News from Elsewhere

Coming days after 14 Conservative MPs called for the funding to be scrapped in a letter to Transport Minister Grant Shapps, the cash comes with caveats. Local authorities will be urged to publish detailed plans showing consultation with communities and businesses, submit evidence of further consultation prior to implementation and thereafter submit monitoring reports on schemes for between 6 and 12 months after their opening showing how each has been modified on ongoing community feedback.

Further to the MPs and motoring orgs rubbishing active travel efforts, Shapps himself signed off a letter to local authority transport leaders last week with “no one should be in doubt about our support for motorists.”

A survey of 2,211 adults has looked at public attitudes towards traffic and road use in England. This included attitudes towards local action; views on reduction of traffic and reallocation of road space; and perceptions of traffic and road problems within local neighbourhoods

Developed by Vivacity Labs, the initiative first went live earlier this year and last week won the Innovative Use of Technology award at the 2020 Intelligent Transport Systems, ITS (UK) Awards.

Sensors with artificial intelligence (AI) built into them mean that different groups of road users to be anonymously identified, enabling TfGM to prioritise different modes of transport as needed.
As a result, with greater numbers of people travelling by foot or on bike to avoid public transport due to the coronavirus crisis, those using active modes of travel can be prioritised.
The technology can also be used to improve air quality through reducing emissions by being able to respond to congestion and traffic queues quicker than existing systems can.

The Mayor of London has explained just why he wants more cycle lanes in London’s during his Speak to Sadiq show on LBC

In the eight years leading to Sadiq Khan becoming Mayor the number of cars in the city sky-rocketed from 60,000 to 120,000.
But as the population increases, so do the vehicles, causing gridlock and mayhem on the city’s roads.
To counteract this, the Mayor wants to introduced more cycle lanes, and told LBC’s James O’Brien: “95% of the roads in our city are controlled by our 32 boroughs and the City of London Corporation and 5% are controlled by TfL,” he said.
“We try and work with the boroughs, the boroughs are trying to do right by their residents, they understand the consequences of air quality and pollution.”

If you’re a fan of the historical notion that progress doesn’t move as a straight, upward line but tends to be a bit more wiggly, then there was an article about cycling in this week’s Mail on Sunday that very much proved the point.
Anti-cyclist pieces in the Mail are not exactly uncommon, but this one was notable because its key argument was that cyclists should “pay road tax”.
If this blogpost were a film, this would be the moment to insert a sudden, soundtrack-halting needle scratch, with a narrator filling the sudden silence to say: “Yes, road tax.”
You know the one. Abolished in 1937. Replaced by vehicle excise duty (VED), which is, as has been explained countless times, very much not a tax to pay for roads – the money goes into the central pot, as do almost all tax revenues.
VED is also based on exhaust emissions, meaning that even if cyclists were liable for it, bikes would be, as with dozens of electric and hybrid cars, charged precisely £0 a year.

Physician, heal thyself appears to be one of the mantras of Ugur Sahin, the Turkish-born German doctor and researcher who was hailed on November 9 for his work on the new coronavirus vaccine. Along with his wife Oezlem Tuereci, he co-owns BioNTech which is now worth north of $24 billion but, despite these paper riches, multiple newspaper reports state that Sahin still cycles to work each day.

Roger Harrabin

BBC environment analyst

The vast majority of emissions cuts from electric cars will be wiped out by new road-building, a report says.
The government says vehicle emissions per mile will fall as zero-emissions cars take over Britain’s roads.
But the report says the 80% of the CO2 savings from clean cars will be negated by the £27bn planned roads programme.
It adds that if ministers want a “green recovery” the cash would be better spent on public transport, walking, cycling, and remote-working hubs.
And they point out that the electric cars will continue to increase local air pollution through particles eroding from brakes and tyres.
The calculations have been made by an environmental consultancy, Transport for Quality of Life, using data collected by Highways England.

People are planning to drive more in future than they did before the coronavirus pandemic, a survey suggests, even though the overwhelming majority accept human responsibility for the climate crisis.
The apparent disconnect between beliefs and actions raises fears that without strong political intervention, these actions could undermine efforts to meet the targets set in the Paris agreement and hopes of a green recovery from the coronavirus crisis.
Approximately 26,000 people in 25 countries were polled in July and August by the YouGov-Cambridge Globalism Project, in a survey designed with the Guardian.