News Archives - urbanism

Pedal-powered LTNs: Could mobile modal filters help protect school streets?

Towns and cities can be safer and more pleasant places to live and work when motorised traffic is restricted, so how best to enforce LTNs and school streets? Planters and bollards are often used to create low traffic neighbourhoods by blocking rat runs, and cameras are relied on to safeguard school streets, but how about the idea of a mobile…

Driverless cars; Brave new world or road to nowhere?

A Tesla whistleblower this week claimed self-driving car tech is not safe enough for public roads, but how safe is safe enough? After all, there’s a double standard where road safety’s concerned. A once-in-a-decade train crash that kills 5 people will generate wall-to-wall media coverage, a public enquiry and changes to working practices, but the daily UK road death toll…

There’s nothing new about motoring miscreants as first ULEZ vandals prosecuted

In 1935, a young boy fishing in a pond at Swanwick, Hampshire landed eight 30mph road signs – roundels that had recently been installed across the country to enforce the new national speed limit. It’s not clear whether the vandal was caught, but nearly 90 years later a small group of motoring miscreants is back at it – this time…

Transport poverty: Cars are making us poor

Running a car is the single largest household expense (excluding mortgage repayments) for rural families, and the second largest for urban ones. As a result, transport costs have pushed over 5 million people into poverty according to research by the Social Market Foundation. The average British household spends £5,740 on driving, but only £87 on bus travel. Poorer regions are…

Whatever you ride, winter will be hard on your bicycle

Most cyclists agree a good bicycle should be protected from the ravages of winter. It’s how you achieve it that causes disagreement. Mothballing an expensive bike in favour of a cheap hack while roads are covered in grime and salt is a school of thought considered perverse by those who don’t believe in keeping things ‘for best’. More importantly, one…