The National Trust and Raleigh Bicycles have announced a collaboration which will see £42,000 of electric bikes and electric cargo bikes donated to National Trust properties, as the charity looks to reduce its reliance on traditional vehicles and reach carbon net zero by 2030.

The National Trust is collaborating with UK-based Raleigh to trial e-bikes and e-cargo bikes to help them meet their climate change objectives. The bikes will be used by park rangers as they go about their stewardship duties.

Hear more about e-cargo bike development in our free webinar, June 17, 14.30 -16.00: register here
‘Climate change is the single biggest threat to the precious landscapes and historic houses we care for,’ says the National Trust. ‘We’re tackling the causes of climate change by reducing our own emissions and, as a conservation charity, we’re always searching for greener ways to get around the places in our care.’ 

The legacy of the radical bike-riding clubs of a century ago lives on

Wed 16 Jun 2021
Cycling’s radical traditions are part of Britain’s social history. Recalling her teenage years in the 1890s, the great suffragette Sylvia Pankhurst wrote beautifully about the band of carefree lefties with whom she rode out of Manchester each weekend. Criss-crossing rural Lancashire and Cheshire, her cycling club was one of many associated with the Clarion, a popular socialist weekly newspaper. The more earnest socialists of the time saw this crowd as ideological dilettantes, too keen on having a good time. And their trips do seem to have been rather fun.

The All-Party Parliamentary Group for Cycling and Walking (APPGCW) has revealed that it is holding an inquiry, to help shape the Government’s upcoming second Cycling and Walking Investment Strategy (CWIS 2).

The Government published the first Cycling and Walking Investment Strategy in 2017, in a bid to increase cycling and walking activity across England, reduce the number of cyclists killed or seriously injured on the roads, and to encourage children to walk to school.
Since the strategy was published, the Government has received criticism for not matching this ambition and not providing adequate funding for cycling and walking.

Researchers studied how to make climate change communication more persuasive.

14 June 2021
Why climate change threatens public health
As the Earth warms, extreme weather events, increased disease risk and even compromi…
The key to easing partisanship on the topic of global warming may be in the way the messages are conveyed, according to new research.
Tailoring online messaging and advertising toward Republican voters could shift their views on climate change, a new study published Monday in Nature Climate Change suggests.
As of 2020, 73% of Americans believed that global warming was happening, and 62% think that it was caused by human activities. In 2010, only 57% of Americans thought that global warming was happening, researchers said.
But, the shift in public opinion on climate change has largely been driven by Democrats. In previous research, when asked how high of a priority global warming should be, just 22% of Republicans said it should be a “high” or “very high” priority, compared to 83% of Democrats, according to the study.

Sandra Laville Thu 17 Jun 2021
The government has refused to commit to an immediate lowering of legal levels of air pollution as a result of the death of a nine-year-old child from toxic air.
Ella Kissi-Debrah was the first person in the UK to have air pollution listed as a cause of their death in a historic ruling by a coroner earlier this year.
The schoolgirl died after an asthma attack following multiple seizures and hospital admissions. Her death sparked calls for the immediate lowering of legal air pollution levels to bring them in line with those recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO).
The WHO says particulate pollution from fine particulate matter PM2.5 should not exceed an annual mean of 10 μg/m3. For PM10 the limit is 20 µg/m3 annual mean. But the UK currently has higher limits for fine particulate matter: 40 µg/m3 annual mean for PM10 and 25 µg/m3 for PM2.5.

A London cyclist died in hospital after she crashed into a car door in Haringey last month, police have said.

The cyclist, a 65-year-old woman, was treated by paramedics at the scene of the crash which happened at around 4.40pm on the afternoon of Friday 28 May, but she died in hospital two days later.
In a statement, the Metropolitan Police Service said that the victim had been riding on Coleridge Road, N8 “when she collided with an open car door.”
There was no mention of whether the door had been open for some time, or whether it had been opened as the cyclist approached, and officers are appealing for witnesses and information.
Police said that the driver of the parked car is helping them with their investigation, and they do not believe there were any other vehicles involved.
Anyone who saw the crash or has any dash cam footage or CCTV is asked to call the Serious Collision Investigation Unit at Alperton on 0208 246 9820.

Benjamin Schroeder
This is the first part of a three-part analysis on micromobility. The first part aims to explain why micromobility is so appealing as an alternative to public transportation. The second part of the analysis will focus on how COVID has affected the industry. Lastly, the third and final part of the analysis will focus on the future of the industry.
City residents have by now undoubtedly observed the explosion of e-bikes, e-scooters and electric mopeds that have taken over bike lanes. In New York City alone, I’ve seen everything from generic electric Citibikes to custom-made, light-up and music-blasting electric mopeds ride down the bike lane outside my apartment.
As cities become more congested, the pre-existing, car-focused infrastructure has struggled to keep up. A Texas A&M Transportation Institute study found that commuters wasted an average of 54hrs in traffic every year (pre-pandemic). In New York/Newark, that number nearly doubles to 92hrs/year.
Yet, a study by the Office of Energy Efficiency & Renewable Energy found that nearly 60% of all vehicle trips were less than six miles.