Author name: Steven Edwards

Carlton Reid
Pedal Me cofounder Ben Knowles on one of his firm’s electric cargo bikes.
“Overwhelmingly, our staff experience injuries off the bike, not on the bike,” states Pedal Me cofounder Ben Knowles, who has been fielding comments on Twitter after he confirmed the London-based pedal-powered taxi service has long banned its riders from wearing bicycle helmets. 
“People that are taking risks that are sufficient that they feel they need to wear helmets are not welcome to work for us,” Knowles tweeted on 4 February.

On 22 June 2021, the Deputy Minister for Climate Change, Lee Waters MS, announced in a statement to the Senedd that there would be a pause on all new road schemes while the existing pipeline of schemes is reviewed.
The context for the review is that Welsh Government, and many local authorities in Wales, have declared a climate emergency. Welsh Government has recently published Net Zero Wales Carbon Budget 2 (October 2021), which identifies the need to reduce CO2 emissions across the whole economy by 63% by 2030. In the transport sector, Net Zero Wales sets an aim to reduce the number of car miles travelled per person by 10% by 2030 (from 2019), and to increase the proportion of trips by sustainable modes (public transport and active travel) to 35% by 2025 and 39% by 2030. Transport emissions accounted for 17% of Welsh CO2 emissions and had declined by only 6% against the 1990 baseline in 2019, highlighting that meeting targets will be very challenging.

Oliver Milman
The Covid-19 pandemic has seen two pernicious trends emerge as to how Americans are getting around their country: public transit is struggling with a reduced number of paying customers, while there has been a sharp increase in car crash deaths.
The shuttering of businesses, the rise of working from home and a fear of contracting the coronavirus saw public transport use plummet across the US – commuter rail alone reported a 79% decline in ridership in the year to September 2020. Despite a slight resurgence in 2021, trips taken on all modes of public transit are still around half of what they were before the pandemic, federal government figures show.

@StreetsblogSF
Rotterdam was bombed into rubble in the 1940s and rebuilt around cars. They then retrofitted for bikes, transit and walking when they realized it wasn’t worth letting children get mowed over to be able to drive fast.

On Saturday 29 January the Government will introduce new rules to the Highway Code. The changes should make our roads safer for everyone, but they won’t be effective unless all road users are made aware of them. That’s where you come in.
Thousands of people backed our campaigning for these changes in 2020 but now we need your help once again, to take them from the rule book to the road. Please follow and engage with our messaging on social media – you can find Cycling UK on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

‘We need politicians and experts’: how Chile is putting the climate crisis first

Carlton Reid 24/2/22
Cars can be convenient, but they are also incredibly costly, both to owners and society in general. New academic research has calculated that the lifetime cost of a small car—such as an Opel Corsa—is about $689,000, of which society pays $275,000. (A Mercedes GLC costs $1+m over an owner’s lifetime.) 

Gwyn Topham
Motorists will have to pay by the mile to make up a £35bn tax shortfall that will arise from the shift to electric vehicles, MPs have warned, calling on the government to act urgently to bring in a national road pricing scheme.
The cross-party Commons transport select committee said it saw “no viable alternative” to road pricing and work should start immediately on creating a replacement for fuel duty before it dwindled away with the transition.
Without urgent reform of motoring taxation, the UK would face an under-resourced and congested future, the committee said. New petrol and diesel vehicles will be banned from sale from 2030, as part of the governments 2050 net zero plans, losing the Treasury roughly £28bn in fuel duty and £7bn in vehicle excise duty, under current tax rules.

Eleanor Salter