News from Elsewhere

The Transport Research Laboratory has joined the chorus of organisations stating that

safe cycling and walking infrastructure is “needed” if social distancing is to work in the UK.

I used to be in a gang. There were 10 of us and we hung out in the street with bikes and footballs. Most days the doorbell would go and it’d be one of our number asking, “Is Chris playing out?” I’d hurriedly pull my shoes on and run out to do what eight-year-olds do.

Hadfield Avenue is where I learned to ride a bike, where I proudly removed the stabilisers before hurtling off with the others to the next road, and then the next. The whole neighbourhood was our playground. It was a perfectly normal thing to do on a British street in the 1970s.
Today, the majority of parents must deny their children this first, simple freedom because the space outside our homes is no longer safe. Instead, we pop the kids in the car and drive them around to protect them from other people in cars. That’s how we lost our street playgrounds, without even realising what was happening.

Tranche 1 was for temporary Covid related measures, whilst today’s tranche 2 is for longer-term projects that provide safe spaces for people to walk, cycle and wheel.

Speaking on behalf of the Walking and Cycling Alliance, Mary Creagh, CEO, Living Streets said:
“Everyone should feel safe to walk, cycle, wheel or scoot on our streets, but that is not the case in too many towns and cities. Across the country, there is a silent majority in favour of more people-friendly streets, but all too often their voices are drowned out by a vocal minority.
“It’s vital more people start walking and cycling for local journeys, to reduce congestion, improve air quality and tackle the twin epidemics of loneliness and obesity.
“We hope this report will support councillors to build back better after the pandemic.”

Professor Jem Bendell

Thanks to Hollywood, we have all seen stories of near apocalyptic futures, where people descend into violence and depravity. We have also seen sensationalist, even racist, TV news reporting on looting after natural disasters. It seems the mass media is not always a good channel for hearing about the solidarity and cooperation that emerges between so many of us in times of crisis. It takes authors like Rutger Bregman to remind us of the better sides of human nature. Or Rebecca Solnit to show how human solidarity has always been a powerful resource during crises. Unfortunately, such views don’t get as much airtime when it comes to dis1cussing the possibility for societal disruption and collapse.
Which is what I do. Because hundreds of scientists and scholars have been warning us that we face “global systemic collapse” due to the pressures we are putting on the planet. 

The £600,000 project is being funded by a partnership made up of Leicester City Council – following the council’s successful bid to the Department for Transport’s Transforming Cities fund – with sponsorship from Santander UK and additional investment from the operator, Ride On, and their delivery partner Enzen Global
Leicester City Council has announced that specialist e-bike hire provider Ride On will be providing the city’s e-bike share scheme. Known as Santander Cycles Leicester, the scheme will see 500 electric bikes available to hire from 50 locations across Leicester city centre.
This will make Santander Cycles Leicester the largest docked e-bike hire scheme in the UK.
Work is getting under way to create the docking stations where the bikes will charge up, ahead of a public launch currently planned for spring next year.  

A commonly raised trope amongst the driving community is that there is some kind of clandestine war on the motorist. This ‘opinion’ is formed when those in a position of huge entitlement and privilege suddenly find their unchallenged societal priority comes under threat. The under threat positioning is described well here by Peter Walker but I’ll leave him to describe that in better words than I could.

Matthew TaylorFri 13 Nov 2020 07.00 GMT

Leading scientists, academics and campaigners have called on governments and businesses to go beyond “net zero” in their efforts to tackle the escalating climate and ecological crisis.
The former archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams and the leading climate scientist Michael Mann are among a group of prominent environmentalists calling for the “restoration of the climate” by removing “huge amounts of greenhouse gases from the atmosphere”.

Despite the Covid-19 pandemic cycle tourism has set some surprising records in Europe this summer to the benefit of local and national economies.

Addressing the virtual Cycle Summit 2020 the European Cyclists Federation’s Jesús Freire pointed to data from both France and Hungary.
In Hungary The Centre For Development of Active and Ecotourism alongside road maintenance firm Magyar Közút delivered a study that revealed that 2020 “shattered” prior records as people took to bicycles in the absence of international travel. As part of the surge it was noted that development of new routes prompted a wave of tourism.