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Drivers should welcome cycle lanes, says AA president | road.cc

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Edmund King insists dedicated infrastructure for bike riders helps ease motor traffic congestion, and urges government to protect funding

The president of the UK’s biggest motoring organisation, the AA, says that drivers should welcome cycle lanes because by encouraging people to get out of their cars and onto bikes for everyday journeys, they help improve motor traffic flow and reduce congestion.
Edmund King has also called on the government to protect active travel funding from falling victim to widely expected spending cuts in the Budget, which is due at the end of this month, reports the Daily Telegraph.
“Even though we’re a motoring organisation, that doesn’t mean you need to use your motor all the time,” explained King.
“Journeys under a mile and a half are in many ways the most expensive way to use a car,” he said, “because your car’s not warmed up, you’re only going a short distance, and you’ve got to pay to park.”

News from Elsewhere

July) Days of Rage – George Monbiot

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System change is – and has always been – our only realistic means of defending the living planet.
By George Monbiot, published in the Guardian 19th July 2022
Can we talk about it now? I mean the subject most of the media and most of the political class has been avoiding for so long. You know, the only subject that ultimately counts – the survival of life on Earth. Everyone knows, however carefully they avoid the topic, that, beside it, all the topics filling the front pages and obsessing the pundits are dust. Even the Times editors still publishing columns denying climate science know it. Even the candidates for the Tory leadership, ignoring or downplaying the issue, know it. Never has a silence been so loud or so resonant.

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East Antarctic glacier melting at 70.8bn tonnes a year due to warm sea water | Antarctica | The Guardian

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East Antarctic glacier melting at 70.8bn tonnes a year due to warm sea water

Denman glacier in remote part of the continent could become unstable, possibly contributing to more sea level rise than predicted
Lisa Cox
The Denman ice shelf in east Antarctica is melting at a rate of 70.8bn tonnes a year, according to researchers from Australia’s national science agency, thanks to the ingress of warm sea water.
The CSIRO researchers, led by senior scientist Esmee van Wijk, said their observations suggested the Denman glacier was potentially at risk of unstable retreat.
The glacier, in remote east Antarctica, sits atop the deepest land canyon on Earth. It holds a volume of ice equivalent to 1.5m of sea level rise.
Until relatively recently, it was thought east Antarctica would not experience the same rapid ice loss that is occurring in the west. But some recent studies have shown warm water is reaching that part of the continent too.

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Multimillion-pound UK road scheme facing legal action on climate grounds | Road transport | The Guardian

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Isabella Kaminski

A legal challenge has been launched against a road scheme that opponents say clashes with climate goals.
Changes aimed at improving car journeys between Milton Keynes and Cambridge by upgrading junctions and building a 10-mile dual carriageway on the A428 between Black Cat and Caxton Gibbet were approved in the summer. The scheme, estimated to cost £810m-£950m, is listed in the government’s growth plan for accelerated delivery.
But Transport Action Network (TAN) filed for judicial review at the end of September, arguing the Department for Transport (DfT) was wrong to only assess emissions from the scheme against the national carbon budget.
Instead, the climate campaign group points to professional guidance from the Institute of Environmental Management and Assessment, which recommends using sectoral, regional and local carbon budgets to contextualise a project’s greenhouse gas emissions.

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