News from Elsewhere

Oliver Gill, Chief Business Correspondent 30 May 2022
Particulates generated by tyre wear are more dangerous to public health than diesel exhaust fumes, a Government expert claims
quality in cities, the Government’s top clear air adviser has claimed.
The chairman of the Government’s independent science advisory group on air pollution said charges for low-emission zones are likely to be replaced with alternative levies as drivers switch to electric vehicles.
Particles from tyre wear are more dangerous to public health than diesel exhaust fumes, Professor Alastair Lewis said.
Known as “particulate matter (PM) 2.5”, the amount of air pollution is growing because motorists are driving ever larger vehicles with more substantial tyres.

Simon Kuper
In the Netherlands, the Oranjes present themselves as a fairly ordinary if super-rich family that happens to have a crown
King Willem-Alexander and Queen Máxima of the Netherlands on their bikes during a visit to Friesland in 2020 © Getty Images
In the undying scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, King Arthur is pretending to ride through the British countryside. (He isn’t actually on a horse.) Spotting a peasant, he cries out “Old woman!” “Man!” corrects the peasant, and an argument ensues. When an actual female peasant (played by the male Python Terry Jones) crawls up through the mud, she’s even more combative: “Who does he think he is? Hey?”

26 May, 2022 Simon Cox
Cycling UK today launched its fifth route: The Cantii Way, a 145-mile (234km) bikepacking tour of Kent, starting in the village of Wye, near Ashford, as part of the charity’s EXPERIENCE project.
The route is promoted as the perfect introduction to multi-day bikepacking and cycle touring, so can be ridden in one go over 3 to 4 days. Alternatively it can be split up over several weekends as it is has regular train stations along its length.
The route GPX file is freely available https://www.cyclinguk.org/webform/cantii-way-download-gpx-file helping people access the route, and appreciate the opportunities along its length.

“It’s the most polluting form of car that you can have.”
@AyoCaesar defends @GeorgeMonbiot’s support of SUV tyre deflating as

Nicholas Hellen, Transport Editor Saturday June 04 2022 Sunday Times
A young man in a mask crouches down by the back wheel of a Mercedes G-class, fiddles with the valve, inserts a single dried bean into the cap and pushes down. A few seconds later, as the air hisses out, he is walking nonchalantly away from the scene.
He is one of a new breed of activists, calling themselves the Tyre Extinguishers, who are taking on climate change one mung bean at a time.
The G-class, or G-Wagon, which is 6ft 5in high, weighs 2½ tons and does only 26 miles to the gallon of diesel, is the brashest of SUVs. Even here, at midnight in Hampstead, where the streets are thick with Range Rovers, Land Rover Discoverys, Audi Q8s and BMW X5s, it is a trophy for those bent on making it socially unacceptable to own these vehicles in urban areas.
The campaigners say SUVs are a “disaster” for our climate and the second-largest cause of the global rise in carbon dioxide emissions in the past decade. This broad category accounts for more than 40 per cent of Britain’s car sales, even though very few of the people who drive them do so off road.

In a bid to reduce global warming and offset rising fuel costs, an increasing number of European countries, cities and regions are making public transport free.

Simon Kuper – Poorer megacities tend to be designed for rich people who can afford cars. Bikes are the answer
In a stunning photograph from Shanghai in 1991, clusters of cycling commuters stream across a bridge. The only motorised vehicles to be seen are two buses. That was China in the 1990s: a “Bicycle Kingdom” where 670 million people owned pushbikes. Chinese rulers were then still following the lead of Deng Xiaoping, who defined prosperity as a “Flying Pigeon bicycle in every household”. 
Today China is the kingdom of eight-lane highways. Most lower- and middle-income megacities around the world have ditched the bike. But they now need to reclaim it. Modern “megacities” (defined as places with at least 10 million inhabitants) are the biggest human settlements in history, and growing every day. 
The world had ten megacities in 1990, 33 in 2018 and will have 43 by 2030, says the United Nations. Over a third of their population growth will be in India, China and Nigeria. More cars will mean more traffic jams and more damage to people, the planet and city life. Happily, it’s perfectly feasible for these places to become bicycle kingdoms again. 

Carlton Reid
For some newspapers, the imposition of speeding fines is a “war on the motorist.” The latest front in this supposed war is led by a group not usually noted for radical anti-car tendencies. 
According to the headline on a double-page spread in yesterday’s Daily Telegraph the “elite are determined to kill off the car.” 
Folks from the elite tend to be Tesla and Lamborghini owners, so it’s a strange claim for the Telegraph to make. What is the newspaper basing its claim on and is the car really as endangered as the giant panda or the black Rhino? 
The claim, it turns out, is based on “increasing insurance premiums, new city charging zones and pollution-busting road restrictions.”