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Children, Cycling, Environment, Life and style, London, Road transport, Schools, UK news - June 19, 2023

‘In at the deep end’: ditching the car for a cargo bike on the school run

The price tags can be eye-watering for the electric model I need around my hilly London neighbourhood

It’s been 20 years since I last used a bike every day. But I’m returning to cycling because I want to take my children to school and nursery without the horrible sense of guilt from dropping them off in the car, complaints about walking or the juggle of pushchair and public transport at rush-hour.

To replace my car on the daily school run, I need an electrically powered workhorse that will carry two smallish children and the bags of stuff that we lug around wherever we go.

The options, I’m told, are an elongated cargo bike that fits two children on the back, a detachable trailer, or a trike/bike with a giant child bucket on the front.

In an ideal world, it will be powerful enough that I don’t feel dragged down by 30kg of offspring while chugging the household around my hilly London neighbourhood. The longtail electric cargo seems like the best fit for this brief.

There are various “car replacement” bikes on the market with eye-watering price tags. The Tern GSD retails at £5k-plus at the top end. The model I choose to try out is a RadWagon, at the cheapest end of the market, though not actually cheap at more like £2,000 with all the necessary attachments.

My main concern is whether I can keep my wriggling cargo safe. I spend a long time poring over Google maps to figure out a route that avoids buses and sticks to cycle paths and parks as much as possible.

Why do traffic reduction schemes attract so many conspiracy theories?

Plan to restrict car journeys in Oxford becomes lightning rod for fears of global assault on freedoms

Jordan Peterson is rarely lacking in strong opinions, but even by the standards of the Canadian psychologist turned hard-right culture warrior, this was vehement stuff: a city is planning to lock people in their local districts as part of a “a well-documented” global plot to, ultimately, deprive them of all personal possessions.

Where was this? Not Beijing, or even Pyongyang. It was Oxford. In the days since Peterson’s tweet – viewed 7.5m times – officials in the city have fielded endless queries from around the world asking why they are imposing a “climate lockdown”. Inevitably, there have also been some threats.

How car culture colonised our thinking – and our language

We have become used to thinking about things from a driver’s perspective – but is that the sort of world we want?

When we block traffic from a street, like for a sports event or a street party, we say that the street is “closed”. But who is it closed for? For motorists. But really, that street is now open to people.

We say this because we’ve become accustomed to thinking about the street in “traffic logic”. For centuries, streets used to be a place with a multiplicity of purposes: talk, trade, play, work and moving around. It’s only in the past century that it has become a space for traffic to drive through as quickly and efficiently as possible. This idea is so pervasive that it has colonised our thinking.

This is an edited extract from Movement: How to Take Back Our Streets and Transform Our Lives by Thalia Verkade and Marco te Brömmelstroet, translated by Fiona Graham

RideLondon: it’s all change as cycling festival on closed roads returns

There were notable differences from the last time the event was held in 2019. Here are five thoughts

RideLondon is back. After a Covid-enforced hiatus, the closed-roads cycling festival held its first incarnation since 2019 on Sunday, with both the family-based Freecycle and the 30-, 60- and 100-mile rides held on the same day. There have been some changes – so what was it like? As has become traditional, here are five thoughts about the event.

The man challenging anti-cycling trolls to change their ways

Andrew Tierney is part of a new breed of cycling activists tackling a rise in online abuse head-on

“If someone deletes their comment, that’s success for me,” says Andrew Tierney. “Hopefully, that person will think about what they’re saying in the future.”

Tierney, who goes by the name @cybergibbons online, is part of a new breed of cycling activists. After noticing an increase in the amount of abuse and violent threats on social media directed at people who ride bikes, Tierney decided to take action. He started calling out the posters online, with the result that many deleted their comments or even their accounts.

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Life and style RSS

‘In at the deep end’: ditching the car for a cargo bike on the school run

Why do traffic reduction schemes attract so many conspiracy theories?

How car culture colonised our thinking – and our language

RideLondon: it’s all change as cycling festival on closed roads returns

The man challenging anti-cycling trolls to change their ways

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