News from Elsewhere

News from Elsewhere

National Highways draws up revised plan for Lower Thames Crossing – Transport Xtra

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A multi-billion pound scheme that will involve building the UK’s longest road tunnel under the Thames is now open to a further round of consultation. National Highways said it has refined its plans for the Lower Thames Crossing to take into account feedback from previous consultations.

The project would involve a 2.6-mile tunnel under the Thames, 14.3 miles of new road connecting the M2/A2, A13 and M25 and around 50 new bridges and viaducts“..National Highways are not considering or planning how traffic would migrate between the two crossings when there are incidents, if the LTC goes ahead, and there would not be adequate connections.  The result would be more chaos, congestion and pollution.”
The UK Government should follow the Welsh Government’s example, which last year paused most new road schemes to allow them to be reviewed by an independent panel, said Blake (LTT 28 June 2021).
https://ltcconsultation2022.nationalhighways.co.uk

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‘Ella’s law’ tops poll of private members’ bills – Transport Xtra

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A Clean Air Act has won first place in the House of Lords ballot of private members’ bills. It topped a shortlist of 25 bills, so will be the first to be introduced in the Lords. Ballot bills have a better chance of becoming law, as they get priority for the limited amount of debating time available. 

The Bill, named Ella’s law, named after nine-year-old Ella Kissi-Debrah who the first person in the UK to have air pollution recognised as a cause of death, was introduced by Green party peer Jenny Jones. She is seeking to establish a right to clean air and set up a commission to oversee government actions and progress

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Police pay compensation after leaving cyclist to freeze to death | road.cc

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PCSOs did not get out of car and spent less than 10 minutes looking for Jacqueline Parsons after she crashed while riding through a cemetery in Hull

The family of a cyclist who froze to death after police were alerted to the fact she had fallen off her bike but did not get out of their car to look for her have won compensation from Humberside Police.
Two PCSOs from the force stopped searching for Jacqueline Parsons after less than 10 minutes despite a call being received to tell police that she was in distress.
Ms Parsons, aged 56, had fallen from her bike as she rode through Western Cemetery in Hull, East Yorkshire in October 2018.

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Visualisation tool allows residents to transform their streets – transportxtra

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Deniz Huseyin25 May 2022
New software has been developed that allows anyone from professionals to local residents to swiftly create visualisations of how they think streets could look. Users can drag and drop a range of features – including street surfacing, kerb build-outs, trees, rain gardens, bollards, bike racks and hangars – onto an image of a street. Features are set to the correct scale to give an accurate representation of how they would look in reality.

The BetaStreets computer-generated image (CGI) design and visualisation tool is the brainchild of Jon Little and Andy Heather. They believe the tool will allow visualisation to be used more often and make design more open and inclusive, with local people able to interact with scheme developers earlier in the process.
Andy Heather is a visualisation specialist while Jon Little is specialist in active travel, liveable streets, shared and combined mobility, and the author of Waltham Forest’s successful Mini-Holland bid, which paved the way for the transformation of streets in the London borough.

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Photo evidence from public key to behaviour change, says traffic officer – Transport Xtra

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Deniz Huseyin 25 May 2022
A scheme that involves people in the West Midlands sending the police photos of dangerously and thoughtlessly parked cars will change driver behaviour, predicts traffic officer PC Mark Hodson.

Operation Park Safe has resulted in “thousands” of fixed penalty notices being issued to motorists since its launch in 2018, said Hodson, who has for many years been pioneering road safety initiatives.
The scheme has also resulted in the removal of hundreds of dangerously parked vehicles, some of which were stolen or cloned, reports Hodson.
He has trained PCSOs across the West Midlands on how to handle third-party reports. “I’ve shown PCSOs what evidence is needed to prosecute various traffic offences – the types of photos and what needs to be included in the reports,” said Hodson.
“If you ask people about policing priorities they say: parking, speeding, littering and dog poo. These come above robberies and anti-social behaviour. Pavement and obstructive parking impact on people’s lives, especially those who are mobility or sight impaired.”

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Bikes4ukraine Crowdfunds To Send Bicycles And Pop-Up Cycleways To Car-Choked Lviv – forbes.com

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Carlton Reid
Danish-Canadian urbanist Mikael Colville-Andersen—presenter of the Canadian TV series Life-sized City—is behind an initiative to bring bicycles and pop-up cycle infrastructure to the Ukrainian city of Lviv, 50 miles from the Polish border.
As Russia’s invasion forces continue to bombard the east of Ukraine the western city of Lviv has become home to 200,000 Ukrainians fleeing the war. Many of these internal refugees arrived in Lviv by car, an influx which has continued to grid-lock the city. Public transport has also been overwhelmed. 
Bicycling could be the answer. Lviv’s transport department contacted Colville-Andersen to ask his advice on boosting bicycling in the city. Based in Copenhagen, Denmark, Colville-Andersen—the Anthony Bourdain of urbanism—has worked on cycle initiatives in cities across the world. 

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Peter Kalmus: ‘As a species, we’re on autopilot, not making the right decisions’ | Climate crisis | The Guardian

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Ian Tucker
Last month a Nasa data scientist, Peter Kalmus, chained himself to the entrance doors of the JP Morgan Chase building in Los Angeles. A video of a short speech he gave about global heating before he was arrested was shared multiple times on social media. In the clip, voice faltering, he told the public: “I’m here because scientists are not being listened to … we are going to lose everything and we are not joking.” He spoke to the Observer in a personal capacity.
What drove you to nonviolent protest?
It’s this mounting feeling that I need to do more. I have a sense of desperation, because of the wide gulf between what the science says society needs to do and how it feels like everything is heading in the opposite direction. World leaders and people not understanding that we’re in an emergency.
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Stonehenge scheme re-appraisal badly flawed, says Goodwin – transportxtra.com

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Peter Stonham 18 May 2022
Phil Goodwin – National Highways’ continued promotion of a new two-lane dual carriageway with a tunnel on the A303 in Wiltshire – the “A303 Stonehenge Scheme” – does not stand up to new Govt objectives for net zero by continuing to reflect expanding road provision to match forecast increases in road traffic, Professor Phil Goodwin argues in his latest column for LTT.
The scheme was approved by the Sec of State for Transport in 2020 and, despite that decision being overturned in a High Court challenge by objectors in 2021, he decided to ‘redetermine’ National Highways’ application, and National Highways’ updated case for doing so was published in April (https://bit.ly/3yxxk9F).
Following an Examination in Public in 2019, the planning inspectors recommended rejection of the scheme, because of the serious and irreversible damage it would do to the Heritage Site. 

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