#BikeIsBest Advocacy Digest - Edition No. 144

It's a bumper edition this week, including several stories on road harm: the bad things that happen when we don’t and some of the good things that happen when we do.

Hello and welcome to this week, where it’s all about cutting road harm: the bad things that happen when we don’t and some of the good things that happen when we do. Due to a slight lapse in my newslettering last week, we have a slightly more bumper edition for you this time around.

CYCLING DEATHS AND SERIOUS INJURIES ARE DOWN…

Provisional government data on road casualties shows cycling fatalities have fallen - 27% down on 2014 numbers. While too many people were killed and seriously injured on our roads, 29,540, in the 12 months to June 2023, it is a small step in the right direction.

BIG STORIES FOR CYCLING ADVOCACY

SCOTLAND CUTS ACTIVE TRAVEL BUDGET. Sad news for what was seen as a positive place for active travel funding, as the Scottish government cuts £40m from the walking and cycling budget, according to campaign group Spokes. This slashes active travel “from 5.6% of the transport budget, to 4.6% or less”, Spokes says. It’s a blow to Scotland’s pledge for cycling and walking to be 10% of transport spend.

THE TRUE COST OF ROAD HARM. A recent scrutiny report by Birmingham City Council has highlighted the enormous financial burden of road harm, with road casualties costing £205m every year. Across the West Midlands it’s £444m - a figure that includes costs for ‘lost output, medical and ambulance, police, insurance and damage to property’. The status quo is not only unacceptable on a human level but also economically ruinous.

PART OF THE SOLUTION: SLOWER SPEEDS. Birmingham City Council is looking at ways to introduce more 20mph zones, amid an ongoing road safety emergency. The council declared the emergency in the summer, and BirminghamLive reports it is consulting on reducing some 40mph streets to 30mph. Cllr Majid Mahmood, cabinet member for transport and environment, has sent a letter to the government requesting a “20mph zone for the whole of Birmingham” and is awaiting a response.

MANCHESTER AIMS FOR VISION ZERO. Recognising the enormous toll of road danger in the city region, which killed and seriously injured 10,000 people over the last decade, Greater Manchester’s leaders endorsed a Vision Zero Strategy and Action Plan. This includes a long-term commitment to eliminate road harm by 2040, and a three-year strategy to get going.

SAVE OUR SAFER STREETS. That’s the name of the plucky campaign group taking Tower Hamlets Council to the High Court over mayor Lutfur Rahman’s removal of Low Traffic Neighbourhoods, and plans to take out more. Campaigner Jane Harris, and solicitor Ricardo Gama, spoke to Laura Laker and I for a Streets Ahead podcast last week, to tell their David and Goliath story, so far.

CYCLING IN LONDON IS UP. Cycling in London increased by an impressive 26% since 2019, according to the latest figures from Transport for London. An eye-popping 1.33 million cycle journeys now take place every day in the English capital; that’s 5% up on 2023. As Will Norman, London’s walking and cycling commissioner points out, the city is bucking all the national trends. Which goes to show that building safe cycle routes works.

OTHER HEADLINES

POLICE CUTTING OUT ‘ACCIDENT’. Recent research has revealed police have almost entirely stopped using the word ‘accident’ in their communications with the public. ‘Collision’, ‘crash’, or ‘incident’ are more neutral words that better reflect the preventable nature of such events. Road Collision Reporting Guidelines author, Laura Laker, has also produced a handbook for police and professionals communicating on collisions, available here.

E-BIKE WORD SOUP. Cycling Weekly’s Dr Hutch underlines the crucial difference between illegal e-motorbikes and e-bikes with his usual dry humour in a recent column. Meanwhile, readers of the BBC’s website may have been perplexed to find an ‘ebike hit-and-run’ story actually involved an SUV being deliberately driven into a woman who happened to be on an e-bike, rather than the rider being the hit-and-run perpetrator. Complaints led to a slight tweak that almost, but not quite, fixed it.

INTERESTING GRAPH OF THE WEEK:

Road fatalities have been declining since 2014, albeit slowly. By June 2024 there were an estimated 1,607 deaths, 2% down from the year to June 2023. The biggest change was for cycling, an activity in which 5% fewer people were killed than last year, and 6% fewer injured or killed overall. Source.

ACTIVE TRAVEL WORD OF THE WEEK:

Five-Minute City. Fifteen-minute cities led to weird conspiracy theories but what about five-minute cities? Perhaps Denmark’s revolutionary neighbourhood, the Nordhavn district, will finally get across the message that having the things you need in close walking distance, is good, actually.

Until next time,

Adam

Adam Tranter

Founder, #BikeIsBest