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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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In Ceredigion, out of a population of 71,500, only 16 people objected to any of the 20mph roads managed by the county. That's just 0.02%, and shows strong public acceptance of the default 20mph limit. #20splenty making Wales an even better place to be. bit.ly/43Tn4Xf

they said it couldn't be done. they said the gains would be marginal

this SLAPS youtu.be/ZmiQAvP5ZZw?...

“It costs too much to pedestrianize a street.”

U.K. Government’s Cuts To Cycling And Walking Budget Ruled Unlawful By Court Of Appeal www.forbes.com/sites/carlto...

When I get home, if you hear me referring to “cave people,” I got it from Gil Peñalosa.

They would save more than the cost in NHS spending. Govt position is illogical.

Every so often I remember that interest rates were below 1% for 12 years. I realise this is not "news". Nor is it news that, during that decade-plus, we failed to use the potential of dirt-cheap borrowing to invest in infrastructure projects that we belatedly realised we desperately needed. Hmph.

A crucial win for investment in #cycling & #walking... The last Gvt's funding cuts caused a glaring mismatch between the 2nd Cycling & Walking Investment Strategy (CWIS2)'s "objectives" and the funding earmarked to achieve these. Let's hope there will now be no repeat in CWIS3, due later this year!

Oxford Labour right now:

No new memes on Facebook this week, lads

Treasury cuts to cycling and walking budget UNLAWFUL, rules Court of Appeal transportactionnetwork.org.uk/treasury-cut...

Important thread from Adam here. Public space - especially in towns and cities - isn't just there for the fast, efficient movement of motor vehicles and we mustn't let that motonormative thinking enable another generational landgrab as automated driving slides in

This scares me. We don't have jaywalking in the UK, crappy guard rails are bad enough. US tech fantasists MUST not be allowed to rule our roads, and squeeze pedestrians and people cycling even further into the margins.

Astonished to learn that White Lightning only existed for 17 years. I thought it had some sort of Unesco Intangible Cultural Heritage status.

If you want to witness journalistic malfeasance in action, here's a report from Merthyr Tydfil, one of the UK's poorest towns. The BBC treats Reform like a contestant on Love Island, rather than a far-right grift that will actively immiserate an already desperate population.

If you ever want to con a politician out of money, always do it with tech. They've got this massive blindspot for tech bullshit. Crypto, blockchain, NFTs, AI. They will always buy that bridge off you.

A damning pair of charts. People on lowest incomes own FIVE TIMES fewer cars than the richest do. Meanwhile kids in most deprived areas are FIVE TIMES more likely to be injured by cars.

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.

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

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?

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.

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....

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

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...

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.

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...

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.