Extreme heatwaves in the UK have prompted a transport charity to call for urgent decarbonisation of the nation’s travel network through cycling and walking. The Campaign for Better Transport has joined 54 civil society organisations to spearhead a call to the government to shift journeys away from private cars.
The charity’s chief executive, Ben Plowden, has called for an increase in “the proportion of journeys made by public transport, shared transport, walking, wheeling and cycling.”
“With the majority of journeys under five miles, this will benefit local communities, making it easier for people to get to shops, schools, health services and see friends and family,” Plowden said. “It’s really a question around getting on with the sort of investment primarily in local transport improvements that would allow all of those things to happen simultaneously and as part of the same process.”
Following a summer that the Met Office says could be the ‘warmest on record’, the Campaign for Better Transport has highlighted that transport contributes almost a third of the UK’s total greenhouse gas emissions — more than any other sector. To reduce this, the Campaign is calling for a huge ‘modal shift’ away from cars.
“That needs to be driven by central government setting an overall target for enabling people to change how they travel, away from private vehicle use and to be able to choose public transport, walks, cycle, wheeled and shared mobility”.
In response, the government has pointed to its £4.5bn active travel investment. However, it has failed to set targets to reduce the number of journeys made by private vehicles, instead aiming to give people a broader range of options in terms of getting around.
A Department for Transport spokesperson told The Guardian: “We’re giving people real choice in how they travel by making buses, trains and active travel cheaper, more reliable and easier to access – including lowering the bus fare cap to £2, freezing rail fares, and investing £4.5bn in cycling and walking”.
The urgent government request was made by the Campaign for Better Transport in conjunction with 54 partners.
“That such a range of organisations have come together to make this statement shows the urgent need for stronger action in response to the climate emergency, which has had such a devastating impact on communities across the country this summer”, Plowden said.
“The heatwaves and wildfires, the harm to people, nature and infrastructure, are just a taste of things to come if we do not act urgently”.
30 thoughts on ““Urgent need for stronger action”: Extreme heatwaves prompt fresh calls for UK government to prioritise cycling for short journeys”
This is a timely initiative from the Campaign for Better Transport.
I don’t have much hope that it will lead to genuine, meaningful change on local roads, but you have to keep making the case.
For yet another reason “(providing for) cycling, walking and wheeling – your least shit option” *.
Let’s hope we avoid the “Fosters advert” tendency (“the world is warming … write to your MP … or say bollocks to it and enjoy the sun while you can!”)
The pull of the “short term gain” arguments / “but change!” are strong though. (And “even if we don’t, others will – and they’ll get ahead!”)
* As Chris Boardman said in the context of “how can cash-strapped local authorities meet targets around road safety, congestion, accessibility, health, carbon emissions…”
Good luck with that; people around me get their cars out for a journey beyond the end of the road. As soon as they’re home, they’re raging on NextDoor about new pedestrian crossings, cycle lanes, closing off rat-runs, ebikes (they can’t differentiate between legal and illegal), increased parking charges and hire scooters/bikes. They’ll give up their car when you prise it out of their cold dead hands.
@Shades Don’t forget that they’ve just arrived home in their SUV (40% larger and heavier than a regular car a few decades earlier) and now complain about how many potholes there are these days.
Tax SUVs, call it a pothole tax, link it directly to the damage they cause.
@sheridan They’ve just introduced one of those for car parks and residents permits (cue more ranting). Like the pothole tax term; we have plenty of those!
Setting aside the tedious and untrue “extreme heatwaves” quote from the article, I’ve never understood why cyclists and cars alike aren’t compelled to be brightly coloured.
Not only would this create a highly visible scene, naturally reducing the number of accidents in the road, wearing light colours and having white cars would naturally reflect heat and sun back into the atmosphere, lowering ambient temperatures, creating less need for air conditioning or hydration. Win-win.
Domestic car journeys create 16% of UK CO2 emissions, and the UK itself creates less than 1% of global totals. With the increasing proportion of electric vehicle journeys, that figure will only shrink in future. So framing this as some kind of existential argument is alarmist, short-sighted and false.
@jackcycles I am not sure electric cars reduce carbon emissions. This is only true if the electricity used to charge the batteries is generated without fossil fuels, otherwise it simply shifts the emissions from roads to power stations. It may be that increased used of electric vehicles will lead to lower pollution levels in towns and cities but even this is not clear cut due to extra tyre, brake and road wear from extra weight.
As for the UK only producing 1% argument that is the thinking that has got into the mess we are in. Every individual’s contribution is negligable so that no individual’s actions can make a difference. Things will only change when everybody is compelled to reduce their emissions and that is where governments come in. We’ve tried hoping that people will choose to do the right thing and it’s failed miserably.
Until polluters pay the true cost of their actions we will continue on a spiral of self destruction. Lets hope the next iteration of evolution results in beings that realise the true value of the world they inhabit.
Not to mention that ‘the increasing number of electric vehicles’ probably only gets us to half of all vehicles by around 2035 and 80% by around 2045.
@Bungle_52
And you can participate! In fact, you are doing so already – your digital footprint is in the mills grinding out the design of our new digital successors.
Albeit a handful (in many ways) of very rich guys have more direct control on the direction of travel. At least, at the start…
@chrisonabike The only way the next iteration of beings will value the world is if that attitude improves your chances of mating.
Ladies, I REALLY value the world we inhabit😊
@jackcycles I would like to see more motor vehicles in blurred pastel shades, without well-defined outlines, like in a Monet painting. Perhaps driving through a water meadow or a blurred, misty river scene.
I think it would reduce driver aggression.
I’d rather see fewer motor vehicles, never mind what colour they are.
Failing that, I’d like them to *actually* be soft around the edges, rather than just coloured that way.
If you want to see fewer motor vehicles that’s easily done.
@chrisonabike A lot more of these around city centres would help.
@Nigel Garage What we can leave aside is the tedious and untrue claim that we are not undergoing extreme heatwaves, given that the three hottest recorded years in UK history have come in the last four years and that this year is likely to surpass even them. To address your last bit of drivel, for the 40,000 people who die premature deaths in the UK every year due to air pollution, to which in urban areas the largest contributor is motor traffic, and the millions of children growing up with developmental difficulties, both mental and physical, as a result of the same pollution, it is indeed, quite literally, “an existential argument”.
Khan’s ulez extension is having real world beneficial effects on the lungs of London’s children.
Though of course it’s more of a pollution charging zone…
@ktache Yes, I still have hopes that in years to come we will see it changed to a high emissions vehicle exclusion zone rather than a come and pollute if you can afford the charge zone. However it has had a massive effect on air quality, it’s not just the roadside detectors that show it is working, you can literally see and smell the difference.
We have to hope..
REAL infrastructure ( not painted lines on clogged choking roads ) is what is needed to encourage the shift.
Do as the Netherlands, make it MUCH easier to cycle to your destination rather than drive. Make driving harder, less and less convenient and provide meaningful alternatives.
We’re giving people real choice in how they travel by making buses, trains and active travel cheaper, more reliable and easier to access – including lowering the bus fare cap to £2, freezing rail fares, and investing £4.5bn in cycling and walking
But we’re subsidising drivers by abolishing the fuel price escalator, so that drivers can be assured that we’re not serious about this ‘Active Travel’ bollocks and are encouraging people to drive everywhere whenever they like
First thing: climate effects we have now will continue regardless.
Second thing: The UK is responsible for 1% of global emissions. So anything we do from now on will not fix the problem
Which isn’t to say getting people on to bikes, public transport or walking isn’t a bad idea.
But there’s a dependency chain of before you can do *that*, you have to do *this*, and before you can do *this*, you have to have *that*.
And at the head of it are energy, land, infrastructure, and money.
Climate effects will continue, yes, but not ‘regardless’.
Climate scientists say that every tenth of a degree matters. Some heating is already baked in, but what we do from now on has an impact too.
The UK is responsible for a small but significant proportion of current emissions. They are the only emissions that we in the UK can do anything about, so we need to get them down as fast as possible.
“It’s too late” and “there’s nothing we can do because China” are just the latest excuses from people who want to convince others that we can and should do nothing about our climate problem.
Nice graph. I’m aware that climate change exists, but so does maths. We are still responsible for 1% of global emissions. Therefore we can only move the needle in proportion to that one percent we create.
Going net zero is not without cost, money is not unlimited, and the faster we go the more expensive it will be.
If net zero asap is the absolute priority, what do we decide to do without to be able to fully fund it?
HS2 should be a lesson in the problems of managing large scale infrastructure and getting it done on time and budget.
@StevenCrook I’m sorry to inform you that the costs of not achieving net zero will be even higher. One problem, as you point out, is the attitude that it’s down to everyone else to reduce carbon emmissions because me doing it won’t make any difference and it will adversely affect my enjoyment of my life in the short term.
HS2 is an interesting one. I believe the extra line is more of a capacity fix rather than the time saved on the journey. The cost of a normal line with a cycle path along side would have been much lower and produce less carbon emissions but we went for the high carbon option because it’s a vanity project and will allow the big firms and their bosses to make loads of money.
@HarrogateSpa China is making great strides in climate action.
Do you drop litter on the basis that you are only one of the thousand doing so so whether or not you do won’t make any difference to the problem? Do you dodge paying your taxes on the basis that you are only one of 40 million taxpayers so your contribution won’t help anything? Same sort of logic, and it’s nonsense.
The faster we go etc: Well… logically we *pay* for all the fuel etc so we would be both fixing the environment AND richer simply not buying it! 😉
More realistically change is going to cost, true. But the status quo also costs eg. subsidising driving (all the externalities all taxpayers pick up). Building the new roads and fixing the old ones costs – and those might well go up with more feisty weather.
There are other savings / benefits which come with moving away from the old models, so it’s not simply “pay to be worse off”.
While this seems to be the epitome of “tragedy of the commons” interestingly we *don’t* appear to be lone mugs paying for change which benefits other freeloaders.
For example IIRC China is installing vast renewable capacity (albeit they’re also generating plenty emissions doing so). I could be wrong but I doubt the Chinese Communist Party is doing that entirely for altruistic reasons…
Overall I am rather skeptical about how things will go. Jevons Paradox applies. This isn’t humanity’s first “escape a limit caused by heavy use of technology by switching technologies” rodeo. Each time more of us end up using more of the new tech (and far more resources / energy) and getting to the new “bust” quicker.
OTOH through technology we’re most of us operating beyond our natural “design lifetimes” so none of us will have to deal with whatever issues arise for long 😉.
This is a common sense idea that could and should have been implemented 50 years ago. Unfortunately successive governments just haven’t had the guts to do it. Hopefully a younger and more climate-aware electorate will give them the support they need for this measure. I’ve noticed a lot more young parents teaching the kiddies to cycle on our local bike trail recently and our office cycle parking (120 spaces) is nearly always full, even with WFH.
There would inevitably be pushback from the petrolhead/entitled motorist/Far Right/NIMBY lobby, there was some pushback in the Netherlands in 1974; but this last 6 months has shown just how vulnerable we are to oil supply disruption and climate change. It’s set a lot of people thinking.
I’m always hopeful, but people don’t think for long… or not enough of us *do* something after the thinking.
It may be “too early to tell” but AFAICS after we all eagerly forgot about the “pandemic which doesn’t get mentioned”, the roads pretty much returned to normal. Albeit with a lag and possibly more remote working now.
And all the bikes went back into the sheds / onto the balconies, or were consigned to the odd Sunday outing along the canal / in the park.
People tend to do what others do. The “hopeful” part is that a “critical mass” can be achieved locally. And cycling *can* be such an efficient, low cost, easy access, adaptable transport method. And – yes – even “social” and “fun”.
@chrisonabike True, things went back to normal once the pandemic was over. In this case, however the problems are still ongoing, and aren’t likely to be resolved in the near future. If anything, they’re going to get worse. Food shortages are predicted because of the effect that the heatwave has had on crops. This is bound to push prices up. The Straits of Hormuz aren’t likely to reopen anytime soon and the strategic oil reserves are running low. Russia is having to import petrol because its own refineries have been badly hit, so that’s even more competition for an even more scarce resource. I think that more and more people are going to see cycling as a way of cutting household bills.