News from Elsewhere

Gary Fuller 26/03/21
Less traffic meant less congestion, but the remaining vehicles went fasterI asked William Hicks how he felt when lockdown suddenly happened in the middle of his year-long air pollution investigation. “Excited,” he replied. Not the answer that I expected. “It was like moving the field laboratory to a whole new road.” Hicks, and his team from Imperial College London, were studying tiny particles from tyres, brakes and road surfaces on London’s Marylebone Road.The inside of the field laboratory is a noisy environment full of the rattle of pumps, as an array of equipment measures the size and chemical nature of the air pollution. Hicks was measuring metal particles in the air to work out how much pollution came from each source. Barium particles are released from brake pads and zinc, used to vulcanise rubber.

Even now, after everyone has been told to stay at home, any of those who have the time and money are back in their cars. It’s really important to remember that it is a luxury, an expensive luxury that isn’t available to as many people as we think.

:excerptstartCarlton Reid 26/03/21A Freedom of Information (FoI) investigation of NHS ambulance trusts in England, Scotland and Wales has found that none were opposed to the new pop-up cycleways or “low traffic neighbourhoods” (LTNs) installed during the COVID-19 lockdown last year.The FoI requests were placed by member organisation Cycling UK.The so-called “active travel” schemes were funded by the Department for Transport

:excerptstart Local Zero: pathway to #COP26 Transport makes up nearly 40% of the average UK household’s carbon footprint (with wide variation between different sections of society). While other sectors have made progress on cutting carbon, the dial has barely moved on transport emissions. So is the elephant in the room actually an SUV? Joining the team

“We can’t turn the clock back. We know that if people want convenience, they’re going to shop online or go to their local neighbourhood store. So what we have to do is reimagine our city centres as places for people where we create the right outside spaces for people to socialise, where we give pedestrians

Katherine Johnston
The ultra-low emission zone is set to expand to the North and South Circular roads in October this year
The extension of the ultra-low emission zone (ULEZ) to include all inner London boroughs will save NHS services in Southwark nearly £100 million by 2050, a study claims, writes Kit Heren…
The ULEZ will expand from central London to the North and South Circular roads on October 25. The zone already includes part of Southwark, from Blackfriars Bridge in the north-west to the Elephant & Castle roundabout in the south, and Tower Bridge Road in the east.
The study, carried out by Lumen Health on behalf of Transport for London and the Greater London Authority, suggests that the ULEZ will cut diseases linked to air pollution in London by nearly 30%, possibly saving the NHS £4 billion in total over the next 30 years.
Some £97.8 million of that could be saved in Southwark – money that can be ploughed back into local services, a local politician said. 

This report builds upon previous research from CPRE, the countryside charity into rural ‘transport deserts’ to set out what a comprehensive bus network for England would look like, with services to every village every hour, and the scale of investment we need to make this vision a reality.
The aim of this report is to show how we can have a bus system that is fit for the climate emergency and that will put an end to the inequality and social exclusion caused by the current car dominance of rural life.

:excerptstartKate Jelly 26/03/21The UK’s cycling infrastructure is hostile to women – and smart new measures in Paris and Lisbon show that change is overdueWomen cyclists in the UK are twice as likely as men to have faced harassment by drivers, research shows. It was enraging and exhausting to read comments on social media in the wake of

:excerptstartPatrick Sisson Mar 6, 2020Would you pay money to make traffic worse? The U.S. has been doing that for decades. More roads, more expenses, more congestion: a new report argues America’s transit policy gridlock is costing us billions of dollarsIt’s a great time to be a road builder in the United States, and a terrible time

greenpeace.org.uk
Some people assume that building more roads would help us get around quicker. But decades of evidence shows that it actually makes traffic and congestion much worse. The government should learn this lesson before it’s too late.
A lot of us have spent more time than we’d like stuck in traffic. The thought of new or wider roads might come to mind as a solution. But building more roads won’t help us get around quicker, and instead of cutting congestion, it increases traffic. Here’s how: