News from Elsewhere

Climate scientists shocked by scale of floods in Germany | The Guardian

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Deluge raises fears human-caused disruption is making extreme weather even worse than predicted

Jonathan Watts

The intensity and scale of the floods in Germany this week have shocked climate scientists, who did not expect records to be broken this much, over such a wide area or this soon.
After the deadly heatwave in the US and Canada, where temperatures rose above 49.6C two weeks ago, the deluge in central Europe has raised fears that human-caused climate disruption is making extreme weather even worse than predicted.

News from Elsewhere

Girl, 7, dies after bike crash with lorry in Wiltshire – BBC News

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14 July 2021
A “beautiful and kind” seven-year-old girl has died after a crash with a lorry while riding her bike.

The girl, named only as Eloise, was taken to Salisbury District Hospital but died a short time later.
It happened on the A338 Church Street in Collingbourne Ducis in Wiltshire shortly before 18:30 BST on Tuesday.
She attended Collingbourne Primary School and headteacher Dan Crossman said the school sent her family “our sincerest sympathy and support.”

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Cars are fuelling our isolation from strangers – Guardian

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Letters Fri 16 Jul 2021
In his otherwise insightful article about how our interactions with strangers have changed (Remember hand shakes and small talk? The lost art of living with strangers, 10 July), Joe Moran omits to mention another important influence: cars, and our relationship to them. In the suburban neighbourhood where I now live, it is virtually impossible to encounter the strangers who are my neighbours, apart from those immediately next door.
Almost everyone else is only ever seen stepping from their front door to their car, parked a couple of feet away in what was the front garden, driving off, and then returning later to scuttle from car to front door. Few people walk to the local shops. One 88-year-old resident I chatted to at a community event confirmed this impression. When I asked why she didn’t know as many people in the street as she had in the past, she gave a one-word answer: “Cars.”
Isabella Stone Sheffield

News from Elsewhere

Electric car “obsession” to see Net Zero goals missed, writes Oxford Uni Transport Professor – Cycle Industry News

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Mark Sutton15 July, 2021

The Associate Professor at Oxford’s Transport, Energy & Environment, Transport Studies Unit, Christian Brand has warned that “obsessing over the electric car is impeding the race to Net Zero” and has simultaneously called for active travel provision to be the focal point of reducing transport emissions; the UK’s heaviest polluter.

There is no feasible way the transition to electric cars can take place fast enough within the window “we can spare – the next five years,” writes Brand. It is estimated that it will take three to four times that period of time for a complete transition of the world’s fossil fuel car fleet.
“Tackling the climate and air pollution requires curbing all motorised transport, particularly private cars, as quickly as possible,” he writes.

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Is the Government’s Transport Decarbonisation Plan up to scratch? | Campaign For Better Transport

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16.07.2021 | Silviya Barret
While launching the Plan the Transport Secretary was at pains to say that people’s lives won’t change much: “We will still fly but in more efficient aircraft, using sustainable fuel. We will still drive, but increasingly in zero emission cars”. The good news is that – by contrast – the Plan itself recognises the need for modal shift and to reduce how much we travel, as well as how we travel. It reiterates the government’s ambition for public transport, cycling and walking to be “the natural first choice” for people.

Yet there seems to be an overreliance on some of the changing habits during the pandemic sticking, rather than actively promoting behaviour change going forward. Without any specific traffic reduction and modal shift targets to promote action, even the reforms proposed in the National Bus Strategy and the Plan for Rail may not result in significant change.

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Leicester presses ahead with plan for workplace parking levy – transportxtra

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Outline plans for a proposed workplace parking levy (WPL) have been put out to public consultation by Leicester City Council.

The plans form part of the draft Leicester Transport Plan that focuses on the key themes and schemes that the city council proposes to deliver by 2036.   
The city council says the WPL, which could start in 2023, would support delivery of the overall transport plan, alongside other funding opportunities. 

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Measuring the impact of Covid-19 on cycling – transportxtra

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During the first lockdown in March 2020, there was a massive increase in cycling as the roads emptied of motorised vehicles and people turned to their bikes. Pop-up cycle lanes appeared in many towns and cities and the BBC ran articles on how the pandemic had sparked a “European cycling revolution”. As lockdowns have eased and road traffic is generally back to pre-Covid levels, what has happened to that cycling revolution?

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The government has no plan for decarbonising transport – At War With The Motorist

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Joe Dunkley July 14, 2021

There is much excitement in the transport sector, as the government has finally announced that they have published the long-awaited Transport Decarbonisation Plan. Social media is full of ministers with fancy videos claiming that they are doing something significant.
So I rushed to the DfT section of gov.uk and read what they have published. And I’m afraid it will be a massive disappointment.
There is no plan to decarbonise transport.
The government has not published any new actions that it will be taking to decarbonise transport. There is no plan for modal shift, there is no plan for decarbonisation of individual polluting modes and sectors. The government have made no commitments and have no policies.
For all their talk, Grant Shapps and his ministers are doing nothing at all to decarbonise transport in the UK. It’s business as usual on the Department for Transport website.

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