excerptstartCrash which injured cyclist is ‘wake-up call’ for Labour to push for better infrastructure First published on Tue 27 Oct 2020 13.46 GMTA cycling campaign group has urged Keir Starmer to learn from a collision he was involved in over the weekend that left a cyclist with an injured arm.Police attended the incident on Sunday, close to the Labour leader’s home… [Read More]
Raleigh seeds E-cargo logistics with highways giant Ringway Jacobs – Cycle Industry News
excerptstartMark Sutton28 October, 2020 E-cargo bikes have found their way into the hands of highways giant Ringway Jacobs thanks to a trial period with Raleigh, who will now ship such bikes directly to businesses interested in making the move away from vans.Deigned to see if the bikes could serve a purpose within the infrastructure businesses, primarily… [Read More]
PM on the ropes as London Tories rail against extension of congestion charge | The Guardian
MPs warn of ‘blood on the walls’ amid talks with Sadiq Khan over bailout for capital’s transport network
Michael SavageSun 25 Oct 2020 08.15 GMT
Conservative figures in London say an extension of the congestion charge should ‘not be tolerated’. Photograph: Alastair Grant/AP
Boris Johnson is facing mounting pressure from Tory MPs in London to comprehensively rule out a massive extension of the congestion charge in the capital, amid emergency talks over a new bailout for its struggling transport system.
Conservative figures warned there would be “blood on the walls” if the government allowed the extension of the charge, which would hit a series of so-called “London doughnut” Tory seats on the outskirts of the city. They are also demanding there must be no threat to subsidised travel for the young or older people, also proposed as an option by the government as a condition of a further bailout.
Sir Keir Starmer involved in road collision with cyclist – BBC News
BBC News9 hours ago
Police are investigating a road collision involving Sir Keir Starmer, which saw a cyclist taken to hospital.
The Labour leader is understood to have been driving in the Kentish Town area of north London when the incident happened around miday on Sunday.
A spokesman for Sir Keir said he stayed at the scene until an ambulance arrived and reported the incident at a police station later that day.
The Met Police said the driver was not arrested nor interviewed under caution.
They added that the male cyclist suffered a minor injury to his arm and was taken to hospital by ambulance “as a precaution”.
Sir Keir, a former director of public prosecutions, is not believed to have been injured.
A spokesman for the Labour leader said: “Keir was involved in a minor road traffic accident on Sunday.
Hordes of mums clogging roads and causing chaos as they drop off their little darlings – Daily Mail
By Nick Harding for the Daily Mail 00:32 09 Oct 2014, updated 11:45 09 Oct 2014
Sara Davis had a happy summer. The company director could race around the Home Counties from meeting to meeting in her Nissan Juke without so much as a hint of a traffic jam.
Now she has to allow an hour for a journey that in August took 30 minutes, fits in far fewer meetings and arrives home late and frustrated each evening. Just thinking about sitting behind the wheel makes her stressed.
She is in no doubt whose fault that is.
Low traffic neighbourhoods: the biggest transport controversy of the century – LabourList
Christian Wolmar23rd October, 2020, 4:45 pm
It has become the biggest transport controversy of the century. Not rail nationalisation, not the £27bn roads programme, not even the £100bn on HS2, but the humble ‘low traffic neighbourhood’. Or LTNs, as they are known in the jargon that was previously only used by highway engineers and cycle campaigners.
The fundamental idea is simple. By cutting off through traffic in minor residential roads, local residents will enjoy a quieter environment, less pollution, reduced danger from traffic and be more likely to walk or cycle. The road system will be filtered so that cyclists and pedestrians can get through the barriers but cars and vans cannot.
This has implications far beyond transport. Having less traffic going past your door makes life better in lots of ways, from improving sleep to making for a more friendly neighbourhood. Research in the 1970s in San Francisco revealed that there was a strong correlation between the busyness of a street and loneliness. People on quieter streets were far more likely to know their neighbours than those on busy ones.
Cargo bikes that look like cars | ETA
22nd October 2020
You don’t have to spend too much time walking or cycling in Britain to realise the hierarchy on British roads is at the expense of vulnerable road users. Research due to be published later this year will show that cargo bike riders are afforded more room by drivers owing to the primary road position adopted by their riders.
The news will come as welcome news to a new breed of cargo trikes that fool drivers into thinking they are cars. With typical Italian design flair
Milan-based bicycle builders Agnelli style the front of their cargo trike to look like classic cars like the original Fiat 500 and Citroen 2CV.
The cargo box of the 2CV trike sits on old-fashioned leaf suspension and carries leather satchels and an umbrella on its side.
Despite a loud opposing minority, low-traffic neighbourhoods are increasingly popular | The Guardian
Peter WalkerThu 22 Oct 2020 07.30
They are not purely, or even mainly, about cycling, but the row about low-traffic neighbourhoods (LTNs), – where some residential streets are closed to through motor traffic – epitomises broader attitudes in the UK towards safer, more human-friendly streets.And amid the daily froth of sometimes entirely false stories about LTNs closing roads, or slowing emergency service response times, one thing is often forgotten: these schemes tend to be very popular.
Ealing Council wins crucial vote on Low Traffic Neighbourhoods at emergency meeting | road.cc
Meanwhile, poll finds that silent majority across country supports such schemes despite vocal but small opposition
Ealing Council won a crucial vote at an extraordinary meeting on Tuesday evening which could have resulted in suspension of the borough’s implementation of Low Traffic Neighbourhoods (LTNs).
The leader of the Labour-controlled council also survived a motion of no confidence brought by the opposition Conservative and Liberal Democrat groups, both of which are opposed to LTNs, reports MyLondon.
Despite such schemes, which are aimed at curbing rat-running drivers while maintaining access for people who live on the residential roads concerned, a national survey has also found that most people are in favour of such initiatives.
Opponents of LTNs in a number of boroughs have repeatedly targeted planters and bollards used to block off streets, moving and even vandalising them, with a number of attacks for example in Ealing’s Northfields LTN.
Cycle commuters return as numbers steadily creep upwards through Q3 – Cycle Industry News
Mark Sutton21 October, 2020Data from Sports Marketing Surveys has illustrated that cycle use has regained some of the momentum from the Spring spike, rising through Q3 to represent about 7% of commuters.The findings come as part of the data giant’s assessment of transport habits starting June 8th and spanning September 14th, with cycle commutes closer to 5% at the beginning of the study period.As part of its documentary of the steady uptick, Sports Marketing Surveys note the installation of Low Traffic Neighbourhood schemes has brought about “some of the most radical changes to traffic management in the last 50 years”. In turn, that has provided people friendly streets on which the data recorded the number of those walking to work has also increased “by a factor of nearly 50%.