Parking spaces serve the needs of a wide range of users, including residents, workers, shoppers, visitors, delivery drivers, taxis, and private hire passengers. However, they also reduce space for pavements, cycle lanes, and other social and environmental features such as benches or microparks. Car owners may pay for the privilege of parking – in the form of short-stay parking spaces and residential parking permits – but are they paying a fair price?
There are a number of ways that this question can be approached. Often-quoted international examples have focused on the costs of building and operating multi-storey parking structures, the added costs of providing parking in new buildings, and the potential reduction in available space for more affordable housing or other amenities. 21 Other investigations have focused on quantifying the environmental costs arising from increased parking provision. 22 However, there is little empirical evidence from London and the UK on the matter. To answer this question in a London context, this chapter considers a number of alternative approaches to pricing an on-street residential parking space.
Being A Car-Free Parent Isn’t Just Possible, It’s Great – vogue.co.uk
Nell Frizzell 17 April 2022
As I think I have mentioned here before, I am a virgin who can’t drive. Well, okay. That’s not quite true. I have had driving lessons, for about two months when I was 17. Only, my driving instructor’s dad took over for a couple of weeks, during which time he asked my mum out, she said a horrified no and things got so awkward that I simply never had another lesson. (He asked her if she’d like to “go for a drive” which, for a driving instructor, has always struck me as an amazingly unimaginative date idea. Like a plumber asking a prospective partner if they’d like to come and watch them fit a boiler one evening.)
Tyre Extinguishers strike again, targeting SUVs in wealthy London areas | road.cc
120 vehicles had their tyres deflated last night in locations including Primrose Hill and Hampstead
Simon MAcMichael – 22/04/2022
Tyre Extinguishers(link is external), the activist group that targets SUVs due to the damage the vehicles cause to the environment as well as the risk they pose to vulnerable road users including cyclists struck again in London last night, letting the air out of the tyres of 120 vehicles and leaving behind leaflets explaining to the owners why they had taken the action.
The direct action group, one of whose members we interviewed in the latest edition of the road.cc Podcast, undertook its latest direct action intervention in several affluent areas of the capital – namely Hampstead, Primrose Hill, Paddington and Kensington.
Here’s the blunt reality; reasonably-sized electric vehicles need to be the future of cars, but they can’t be the future of urban mobility – Brent Toderian – Twitter
@BrentToderian Apr 22
Here’s the blunt reality — reasonably-sized electric vehicles need to be the future of cars, but they can’t be the future of urban mobility. Fewer cars. Less driving. More inviting mobility options. Better communities and cities. These are the 4 pillars of the REAL solution.
Will local elections put the brakes on low-traffic neighbourhood schemes? | Local elections | The Guardian
Peter Walker
Sadiea Mustafa-Awan, an Oxford solicitor, spent years as a Labour member, including a decade working for one of the party’s MPs. But on 5 May she will stand for election with the express intention of removing a Labour councillor. Why? It’s all about traffic.
“I just felt that Labour are not listening to residents,” Mustafa-Awan says. “Someone needs to tell them to think again. That’s what I’m trying to do.”
There will be many subplots in next month’s local elections, held in various forms across the UK, not least whether a bad Conservative result could spell trouble for Boris Johnson. But few will be as bitterly argued over as low-traffic neighbourhoods, or LTNs.
How I Live Car-Free in Hartford, Connecticut – vice.com
Aaron Gordon 22.04.22
Most U.S. residents live in a household with at least one car. But millions of U.S. residents do not. In this series, How I Live Car-Free, Motherboard speaks to some of the people living car-free, either by choice or by necessity, in places without robust public transportation options like New York City and parts of Washington, D.C., and Boston.
In this edition, Motherboard speaks with Kerri Provost, a 42-year-old lifelong Connecticutian who works for a nonprofit and writes the Car-Free Diaries for RealHartford.org. She lives in the Frog Hollow neighborhood of Hartford, and has been car-free since 2017. This conversation has been edited for clarity and brevity.
Swytch Technology’s Handlebar-Bag Battery Reduced To iPhone-Size To Convert Any Bike Into Electric Bike – forbes
Carlton Reid
The new Swytch battery is little larger than a (large) iPhone.
Swytch Technology of London is soon to launch an e-bike battery little larger than a (large) iPhone and — with the addition of an included wheel kit — this can turn any bike into an electric bike.
Cycle superhighway to cross Berlin – transportxtra.com
Juliana O’Rourke – 14 April 2022
Journey times for the 38 km cycleway should be about 2.5 hours – as fast as cars but saving 1,000 tons of carbon dioxide per year
Berlin has announced plans for a new high-speed bicycle route from Hönow to Spandau through the city centre.
It claims that bicycles should be able to reach their destination from east to west across the city as quickly as cars on the new cycle route, which covers 38.3 kilometres right across Berlin. The journey time from one end to the other should be about 2.5 hours.
We’ll be showcasing great cycling networks and other infrastructure at Cycle City Active City 2022 in Sheffield on 5-6 July: join us!
The state-owned cycle planning company Infravelo, said that total costs for the two parts of the route are estimated at around €58m. The planning approval procedure for the west route will start at the end of 2023 and for the east route at the beginning of 2024.
A quick list of the carbon-intensive sectors whose climate pollution can be largely attributed to car culture – (((Matthew Lewis))) 1 billion Cal students @mateosfo – Twitter
(((Matthew Lewis))) 1 billion Cal students @mateosfo · Apr 5
A quick list of the carbon-intensive sectors whose climate pollution can be largely attributed to car culture:
1. Steel: 8% of global emissions; car industry consumes 15% of that directly, indeterminate amount indirectly for road infrastructure (construction).
2. Concrete: 8% of global emissions, indeterminate amount attributable to cars.
Most car infrastructure is made of concrete and steel.
3. Oil: 34% of global emissions. 50% of oil is consumed by cars.
4. Buildings: 30% of global emissions. The sprawl-style development that is necessary to maintain robust car sales increases building energy use by at least 2x and increases embodied carbon (steel, concrete) from the need for more materials than denser/infill development.
Taken altogether, there is no other driver of climate destruction that comes close to car culture. And so there is no way to solve climate without ending car dominance of our cities.
Forty XR activists arrested in various anti-fossil fuel protests across London | Extinction Rebellion | The Guardian
Olympians Etienne Stott and Laura Baldwin among those who climbed on oil tanker, while others hung banner from Marble Arch
Sarah Haque and Nadeem Badshah
Six people have been arrested after Extinction Rebellion (XR) activists, including two Olympians, scaled an oil tanker in west London. The Metropolitan police said that 40 people were arrested in total on Saturday in a number of protests across the capital.
The gold medal-winning canoeist Etienne Stott, along with two others, climbed on to the Shell tanker on Bayswater Road with a banner reading “End fossil filth”.
Later on Saturday, two XR demonstrators scaled Marble Arch in central London to hang a banner as protests against fossil fuels continued for a seventh day. A man and a woman climbed up two pillars to hoist a green banner, which was about 10 metres wide and read “End fossil fuels now”, shortly before 6pm.
On a road next to Marble Arch, a group of eight activists locked themselves on to a car while two glued themselves to the roof.
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