Life Outside The Box: Carfree in Brighton & Hove, and Beyond

“We are all pedestrians.”

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen) — Tue, 21 May 2013 13:16:00 +0000

A timely reminder from the World Health Organisation, from its recent publication on pedestrians and road safety.

World Health Organisation (2013) Pedestrian Safety: a road safety manual for decision makers and practitioners. p4

Drama on the streets of Hove

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen) — Mon, 20 May 2013 11:52:00 +0000

Hove hit the headlines in a shocking way at the weekend – the site of an on-street shooting which ended up with one dead and two injured. Hove is normally more sedate, but it is part of the Brighton Festival. As was A High Street Odyssey by Inspector Sands in Hove’s George Street, a promenade performance with history, observation, drama, fantasy and music. Participants are unlikely to look at George Street in the same way in future. Fortunately, there were no bullets.

Avoid “scarcely relevant feet”

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen) — Fri, 17 May 2013 08:13:00 +0000

Don’t let this happen to you. Comedian Stewart Lee, in his book “The ‘If You Prefer A Milder Comedian, Please Ask For One’ EP,” (it is a book, really), refers to a walk he took in London with his promoter, who was “unused to the act of walking and thrilled by the challenge his scarcely relevant feet presented him.”
Photo from http://www.stewartlee.co.uk

David Cameron visits MIT: where the future of the city doesn’t include owning a car

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen) — Wed, 15 May 2013 10:36:00 +0000

On his visit Stateside, David Cameron yesterday dropped in at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). The focus was on amazing technological stuff like robotics and the kind of advanced prosthetics shown in the photo.Let’s hope that his briefing material included an article in the Financial Times Weekend Magazine about the MIT’s City Science, “city of the future” research projects. The FT interviewed Kent Larson and Ryan Chin, the architects who run the project, who have a “back to the future” philosophy, explained as follows,

“We stepped back and looked at the cities where we all like to be - many of them historic European cities….The cities that work best are the ones organised as they were before the automobile, with small neighbourhoods 1km to 2km in diameter containing almost all the facilities that people need for daily life. So we decided to graft new technology on to the best human settlement patterns from the past.”

They have come up with a 21st-century of a “cellular city” with compact, walkable neighbourhoods - as resilient and self-sufficient as possible - connected by public transport and shared vehicles to a wider urban infrastructure. Chin commented that the key is to move away from private ownership to “an ecology of shared use vehicles.” Social factors are already moving in this direction: MIT students do not care about owning things as much as their parents did at the same age. As Larson says, “Why own a vehicle or even a house, which is an illiquid asset that ties you down….Sharing is a much more rational model than the one I grew up with.”

“The streetscape should have priority,” says Larson. “That means low-rise buildings along the street, four or five stories high, with taller buildings set further back. You can fit a lot of people into a neighbourhood if they don’t have private cars – and enjoy the positive aspects of high-density living without the negative ones.”

Don’t Expect Driving Rates to Rise Again

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen) — Mon, 13 May 2013 08:28:00 +0000

So said The Economist in September 2012, as quoted in this article from Streetsblog in Washington DC. Shown above: graphic from The Economist which sets out the decline in driving. Peak car and all that....

Talking Twenty: Challenging the Myths about the 20mph Speed Limit

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen) — Fri, 10 May 2013 08:51:00 +0000

Yesterday morning I rocked up to the Hove Business Association breakfast at Sussex County Cricket ground in Hove, put on my Living Streets hat and delivered a talk on “Why 20 is Plenty: Challenging the myths about the 20mph speed limit." I’d been warned that the tomatoes were ready (why?), but none were thrown and the audience was very attentive, asking a wide range of questions – mostly about enforcement, and the attitude of pedestrians.

A couple of delegates said that they had been sceptical, but had been convinced by my use of evidence-based analysis. That was encouraging. I reckon that, in a few years time, when 20mph has become the default speed limit in UK urban areas (as it is in much of Europe), we will wonder what all the fuss was about. Click here for my slides.

Scary graphic from Complete Streets Chicago, showing stopping distances and driver’s eye view at various speeds – including the unseen pedestrians.

Brighton and Hove bids for Cycle (and Walking) City Ambition cash

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen) — Thu, 09 May 2013 16:25:00 +0000

Brighton & Hove City Council is bidding for funding for cycling, walking and public realm facilities from the Department for Transport's (DfT) Cycle City Ambition Grant Fund.

The Greater Brighton City Region (GBCR) was one of 20 cities involved in the ‘city deal’ who were invited to bid, and only two cities are expected to be awarded funding. Partners in the GBCR include Adur, Worthing and Lewes District Councils and East and West Sussex County Councils. They have agreed to support the bid from Brighton & Hove due to the long term benefit this will bring for cross-boundary cycling facilities. The DfT have said that bids must demonstrate how they will ‘secure transformational change’ for active travel.

Despite the bid being labelled “Cycle City”, the bid guidance says that, while the grant is for delivery of the ‘first two years of a transformational long-term cycling strategy,’ there is also an emphasis on ensuring that any cycling-related infrastructure improvements should create an enhanced and accessible environment for pedestrians. Quite right, too. With this in mind, Living Streets Brighton and Hove added its support to the bid, particularly given the emphasis on getting on with the Brighton and Hove Public Space Public Life legibility study, with its emphasis on the needs of people who use the streets.

The two areas proposed to benefit from the bid are:

· A270 Old Shoreham Road Phase 2, with a scheme to extend the first section of cycle route a further 900m westwards, with junction improvements and pedestrian priority features.

· A259 Marine Parade, with high quality segregated cycle tracks in both east and west directions to link the city centre to planned development in the Marina. There are also plans for a ‘Pocket park’ to enhance public space on the cliff top

Successful bids are expected to be announced in June 2013. More here.

Talking Twenty: Challenging the Myths about 20mph

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen) — Tue, 07 May 2013 12:48:00 +0000

This Thursday 9^th May, I’ll be donning my Living Streets Brighton and Hove hat and giving a presentation at the Hove Business Association Business Breakfast. The talk is entitled “Why 20 is Plenty: Challenging the myths about the 20mph speed limit." More details here.

Things You Don't See From A Car: Audible Forces, Hove

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen) — Mon, 06 May 2013 09:23:00 +0000

On Hove’s Sackville Beach is this Brighton Festival commission. It’s a group of installations on a pebbly beach which convert different kinds of energy - wind or sun - into sound. Well worth a visit, today is the last day.

On The Buses or In the Car? Brighton & Hove Buses join forces with City Car Club

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen) — Fri, 03 May 2013 16:58:00 +0000

City Car Club provides hourly car and van rental on a pay as you go basis in Brighton & Hove, and across 13 other cities in the UK. A deal with the Brighton and Hove Bus Company means that, if you hold the key, you can get the first year of membership for £1 instead of the usual £60 (itself pretty cheap – around £1 a week for access to a car when you need it). More details here.

Lewes Road for Clean Air

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen) — Thu, 02 May 2013 08:56:00 +0000

Tonight is the Lewes Road for Clean Air & Bike Train AGM 'BIKE TO THE FUTURE.' It’s at The Lectern pub, Lewes Road, Brighton (opposite B&Q). It starts at 6pm, and includes discussion about next steps for the Lewes Road and how to shift from 2% to 10% of journeys by bike in the coming years.

Things You Are Unlikely To See from A Car: Brighton Clock Tower Gets Shirty

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen) — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 18:42:00 +0000

The Clock Tower is becoming a giant art installation for the Brighton Festival – here’s a photo of the work in progress. More follows.

Blues and Twos and 20mph

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen) — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 18:40:00 +0000

Never one to miss a chance to diss. our new city centre 20mph area, our local newspaper, the Argus, just ran a story along the lines of “emergency services might have to slow down a bit which could endanger lives.” My letter challenging this appeared today. Here is the full version:
“Your story (April 20^th) about emergency services potentially having to slow down when answering calls as a result of the new 20 mph speed limit in Brighton and Hove ignores a couple of crucial points.
First, if motorists are obeying the 20mph limit, those crashes that happen will result in fewer serious injuries – meaning that the emergency services will not have to undertake as many life-saving high speed dashes around the city. Secondly, high speed responses by emergency service vehicles can themselves have serious consequences. As an article in the Emergency Medical Journal of the British Medical Journal has noted, “The risk of road traffic accidents is associated with the increased speed of a vehicle, and this phenomenon equally applies to responding emergency vehicles.”
It was unfortunate that Hove MP Mike Weatherley described the slow-down as “an arbitrary change that might put lives at risk,” when the evidence shows that it is more likely that the 20mph speed limit will not just save lives, but also increase the quality of life for everybody who visits, lives in, or works in, Brighton and Hove.”

MPs say Bikes and Shank’s Pony are Way To Go

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen) — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 09:01:00 +0000

Today’s Guardian reports that a cross-party group of MPs has advocated spending £1bn a year to increase cycling in the UK, since this would pay for itself many times over, boosting the economy and the health of the nation by reducing pollution, congestion and inactivity. Because the benefits are so widespread, it should be funded not just by the Department for Transport but health, education and business. The co-chairs of the group say that the country needs "a fundamental cultural shift in how we think about the way we travel." Too right. The committee recommends a legal requirement for the needs of cyclists and pedestrians to be taken into account at the start of all development schemes, including for housing and business as well as roads. Other recommendations include the extension of urban 20mph speed limits. The report notes that “such goals hinge on strong and consistent leadership from the top of government.” Do we hold our breath?

Make Sundays Special: Bristol follows Bordeaux and Bogota with Carfree Sundays

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen) — Tue, 23 Apr 2013 13:43:00 +0000

George Ferguson, the elected Mayor of Bristol (pictured above, from his blog) has announced that Bristol is to go carfree for one Sunday a month starting on June 23^rd. According to this report of a speech given to the Bishopston Society in March 2013, Mayor George Ferguson “had been particularly impressed by what the cities of Bordeaux and Bogota had achieved in rescuing their historic centres from traffic. This would then allow and encourage the use of streets for community activities such as markets, street ‘circus’ and street basketball. He believed in an ‘incremental approach to making things happen’ but with the option of subsequently adopting and applying successful small scale changes on a larger scale.” Amen to that, and roll on carfree Sundays (and more) in Brighton and Hove.

Top Tips: Save Money, Time and Hassle Disposing of Garden Waste

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen) — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 09:18:00 +0000

One comment frequently heard by those of us who have a garden but not a car is “I need my car to dump garden waste.” Not any more you don’t. Firms like Greentopia run a service to collect your garden waste: you get a 240-litre wheelie bin (in other words, a big one), and they come and collect your grass cuttings, prunings, leaves and plants every two weeks. This saves messy and time consuming trips to the tip. It costs £78 a year, around £1.50 a week. Which probably wouldn’t even cover the cost of the fuel you’d need to get to the dump. I mean “amenity site.” Not only that, someone else does all the work for you – all you have to do is fill it up. Bang goes another reason to own a car.

Steamships, Fixed Phones, Cars and The "Insurgent Niche"

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen) — Fri, 19 Apr 2013 08:56:00 +0000

Within any social system, there are what Maurie Cohen, an associate professor in the Department of Chemistry and Environmental Science at the New Jersey Institute of Technology calls ‘insurgent niches.’ If you don’t own a car, you almost certainly in an ‘insurgent niche.’

“Niches are fragile, they’re underfunded, they’re stigmatized. The car was once an insurgent niche in the age of streetcars. Now in the age of the automobile, we might think of those niches as car-sharing companies or bike advocacy groups”.

More on this, and how it relates to steamships and landline phones, at Atlantic Cities.

Top Tips: Save Money on Car Hire and Car Club Insurance

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen) — Thu, 18 Apr 2013 17:02:00 +0000

I don’t hire a car very often: since going carfree I’ve been amazed how few times it has been necessary. But when I do hire, I’ve noticed recently that, whilst it’s still much cheaper to hire than it is to own and run a car, there’s one car hire cost which is rising – the excess or deductible. This is the bit that isn’t covered by the Collision Damage Waiver, and the likely price you’ll pay for the first portion of repair or replacement costs if anything goes wrong. Back in the day, a minor car park ding meant you’d pay around £60 for a bit of metal bashing and a quick burst of spraypaint.

But things have changed. Just as those unlucky enough to own a car are being hammered by rising costs of insurance, something similar has happened with hire cars, where the excess amount on insurance for car hire typically goes from £500 up to £1,600 - so if your excess is £600 and someone drives into the back of you causing damage of £750, you end up paying £600. Which is why the hire firms are quite persuasive when it comes to coughing up an extra £11.00 a day for excess cover. Either that, or you take the risk.

An alternative is to use a separate insurance policy. Which I did, with a policy to cover the entire excess fee, damage to the roof and undercarriage of the car plus the windows and tyres. I used www.Insurance4carhire.com, a firm with good customer reviews, to get cover for the UK and the rest of Europe at a price of £42.50 for a year. Worldwide including the US is £58.50. For which, you get:

Covers excess on damage to the vehicle, theft and damage to windows, roof, undercarriage & tyres
Up to £4,000 per claim & £5,000 per year
Unlimited number of rentals per year
31 days continuous cover per rental
Cover for you plus 7 additional drivers aged 21-85

Not only that, but it also covers Car Club rentals. So if you hire a car more than one weekend a year, and don’t want to take a chance on the excess, it’s a total no-brainer.

Triumph of the Bipeds: 4th Brighton Marathon

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen) — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 17:42:00 +0000

Life was totally outside the box in Brighton and Hove on Sunday 14th April, as roads were closed, the sun shone, and nearly 10,000 runners (and walkers), cheered on by around 100,000 spectators, ran 26.2 miles around our fair city.

We were there to cheer on Marathon Man David Perry (Go, Dave, Go), running for Build Africa. Here are a few sights seen on the day, from the speeding leaders to some quirky encouragement from onlookers.

Thanks to Paul Saint for his picture of the Kenyans who took 1st, 2nd and 3rd place, seen here blitzing through Hove.

Quote of the Week

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen) — Fri, 12 Apr 2013 07:49:00 +0000

“Car parks are a bigger threat than war.”

Because “We spend all this money bombing other countries but demolish our own heritage and replace it with fake copies.”

According to Ian McCulloch, Echo & the Bunnymen (or as my mum once called them, Bunny and The Echo Men – and why not?)

Three Easy Steps

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen) — Thu, 11 Apr 2013 08:28:00 +0000

If only it was this easy. Still, it’s a great start. As Chairman Mao said, "A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step."

Accentuate the Positive: Reframing 20mph

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen) — Wed, 10 Apr 2013 09:25:00 +0000

It’s frustrating that our local newspaper, the Argus, continues to frame every policy initiative which attempts to redress the cars/people imbalance by finding a selection of vox pop motoring rentaquotes who specialise in comments which are unsullied by facts or evidence. Yesterday’s Argus, placard shown above, was no exception. Here’s a much better way to frame 20mph default urban speed limits. It would be refreshing if the Argus tried something similar…

Walkability Workshop

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen) — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 07:48:00 +0000

Thanks to David Brindley, the Health Promotion Specialist from the Public Health Team at Brighton & Hove Hove City Council for hosting an interesting and informative workshop on walkability, held at Hove Town Hall. The KESUE workshop was run by researchers from Queens University Belfast, who shared information from a study looking at ways to improve urban walkability. One major issue that the researchers addressed: existing route survey data uses the centre line of roads, not footways and paths so this had to be measured and mapped – walkability is about where people actually walk, rather than deriving it from maps based on where vehicles go (a familiar challenge to walkers who use Google maps).

Some other things that came up:

Mobility issues are becoming more significant for an ageing population.
Walking networks need to be winter-proof
The costs of diversions

I’ve included a couple of key slides. The rest are available here.
Hat tip to Andrew Stuck of Rethinking Cities for his note on the workshop.

Monday 8th April 2013: An Historic Day

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen) — Mon, 08 Apr 2013 13:52:00 +0000

No, not the death of Baroness Thatcher. But the day on which, for most roads in central Brighton and Hove, 20mph became the legal speed limit. The road markings were already there, the signs have now been revealed, and today the 20mph limit became legally enforceable in central Brighton & Hove.

The aims? Improving the street environment for all road users by reducing the number and severity of collisions and casualties on the city’s roads, improving traffic flows and making the city a safer and better place to live in. The hope is that making streets safer and more pleasant to use will encourage more cycling and walking especially for local trips. This will not only bring road safety benefits, but will also help to improve overall health and wellbeing, reduce congestion and could improve air quality.

The programme is proposed to be rolled out city wide, with further consultation on the later phases, over the next two to three years. The overall project budget is £1.5m spread over three to four years but this will be reviewed annually.

Photos: The Guardian, Brighton and Hove City Council

Walk, Don’t Run

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen) — Fri, 05 Apr 2013 09:15:00 +0000

Sound advice, based on results from a large scale medical study reported in today’s Guardian. Of course, the point about walking is that you just incorporate it into your routine – not as some special thing. So just get on with it!