Diederik BaazilJanuary 5, 2021
Walk down a block in any neighborhood of Rotterdam and chances are it will look greener than just a few months ago. Tiles that once lined the front gardens of many apartment buildings, homes and offices have been ripped out and replaced with plants, bushes and trees.
It’s a small but notable shift to the streetscape in a country with an affinity for tiled gardens. And it’s no coincidence this change came en masse. It was part of a green initiative that channeled an age-old rivalry between two Dutch cities.

Highways England has found itself embroiled in yet another row over a planned bridge infilling project.

Engineers, transport planners and the local authority have all hit out at Highways England’s proposal to infill a 156-year-old disused rail bridge in the South Downs National Park.
The chief executive of the South Downs National Park Authority (SDNPA) labelled the plans to infill Stoke Road bridge as “vandalism”, while a spokesperson for the HRE Group accused Highways England of acting like “cowboys and bullies”.
In April 2020, the SDNPA ordered Highways England to apply for planning permission for the work.
However, the roads body subsequently decided that it would carry out the infilling under permitted development rights; which allows temporary works to be carried out without planning permission in emergency situations presenting a serious threat of death or injury.

Birmingham—once, proudly, the U.K.’s “motorway city”—has plans to reduce motoring by making motor vehicle journeys longer and inconvenient. At the same time, journeys by bus, bicycle and on foot will be made quicker, easier and safer.
The city will be split into “segments” and, rather than driving direct, motorists will have to use a ring road for all segment-to-segment journeys. The changes are required in order to achieve carbon targets, says Birmingham’s city council.
Birmingham must “build a future in which the car will no longer be king”, said the council’s cabinet member for transport and environment Waseem Zaffar, speaking two years ago launching the outline plans for the scheme. Firm plans were released today with the start of a public consultation.

Standing in the middle of a usually busy central London street during Extinction Rebellion’s protests, the air noticeably cleaner, the area quieter, I was struck by the enormity of the challenge ahead of us. We need to create a transport system that is zero carbon in only a few years. Despite London’s Ultra Low Emission Zone, the daily reality is still toxic traffic fumes, unjustifiable road deaths and high levels of transport carbon emissions (up to one-third of all emissions in many places). There are over 9,000 extra deaths a year in London due to illegal air toxicity, much of which is from road transport.
But some cities have created more car-free, healthy and safe places. Copenhagen and Amsterdam are known for their amazing cycling culture. Curitiba, in Brazil, has an amazing bus transit system that functions like a subway network. Helsinki has committed to going car-free as soon as possible. Tokyo has some of the lowest levels of car ownership in the world. And Venice hasn’t seen a car in its history.

‘Easier’ road closures may avoid disruption, but it is the schemes covering strategic routes or a wider area that will ultimately cause traffic reduction, writes Steve Melia

All around Britain – and in many other countries – transport authorities have been closing roads to general traffic, pedestrianising in some cases and filtering in others. These experiments have proved controversial. Claims and counter-claims have been flying across mainstream and anti-social media. What happens to the traffic when you close or filter a road? Does it just squeeze onto the surrounding roads, worsening congestion and pollution, or does it ‘disappear’, and if so, what happens to the people who used to drive there?  
Steve Melia is a senior lecturer in transport and planning at the University of the West of England. Hs book, Roads Runways and Resistance – from the Newbury Bypass to Extinction Rebellion, is published by Pluto Press. Melia, S. and Calvert, T. (2021) Does Traffic Disappear When Roads Are Closed? is available on: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/7520712

August 4, 2021,
A few months ago, Dodge posted tweet: “Fill in the blank. More horsepower means more _____.”
The U.S. Twitterverse immediately responded with the reality of living in a country where traffic crashes kill nearly 40,000 and injure over four million people every year:
“More horsepower means more dead kids.”
“More horsepower means more dead pedestrians.”
“More horsepower means more dead cyclists.” 
Dodge removed the tweet. But bragging about horsepower was not a one-off error of judgment. Rather, marketing speed, power and reckless driving as a selling point for cars is part of a longstanding advertising tradition for automakers who, in 2018, spent more than $35 billion on advertising.