#BikeIsBest Advocacy Digest - Edition No. 130

Hello and welcome back to your big, friendly, safe-speed newsletter, where we dream of a future where it’s possible to let the kids walk and cycle to school in safety. Wild, huh?

I took a short hiatus last week to revel in the success of the news being dominated by a story that originated on a little podcast I co-host. 

PLENTY - AND I MEAN PLENTY - ABOUT 20

When my Streets Ahead co-host Laura Laker spoke exclusively to the Secretary of State for Transport, Louise Haigh, she revealed she supports councils who want to implement 20mph zones and LTNs. It’s fair to say none of us were expecting to make front-page news. 

BIG STORIES FOR CYCLING ADVOCACY

IT STARTED HERE. A fairly innocuous write-up for Bloomberg of a portion of Laura’s interview with Louise Haigh MP. In it the SoS for Transport said it’s up to local authorities - not central government - to decide on local speed limits, marking a shift from the previous government’s stance. However, the current position is eminently sensible, even in a country with one of the most centralised Governments in the world.

AND SPIRALLED FROM THERE. Just about every major news outlet, and plenty of minor ones, picked up on the story. Many of them did their due diligence, listening to the full interview, and reporting it even-handedly. Others, it is fair to say, didn’t - and the field was littered with ill-informed comment pieces. From being overtaken at 20mph by cyclists (extremely unlikely) to “no one objects to 20mph zones outside schools or hospitals, but…” How do they think people arrive at these places? Might they also need to be safe on the journey too?

DEPOLITICISING LTNS. Boris Johnson’s former advisor, Andrew Gilligan, penned this piece following some of the furore, arguing measures like LTNs needn’t be a party political issue. “An official study [the former transport secretary] ordered into LTNs, intended to prove they were hated, ambulance-blocking failures, said they were mostly popular and effective; reducing traffic volumes within the LTNs, having limited adverse impacts on boundary roads, and not adversely affecting emergency response times”, he wrote.

BIKES ALSO CHANGE LIVES. XO bikes, which trains prison inmates and ex-offenders (hence XO) featured in this FT piece (paywall) on the power of rehabilitation. With prisons full, the minister for prisons, Lord Timpson, argues we need to stop the cycle of reoffending. XO says they are about rehabilitating people, above reconditioning bikes, the machine is simply a vehicle for achieving that.  

AND NOW SOMETHING DIFFERENT. There was other news about this week, and the threat of air pollution is still very much present. A new graph, tracing the rise - and, in some places, the fall - of air pollutants, shows the places that have (Europe), and haven’t (parts of the Asian and African continents) made progress. Inspired by climate stripes, it’s a powerful visualisation of how far parts of the world have come, and how far others still have to go. 

OTHER HEADLINES

This weekend around 100,000 people arrived in Zandvoort for the Formula 1 Dutch Grand Prix. The main mode of transport for thousands of petrol heads? Bicycles, of course. A combination of infrastructure, traffic management and behaviour change makes it possible. It has to be this way, frankly, because bikes and buses are best for moving lots of people. 

MEANWHILE…IN THE WORLD OF TRIALS. The city of Haarlem trialled closing two of the city’s busiest traffic lanes, on an experimental basis, for bikes for two months. Here’s what happened. As its road planning advisor said: “Policymakers shouldn’t be afraid to upset car drivers if it makes the city a better place to live. Another piece of advice is to communicate clearly that a trial is a test, that it’s temporary, and that it might fail. This way, people don’t feel that the government is imposing changes permanently”.

INTERESTING GRAPH OF THE WEEK: The safety difference between 30mph and 20mph is stark. It’s been described as the difference between falling from a third floor window (30mph) and a first floor window (20mph). Stopping distances differ drastically, too. Source https://www.20splenty.org/graphics 

ACTIVE TRAVEL WORD OF THE WEEK:

Experimental Traffic Regulation Order (ETRO). The process by which local authorities introduce street space measures like 20mph zones and Low Traffic Neighbourhoods (LTNs). The process allows the trialing and introduction of measures to improve road safety or balance the needs of different users, before deciding if they work or not. In other words, it's how local authorities can manage their streets - and move fast and fix things.

Until next time,

Adam Tranter

#BikeIsBest