Cyclists face £900 fine for breaking 10km/h speed limit in shared zones; Controversial YouTuber Lucas Brunelle falls through ice while riding on frozen river; Council ignores anti-cycle lane fundraiser; Quick-Step go carbon neutral + more on the live blog

AlsoSomniloquism wrote:

Aussie Police to fine cyclists for going above 6mph and charge double then drivers doing 20-30mph above speed limits. Do they charge runners if they do 8mph in the same area the cyclists. Do they have speed markings on the path to indicate the cyclists speed to them being as they don't have a speedo themselves?

The Aussies hate cyclists even more than the Brits it seems, as their use of ridiculously excessive fines and illegal use of the helmet law demonstrate beyond doubt.  I read something yesterday about somewhere in America, Tacoma? repealing their helmet laws as they were being used to harrass homeless people and coloureds, so yet another reason to oppose them.

Not sure about your choice of vocabulary here, dude .

Woodchipper wrote:

Not sure about your choice of vocabulary here, dude .

Neither was I, but what is the current politically correct term this week?

"Coloured people" = offensive
"People of colour" = current acceptable term.

I think some effort is needed to understand why certain words or arrangements of words are offensive given historical usage, but maybe best not to mention at all, because what you say today may be used as evidence against you in the court of public opinion 25 years from now when the rules have changed.

Nigel Garrage wrote:

People of colour can also be considered offensive, but is considered less so than "coloured" which is also objectification. Tbh all these terms can be offensive to someone... my company decided to settle on calling white people "non-diverse" and everyone else "diverse"...

.  Either this is fiction, and hilarious, or true, and twice as hilarious.  Thanks.

Woodchipper wrote:

Not sure about your choice of vocabulary here, dude .

 

It may be that Burt's vocab was not ideal, however his point is on the nail. In many jurisdictions, cycling legislation, particularly helmet law, is egregiously used to target marginalised groups. As folk with little money is a marginalised group in itself, and the membership of that group is more likely if you are from an ethnic minority, it is clear that the application of the law will be racially biased, even without deliberate profiling and targetting. Sadly this does occur to compound the issue.

As helmets are of little (or even detrimental) value in public health terms (regardless of the "I wouldn't be here today... yadda yadda" anecdotes) mandating of helmet use is not only counterproductive but also iniquitous and should be resisted. Even by people like me who do use them.

Helmet laws seem to be used as a tool for racist police forces so that they can oppress young people. They are nothing to do with public safety.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jun/15/punitive-policing-doesnt-make-aboriginal-people-safer-community-solutions-can

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-australia-51496206

The state of Victoria is well known for its overzealous policing. The joke around the country is instead of the slogan "Victoria - the garden state" it should be "Victoria the police state". For motorists there's a zero tolerance of speeding as well, you can be ticketed for travelling 1kmh above the posted limit. However this is a particularly egregious abuse of power even for them. Even if it's just a "trial" for three weeks.

The promenade could easily be separated between cyclists and pedestrians, there's already a row of bollards which could delineate segregated use. It shows the mindset of authorities in Australia that they will resort to heavy handed policing before considering a simple allocation of space so commuter cyclists can maintain a sensible and safe average speed of 15kmh.

1km/h over the limit is speeding. It is a limit not a target. If this approach was adopted here I suspect we would have many fewer serious injuries and fatalitites on our roads. If the limits are wrong change the limits not the enforcement.

I agree that is someone is over a limit, it is over. However 1km/h is well within error margin in Speedometers in cars and Speed check equipment so I'm surprised that most are not chucked in court. 

AlsoSomniloquism wrote:

I agree that is someone is over a limit, it is over. However 1km/h is well within error margin in Speedometers in cars and Speed check equipment so I'm surprised that most are not chucked in court. 

Car manufacturers err on the side of caution, and speedometers always show faster than actual, usualy by about 10%.

I was surprised how unfriendly Melbourne is for walking too. Trying to cross St Kilda Road (top end of Albert Park) took something like 5 minutes of waiting for 3 pedestrian crossings, all with very short pedestrian priority green lights. Massive junction of course with the central tramway but it was just seriously intimidating. If we had a hire car it would have been quicker to drive from the hotel to the other side of the road, madness...

How does supplying clean drinking water offset CO2 emissions anyway? I can see that it might help to avoid more emissions (by reducing the need to ship bottled water, for example), but I don't see how it's taking any CO2 out of the atmosphere, which is surely what offsetting ought to do?

[Not that supplying clean drinking water isn't a good thing in and of itself, of course.]

mdavidford wrote:

I can see that it might help to avoid more emissions [...] but I don't see how it's taking any CO2 out of the atmosphere, which is surely what offsetting ought to do?

Unfortunately "avoided emissions" forms the majority of carbon offsetting. The basic theory is that if you can demonstrate emissions would have occurred in the absence of a given intervention, and that the money you spend on offsetting goes directly towards implementing that intervention, then you have reduced the amount of carbon in the atmosphere compared to a baseline in which the intervention didn't happen.

That last bit is key - as you point out the acutal amount of CO2 in the atomsophere is still higher than it was yesterday, but it's lower than it would have been if you hadn't offset your carbon.

We could argue until the cows come home about whether or not offsetting is A Good Thing, but that's probably a debate for another time/place

Looking at the CO2Logic website, it looks like the mechanism for the clean water thing is avoiding the need to boil water using firewood.

Most carbon offsetting projects do aim to have societal co-benefits, and I think it is normally a requirement of the carbon offsetting certification schemes to demonstrate this.

100% agree. To reduce your carbon footprint, reduce your carbon footprint. The schemes they are supporting sound very worthwhile in their own right.

Saw St Chris' tweet congratulating Carlton Reid on this news:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/carltonreid/lets-rescue-britains-forgotten-1930s-protected-cyc/posts/3110867

Carlton wrote:

I've been bursting to tell you this good news but had a few t's to cross and i's to dot first.

The formalities are now out of the way and I can proudly reveal that the project which you so kindly originally backed has received official backing from the Department for Transport. With management support provided by Sustrans I will rein back some of my freelance journalism and spend the next six months completing the historical research necessary to put flesh on the bones for the next stage to be carried out by John Dales and his crew at Urban Movement.

Summary of the project: In the 1930s, Britain's Ministry of Transport commissioned the building of 500-miles of protected cycleways. Between 1934 and 1940 more than 300 miles of these innovative cycleways were actually built, usually both sides of the new "arterial roads" springing up all over the country. Some of these cycleways still exist, but they are not today understood to be cycle infrastructure: they should be rededicated. Others are buried under a couple of inches of soil: they could be excavated. 

That sounds bloody brilliant, if it gets off the ground. How good would it be knowing you could cycle from (say) London to Leeds using sensibly-routed 'arterial' cycleways?

its amazing how many of these cycleways are basically hiding in clear sight, people have basically forgotton what they were originally for (and sometimes they have been abandoned to weed/grass and so on)

The biggest problems I can see with this are having to be in London or Leeds

Bradford's just a short hop from Leeds, so look on the bright side.

Fantastic concept but in the hands of the D of T and Sustrans...