#BikeIsBest Advocacy Digest - Edition No.15
#BikeIsBest Digest Edition No. 15 | Thursday, May 26th 2022 | View in browser
Hello and how has the week been for you so far? Oxford has new Low Traffic Neighbourhoods, there’s new data for cycling and walking and there’s fresh calls for more support for e-bikes.
MORE EBIKE NEWS, A CYCLING FLOTILLA AND A NEW LTN
We’ve got some good news stories this week, because while it’s easy to see what’s going wrong in the world - and there is obviously a lot of that - there are also things going right, and everyone needs some positivity in their lives. This week I saw and really enjoyed the play, Straight Line Crazy at London’s Bridge Theatre, about New York’s car-centric architect, Robert Moses, and the 1950s fightback against car dominance.
BIG STORIES FOR CYCLING ADVOCACY
BIKE LANES AND CONGESTION EXPLAINER
Traffic is complicated and counterintuitive, like the idea that expanding road space for cars increases vehicle journeys, and vice versa. The Guardian has produced an excellent video debunking claims cycle lanes cause congestion. Share it with your friends.
WALKING AND CYCLING INDEX LAUNCHES
Some say you can’t have a cycling policy without a parking policy - and Sustrans’ annual survey, formerly Bike Life, found 70% support to cut pavement parking. Now including walking for the first time, the survey of 18 UK and Irish cities’ residents, the West Midlands among them, estimates up to 2.6 million car trips annually are saved by active travel, with much more to be done as 56% of disabled respondents don’t feel welcome to walk and cycle in their neighbourhoods.
EBIKES FOR ALL?
Industry and cycling bodies are urging the government to reform the Cycle to Work scheme to include those on lower incomes and the self-employed, the Guardian reports. The popular employee benefit scheme is not currently available to all, including minimum wage workers - putting cheap healthy transport out of reach for many in society.
LTN NEWS
Three Low Traffic Neighbourhoods are being trialled in East Oxford, after bollards were installed in the Divinity Road, St Clement’s and St Mary’s areas of the city. A six month consultation has started and the council will make a decision on the schemes’ future in February 2023. Advocates and local politicians on social media are buoyant about the early impact of the traffic filters. Watch this space.
PONTEVEDRA - CAR-FREE HAVEN?
It’s not a new story but this ace video by the World Economic Forum highlights how city-wide change can happen. 19 years ago the mayor of Pontevedra started to remove car access to city centre streets, and today the city is thriving, with air pollution down 61% and no traffic deaths for a decade. So is the four-times re-elected mayor, Miguel Anxo F. Lores. "It's not my duty as Mayor to make sure you have a parking spot,” he says.
A BIT OF LIGHT READING
#BikeIsBest continues to gather useful and educational resources on our website, with the hope that education might instil confidence in new and return riders. Visit our content library at bikeisbest.com and feel free to get in touch for future content ideas.
Content hub
OTHER HEADLINES
MAYOR’S CYCLING FLOTILLA
Colchester’s new mayor, Tim Young, will arrive at Colchester Town Hall to be sworn in, by e-rickshaw, “accompanied by a flotilla of e-cargo cycles and bikes,” according to the local paper. Young said he and his partner are “particularly keen to make the mayoralty as carbon-free and eco-friendly as possible and will be using sustainable transport – be that walking, cycling, e-scooters, e-cargo bikes, public transport or electric and hybrid vehicles – to travel to our official engagements wherever possible”.
INTERESTING GRAPHIC OF THE WEEK
This graph shows how, on a given road, small increases in traffic can have a big impact on increasing congestion. From the Geography of Transport Systems by Jean-Paul Rodrigue.
Source
ACTIVE TRAVEL PHRASE OF THE WEEK; INDUCED DEMAND
A growth in new traffic that would not have occurred without the increase in network capacity. It can apply to motor traffic, as well as cycling traffic (the ‘build it and they will come’ concept).
Until next time,
Founder, #BikeIsBest
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