In a lot of ways, cities are about movement. Commuting, cultural visits, consumer binges, social trips or just staring out of the bus window, feeling part of the flow: motion makes urban life fulfilling, sometimes very tiring and occasionally sublime. Over recent years, without much discussion, the way we move around cities has changed. The change started before the pandemic, but Covid accelerated it, and it has continued as the pandemic has apparently receded.
We’ve Got to Stop Requiring Parking Everywhere – nytimes.com
Farhad Manjoo June 2, 2022
There are more registered vehicles in California than there are adult human beings. This isn’t especially anomalous — vehicles outnumber people who can drive them in much of the United States — but the mismatch is particularly absurd in the nation’s most populous and most car-obsessed state, where people and cars have long been locked in a largely invisible battle for the same precious resource: places to park themselves.
For California’s people, the problem is acute. In part because of a longtime undersupply of new housing, California’s cities are some of America’s least affordable places to live; less than 25 percent of households can afford to purchase a median-priced single-family home in the state.
When Cars Kill Pedestrians – newyorker.com
Danyoung Kim
On the afternoon of October 8, 2013, in the last moments of his life, twelve-year-old Sammy Cohen Eckstein, of Park Slope, Brooklyn, was walking to after-school soccer practice near his apartment on Prospect Park West when he lost control of his ball. It rolled into the busy southbound street, and he went after it. The driver of a car in one lane hit the brakes. The driver of a van in the next lane did not. Later, he said he’d seen only a ball, not a boy.
“Sammy didn’t yet have his growth spurt,” his mother, Amy Cohen, said. “He was small for his age. This is why he didn’t survive.” Apart from the funeral, to which nearly a thousand people came, she spent the following days under the covers, as her husband, Gary Eckstein, took the lead in caring for Sammy’s devastated older sister, Tamar. Their son had been a popular figure in the neighborhood, game to debate climate change and Yankees pitching with all comers. A random accident—that’s what people told them.
Melbourne’s ‘pause’ on new bike lanes sparks outrage on World Bicycle Day | Melbourne | The Guardian
Advocates and key councillor hope the halt is short-lived, but transport union criticises existing lanes
Adeshola Ore
Cycling advocates are holding out hope that a halt on new bike lanes in Melbourne CBD announced Friday will be short-lived, warning of the risks posed by gaps in the network.
The Melbourne lord mayor, Sally Capp, said Friday there would be a “pause” on the construction of dedicated cycling lanes in the CBD. The City of Melbourne council said it would instead prioritise upgrading cycling infrastructure on arterial roads.
The council has built more than 19km of protected bike lanes over the past two years.
The announcement – which coincided with World Bicycle Day on Friday – follows backlash from businesses, motorists, the state transport union and residents, with some arguing the lanes made parking and delivery vehicle access difficult and increase city congestion.
But Melbourne Bicycle User Group spokesperson Nicholas Dow said the pause would create a cycle lane network with gaps.
National Highways draws up revised plan for Lower Thames Crossing – Transport Xtra
A multi-billion pound scheme that will involve building the UK’s longest road tunnel under the Thames is now open to a further round of consultation. National Highways said it has refined its plans for the Lower Thames Crossing to take into account feedback from previous consultations.
The project would involve a 2.6-mile tunnel under the Thames, 14.3 miles of new road connecting the M2/A2, A13 and M25 and around 50 new bridges and viaducts“..National Highways are not considering or planning how traffic would migrate between the two crossings when there are incidents, if the LTC goes ahead, and there would not be adequate connections. The result would be more chaos, congestion and pollution.”
The UK Government should follow the Welsh Government’s example, which last year paused most new road schemes to allow them to be reviewed by an independent panel, said Blake (LTT 28 June 2021).
https://ltcconsultation2022.nationalhighways.co.uk
‘Ella’s law’ tops poll of private members’ bills – Transport Xtra
The Bill, named Ella’s law, named after nine-year-old Ella Kissi-Debrah who the first person in the UK to have air pollution recognised as a cause of death, was introduced by Green party peer Jenny Jones. She is seeking to establish a right to clean air and set up a commission to oversee government actions and progress
Police pay compensation after leaving cyclist to freeze to death | road.cc
PCSOs did not get out of car and spent less than 10 minutes looking for Jacqueline Parsons after she crashed while riding through a cemetery in Hull
The family of a cyclist who froze to death after police were alerted to the fact she had fallen off her bike but did not get out of their car to look for her have won compensation from Humberside Police.
Two PCSOs from the force stopped searching for Jacqueline Parsons after less than 10 minutes despite a call being received to tell police that she was in distress.
Ms Parsons, aged 56, had fallen from her bike as she rode through Western Cemetery in Hull, East Yorkshire in October 2018.
Visualisation tool allows residents to transform their streets – transportxtra
Deniz Huseyin25 May 2022
New software has been developed that allows anyone from professionals to local residents to swiftly create visualisations of how they think streets could look. Users can drag and drop a range of features – including street surfacing, kerb build-outs, trees, rain gardens, bollards, bike racks and hangars – onto an image of a street. Features are set to the correct scale to give an accurate representation of how they would look in reality.
The BetaStreets computer-generated image (CGI) design and visualisation tool is the brainchild of Jon Little and Andy Heather. They believe the tool will allow visualisation to be used more often and make design more open and inclusive, with local people able to interact with scheme developers earlier in the process.
Andy Heather is a visualisation specialist while Jon Little is specialist in active travel, liveable streets, shared and combined mobility, and the author of Waltham Forest’s successful Mini-Holland bid, which paved the way for the transformation of streets in the London borough.
Photo evidence from public key to behaviour change, says traffic officer – Transport Xtra
Deniz Huseyin 25 May 2022
A scheme that involves people in the West Midlands sending the police photos of dangerously and thoughtlessly parked cars will change driver behaviour, predicts traffic officer PC Mark Hodson.
Operation Park Safe has resulted in “thousands” of fixed penalty notices being issued to motorists since its launch in 2018, said Hodson, who has for many years been pioneering road safety initiatives.
The scheme has also resulted in the removal of hundreds of dangerously parked vehicles, some of which were stolen or cloned, reports Hodson.
He has trained PCSOs across the West Midlands on how to handle third-party reports. “I’ve shown PCSOs what evidence is needed to prosecute various traffic offences – the types of photos and what needs to be included in the reports,” said Hodson.
“If you ask people about policing priorities they say: parking, speeding, littering and dog poo. These come above robberies and anti-social behaviour. Pavement and obstructive parking impact on people’s lives, especially those who are mobility or sight impaired.”
Bikes4ukraine Crowdfunds To Send Bicycles And Pop-Up Cycleways To Car-Choked Lviv – forbes.com
Carlton Reid
Danish-Canadian urbanist Mikael Colville-Andersen—presenter of the Canadian TV series Life-sized City—is behind an initiative to bring bicycles and pop-up cycle infrastructure to the Ukrainian city of Lviv, 50 miles from the Polish border.
As Russia’s invasion forces continue to bombard the east of Ukraine the western city of Lviv has become home to 200,000 Ukrainians fleeing the war. Many of these internal refugees arrived in Lviv by car, an influx which has continued to grid-lock the city. Public transport has also been overwhelmed.
Bicycling could be the answer. Lviv’s transport department contacted Colville-Andersen to ask his advice on boosting bicycling in the city. Based in Copenhagen, Denmark, Colville-Andersen—the Anthony Bourdain of urbanism—has worked on cycle initiatives in cities across the world.
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