Cycling UK Forum

Nearholmer wrote: ↑7 Jun 2024, 8:47am Well, it’s all pretty much a fantasy for now, because there isn’t a foreseeable outcome where Reform form a government on their own after the election, and in the deeply depressing scenario of a Tory administration propped-up by Faragists there would be some moderating (odd word to use for much of the Tory party these days) influence on some of his ill-thought-through ideas. The PR thing would be interesting under that scenario, in the light of previous attempts by proper-uppers to get it through.

Under PR there's little reason for the Tories to continue to try to be poundshop ukip/reform so they'd likely shift back to the centre. Or if they didn't, there's a far lower barrier under PR to a new centre-right start up.

bnp/ukip/reform etc have been considerably more successful under FPTP in terms of actual policy enacted than any of their other western/northern european equivalents.

The reality is neither party is being honest about tax which will need to rise regardless. Aging population, crumbling infrastructure and broken public services. Whilst capital investment can be done against borrowing, revenue for the most part cannot. The only real question is the balance on how that tax will fall.

I think they may just be intended as 'helper' things to stop other things falling off the bolt, so probably below the 3 washers.

But are not critical, just makes it less annoying to dis/reassemble.

The legal limits on ebike power and torque outputs (at least in the EU/UK) mean that a typical ebike user isn't really exerting additional strain than a higher power sportsing non-ebike user.

So if the industry is now claiming ebike specific stuff is a thing then it's either a tacit admission that the existing gear was not good enough for the latter type of user or it's mostly a marketing thing.

I suspect the latter, though providing there's no significant price differential it might be a useful guide as to what is harder wearing, but also heavier and likely worse ride quality, so usual tradeoffs.

Obviously there may be some exceptions here which are either higher power users on ebikes. Or eMTB where gravity is doing most of the work. I don't have a very positive view of the latter though as an ad hoc volunteer mtb trail maintainer.

The increase in older cyclists causes real issues for naive interpretation of collision statistics.

Have a medical issue or trip up/slip and die as a pedestrian? Not a transport casualty.
Same on a bike? Now you are.


You're also strongly getting into huge benefits from maintaining healthy lifestyles at that point, better to go out on a bike oopsie or dragged out dying of multiple cardiovascular failures from inactivity/obesity?

Well lets hope they mean more business than just that. Rolling programme of electrification, sort rolling stock programme and get the full HS2/NPR programme back on track with longer term plans for additional capacity.

Usual internal labour tribal nonsense, politics has a tendency to attract the petty and this is seen regardless of what internal faction tends to be in charge.

simonineaston wrote: ↑29 May 2024, 8:29am In my continuing desire to see & understand the world through charts, I’d love to see the major job groups of the nation’s health (I was going to say “the nhs” but they are not the same thing these days!) and their voting record, thus:IMG_0333.jpeg

May be worth just digging through the data yourself. British Social Attitudes, British Election Study and Understanding Society surveys all may have questions covering that and have more or less publicly available data tables (you might have to sign up as a non-commercial user to the ukdataservice for some and sign an agreement on data use)

My car insurance is ~ 20% up on about 8 years ago so inline with most other things really. Just switched as the previous supplier had been gradually sneaking upwards, as they do, and was heading for £300 this year (new one is down to £180).

Had read a great deal of fuss on dramatic increases this year but can't say I've noticed it. Obviously with the car both myself and the car are now older and inherently cheaper but I was already pretty much into the cheap as a gets inverse plateau.

It's an old cheap banger though, wonder if the increase is due to other matters, SUV crash rates or stuff vulnerable to key cloning (and worth actually stealing!)

Well the one benefit of the nts data is they could make a half reasonable stab at classifying the distance by area type if they wanted to.

Hmm bit of an odd data cut-off. Correspondence with dft on nts data on march 2020 and it's been over 4 years since. I don't recall hearing of an archiving issue with the data either (as a fairly regular user of it). 2022 was available as of Jan this year so bit odd the analysis wasn't rerun with more up to date data.

That aside, not entirely sure nts is necessarily the best source for the denominator here anyway, should be able to get full rather than sampled milage from MOT records.

atoz wrote: ↑29 Mar 2024, 10:08am Rule of thumb to remember. Do not, on general election day, go cycling in a red jersey. Not a good idea.

The other rule of thumb though is- don't go cycling on the day of a major football match, esp one involving England. Even less of a good idea.

Not sure how either of those work?

Particularly the second, I've found Euros/World cup kickball England games to be excellent times to have a cycle ride!


At any rate, the reality is, beyond some angry internet keyboard warriors, there largely aren't any votes in it which is why taking up anti cycling positions very rarely bear any fruit for the candidates.

wjhall wrote: ↑23 Mar 2024, 1:30pm The so-called independent report has come from a large consultancy, AECOM, working mainly in the USA with no obvious claims to expertise in cycling infrastructure in the UK. I have examined their website and not yet found any claims to expertise in cycling, although they have done some pedestrian modelling in North America.

AECOM, like much of the civil engineering industry currently, is a multinational organisation. They do have a substantial UK presence including a reasonably large office in Bristol. Historically that was from an acquisition of Faber Maunsell, itself a merger of two british engineering firms. AECOM, along with WSP & Atkins had the local framework from 2020-2024, nominally managed by WECA but North Somerset with it's odd half in half out relationship can and does procure through it.

It seems likely that in this case their expertise is mainly in providing 'independent' cover for what politicians have decided to do anyway.

Sadly to greater or lesser degree yes this happens. Less so than with the 'big 4' accountancy firms who from what I've seen are awful for it, particularly when they dabble into more general 'professional services' areas they don't really have any expertise in. Without seeing the actual aecom report here can't really comment much further as to how closely the officer summary of it reflects the actual contents (which also can be a place where things are changed/misrepresented due to political pressure) but there's always the incentive not to annoy one's clients that sits in conflict with professional responsibility and people tend to draw that line in different places.

Regarding objecting to this, the main options are apply political pressure to local ward cllrs and/or submit a reasoned, evidence based objection to the TRO when that appears (if it hasn't already but I the council vote would normally precede this process)

published TROs are subject to a 21 day statutory consultation period where all objections must be 'considered'. Thus you need to do a best effort, concise, factual & reasoned in pointing out why the proposed change is wrong, ideally not as opinion but making specific points that, for example, it is in conflict with policies/law that trumps it. For example, does it go against the council's local plan, transport plan or climate change commitments? And/or that is a failing of the council's network management duty under traffic management act 2004.

Not sure if NS has any local walk/cycle campaign groups that might be worth talking to, however do not have multiple people submit identical, or very nearly identical objections to TROs as these will often be treated as a duplicates by the council.

Almost everyone who brings it up also seems to be guaranteed to think that we are definitely to the right of the laffer curve peak and thus definitely need tax cuts.

However, there are certainly some parts of the UK's mess of a tax system where marginal tax rates are crackers. A good argument for making certain benefits universal (e.g. child payments and personal allowances) is that there's no easy way to remove them without creating a nasty bump in the marginal tax rate. Aside from that it also simply removes admin costs and has perceptual gains.

Economically labour absolutely needs to go port.

Without significant public investment they won't be getting a second term.

The idea that a bit of reform and competency is all that's needed and the private sector will rush to invest in a country with broken infrastructure is economically inept.

What he'll actually do is an unknown, the only certainty is he's shown himself to be a stereotypical politician and has zero sense of being held to anything he's said or promised before.

Still, the current noises from him and particularly Reeve's perpetuating nonsense comparisons of national fiscal policy to household budgets and credit cards isn't promising.

Well they can be led locally, they're relatively cheap schemes so something a local authority can feasibly fund themselves if they want.

I don't really see why ATE should drop standards just because a small minority of noisy drivers object to anything (they will and do object to watered down schemes anyway).

There's also a fair reliance in the argument of 'we're different here' which, as it is in most cases, baseless assertion that rarely stands up to evidence. We know what is needed to provide fully inclusive spaces and routes for active travel, there is extensive evidence on what passes the "would I let my late primary school child cycle to school that way unaccompanied" test and that simply doesn't change in different places. Seems perfectly reasonable to me that as a champion of active travel and best practice design that ATE has minimum standards for the things it funds.

Really that's the only way you get proper movement on this and it's a similar approach TfL have taken, increasingly so from Johnson's terms onwards. You focus efforts on the willing and the others will, in time, mostly fall into line.