News from Elsewhere

News from Elsewhere

“Not even close” – European cities failing on green mobility transition, says study – cyclingindustry.news

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4 March, 2022 Mark Sutton
A new study from the Clean Cities Campaign has outlined just how far off the pace European cities are when it comes to meeting targets on climate-friendly mobility forms.
“No major European city is fully on track to move its citizens onto more climate-friendly forms of transport by 2030, threatening to undermine a vital component of the EU’s efforts to cut greenhouse gases,” starts the campaign in its statement.

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Sustrans reports ‘huge progress’ in improving National Cycle Network – transportxtra

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Deniz Huseyin 28 February 2022
More than 300 barriers have been removed or redesigned on the National Cycle Network (NCN) over the past three years, Sustrans has reported. The walking and cycling charity, which is the custodian of the UK-wide NCN, launched a strategy in late 2018 to improve the NCN. 
Sustrans says it is on course to make 66% of the NCN traffic-free, adding an extra 5,000 traffic-free miles, by 2040.

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Weekly Round-up

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Sian Berry shows how the Mayor CAN cancel the Silvertown Road Tunnel, and develop smart fair privacy friendly road charging at the Blackwall Tunnel. – Caroline Russell – Twitter February 27, 2022 By Steven Edwards @CarolineRussellMy brilliant Assembly colleague @sianberry shows how the Mayor CAN cancel  the Silvertown Road Tunnel, and develop smart fair privacy friendly road charging

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Sian Berry shows how the Mayor CAN cancel the Silvertown Road Tunnel, and develop smart fair privacy friendly road charging at the Blackwall Tunnel. – Caroline Russell – Twitter

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@CarolineRussell
My brilliant Assembly colleague @sianberry shows how the Mayor CAN cancel  the Silvertown Road Tunnel, and develop smart fair privacy friendly road charging at the Blackwall Tunnel, all costing Londoners far less than this toxic project. No excuse not to cancel it now.

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Brompton Bikes plans £100m wetland factory on stilts | Cycling | The Guardian

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Britain’s biggest cycle maker commissions circular factory over Ashford floodplain with capacity to make 200,000 bikes a year
Jasper Jolly

Brompton has revealed plans to invest as much as £100m in a new UK factory that will secure its place as the UK’s biggest bicycle manufacturer. In an added twist it has decided to reject the normal grey shed, instead opting to build its plant on stilts amid a newly restored wetland.
The folding bike maker plans for the new site at Ashford in Kent to be open by 2027, on a 40 hectare (100 acre) floodplain. The stilts will be needed to prevent the factory being regularly inundated. It will also have no new car parking, instead relying on new pedestrian and cycle paths from the train station.

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This is how we defeat Putin and other petrostate autocrats | Bill McKibben theguardian.com

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Bill McKibben
The pictures this morning of Russian tanks rolling across the Ukrainian countryside seemed both surreal – a flashback to a Europe that we’ve seen only in newsreels – and inevitable. It’s been clear for years that Vladimir Putin was both evil and driven and that eventually we might come to a moment like this.
One of the worst parts of facing today’s reality is our impotence in its face. Yes, America is imposing sanctions, and yes, that may eventually hamper Putin. But the Russian leader made his move knowing we could not actually fight him in Ukraine – and indeed knowing that his hinted willingness to use nuclear weapons will make it hard to fight him anywhere, though one supposes we will have no choice if he attacks a Nato member.
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The patriotic act of riding a bicycle during wartime – A view from the cycle path

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Russian forces under control of Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine last night. Sadly, such an act of aggression  was expected as it’s been clear for a very long time now that Putin is dangerous. He’s already occupied part of Ukraine for many years without provoking much of a reaction, and even his fairly obvious Russian support for Brexit and Trump and other actions to undermine the EU and the USA, and the more recent Covid / vaccine misinformation spread by Russian bots have largely been ignored. Unfortunately we even have political parties within our countries which are acting against our interests and instead supporting the interests of Russia (examples from Netherlands, UK, USA).

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Question: “I’m a progressive councillor who wants to support the shift from private cars to a healthy city, what parking policy should I be pushing for?” Lambeth Living Streets (Twitter

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@LambethLivingSt · Feb 20 This THREAD tries to answer in three parts:

WHY the need to change – WHAT to change to – HOW to help achieve it as a cllr
In Lambeth parking revenue is £35m per year, but without parking subsidies this could be as high as £80m. Over 10 years, that’s a transfer of around £600m from poorer to richer residents. It’s clear injustice as a transfer, but doubly so if you consider who suffers from dirty air

So WHAT does progressive parking policy look like?
1. CPZs everywhere. This puts at least a low price on parking & begins to tame the worst aspects of wild west parking like abandoned cars & pavement parking (see CPZ & abandoned cars map) This might be filling the gaps or creating a single borough-wide CPZ.
2. Reduce & rebalance the parking subsidy. The reductions could be staggered over several years, but by 2026-27, there should be no council subsidies for parking the dirtiest cars, which means no difference in cost between parking the dirtiest car in a private or council space.
3. Rebalance the parking subsidy means looking at vehicle storage holistically. Cars or bikes are a choice & the revenue from reducing the parking subsidy for cars should go hand-in-hand with increasing the subsidy for bike storage so there are more & cheaper spaces for residents

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