An extremely long thread on visiting Paris by me: someone interested in cycle infrastructure and making public spaces better.

The last decade’s change is so positive and has been huge: what have they done and how have they done it?

Things they’ve done:
1. Reallocated space to people. Classic Paris boulevard now: generous two way cycle lane, one way lane for private cars, one way lane for buses & taxis.

Exciting news for me! We FINALLY launched "School Streets" at the school in my ward this week after 2+ years of trying.
Read on to find out more about what it is, the benefits, & how we did it. Oh, and here's a selection of the bike racks at the school from today. 💖🚲 (1/14)



#SchoolStreets is an initiative which means motor traffic can't come down roads outside a school at pick up and drop off time. It makes school gates WAY safer. They're in a number of countries, in the UK Local Authorities are responsible for them. (2/14)
schoolstreets.org.uk

🚆Rail geek klaxon!

Coventry is developing a new light tram, the CVLR.

Read on to see a photo of me driving one of them (my kids are v jealous) and hear about my visit to their innovation centre and why I think it’s so cool.

(1/12) Trams are great, people love them, they’re predictable and a useful form of public transport. But they require rails, and putting conventional rails in requires digging deep & moving utilities: expensive.

The CVLR tram has a v. shallow rail bed & is c£10m/km not c£50m/km (2/12)

Another piece of evidence that Oxford’s private schools are the main cause of school run traffic. Huge thanks to @DrEliseUK for the analysis. A thread.

What you’re seeing here is the speed of cars, each line is a day. The orange lines are the first week in Jan this year (1/9) This was an interesting week cos unusually the private schools were back on Mon 8th Jan - but many state schools didn’t go back until Tue 9th Jan. Looking here at the 4 roads which approach The Plain, ie where MCS is key issue.

Traffic already bad on the Mon am.

(2/9)

A tale of 3 streets: I'm obsessed with Oxford's new telraam traffic counters so I looked at the weekday traffic for first week of operation, and even I was surprised by just how much more cycling in LTNs vs in non-LTNs - it's double (see chart) Reason these streets are interesting to compare is they're v. similar: Howard & Hurst are residential streets between 2 main roads, and they were LTN'd in May 2022. Latimer is also, and was originally on the cards for being an LTN but it didn't happen.

The Oxford Online Cycle Map has been an absolute labour of love for a number of us.

I'm so very proud of it and would love to share it with you and for you to share it if useful.

Here's some more about it, a 🧵🪡

https://twitter.com/cycloxoxford/status/1663226947537715210

In conversations with Oxford residents, we kept hearing people didn't know where they could cycle safely outside of their local areas. So inspired by this (and by @OxfordCity's awesome playground Google Map, linked) a few of us got together (2/10)

oxford.gov.uk/info/20229/lei…

We've done a crowdsourced map of where the issues with walking and cycling are in East Oxford. It was easy to do and has involved hundreds of contributions. @Charlie_Hicks_ & I put together the project, and loads of other East Oxford councillors (tagged) contributed. (1/6) It uses Google Maps which is a really flexible tool. The map is arranged in layers so you can just see e.g. the 'signs and barriers' issues we've identified. All councillors have edit access to the map. (2/6)

Did an awesome afternoon cycle tour of Oxford’s Marston area with its councillor @MarkLygo. And it has the best of infra, and the worst of it!

First up, the good news. Loads of segregated cycle lanes, almost all with good signposting and way finding. Also really pretty (1/4) Then there were the bollards. In a 100m stretch by St. Nicholas primary school, Oxford, I counted no fewer than 10 types of bollard. 10 types!! What do you think of that, @WorldBollard? Is it a record? (2/4)

Concerned about climate change? Some thoughts on some actions you can take and what the good news is: a thread Transport: use your car less, car pool, share your car or join a car club, walk more, use buses, cycle more
Good news: shifting away from cars leads to improved population health and safer streets, cycling infrastructure is improving, it's often cheaper to use alternatives

Dined last night with hotelier from Porec, a Croatian costal town. She told me that their biz was working with local council to extend the bike-only route pictured to 100km, cos good for biz & sustainable. They see local sustainability as key cos employees really care about it 🧵 Apparently her firm get the best staff as they do the most sustainable things - and because they employ so many locals who know the business, it actually has to be more sustainable, they can’t fake it. Protecting and supporting the local area is really important to them.

Car-free Rovinj was amazing: Croatia’s largest pedestrian zone at around 10km squared. I stayed with a local friend who runs a hotel there and I spoke to a number of locals about it. It was done around 20 years ago and met the usual protests at first. A thread on what I learned. Raisable barriers are at all road entrances to the zone. They work on numberplate and card recognition. Limited registered motor access is permitted 05.00-09.00 and 15.00-18.00. Essentially locals, deliveries, workmen, and taxis with disabled passengers, but there’s no parking.

Private schools: please can you help be part of the solution rather than the problem? I think you are creating up to 70% of Oxford’s school run traffic, and you need to help your parents with alternatives to driving huge cars through our congested streets at peak hours (1/8). Inside the ring road, there are 7k private school kids and 14k state school kids. State schools have local catchments so most children can walk or cycle to them, but the 12 private schools pull from a huge area. Cherwell has 11% of pupils coming by car, you seem to be 65%+ (2/8)

The East Oxford LTNs are going in tomorrow. Few worthwhile things are easy, but to transform our streets we need to shift away from cars. This trial is one of the building blocks in a vision which will make Oxford a much more liveable city with better busses & cycling. 🧵🪡🧵 I hope it will make streets safer for people. Kids can walk, scoot and cycle to school. Teenagers can go on their own to visit friends. The risk of injury and death is 2-4 times lower in the same areas after LTNs are implemented.