Author name: Steven Edwards

Angie Schmitt
The government can no longer allow the auto industry to treat walkers and bikers like collateral damage.
After a decade of steady increases, the newest Ford F-250—part of Ford’s F-Series of pickups, the No. 1 selling vehicle model in America—measures some 55 inches tall at the hood. That’s “as tall as the roof of some sedans,” a Consumer Reports writer remarked in a recent analysis examining the mega-truck trend. This height would easily render someone in a wheelchair, or a child, totally invisible at close range. If I, a tallish woman at 5 foot 6, were hit by a new F-250, I would be struck above the chest. The face, head, neck: These are not great places to suffer a forceful blow—like the kind that an up-to-7,500-pound F-250 can deliver.

@theeyecollector
Live
Laugh
Lead an uprising against car culture

Carlton Reid 30/12/2021
A highly-placed Transport for London (TfL) official wanted to digitally alter a road safety TV advertisement after it was slammed on social media. The ad was removed from TV screens and Twitter in early December. The ad featured a female driver and a male cyclist shouting at each other after the motorist overtook the cyclist dangerously. The pair reconciled, but critics accused the ad of “victim blaming.”
Following a kickback on social media from cyclists and cycling organisations in late November the TfL official emailed the ad’s creative agency saying, “I’m confident that we will be back on air in January [2022].”
“Gutted it’s got to come down,” replied an executive from the VCCP ad agency of London, who went on to say the removal of the 60-second TV advert was “bowing to the minority.” (Ironically, the advert’s strapline was “See their side,” a reference to how road users ought to empathise with others also using the road.)

David Wallace-Wells @dwallacewells
“What’s interesting isn’t just how polarising the film is, it’s the sheer volume of discourse

Rob@the_baseband
It’s not just that I was almost hit by a driver running a stop sign, or that it was a half-block from my house, or that the driver honked at me after doing it, or that he rolled down his window to yell vague threats at me afterwards…

Toronto City Council Removes Most Minimum Parking Requirements
The parking reform movement has a major new feather in its cap: the Toronto City Council has this week adopted sweeping changes to the parking requirements of the city’s zoning bylaws. www.planetizen.com

@grescoe
STUDY: Drivers of luxury cars found to give pedestrians the right of way 3x less than those driving less expensive vehicles; 4x more likely to cut off other drivers. Call it the “Audi Effect.”

Karen Liebreich
Everyone loves a good scapegoat. When your business is faltering because of Covid, or your shop is losing trade because of the internet, or when you simply can’t turn left outside your house as you have done for the last twenty years to drive to your local shops — blame cyclists. When you’re stuck in traffic and someone sweeps past without a care in the world (and without paying for road tax or insurance) — blame cyclists.

May 21, 2021
Live Event Recording | Urban Age Debates: Cities in the 2020s Localising Transport: towards the 15-minute city or the one-hour metropolis? Hosted by LSE Cities, the Alfred Herrhausen Gesellschaft and the LSE School of Public Policy For urban transport, the early 2020s are going to be an inflection point hard to overestimate: digital connectivity will increasingly substitute physical access, public transport finance will require new business models, and fiscal recovery packages have the potential to either entrench transport-intense urban development or accelerate progress towards urban patterns based on density and mixed use.