A short photo THREAD dedicated to the councils that removed their LTNs & @lambeth_council for keeping ours, sketching what they mean for people...

(P.S. check out the finale 😉) The LTNs mean teenagers can walk & talk side by side not one after the other

Use 6sqm of public space in Brixton to park a Tesla for a year, £38.

Use 6sqm of public space in Brixton to sell fruit & vegetables for a year, £4,200.

£38 because the council subsidises parking permits, support local business instead Council pricelist for cars & market stalls. Parking is way too cheap & that's a political choice 👇🏽⚖️👇🏾

QUESTION: "I'm a progressive councillor who wants to support the shift from private cars to a healthy city, what parking policy should I be pushing for?"

This THREAD tries to answer in three parts:
- WHY the need to change
- WHAT to change to
- HOW to help achieve it as a cllr WHY: Firstly, let's be clear that cut-price parking is a subsidy. If a petrostate charges $1/L for fuel where market rate is $20/L, it's a subsidy of $19/L.

Market rate for a Lambeth parking space is £1200ish per year. The council charges £300, so the subsidy is £900pa per car

LTNs you either love 'em or you hate 'em (for the record, we love them).

But what if one of the reasons you'd been convinced to hate them, turned out not to be true?

Here's a THREAD on new research on LTNs and inequality. Before we begin, there are a few folks we should introduce.

First up is @RachelAldred -- genius and all round goddess of active travel. She's the Director of the prestigious @Active_ATA.

If you’ve been paying even slight attention to the debate around low traffic neighbourhoods, you’ll probably have heard something about the argument of traffic on main and residential roads.

This THREAD explains what this means in the contexts of LTNs. Those in favour of low traffic neighbourhood schemes point out that, over the past 10 years traffic on main roads (A or B roads) has decreased, whereas traffic on residential roads has gone up 70%

https://twitter.com/martin_mckee/status/1307391031499984897

THREAD: These days it's all the rage to talk about getting people out of their cars and onto the street to walk and cycle to their chosen destination.

That conversation is important, but it's also important to understand our baseline.

Luckily, folks (🤓) have found the data... Let's start with walking.

On average, a person in the UK spends 4250 minutes a year walking.

Don't worry, we did the math (🤓) -- that's almost three full days of their lives!

Low Traffic Neighbourhoods. LTNs.

It seems like everyone is talking about them. But do they actually *work?*

Here's a THREAD: Ask a cyclist and you're likely to get one answer. Ask a black cab driver and you're likely to get another.

So we did neither. Instead, we looked to science

As millions of children and young people return to schools and universities, cities like Paris and New York are waking up to the open space offered by streets adjacent to schools to be recast as outdoor classrooms, school auditoriums or gym classes. To put it plainly -- we need to reimagine how we can use the street space that makes up 80% of our city.

Streets are no longer just a domain for cars. Streets need to become classrooms, gyms, playgrounds, running tracks, bike paths, restaurants, forests, clubs and more.

THREAD: What has urban planning and the design of our cities got to do with COVID recovery? It turns out -- quite a lot!

Introducing the six-foot city. By now, most of us are getting used to a new way of moving through cities in the COVID-era -- one in which we endeavour to keep 6 feet between us and every other living thing

It’s Wednesday evening, it’s cold and rainy, it’s a terrible time to go on a literal journey.

So how about you go on a figurative journey with us instead? Imagine, if you will… Your name is Steve and you’ve always been an adventurer — climbing mountains, cycling cross country, running marathons — but last year, just before your 70th birthday, you suffered a stroke and lost the ability to walk.

Pissed off about LTNs? Wish things could just go back to the way they were?

Well we hope you're directing that anger towards the big tech companies like Google and Waze because if it weren't for them, we might not have even needed LTNs in the first place.

Here's why... Do you remember what it was like to go for a drive somewhere new 20, 30, 40 years ago?

As you prepared for your journey you wouldn't pull out your phone, but instead, you'd study a book.

Not just any book -- but this guy ⬇️

17. Ensure everyone including an aging population and those with a disability can fully access and participate in their community 18. Ensure 100% of municipal operations are powered by clean energy sources.

10. 👏 STOP 👏 BUILDING 👏 EXPRESSWAYS 👏 11. Introduce congestion pricing and dedicate 100% of the revenues to public transport.

It's the question on everyone's lips: what will the world look like post-Covid?

Specifically, what will our cities look like?

Luckily -- someone has a vision That's right -- Canada!

Canadian urban planner and all round hero @jen_keesmaat has developed a 2020 Declaration for Resilience in Canadian Cities -- tackling all the ways that we can improve our cities for the better.

THREAD: We're all used to (and sick of) streets designed for cars.

We dream of streets designed for pedestrians and cyclists and wheelchair users.

But there's another important group too often overlooked when it comes to the design of our streets...

Kids. This ain't your first Lambeth Living St thread.

You've been on this rodeo before.

You know how we start things off.

Facts.

It's here. The moment you've all been waiting for, probably.

We're going to talk about parking. First things first, we're going to hit you with some stats (🤓).

Did you know that there are more than three million licensed vehicles in London, and the average car is parked at least 95 per cent of the time?

Alright, buckle up and get your THREAD reading eyes ready because we're about to have a conversation about...The Highway Code "But Lambeth Living Streets!" you cry. "You're a charity focused on everyday walking! Why do you want to talk about rules for road users? Are you into cars now?!?"

"NO YOU FOOL" we bellow from the top of a mountain for some reason, "the Highway Code is for pedestrians too!"

Cycle revolution! Cycle revolution! Cycle revolution!

If you, like us, have seen these words brandished across today's newspaper headlines and *not really* known what they mean, then this THREAD is for you.

Here's what you need to know... For some reason resented by nerds (🤓), the government chose 10pm last night as the moment when it would launch it's new plan for walking and cycling in the UK.

It's called Gear Change, and you can read the whole thing here if you want to: assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/upl…

That’s good enough for us! Our book for August will be Happy City, inspired by @deekinstow.

Use #LLSBookClub to take part (and also let us know below if you’re joining so we don’t feel looooneelllyyyyy).

https://twitter.com/LambethLivingSt/status/1286981774216704001

@deekinstow We're more than a week into August, so you know what that means? It's time to start book club.

Follow this thread if you want to join in the conversation.

This month, we're reading Happy City

Inspired by this thread, we want to talk about what fairness means in car dependent society (and if you haven’t read Susan’s thread yet — start there).

Alright -- here we go...

https://twitter.com/susancashmere/status/1286225050425753600

Let’s start with this truth: cars have done amazing things for us. They offer the freedom to travel almost anywhere, whenever we want, with bulky luggage and little need to plan ahead.

50 tweets. 50 reasons to love walkable neighbourhoods.

Ready? THREAD. 1. They help people live longer -- Inactivity is the fourth leading cause of mortality around the world. For people over 60, walking just 15 minutes a day can reduce the risk of dying by 22%.