Owning a car could become a fad of the past, a government minister claimed this week.

Junior transport minister Trudy Harrison, 45, told a sustainability conference owning a car was outdated ’20th-century thinking’ and the country should move to ‘shared mobility’ to cut carbon emissions.
Almost 80% of households in the UK own a car according to figures by Statista for 2020.
That accounts for 63.5 million households owning at least one car out of a total 80.7 million.Ms Harrison, who is also a former parliamentary private secretary to Boris Johnson, said the UK was ‘reaching a tipping point where shared mobility in the form of car clubs, scooters and bike shares will soon be a realistic option for many of us to get around.’

Summary

Projections indicate there will be two billion motor vehicles on the roads by 2030, most of them still powered by fossil fuels. Apart from the obvious implications for climate change, this trend also spells public health as well as environmental problems on an unprecedented scale. Michael Gross reports.
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From the sheer amount of bad news coming through the 24/7 news cycle, one may get the impression that the world is on the road to apocalypse. To counter this impression, the German news magazine Der Spiegel now publishes one trend every week that points in the right direction. Diseases have been eradicated, child labour reduced, flying is safer, etc. One of these silver linings concerns road traffic deaths in Germany. They peaked in 1970 at a horrific 58 people dying on the roads per day. Back then, the comparison often used to convince people afraid of flying was that the massacre on the roads corresponded to one fully booked jumbo jet crashing out of the skies over Western Germany every single week.

t want a concrete future for future generations,” said the Austrian climate minister, Leonore Gewessler, who is also responsible for traffic in the country. The decision is, in their opinion, historic.
“More roads mean more cars and more traffic,” Transport Minister Leonore Gewessler told the AFP news agency on Wednesday.
“I don’t want to give future generations a concrete future,” added the environmentalist, justifying the decision, which was heavily questioned by the country’s three major political parties.
The decision is “historic” as it is the first time that an Austrian government has given up infrastructure projects in order to meet its CO2 neutrality commitments by 2040.

Respond To The National Highways Consultation By 31 December 2021

National Highways is seeking views on future investment in the strategic roads network (motorways and the main A-roads) in the third Road Investment Strategy (RIS3) (2025-2030). This is the critical period before the ban on the sale of new fossil-fuelled cars begins in 2030. We need to tell National Highways loudly and clearly that they must stop building more nature and climate trashing new roads, and increasing traffic.
Consultation closes 31 December, 2021 (extended from 30 November). You can also email your thoughts to routestrategies@highwaysengland.co.uk if you find the online tool too restrictive (it allows you to give generic feedback but if you want to comment on more than one road or route, you may need to repeat the process).

Henry Mance – December 10 2021
Quiet residential streets and clean air should not be treated as luxuries

Car users don’t have an inalienable right to occupy public space Quiet residential streets and clean air should not be treated as luxuries Henry Mance People ride bicycles in the cycle lane as they cross Westminster Bridge into Parliament Square in London on November 7, 2020 Many Londoners took advantage of the quieter roads to cycle during lockdown © Justin Tallis/AFP/Getty Share on twitter (opens new window) Share on facebook (opens new window) Share on linkedin (opens new window) Henry Mance December 10 2021 271 Print this page Receive free Transport updates We’ll send you a myFT Daily Digest email rounding up the latest Transport news every morning. It’s the time of year when we remember those nice things that we’d forgotten exist: Santa, macadamia nuts, godchildren. And this year in particular, good governance. No, really. I have been reassured about the quality of British politics. The north London borough of Haringey this week approved three trial “low-traffic neighbourhoods”. In a victory for public health, these will have more pedestrian crossings and space for cycling. Residents will be able to come and go by car, but through-traffic won’t. Not everyone is happy. Low-traffic neighbourhoods, or LTNs, are accused by some Londoners of ruining their way of life and pushing congestion on to surrounding roads. Relatedly, this week a press release tried to blame London traffic jams on new cycle lanes. Come on, complaining that cycle lanes are clogging your roads is a bit like complaining that a stent is clogging your artery.  

Thousands of demonstrators blocked major roads across Serbia on Saturday as anger swelled over a government-backed plan to allow mining company Rio Tinto to extract lithium.
In the capital, Belgrade, protesters swarmed a major highway and bridge linking the city to outlying suburbs as the crowd chanted anti-government slogans while some held signs criticising the mining project.
Smaller protests were held in other Serbian cities, with small scuffles between demonstrators and counter-protesters in Belgrade and the northern city of Novi Sad, according to local media reports.