Heaton-Harris letter insists cycle lanes and LTNs need to given time to bed in
Following a number of councils removing cycle lanes and Low Traffic Neighbourhoods (LTNs) in the face of vocal objections, transport minister Chris Heaton-Harris has formally written to the leaders of all English local authorities with transport responsibilities.
Heaton-Harris emphasises that active travel schemes supported by government funding need to be left in place long enough for their impacts to be properly monitored and assessed.
The letter, sent on Friday 30 July, warned councils that if cycling and walking schemes installed using central government money are hastily abandoned, this could affect future grants.
‘We really need to normalise cycling’ – BBC News
‘We really need to normalise cycling’
A cyclist has shared video of her ride on a bike path by a dual carriageway to highlight the kind of overgrown and unsafe routes she often faces.
Tips from the Netherlands on how to build a nation of cyclists – BBC News
As countries face pressure to reduce their carbon footprint, many climate experts recommend the promotion of cycling as an easy way to cut emissions.
Should police constables stop furious cyclists? – archive, 1896 | Cycling | The Guardian
To the editor of the Manchester Guardian,
Sir, – In your article of this morning, upon the right of a police constable forcibly to stop a cyclist, you say “It is most undesirable that constables should get it into their heads that they are at liberty to stop, without warning, every cyclist who seems to them to be riding too fast. The cyclist is clearly entitled to be warned, and ought to be warned before stronger measures are resorted to,” &c.
June 21) Step forward as DfT agrees roads policy review – Transport Action Network
Buried in the DfT’s Transport Decarbonisation Plan was a concession to review the National Policy Statement for National Networks (NPSNN). We first asked transport secretary Grant Shapps to do this in March 2020, sixteen months ago. We realised that the NPSNN, which was approved in 2014, meant no new roads could be challenged on climate change grounds. Since then, the Department for Transport have messed us and our lawyers around so much that we have had to threaten legal action not once but twice!
Flooding closes London tube stations after heavy rain in south-east | UK weather | The Guardian
Met Office warns of thunderstorms across Northern Ireland, north Wales, northern England and Scotland over the weekend
Parts of the UK have faced rain and localised flooding this weekend, but forecasters have said drier and sunnier weather could be possible by the end of the month.
Heavy downpours caused flooding in areas of London on Saturday, and the Met Office warned that torrential rain would continue to affect the south-east of England throughout the day.
There are also warnings of heavy rain, thunderstorms, flooding, lightning strikes, cold winds and hail in central and southern Scotland, northern England and Northern Ireland over the weekend.
Kuwait: Fire ripped through 25,000 square metres of Al Sulabiya tyre site | Kuwait – Gulf News
An estimated one million tires were said to have been burned in blaze last week
Yasmena Al Mulla October 23, 2020 16:37
An estimated one million tyres were said to have been burned, as the fire blazed through 25,000 of the site’s million square metres, according to KUNA.
The aim of the visit was to reevaluate the current situation of the tire site, otherwise known as the tire graveyard. In addition, questions arose during the visit as to why there has been no development on the front to construct three factories that would recycle tryes, as well reduce the number of tires in the site.
Last year, the Public Authority for Industry transferred the responsibility to the Environment Protection Agency (EPA), who were tasked to find a solution to the tire graves. After taking over, the Director General of the EPA pointed out that there are around 20 to 40 million tyres, in Al Sulabiya, and that, “we will be able to deal with them all within a period of not more than a year.”
The lost history of the electric car – and what it tells us about the future of transport | Motoring | The Guardian
Tom Standage 3/8/21
In the 1890s, the biggest cities of the western world faced a mounting problem. Horse-drawn vehicles had been in use for thousands of years, and it was hard to imagine life without them. But as the number of such vehicles increased during the 19th century, the drawbacks of using horses in densely populated cities were becoming ever more apparent.
Perhaps the most remarkable example, to modern eyes, of how things might have worked out differently for electric vehicles is the story of the Electrobat, an electric taxicab that briefly flourished in the late 1890s. The Electrobat had been created in Philadelphia in 1894 by Pedro Salom and Henry Morris, two scientist-inventors who were enthusiastic proponents of electric vehicles. In a speech in 1895, Salom derided “the marvelously complicated driving gear of a gasoline vehicle, with its innumerable chains, belts, pulleys, pipes, valves and stopcocks … Is it not reasonable to suppose, with so many things to get out of order, that one or another of them will always be out of order?”
Political inaction is dragging the UK deeper into the climate crisis – Financial Times
Highways England may have to reverse concreting of Victorian bridge arch | Heritage | The Guardian
Agency must apply for retrospective planning permission after filling in railway arch in Cumbria
Matthew Weaver
The government’s roads agency could be forced to remove hundreds of tonnes of concrete it used to fill in a Victorian railway arch in a project that was condemned as the first act of “cultural vandalism” in a nationwide plan.
Eden district council told Highways England (HE) this week that it needs to apply for retrospective planning permission for a scheme that involved pouring an estimated 1,000 tonnes of concrete and aggregate under the bridge at Great Musgrave, Cumbria, at the start of nationwide programme to infill scores of historic structures.
If planning is refused, the agency will be obliged to restore the bridge to its state before the infill began at the end of May.