News from Elsewhere

Bicycle graveyards: why do so many bikes end up underwater? | Cycling | The Guardian

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Every decade or so, the city of Paris drains the Canal Saint-Martin. The nearly three-mile-long waterway, which runs south across a swathe of the Right Bank, was originally constructed to keep Paris clean, supplying fresh water to a city plagued by cholera and dysentery. But for the two centuries of the canal’s existence, it has often served a different – in fact, opposite – function. It is a dumping ground, a big liquid trash can. The periodic draining is therefore also an unveiling. The water recedes, and the stuff kicked or heaved or furtively dropped into the canal over the preceding few thousand nights is revealed.

News from Elsewhere

Rethinking road safety – part 1 – Nicer cities, liveable places

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Can you imagine how much more dangerous it would have been working in a factory 200 years ago, in comparison to what it’s like now (in the UK at least)?

Everything is far from perfect nowadays, but we all understand that many years ago industrial safety was seen very differently. We’ve heard about how many people were killed while building a famous bridge, or a tall building. We know that it was much more common for people in factories to lose arms or fingers.

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Shared bikes to integrate with Solent’s MaaS app – Transport Xtra

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Beryl bikes and e-bikes will be available to rent using a smartphone app. The bikes will be located in designated parking zones across the two cities and on the Isle of Wight, with increasing numbers of bikes and e-bikes available after an initial launch period.

Portsmouth City Council and Solent Transport will introduce a Department for Transport-funded bicycle and e-bike rental scheme this summer. Southampton City Council and Isle of Wight Council will also join the scheme, with Beryl as the approved supplier for the Solent region.

News from Elsewhere

Reclaiming the roads – Works in Progress – Carlton Reid

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Carlton Reid 21st July 2022 
Road space is a special good. Some ways of using it have huge impacts on other road users. Until relatively recently, roads were shared between a messy mix of cyclists, stagecoaches, carts, horses, and pedestrians, but with no dominant user. Today the road is almost completely dominated by the car. 

Motorcars have enormous benefits for those driving them: extra speed, extra safety, and an easy way to lug possessions around. Many also love driving. But, when moving, they make roadways dangerous, loud, and polluted for other would-be users, to the point these potential users have been all but driven off. When parked, they take up valuable urban space.

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(ONE MINUTE RESPONSE) – Deadline THIS Friday 29th July––TfL consultation on expanding ULEZ to most of London––August 2023

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TfL is running a consultation on expanding the Ultra Low Emission Zone to nearly all of London, in August 2023.
This expansion would help get the most polluting cars off the road, helping our children to breathe easier. 1 in 10 children have asthma in London – we urgently need measures to reduce air pollution.
You can use this really quick email tool to respond (takes literally ONE minute).  
https://bit.ly/uleztool

News from Elsewhere

Strengthen your net zero strategy, High Court judge tells Government – Transportxtra.com

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21 July 2022
ClientEarth lawyers Sam Hunter-Jones and Sophie Marjanac outside the High Court on the first day of the hearing
The Government’s Net Zero Strategy does not meet its obligations under the Climate Change Act to produce detailed climate policies, a High Court ruling has found.
The ruling follows a hearing at the Royal Courts of Justice in June, which considered the legal challenges brought by Friends of the Earth, ClientEarth, Good Law Project and environmental campaigner Jo Wheatley.
The judgment came on Monday 18 July, the same day as the Met Office’s first ever red alert for extreme heat.

News from Elsewhere

Climate change: Key UN finding widely misinterpreted – BBC News

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16 April Matt McGrath

A key finding in the latest IPCC climate report has been widely misinterpreted, according to scientists involved in the study.
In the document, researchers wrote that greenhouse gases are projected to peak “at the latest before 2025”.
This implies that carbon could increase for another three years and the world could still avoid dangerous warming.
But scientists say that’s incorrect and that emissions need to fall immediately.
The IPCC’s most recent report focused on how to limit or curtail emissions of the gases that are the root cause of warming.
In their summary for policymakers, the scientists said it was still possible to avoid the most dangerous levels of warming by keeping the rise in global temperatures under 1.5C this century.
This will take a herculean effort, with carbon emissions needing to shrink by 43% by the end of this decade to stay under this threshold of danger.

News from Elsewhere

How Sussex farmers plan to rewild a nature-rich green corridor to the sea | Rewilding | The Guardian

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Patrick Barkham

When farmer James Baird read of Isabella Tree’s vision for rewilded land stretching from her Sussex estate all the way to the sea at Shoreham, he phoned up Tree and her husband, Charlie Burrell, and told them: “You’re going to the wrong bit of coast – I’ve got the last bit.”
Now Baird, a self-described “hard-nosed arable farmer” who owns virtually the last slice of undeveloped West Sussex coast at Climping Gap, the other side of Worthing to Shoreham, is the driving force behind the creation of a wildlife-rich green corridor linking the rewilded Knepp estate to the sea.
The Weald to Waves project aims to create at least 10,000 hectares (24,710 acres) of nature-friendly land in corridors running from the rolling hills of the Weald down the valleys of the Rivers Arun and Adur to boost biodiversity on land and in the sea.

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