The Bluesky prayer

There's no such thing as a festive parking lot or a jolly stroad. Humans crave cozy walk/bike/roll-able communities. Every holiday village is a reminder of that truth. Gentle holidays from the BikeMN Team!

We analysed 73,000 articles and found the UK media is divorcing ‘climate change’ from net zero theconversation.com/we-analysed-...

Speeding is so normalised that this article about speeding is actually a veiled advert for how Volvo cars can only go 60% over the maximum legal speed and this is apparently a great thing

Japan is joining Horizon Europe, the EU’s flagship research and innovation programme. Openness and international cooperation can shape a bright future for science and technology. Through science, we can build bridges, strengthen competitiveness, and accelerate the green and digital transitions.

Motonormativity is a term that should be discussed more in the transportation community @ianwalker.bsky.social @drtaragoddard.com Thanks to @streetsforall.org for this youtu.be/dVwsCFCgT_o?...

Great article with @scarlettmcnally.bsky.social about encouraging less driving and more active travel to save the #NHS hastingsonlinetimes.co.uk/hot-topics/h...

Fascinating from Tom’s piece

If you want your city to be a great place for everyone, especially children, older and disabled people, to get around safely and conveniently, then don’t invite in a load of driverless cars. You’ll just be landed with a new source of congestion and serious extra chaos if there’s a power cut.

In 2024 there was one fatality after a pedestrian / bike collision - in the entire UK. Meanwhile 265 pedestrians died after being hit by a car. So why was there huge focus on bikes using this one #Edinburgh street, but little about the vehicles using it? #motornormativity @ianwalker.bsky.social?

One thing that I think I want to emphasize in the conversation about what society should do about drivers being extremely lawless and dangerous to pedestrians and cyclists is that if you spend a lot of time as a cyclist or a pedestrian you see a lot of behavior that is *driven by individual choice*.

Just got round to reading the latest Cycle magazine and... yay!

Hi America: we've done the science on this bsky.app/profile/ianw...

If HS2 was a motorway, it would have been built by now! But because new rail projects are minutely analysed with this "value for the taxpayer" nonsense. If road building was held to the same level of scrutiny, a sizable amount of the road network would still be cart tracks.

There's a top-class trolling opportunity here: "In the absence of people driving over Hammersmith Bridge it's not clear there's any demand for a car route"

Do people support the core idea of degrowth? A recent paper we published show the majority do. See our press release here: www.uab.cat/web/newsroom...

'Let it Snow' with all the positive lines removed

"Conservative policies that pitted drivers against cyclists risked making the roads less safe by inflaming tensions, a minister has said, promising that the era of transport culture wars is over" www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

the small language model arrived

Read Bede's history on this last night: Britain: Shit, Picts! Rome come help us? Rome: Okay, Picts defeated. Build a wall so this doesn't happen again Brits: *Build wall of mud* Picts: invade again Brits: Help! Rome: Okay, but this is the last time. Here's a stone wall Brits: We have to MAN this?!

Since 2000, London has added more than 1.9 million residents (+26%), but the number of vehicle miles driven has declined by 10%; it's declined most spectacularly in the center. Outside of London, vehicle miles traveled have increased rapidly over the same period. content.tfl.gov.uk/travel-in-lo...

Looking at today's Active Travel England (@ategov.bsky.social) updated funding allocations, here is the funding per person per year. I think it makes good sense to fund places that put money to best uses, I made this chart shows how that policy play out in practice. www.gov.uk/government/p...

#TfL's annual Travel in London report was quietly released last week (lots of PDFs at tfl.gov.uk/corporate/pu...) > cycling stage numbers up post-pandemic to 1.5+million/day > At least 1 in 10 journeys are by hire bike > Silvertown shuttle bus averages 127 users/day

Spotted this in a bookshop window today. Finally, I can get the skinny on those Vikings

People currently sitting on softer surfaces than me. Number 74 in an occasional series.

The Mohs Scale of Hardness: Talc Gypsum Calcite Fluorite Apatite Feldspar Quartz Topaz Corundum Diamond GWR seats

Important, exciting research — air pollution dropped 22% in NYC's congestion relief zone within the first 6 months of #CongestionPricing (with reductions in the surrounding neighborhoods, too) Cleaner air, better transit, great data — all thanks to #CongestionPricing!

Pedestrianisation in front of Kings Cross station is a huge improvement on the easy car access of 1950s almost on the platforms. Motonormativity in reverse. @ianwalker.bsky.social

Quick thought, based around listening to a recent @newstatesman1913.bsky.social podcast: has anyone experimented with reframing Net Zero as something like "Reducing our borrowing from the future"? It feels like a relatable way of thinking but I'm surprised I've not encountered it yet

Exciting road pricing news out of Denmark! Today a new expert group for designing the future car taxation was announced, with a focus on the externalities from cars. See the terms of reference below. I will soon follow up with a piece on why I think it actually can lead to GPS-based road pricing.

Trying to be as dispassionate as possible about this: what's the point of national branding on something that never leaves the country? There's a reason that GB athletes in the Olympics dress like this while people running around their neighbourhood do not

More quality evidence is emerging that "pro-environmental behavior" is not a coherent, unitary thing. One behavior is not a proxy for all other behaviors. www-sciencedirect-com.proxy.uba.uva.nl/science/arti... Blankenberg et al. 2025 1/3

We're hiring at the Associate Professor level in Social Psychology! Join us in our vibrant and wonderful department and area. Contact Markus Brauer, search committee chair, for details ([email protected]). Job ad here: shorturl.at/nnvv8

I’m very proud to have been part of this report with @pactsuk.bsky.social and @sarahcoombesmp.bsky.social on the serious and growing problem of Ghost Plates. The past couple of months have been incredibly eye-opening, to say the least: transportsafetyappg.org.uk/inquiries/ve...

The number of non-disabled people (365) who drive less than 1.2 miles to work in our little town is equivalent to around 1/3 of the capacity of the car parks. And insufficient car parking is always cited as a threat to our high street.

I once saw somebody who queued for 45 minutes every day to drive 1/2 mile. Motonormativity is such a powerful force, I suspect for a lot of people driving and movement are seen as the same thing. Add in the influence of habits and automatic behaviour and non-car alternatives don't even register

Guys, this isn't funny. Countries only do this when they're in extreme distress.

If you want to get involved in the #CWIS3 consultation but don't know how, I've put together some suggestions substack.com/home/post/p-... ...and a list of paths you could refer to ...

More and more organisations recognise the power of active travel to help their businesses, improve patient health, reduce inequalities and make the country a better place. I'm proud to have coordinated this effort to bring those voices together around #CWIS3 with @adamtranter.bsky.social

NEW: 50+ transport and health groups have written to the Government calling for clear targets in the upcoming Cycling & Walking Investment Strategy 3, as well as a comprehensive plan for a national active travel network, matching the long-term strategic focus given to roads.

Very pleased to be one of the signatories on this. We called for really bold ambition, including 50% of trips under 5 miles to be made actively soon

“Moving to a situation where cars are not considered the fastest and most convenient mode of transportation will take ambition and imagination. But the alternative is a very expensive dependency, which clogs up the UK economy.” theconversation.com/how-the-uks-...

A nice surprise: Swansea council are launching a new free bus service that loops all day between the train station, the bus station and the city centre. More of this kind of thing* www.swansea.gov.uk/shopperhoppe... *yes it would help if the train and bus stations weren't about 37 miles apart

Today's BBC #Carspreading article takes a good look at the issue of the rise of the SUV, with reasons and solutions, but doesn't mention #RoadDanger at all. Children are 82% more likely to suffer fatal injuries in an SUV collision than one involving a car. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

So do I show this to my old university housemate who (vicarious claim to fame here!) invented wireless earbuds?

A characteristically fascinating piece of work from Giulio here - and a lovely reminder of how valuable is the ESRC @usociety.bsky.social dataset we're lucky to have in the UK

Convenient low cost storage for private vehicles is a huge part of their competitive advantage as a mode of transportation. No wonder people fight so hard to maintain it. Otherwise they may have to face the reality that cars don't work well in cities without a ton of public subsidy.

"Support for cycling infrastructure and traffic restrictions [but] particularly opposed the removal of car parking... Cyclists and drivers favoured segregated cycling infrastructure" New UK study has some nuanced insights into what the public might support www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

"Pairing free buses with paid parking says we value people in motion more than cars at rest." 💯