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The Unstoppable Appeal of Highway Expansion – bloomberg

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bloomberg.com David Zipper
Twelve lanes of Interstate 35 slice through the heart of the city of Austin. But that doesn’t appear to be enough: The highway is often choked with truck and commuter traffic, which is only thickening as the regional population balloons. A recent study named Austin’s section of I-35 the worst bottleneck in Texas.
The Texas Department of Transportation, known as TxDOT, says it knows what to do: Widen the freeway. The agency proposes adding eight more lanes, at a projected cost of $7.9 billion.
Many Austinites are skeptical. The plan would require destroying an estimated 150 homes and businesses and further embed an infrastructural barrier that has served as a racial dividing line since the 1940s. It would also increase vehicle emissions at a time when Austin is struggling to reach its climate goals. But TxDOT maintains that environmentally friendly alternatives to road widening, like investing in transit, are off the table. “We are allowed, right now, to be furious, to break things, to do what is needed to demand to be heard,” Austin Chronicle columnist Mike Clark-Madison recently wrote.

“The cyclists go in flocks like starlings, gathering together, skimming in and out.” – Virginia Woolf, Amsterdam, 1935 – Dutch Cycling Embassy – Twitter

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@Cycling_Embassy
“The cyclists go in flocks like starlings, gathering together, skimming in and out.” – Virginia Woolf, Amsterdam, 1935 Newly-restored, colourized, and motion-stabilized footage from the streets of Amsterdam almost a century ago, in full-high definition. https://youtube.com/watch?v=e9s_PD

Free ‘Fix Your Bike’ £50 voucher scheme has been quietly shut down for good – mirror.co.uk

By


Dan Bloom
The government issued 400,000 vouchers worth £50 each since last summer to help people fix up their bikes – but this week announced it ‘does not plan’ to issue any more
A £20million voucher scheme to help people fix rusty bikes during the Covid pandemic has been quietly shut down for good.
Some 400,000 £50 vouchers were issued between July 2020 and May 2021 to redeem at bike shops across England.
Until this week, the government had held out the possibility that the scheme could be extended.
Its website said: “Any updates on future releases of vouchers will be published on this page.”
But on Monday that was ditched.

Dr Tero Mustonen | Cascading Arctic Changes will create new planet soon – Nick Breeze ClimateGenn – Twitter

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Nick Breeze ClimateGenn
In this ClimateGenn episode I am speaking Dr Tero Mustonen who is based within the Arctic Circle about the enormous changes happening there today and that are going to cascade across the globe impacting everyone of us. Follow on https://genn.cc or support via Patreon on https://patreon.com/genncc Tero works with indigenous peoples inside the Arctic Circle and beyond, utilising what is called Traditional Knowledge Systems that include the linguistic, cultural and natural environments that are complex and holistic. These ancient ways of understanding the world also hold the key to solving many of our systemic problems and yet they are being extinguished, along with the broad swathe of life on Earth. This is all a result of centuries of extraction and consumption, that underpin our contemporary experience of living in developed nations. Despite Tero’s despairing message, he also suggests a pathway to planetary repair through rewilding and by deepening our custodial relationship with nature.

End of the roads – Business Daily – BBC Sounds

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20 Dec 2021 Available for over a year
Roads? Where we’re going, do we need roads? Some countries think they’ve already got too many. In the face of a climate catastrophe, the Austrian and Welsh governments are reconsidering plans to expand their road networks, moving away from a car-first model to better include more environmentally modes of transport. In Wales, they’ve all but halted any new roads as Climate Minister Julie James tells us, and are instead looking at improving public transport and active travel measures. In Austria we speak to Leonore Gewessler, Minister for Climate Action in the national government, who says that to build more roads would only attract more traffic and therefore more pollution. Electric vehicles could go some way to lowering carbon emissions, but the take up isn’t fast enough, says transport researcher Giulio Mattioli and so reducing reliance on cars altogether has to be a priority. And that means reimagining how cities are built to accommodate convenience, but without the car – transport planner Susan Claris tells us how that can be done. Today’s programme is presented by Tamasin Ford and produced by Russell Newlove.

Tripling Bicycle Use Would Pump $6.5 Billion Into London’s Economy Each Year, Says Report – Forbes

By


Carlton Reid Nov 23, 2021

A report by an academic research company estimates that tripling bicycle use in cash-strapped London by 2030 would save lives, create jobs and result in an annual economic dividend of $6.5 billion. And that’s on top of cleaner air and less congested streets
Commissioned by industry organization the Bicycle Association, the report by Wales-based Transport for the Quality of Life states that cycling in the capital could be helped to grow from a current 2% of all journeys to 14% within eight years. Transport cycling in the London borough of Hackney is already on a so-called modal share of 9%.

However, any growth is partly reliant on more support from the Greater London Authority’s Transport for London (TfL) and London Mayor Sadiq Khan, said the Bicycle Association’s report.

“Commission’s strongest commitment to cycling to date”: Cycling organisations react to the “Efficient and Green Mobility” package | ECF

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“Commission’s strongest commitment to cycling to date”: Cycling organisations react to the “Efficient and Green Mobility” package

On 14 December, the European Commission presented its “Efficient and Green Mobility” package with revised legislative proposals on the Trans-European Transport Network (TEN-T) and the Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS) directive and a communication on a new European Urban Mobility Framework.
The European Cyclists’ Federation (ECF), Cycling Industries Europe (CIE) and the Confederation of the European Bicycle Industry (CONEBI) welcome this package, not least because many of the measures proposed recognise the increasing policy priority given to cycling at local and national level, elevating them to a priority level across the whole European Union, the result of two years of hard work and targeted advocacy by the cycling organisations.

🛑 Stop A12 Chelmsford to A120 – Deadline 11.59 TODAY (19 Dec) – TAN

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Supplementary consultation on A12 Chelmsford to A120, Essex
• Here: https://highwaysengland.citizenspace.com/he/a12chelmsford-to-a120-widening-consultation-nov21/
• Or email in comments to: a12chelmsforda120wide@highwaysengland.co.uk
National Highways are holding a supplementary consultation on the a12 chelmsford to a120 widening scheme on changes made since the statutory consultation in the summer.
Tell national highways not to build more roads and increase traffic growth and carbon in a climate emergency.
In large sections they are  leaving the existing A12 dual carriageway in place and putting a six lane dual carriageway next to it. that’s increasing the number of lane by 2.5 X! Even in the DfT’s wildest dreams they are not planning for traffic growth that extreme!

• TAN’s objection here:
https://transportactionnetwork.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/TAN-objection-to-the-A12-supplementary-consultation-no-sig.pdf
The preliminary environmental impact report (peir) states that the extra traffic would increase carbon emissions by an extra 1,350,926 tonnes over 60 years, but provides no construction emissions. other data is also missing.
The road would also lead to increased air pollution, noise and community severance.
It is particularly bad for active travel (walking and cycling) with most provision poorly designed, inconvenient and unattractive.

Protect our railway heritage from National Highways’ wrecking ball – HRE – change.org

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Sign the Petition 🙏🏽

Please help to safeguard our nation’s threatened disused railway heritage.
The UK’s developing network of foot and cycle routes has brought new life to many old railways over the past 50 years. As we build a better normal after the coronavirus pandemic, increasing provision for active travel will bring health, wellbeing, environmental, economic and connectivity benefits, and the Government has recognised this by committing £2 billion over five years to deliver new infrastructure.
Many of these green corridors are ecologically sensitive, supporting increased biodiversity that typically relies upon movement and wider  landscape connectivity.
But National Highways, acting on the Department for Transport’s behalf, has plans to spend much of its excessive budget for managing the Historical Railways Estate of 3,100+ disused railways structures by demolishing or infilling potentially hundreds of them, compromising future greenway schemes by blocking or severing the routes they span or carry. The same plans could also jeopardise railway reopenings and extensions to heritage lines.

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