In a bid to reduce global warming and offset rising fuel costs, an increasing number of European countries, cities and regions are making public transport free.

Simon Kuper – Poorer megacities tend to be designed for rich people who can afford cars. Bikes are the answer
In a stunning photograph from Shanghai in 1991, clusters of cycling commuters stream across a bridge. The only motorised vehicles to be seen are two buses. That was China in the 1990s: a “Bicycle Kingdom” where 670 million people owned pushbikes. Chinese rulers were then still following the lead of Deng Xiaoping, who defined prosperity as a “Flying Pigeon bicycle in every household”. 
Today China is the kingdom of eight-lane highways. Most lower- and middle-income megacities around the world have ditched the bike. But they now need to reclaim it. Modern “megacities” (defined as places with at least 10 million inhabitants) are the biggest human settlements in history, and growing every day. 
The world had ten megacities in 1990, 33 in 2018 and will have 43 by 2030, says the United Nations. Over a third of their population growth will be in India, China and Nigeria. More cars will mean more traffic jams and more damage to people, the planet and city life. Happily, it’s perfectly feasible for these places to become bicycle kingdoms again. 

Carlton Reid
For some newspapers, the imposition of speeding fines is a “war on the motorist.” The latest front in this supposed war is led by a group not usually noted for radical anti-car tendencies. 
According to the headline on a double-page spread in yesterday’s Daily Telegraph the “elite are determined to kill off the car.” 
Folks from the elite tend to be Tesla and Lamborghini owners, so it’s a strange claim for the Telegraph to make. What is the newspaper basing its claim on and is the car really as endangered as the giant panda or the black Rhino? 
The claim, it turns out, is based on “increasing insurance premiums, new city charging zones and pollution-busting road restrictions.” 

Dr Cecilia Oram
There’s a lot of talk about 20-minute neighbourhoods in the UK right now. But what are they, and why are they so important for making safer, healthier places to live? Here’s everything you need to know. 
Our goal for cities and towns is for them to be places that connect us to each other and what we need.

US regulators investigating hundreds of reports that self-driving models 3 and Y have braked on highways

“Cycling in all its forms can be a tool of emancipation for women; offering freedom and autonomy to move through the city unencumbered, facilitating the varied types of journeys they make, and even providing a tool for taking back control of their lives.” 
https://womenmobilize.org/freedom-to-mov
Melissa & Chris Bruntlett @modacitylife

Bollard and planters at three new Low Traffic Neighbourhoods in East Oxford have been vandalised. The schemes were introduced on 20 May by Oxfordshire County under an experimental traffic regulation order (ETRO) . A consultation on the schemes will run for the next six months, during which time changes can be made, after which the schemes will run for a further six-month trial period.

There were notable differences from the last time the event was held in 2019. Here are five thoughts

Peter Walker

In a lot of ways, cities are about movement. Commuting, cultural visits, consumer binges, social trips or just staring out of the bus window, feeling part of the flow: motion makes urban life fulfilling, sometimes very tiring and occasionally sublime. Over recent years, without much discussion, the way we move around cities has changed. The change started before the pandemic, but Covid accelerated it, and it has continued as the pandemic has apparently receded.