’ve published about Sustainable Safety before, in 2012 and in 2017, but the policy was updated in 2018. That is why I want to start this year with another look at Sustainable Safety. First, I would like to wish you all the very best for this new year! I also – as you will have noticed – updated the look of my blog.
Jan 2017) Corporate fascism and the car – Ban Private Cars In London
by V Readhead
The rise of fascism in the 1930s was supported by the avantgarde movement called Futurism. It emphasised speed, technology, youth, and violence, and objects such as the car, the aeroplane, and the industrial city. The autonomous pedestrian and cyclist quickly became an irritation in the march towards futuristic progress.
It was Benito Mussolini who first favoured the elimination of autonomy in favour of corporatism. The advent of fascism welcomed and incorporated mass production of cars. Social Darwinism meant abandoning democracy, weeding out the ‘weak’ and promoting the interests of ‘successful’ businessmen, like the automobile moguls. For the fascists the superior individual drove a car and at speed, dominating public space. Mussolini was often warned, even by those in his own party, about his reckless speeding in his Alfa Romeo. “
Pollutionwatch: fine particles affect lungs of those near airports | The Guardian
Trial finds reduced lung function and heart changes in young people who exercised near Schiphol
Gary Fuller Fri 1 Jan 2021
Extinction Rebellion activists protesting against climate pollution at Schiphol airport in the Netherlands.
For seven months in 2018, a lorry trailer was parked near a runway at Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport. It housed exercise bikes and air pollution measurement equipment. Twenty-one healthy young people took turns to visit the trailer for pedalling sessions. Air was funnelled from the outside as the young people exercised, and researchers monitored their heart and lung functions.
France makes security marking mandatory in bid to halt bike theft – road.cc
29 December 2020, 13:10
A law coming into force in France on 1 January will make it compulsory for all new bicycles to be security marked with a unique number that links them with their rightful owners, in a bid to halt bike theft.
Bikes being sold second-hand, including through online marketplaces such as Bon Coin, will also need to have a number engraved on the frame from 1 July next year so that details of the new owner can be lodged, reports France 3(link is external).
Details of the type, make, model and colour of the bicycle, as well as the name of the owner and their telephone number and email address, will be held on a central database, enabling the Gendarmerie to trace ownership of stolen bikes.
Who’s next on the hitlist now Brexit is ‘done’? Cyclists, says Talk Radio host – road.cc
29 December 2020
If you’re on social media, you don’t even need to follow certain media outlets, or their columnists or presenters, to know that “cyclists” – that catch-all group spanning kids riding to school to the likes of AA president Edmund King – are blamed for all kinds of ills.
And with cycle lanes and low traffic neighbourhoods apparently becoming the latest front line in the so-called culture wars, it’s hardly a surprise that a certain breed of ‘shock jock’ might target people who choose to undertake certain journeys by bike.
Step forward and take a bow, Talk Radio’s Cristos Foufas, who tweeted this seasonal message over Christmas:
“Listen up. It’s been stressful for a while. Labour versus Tory, Remain versus Leave, deal versus no deal, even lockdown versus everything open.
Now we’re approaching 2021, can’t we all just unite and do all we can against the one common enemy we can all agree on? Cyclists.”
He was quickly called out on the tweet on social media, with one user flagging it up to Edmund King and asking if the AA was happy advertising on Talk Radio.
Council Officer Ghost Edited Business Group’s Press Statement Seeking Dismantling Of Pop-Up Cycleway On Kensington High Street – Forbes
Carlton Reid 01/01/2021
A freedom of information (FoI) request has revealed behind-the-scenes coordination between a borough council and a business group over the December 2020 dismantling of a pop-up cycleway on London’s Kensington High Street.
The head of news at Kensington and Chelsea council (RBKC) edited what was supposed to be an independent press statement from the chair of Kensington Business Forum (KBF), reveals the FoI request by Steve Pettitt, a scientist at London’s Institute of Cancer Research.
Names on the FoI documents have been redacted, but according to Linkedin, RBKC’s head of news is Lyndsey Hannam, and KBF’s chair is Tom Frost, a director of London real estate firm Bricks & Mortar Consulting.
From volunteering to vaccines … the best of a bad year | The Guardian
Covid may have made 2020 a year to forget, but amid the gloom there were plenty of positive moments
Cities seized the chance to make more space for people and bikes
The pandemic acted as a catalyst for urban transformation, with authorities in many cities around the world seizing on spring lockdowns to reclaim the streets for pedestrians and cyclists. The Paris mayor, Anne Hidalgo, said it was “out of the question” to return to pre-Covid traffic and pollution levels, opening about 20 miles of new bike lanes, announcing plans for another 30, and sealing off a major east-west artery, the Rue de Rivoli, to private cars.
A resolution for 2021: Be a better ancestor
Kate Yoderon Dec 30, 2020
Who needs the arrow of time, anyway? Roman Krznaric, an author and philosopher, is in search of unconventional ways of thinking about time, ones that aren’t tied directly to the clocks ticking all around us. In one exercise, he imagines his young daughter as a 90-year-old, cradling her first great-granddaughter in her arms.
“I look at her face, her old face, and I walk over to the window and look at the world outside, and see what kind of world that is,” he said. “I think of my daughter, or her great-grandchild, living well into the 22nd century — a time which is not science fiction, but an intimate family fact.”