News from Elsewhere

02 November 2021

A new travel app that calculates money and carbon savings for each journey walked and cycled rather than driven has been launched across Liverpool city region.

Residents could save up to £100 each month by swapping car journeys for bike rides or walks, according to Liverpool John Moores University (LJMU), developers of the ‘Smart Green Journey’ app.

The free app, backed by metro mayor Steve Rotheram, allows users to plan the quickest or quietest routes

Phil Goodwin

Stonehenge is one of our most important monuments, and a much-loved iconic image of our history. Thoughtlessly, its wonderfully skilled builders placed it in an awkward position, obstructing plans for a big road project, whose need, National Highways argue, is demonstrated by their cost benefit study. A tunnel would protect the monument from traffic, and it would fit into the road builders’ plan to increase speeds, section by section, on the present road.  
The problem is that tunnels are very expensive to build, and the money value of the projected time savings would not nearly cover the cost. 

This guest blog by Cycling UK’s policy director Roger Geffen argues that the Government’s draft National Planning Policy Framework makes it commendably easy for councils to reject planning applications which aren’t ‘beautiful’, but creates massive hurdles for councils wishing to reject developments that would entrench car-dependence. The blog was first published on the Cycling UK website.
“The Government is strongly in favour of ‘beauty’. And who wouldn’t be? I certainly am. It’s one of those motherhood-and-apple-pie things that surely everyone agrees with.

“We know what the problems are,” said Dr. Mark Hayden. “We know what the solutions are; what’s missing is the will.”
Dr. Hayden, like many others, is hoping that the political leaders now arriving at COP26 in Glasgow will finally take meaningful steps to fix the climate crisis.
He was speaking from the saddle of his electric bike on day six of a group cycle ride from London to Glasgow. Riders—mostly children’s healthcare professionals—were strung out along the muddy country lanes of the Tyne Valley in Northumberland following a route plotted some months earlier by Dr. Hayden and other organizers of the Ride for Their Lives rolling demo.

“We want to commemorate and commiserate the homes and lives lost to the climate crisis,”

one Extinction Rebellion member said on Friday.

Nearly £7bn will be allocated to urban transport around England in next week’s Autumn Budget and Spending Review.
England’s city regions will receive a total of about £5.7bn in sustainable transport funding, with a further £1.2bn being invested in bus services.
However, only about £1.5bn of the transport funding appears to be new money. Some £4.2bn was previously announced in 2019 for cities, while the bus grants will be coming from a £3bn fund promised by prime minister Boris Johnson last year.
Chancellor Rishi Sunak said: “Great cities need great transport and that is why we’re investing billions to improve connections in our city regions as we level up opportunities across the country.

But a persistent theme is that voters have time and again reelected the mayors responsible for ambitious road reclamations, often with overwhelming majorities. Although many presume these policies are toxic, projects that make cities more liveable have been shown to be good urban policy and good politics.