Every now and again I like to share this photo of an ice cream van I spotted on the Isle of Wight and watch the pedants explode

Just imagine the two dozen cars that we could have parked here

Just found multiple dragonfly cases in our pond. I knew there was one growing in there, but it turns out there was at least 8

How many more studies does your city need proving that people on bikes and on foot spend more on shopping streets than people in cars? Bike-lanes mean business. #UrbanTruth

A new TOP FIVE has just dropped. The @ukri.org TOP FIVE shortest timescales from call opening to closing. And you won't believe the winner 👀

Good day to repost this

Two-storey timber extension added on top of a 1950’s concrete housing block in Geneva. Increasing housing while reducing demolition. By Lacroix Chessex

The number of people Killed or Seriously Injured (KSI) on Oxfordshire roads in 2025 fell by 18% to 213 according to provisional data issued by the Department for Transport yesterday. This is the lowest level on record. (Traffic data is not yet available for context, but in 2024 it increased 2.4%.)

I find this shocking. 60% of Canadians say they feel forced to own a car to access their daily needs! There is HUGE pent-up demand for better transportation options. Paraphrasing @lorinah.bsky.social: people are just not all that jazzed about spending their days in a car. survey.mobilizingjustice.ca

Swansea MS Mike Hedges says the new Senedd voting system “does not work” — and while he’s no fan of the Single Transferable Vote, he says “any system is better than the one we used in the last election.” He’s calling for an open public discussion on how Wales elects its Senedd 👇

It’s a stupidly high bar but I believe this to be Craig Brown’s finest work

One of the use cases in the LOCAST project is a tall timber building that vibrates at nearly 3 Hz. We're collecting detailed data on how easily people feel this, what effects it might have (and why), and what we can do about it

Please follow @locastproject.bsky.social for updates on how we're combining engineering and human science to enable a new generation of lower-carbon* tall buildings * they're also cheaper, if you don't care about the carbon

A quick photo of the VSimulators test facility in Bath, where we're doing the LOCAST testing. We can swing this entire chamber to simulate real motion recorded in tall buildings around the world

Just rediscovered this photo from when I said that if there were a website for selling second-hand donkeys it should be called eBray. Then a colleague sent me a full mockup a few days later

Public reporting provides eyes 24/7, deterrence, enforcement opportunities and saves lives. We accept public reporting for every other crime type, so why such contention re road crime? Do otherwise law-abiding road offenders fail to recognise the harm they cause? www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Why yes I *am* still faffing about reprocessing this photo of the Iris Nebula (NGC 7023) for the fifth time. What of it?

I did a thread on 15 minute cities on X which went so viral I ended up in the Times and on BBC Radio. I thought I'd repeat it here... This was my parents house in Coventry. They bought it in 1965 and it was my home throughout the 1970s & 80s. My mum lived there until 2021. It was a happy home. 1/22

Finally, the Daily Express asks the Prime Minister for road safety interventions to address the biggest cause of traumatic death in children-- WAIT I'M GETTING A MESSAGE...

Wow - you know that saying "You don't assess the demand for a bridge by counting the people swimming across the river"? Turns out some councils don't even assess the demand for a bridge by counting the people using the bridge

Research and transportation colleagues! Where's a good place to find £8k funding quickly? We've got an idea for an intervention to confront motonormativity in practices across the policy, engineering and legal sectors, but need a small amount of resources. Always tricky to know where to look

This is worth reading, for excellent communication & story-telling. “I’m driving less. I don’t want to see the world through a driver’s eyes any more. Before I began driving less, I had long had a melancholic sense that the city lifestyle I lived was cut off...” #UrbanTruth From @irishtimes.com

On this day, 7 years ago. We early finishers on the All Points North race watch the trackers of the remaining riders. The composition of this photo is perfect, and brings back great memories

Quick photo during astrophotography setup

If you're thinking this heatwave is a bit hard, spare a thought for the hundreds of LDWA members who walked 100 miles nonstop this weekend, in the hottest part of England. Here I am at the finish, looking absolutely fucked (the dog met me there - I didn't make her walk!) strava.app.link/FCgitH4Is3b

Another motonormality point for @ianwalker.bsky.social: Mileage allowances have gone up but not food allowances when travelling for work. www.fleetnews.co.uk/news/chancel...

Oh look, two stories in a single day about people blocking emergency services with their parked cars. Always worth remembering these things for when people clutch their pearls about how bike lanes something something ambulances www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

I try - I really do - not to be too judgey about peoples’ ignorance. But all these people I am passing (3 so far on this short walk!!) in zone 2 in London who are sat in their cars in full sun with their engines idling to run the air conditioning AND THE WINDOWS ROLLED DOWN make me want to scream

But I was led to believe that drivers cared deeply about emergency vehicle access. 😮 They're always so hot on it when it comes to opposing bike lanes or pavement parking bans.

CAST job alert: We are hiring for a Research Associate at our centre hub, the University of Bath, to contribute to a major new research programme funded by a philanthropic organisation, on People-Centred Climate Resilience (PCR) 📣 Find out more and apply now: cast.ac.uk/cast-careers/

I well recall the online debates where the majority of debaters opined that zero traffic deaths is an utopian goal and would require methods that would kill Helsinki, if not bring about totalitarian communism

This is an unforgivably stupid situation. It is an astonishing own goal to try and drive student numbers down to move an immigration number that in turn is totally ignored by the anti-immigrant head bangers.

Think of CO₂ removal like a time machine. How far back does planting 100 million trees take us? One mature tree takes up ~25 kg of CO₂/year, so 100 million trees will take up 2.5 MtCO₂. That's a time machine that takes us back ~33 minutes in a year. Nature will not save us from fossil fuel CO₂.

Each figure in this poignant display represents a person injured or killed in a road crash in Northamptonshire during 2025 — 1,354 injured, 331 seriously injured and 26 killed. Utterly devastating! We hope it raises awareness, improves driver culture and influences safer travel policy. #RoadSafety

This kind of decor might seem like a nice way of adding texture to a wall, but you need to know that the Daleks really suffer when their skin is removed

Word nerd? Already done Wordle and the rest? This new one is fun keywords.bagpuss.org

What's great* is that this heatwave is arriving just in time for the LDWA's annual hundred-mile walk, in which I'm taking part this weekend *Not great

"Motorized vehicles create remoteness which they alone can shrink. They create distances for all, and shrink them for only a few." —Ivan Illich (happy 100th anniversary of his birth!) (photo: #Brasilia)

Stunned, appalled, shocked etc to see actual tax reform from a politician. This from Wes Streeting today. A thread on why capital gains tax is broken. It's too low AND too high. & why this is a good proposal.

All this on a tax that is lower in nominal terms than 15 years ago and vastly lower in real terms. One need only look at the number of hugely fuel-inefficient vehicles driving around to know how people have reacted to this steady erosion of the tax's value.

- Subsidising consumption in the face of a supply shock - reducing incentives to drive less/switch to EVs - using up limited fiscal space to help better-off drivers rather than the most vulnerable. Hard to think of a worse policy right now.

The thing with "don't complain about drivers; complain about the lack of alternatives!" is that I do complain about the lack of alternatives lots & drivers ignore me, dismiss me, reject any inconvenience or public spending, & consistently throw non-drivers under the bus (when it eventually arrives.)

Easing sanctions on Russia is a betrayal of Ukraine, a relinquishing of Britain's leadership role and a complete failure of leadership inews.co.uk/opinion/star...

Priorities 👀 £400m support for people who can afford to drive, but nothing for people who walk, ride a bike or catch the bus? “The cost of the package, including postponing the 5p rise and the discount on red diesel duty, is expected to be around £400m.”

Tony Vaughan here, failing to understand that road safety is about addressing the source of the danger.

Instead of banning private jet flights during the fuel crunch to protect people’s summer holidays, we’re doing this

What was that Joe Biden line? “Don't tell me what you value, show me your budget, and I'll tell you what you value”

I don't quite understand the folks responding to this by saying, "Yeah, it's not great but there are no alternatives." That's the point! Calling things out is the first step in fixing a problem. "It's bad, but what can anyone do about it?" is an example of motonormativity!

Motornormativity is everyone in the comments explaining why it's simply not possible to imagine people going to hospital by any means other than a car, while a fifth of the population does not have access to a car.