Decades of building bypasses may be drawing to a close in Wales, according to Lee Waters, the Welsh Government’s deputy climate change minister. The government made headlines in June when it announced a freeze on existing road schemes pending the outcome of a review, to be conducted by a Roads Review Panel. 
However, Waters told LTT: “The real importance of the roads review is not for schemes currently on the blocks, it’s for all future road schemes.

Fresh Sports Marketing Surveys data suggests that 6.7% of the UK’s working population is now commuting by bike, while the broader modal share appears to have hit 3%.
Compared to 2020, the number of people cycling to work has held up strongly. In week one of the study, back in mid-June of 2020, just 1.3% of people overall, and 4.5% of all those working said they were commuting by bike (though it should be noted working from home rates and use of furlough schemes were high at the time). Just over one year on, as the UK emerged from lockdown in July 2021, the figure stands at 3% of the overall population and 6.7% of those working.

In the UK surface transport is the single largest contributor of greenhouse gases, producing 23% of our emissions, and we’ve made no significant in-roads to cutting that contribution, in a decade. So what needs to change, and are we (and our policymakers) capable of doing it?

Three train carriages have been customised to carry up to 60 bikes on the new ScotRail Highland Explorer service from Glasgow to Oban.

There is space on the carriages for rucksacks and ski bags, limited space for tandems, as well as an e-bike charging socket. Each carriage has a total of 20 bike racks, as well as designated seating for 24 people.
The bike-friendly carriages have been introduced to encourage people to make car-free trips out to the countryside, said Scot-Rail.

 The Welsh Government is exploring making electric car clubs available in all communities, including rural areas.
Deputy climate change minister Lee Waters told LTT that the government aims to balance behaviour change incentives and disincentives, initially focusing on incentives. “For example, we’re looking at how we can roll out electric car clubs to every community.”
Rural areas were part of the aspiration, despite the potentially long distances between a club.

[UPDATED August 9, 2021] The Intergovernmental Panel On Climate Change (IPCC) has released its much-anticipated peer-reviewed tub-thumper of a report, and it is bursting with existential horrors. Our planet is expected to hit the critical threshold of 1.5°C warming due to human-caused climate change within the next 20 years, whether or not greenhouse gas emissions are reduced.
Humanity’s role in driving climate change was “unequivocal,” said the report agreed by experts from 195 countries, who were not paid for their work.
“Climate change is not a problem of the future, it’s here and now, and affecting every region of the world,” stated Friederike Otto of the University of Oxford, one of the IPCC experts.