“I’m not anti-car”. OK, then well yes I am. Cars kill and maim and cause air, noise and ground pollution. But I also accept that cars in some form are here to stay, and that if we want to reduce the harm they cause, we need to switch to electric as soon as possible, whilst … [Read more…]
Some people ask why cycling advocates don’t campaign for better walking facilities, when the simple answer is that they almost certainly do! Nearly everyone is a pedestrian for some component of their trip, and very few cyclists use their bicycles to go absolutely everywhere, 100% of the time. Cities which are good for cycling are … [Read more…]
Why are garages on older houses now “too small” for modern cars? Why are even modern garages “too small” for modern cars? Is it just because developers see a faster return from keeping everything as small as possible, or is it because house buyers don’t actually demand sufficient storage space for their cars? Perhaps if … [Read more…]
twone /ˈtwːoʊne/ noun being designated two way, but only functioning in one direction at a time. “a twone way street” Every neighbourhood has them – two way streets which are designated as such on the map, but which can only function in one direction at any one time. Why can’t they operate in both directions? … [Read more…]
So the first Lego movie wasn’t until 2014. Yes, these things are all about extending the commercial reach of the franchise, but above all else, the sheer complexity of creating and then animating each scene – whether it’s done digitally or organically – would probably have made it difficult to have come up with such … [Read more…]
It’s amazing that certain politicians are still talking about “Sadiq Khan imposed” LTNs (low traffic neighbourhoods), when the idea has been around in some form since at least the 1930s. The basic idea of the low traffic neighbourhood might have first surfaced with the cul-de-sacs which are so common in 1930s housing estates, but the … [Read more…]
If your council is anything like mine, then sometime around the early summer of 2019, they will have signed a “Climate Emergency” declaration, and then buried somewhere under a huge mount of (actual and non-recycled) paper work. No doubt they will now be saying we’ve had a”real” emergency relating to the pandemic, but let’s not … [Read more…]
This might be an obvious enough statement – in 1980, in the UK at least, there were no mobile phone related car crash deaths. The first networks were just being established at this time, but early phones also tended to weigh upwards of 2kg, making them difficult to carry, hence why we had “car phones” … [Read more…]
It’s a reasonable enough question, sometimes asked innocently, and sometimes as part of a very large dose of “whataboutery”, sometimes more of a statement than a question: What happens when a cyclist causes a fatal crash where the driver, or other car occupant dies? This question is often asked as part of an argument used … [Read more…]
As we know, most car storage in the UK is free, and even in “controlled” parking zones, car owners usually just pay a peppercorn rent for the privilege, sometimes a fee that barely even covers the admin costs. If the pressure on the parking comes from an “external” source – such as a university, a … [Read more…]