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rantyhighwayman.bsky.social
A highway engineer's adventures in time & space. The street is not too narrow your imagination is too narrow | Independent sustainable mobility design specialist | Better streets & places | Runs @cityinfinity.bsky.social | https://linktr.ee/rantyhighwayman
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Watching nearly every political party in the UK chase the same 20% of the worst people in the country, ignoring the other 80%, just to please the papers. Nothing will change in the UK until the papers are taken in hand. Not all the media, just the papers. The rest will flow from there.

submitted 8 hours ago • 65 comments

Here's a Tory trying to cling to Sunak's Plan for Drivers.

submitted 5 hours ago • 1 comment

A question for the transport historians: when the UK government went all in on cars, were there any considerations for where they'd all be parked?

submitted 6 hours ago • 3 comments

I keep talking about this I know, but it does feel like “everything is just a bit dirty and expensive and nothing really works” is going to be electorally disastrous for Labour, and as this post says London is really an advertisement for that feeling.

submitted 7 hours ago • 12 comments

Let’s zoom out from all the detailed accounting arguments - Wales does not get a fair deal www-bbc-co-uk.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/www.bbc....

submitted 6 hours ago • 2 comments

The oil company behind Rosebank - the UK’s biggest untapped oilfield - has been quietly targeting children in UK schools with a fossil fuel–friendly computer game. 🛢️🎮 This is cyber greenwashing - the new and disturbing tactic of polluting industries. 🧵 1/8

submitted 6 hours ago • 1 comment

Is this at all surprising when 31% of children live in poverty. Desperate people do desperate things, especially when the status quo has failed them...

submitted 6 hours ago • 2 comments

The UK has given up any pretence of even trying to do this now. Meanwhile the Netherlands has contactless card payment for the whole country.

submitted 11 hours ago • 4 comments

Renationalising the wasteful water industry without compensation is possible: “when Railtrack and Northern Rock were put into special administration without any compensation for investors…the investors lost. “The government just needs to stop being so timid,” www.theguardian.com/business/202...

submitted 10 hours ago • 0 comments

Combining capital and revenue for these figures would be bad at any time. Including the pandemic years when the government banned travel yet demanded a full tube service be run (the biggest peak) just leads to unusable data.

submitted 10 hours ago • 1 comment

Is there no way for parts of the UK to lobby for spending without comparing themselves to a tier 1 world megacity? It is a flawed argument and doesn't help them.

submitted 10 hours ago • 3 comments

This 28 year old sounds creepy. He is also very confused about London mayoral powers it seems. It feels. He doesn't understand the meaning of the word "enshittification". www.standard.co.uk/news/london/...

submitted 10 hours ago • 4 comments

Whilst undeniably true, this slightly obscures a bigger truth: only London zones 1-4 have a modern transportation system in the entire country. We've privatised transport which means cars or no/low mobility if you can't afford them for almost everyone else. www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...

submitted 10 hours ago • 3 comments

don’t forget: waymos and other robotaxis are surveillance devices on wheels that police are increasingly tapping for footage

submitted 17 hours ago • 9 comments

Watch the slow motion: it appears to me that the officers discuss the photographer and reporter before the one on the end fires on them (it looks to me like he's aiming at the camera, not the reporter, but you decide)

submitted 15 hours ago • 1039 comments

New drawing: ‘The artists whose work was used when you made a picture using AI, and how much they were paid’. One of ten drawings about AI from Diagram Club #042: open.substack.com/pub/diagramc...

submitted 23 hours ago • 1 comment

Julian Glover in "We Still Steal The Old Way." He chose poorly. Still, nice to see Burnside again.

submitted 23 hours ago • 0 comments

Parisian electric bus with four steerable wheels at the ends to make it easier to maneuver in traffic.

submitted 1 day ago • 3 comments

At long last, I've got some words down about the amputation and immediate aftermath. There's a video. Form an orderly queue to rubberneck. tomstaniford.substack.com/p/17-a-weigh...

submitted 1 day ago • 4 comments

Tom is a wonderfully life-affirming follow on here - and here is his narrative about a necessary but elective amputation. From a legal perspective, the discussion about consents is fascinating. (Please note the content warnings.)

submitted 1 day ago • 1 comment

Lego art 🍳 😄

submitted 1 day ago • 151 comments

"We would ban Nazis but, y'know... money."

submitted 1 day ago • 0 comments

Wimborne , England. A quintessential market town, and like most quintessential English market towns, it's usually tainted by far too much car traffic driving around it. Not this weekend though! Wimborne Folk Festival and the streets are HEAVING with people having a good time ☺️

submitted 1 day ago • 4 comments

How about some peaceful 1bit pixel art?! #pixelart

submitted 1 day ago • 26 comments

Speeding is for people who can't do math. The majority of car trips in the US are less than 6 miles. If you drive 30 mph instead of 20 mph, you'll only get there 6 minutes earlier but you're much more likely to kill someone. Just leave 10 minutes earlier and drive slower.

submitted 1 day ago • 15 comments

I know some people have strong views about the police, but this actually means falling back to downstream detection and stopping upstream prevention.

submitted 1 day ago • 1 comment

What happens when you decide your entirely tiled bathroom needs to break up the visual monotony?

submitted 1 day ago • 3 comments

One of the sad casualties of Brexit: community facilities and schemes that in part or wholly relied on EU funding. During my years as a local newspaper editor and as a Council Community Liaison Officer, I saw just how much it all depended on funding from the European Regional Development Fund.

submitted 1 day ago • 7 comments