Rachael Murphy, CoMoUK’s Scotland director, says mobility hubs seek never to undermine public transport but always to extend its appeal – 27 April 2022
Mobility Hubs are highly visible, safe and accessible spaces where public, shared and active travel modes are co-located alongside improvements to public realm and, where relevant, enhanced community facilities.
They are about the removal of the private car from journey planning.
What you might find at one are bus and train connectivity, bike and lift share, a car club, electric vehicle charging, digital demand responsive transport, cycle parking and storage, lockers for parcels collection and other facilities to make the place special, including toilets, a cafe, vendors or vending machines, wayfinding and shared office-space.
‘Traffic-free lanes and beautiful views’: readers’ favourite UK family cycle routes | Day trips | The Guardian
Guardian readers
Winning tip: Terrific terrain, Yorkshire Dales
In Swaledale, between Keld and Reeth, the Swale Trail is a stunning 12-mile cycle track that snakes along the crystalline River Swale in the Yorkshire Dales. The terrain is manageable for rookie cyclists (that would be me rather than my husband and teenage kids) and there are plenty of stops along the way to have a cold drink and give the pedals a rest.
Save our Bridge! – UKChange – Twitter
Save our Bridge! @de_jasay
No more moments like this if the bridge is replaced! @UKChange
These quiet moments of pleasure and contemplation of nature will be denied if Essex Highways is granted planning permission to demolish the bridge. We need 64 more signatures to reach 7000!
Transport Appraisal and Carbon – eventbrite.co.uk – Wed, April 27, 2022 12:00 PM
Date and time Wed, April 27, 2022 12:00 PM – 1:30 PM BST
The current system of transport appraisal has been described as not fit for purpose, with many weak, incorrect or outdated assumptions. The climate crisis has brought the failings of the current approach to carbon in particular into sharp focus. The tension between the government’s transport decarbonisation strategy on the one hand and their continued funding of expensive and controversial road schemes on the other, suggests the need for an urgent rethink of the appraisal approach. This webinar will discuss the issues with the current system and how best to reform it.
This is the first in a new series of webinars showcasing the work funded by the Foundation for Integrated Transport (FIT). This webinar includes presentations from FIT’s senior Fellows, Professor Phil Goodwin and Professor John Whitelegg, and a panel discussion, including Professor Jillian Anable, chaired by FIT Trustee Mark Frost.
This event is free to attend.
London cycling: Car parking permits cheaper than bike storage – BBC News
Russell Newlove BBC News 20/4/22
Hangars can store six bikes in half the space a car takes up, Islington Council says
The cost of storing a bike in a hangar is five times higher than a car parking permit in some areas of London.
Only six boroughs offer bike storage at cheaper or similar rates to the cost of a permit and in 10 boroughs electric vehicles can be parked free of charge.
Cyclists can pay up to £107 for bike hangar usage annually, despite taking up much less space than drivers do.
The #ThisIsAwkward campaign, which was launched in March, showed Londoners storing bikes in unusual places around their homes.
In as many as 10 boroughs, electric vehicle owners are able to obtain a free parking permit due to their vehicles’ low emissions.
Islington Council, which charges £25 a year for electric vehicle permits, and as little as £30 for other cars, has the highest bike hangar rental cost in London, at £107 a year…and has a waiting list of almost 7,000 people for use of its hangars.
Tyre Extinguishers – taking on the SUVs one valve cap (and lentil) at a time – The road.cc Podcast
In this latest episode, we also speak with one of the members of Tyre Extinguishers – the activist group that has hit the headlines in recent weeks for going out at night and deflating the tyres of SUVs (with the help of lentils) and leaving leaflets highlighting to the owners the damage that their vehicles – collectively responsible for more emissions worldwide than all but five countries, according to a recent study – are doing to the environment, as well as the danger they pose to other road users including pedestrians and cyclists.
Why target those vehicles specifically, rather than other issues that could help reduce global emissions, we asked.
“We’ve chosen SUVs for a number of reasons – not least the International Energy Agency’s research showing that the increasing pace of SUV buying is cancelling out all the carbon savings from people switching to electric cars. If SUV drivers were a country, it would be the sixth-largest emitter in the world.”
As for the reaction they have received? “We’ve had very many death threats, almost entirely from men,” they told us. “There are a lot of men with fragile egos out there who seem to value their cars more than their children’s future.
There Aren’t Enough Batteries in the World to Power Our Huge Cars – vice.com
Aaron Gordon – 20.4.22
During a tour of Rivian’s factory earlier this month, the electric vehicle maker’s CEO RJ Scaringe told reporters that he is very worried about battery shortages, as recounted by the Wall Street Journal. “Put very simply, all the world’s cell production combined represents well under 10 percent of what we will need in 10 years,” the WSJ quotes him as saying. “Meaning, 90 percent to 95 percent of the supply chain does not exist.”
Scaringe is hardly the first to raise this particular alarm bell—here are some other articles from the last six months about the same issue—and recent concerns about nickel supplies, a key ingredient in electric batteries, have only intensified the issue. None of this is especially surprising, though. EV batteries require a lot of raw materials, we barely made any of them 10 years ago, and now every car company wants to make a lot of them every year.
Arson, death threats and ‘eco-crazy councils’: low-traffic neighbourhoods are dividing England | Jonn Elledge | The Guardian
A few weeks ago, the Daily Mail ran a lengthy feature exploring how “eco-crazy councils turned our streets into Gridlock Britain”. It begins with a heartrending and in no way manipulative story about how the traffic jams in the north London borough of Islington are upsetting a disabled 13-year-old boy.
Across the river in Lambeth, the council is celebrating a victory after the court of appeal declined to order a judicial review into three different low-traffic neighbourhoods (LTNs) across the borough. No matter: the local Tories have promised that, in the unlikely event they win next month’s council elections, they’ll scrap them all anyway.
Twitter thread – on electric vehicles, car dependency and better cities – Brent Toderian
@BrentToderian Apr 20, 2022
THREAD: I’m going to try this thread to clearly state my perspective on electric vehicles, car dependency and better cities, to those who frequently ask me, including media, elected leaders and many others. Here goes. Please share if you think it helps. #EVS
To be clear, despite the complexities, problems & grey areas that make electric vehicles much more complicated than the “silver bullets” many claim them to be, I DO support the replacement of ICE vehicles with EVs. It will take longer and be more complicated than boosters think.
The birth of Britain’s environmental rebellion – aljazeera.com
Annie Dare – 21 Apr 202221 Apr 2022
In 1989, the Conservative British government announced a $19bn plan ($43bn in today’s money) to build and overhaul more than 4,345km (2,700 miles) of major inter-urban roads, motorways and bypasses. It declared the infrastructure project the United Kingdom’s largest roads programme “since the Romans”.
But much of the plan, whose aim was to underpin economic growth by relieving congestion – traffic on British roads had increased by 35 percent since 1980 – also smashed through some of the UK’s most pristine nature — ancient woodlands, water meadows, historic valleys and downs or grass-covered hills — places treasured by locals and protected for their biodiversity or beauty.
Opposition to the loss of these pockets of nature was fierce, and from 1992, when building on the first road began, until 1996, portions of the UK convulsed with determined and flamboyant acts of resistance. A new type of protest was born.