Transport

Every one knows the environmental damage that cars cause, but the response is usually to make them greener and cleaner... but why not try to get rid of them altogether? Because that’s just not possible? Because we love our cars too much? Because we need them? This article hopes to explain why we’re in this mess, and to show that we can in fact park the car...for good.

Over 350 people, most of them on their bikes, gathered outside the office of the Scottish government in Edinburgh on 11 January. They came to support Stop Climate Change’s campaign to increase funding for cycling and walking instead of expensive road-building programmes that will increase Scotland’s carbon footprint.

Scotland has shown global leadership by setting the most ambitious emissions reduction targets in the world, including a target to reduce Scotland’s emissions by 42% (…

Roy St Pierre (PN 2540-41) suggests that there is a simple solution to many of our woes: banning cars completely.

This is not simple but simplistic. He overlooks (as he shouldn’t) the millions of disabled and elderly people who need a car to get around. For example, as a semi-disabled person, I cannot get to the Post Office without a car.

And is he really proposing to do away with ambulances, fire engines, and other forms of transport which meet social needs and help community…

Unsilenced, John Stewart and Dan Glass speak on aviation resistance to a US audience in San Jose University via Skype

A new US-wide activist network is to be set up to oppose the soaring growth of aviation in America.

This exciting development follows the Aviation Justice Express tour in which John Stewart and I were invited to share the great British people’s victory against Heathrow’s third runway with people in the USA. The invitation…

I think how we travel is a peace issue (think daily carnage on the roads, oil wars, pollution, global warming, dissected communities, anti-social planning developments etc) and a recent news item prompted me to write the following down to get it out my head.

Instead of banning smoking in cars, ban cars. Problem solved. Children and adults' health will be massively improved as people, especially anyone overweight, rediscover their legs whether walking, cycling or using public transport…

On 9 July, 17 enthusiastic young cyclists from Dyfodol (The Welsh Youth Forum for Sustainable Development) set off from Corris in Gwynedd on a five-day, 160-mile bike ride to Cardiff.

Funded by The Co-operative, this is the fourth consecutive year for the Carbon Cycle, and numbers continue to grow. The ride was to increase awareness and call for better cycling provisions in Wales and raise sponsorship money for Project Mongolia, a collaborative venture between young climate activists…

It took over 100 days but in the end we did it. After passing through spectacul-ar landscapes from lush forest to barren desert, experiencing unbounded human warmth and pushing ourselves to our physical and mental limits while cycling 7,000km – we finally arrived in our destination: Palestine.

“PEDAL: 100 Days to Palestine” was conceived as a solidarity cycle ride based on the idea of linking people and groups struggling against different forms of oppression, with the goal of…

Almost twenty years ago a group of artists and political activists squatted a disused army barracks in Slovenia, a republic in the former Yugoslavia, in an act of defiance against local authorities. The site has been transformed into the Metelkova Autonomous Space, a hub of cultural creativity and positive resistance.

After the 10-day war in 1991 which followed Slovenia’s declaration of independence, the Yugoslav army withdrew from the nascent state – leaving behind the Metelkova…

This book argues that global warming and bulging human waistlines are products of the same global problems. In Western societies, the car and the television have curtailed human physical activity to unprecedented levels, while a rampant food industry pushes more and more energy-dense foods. The developing world follows our oil-addicted lead, whether it wants to or not.

Fatness is not a personal problem: it is a political problem, as is climate change. Effective, essential action on…

“It’s about getting people excited about their bikes.” That’s how Julian Wilmot describes Cranks, a do-it-yourself bike workshop in Brighton. The shop doesn’t just fix bikes; it also teaches people how to fix their own bikes. The all-volunteer staff give customers access to tools and teach them bicycle maintenance for all skill levels.

Cranks got its start three years ago. Its inspiration came from a similar bike workshop in Berlin. There are DIY bike workshops all over the…

I first met Plane Stupid in November 2005, at a protest outside a conference gala dinner for aviation executives on London's TowerBridge.

I was struck by the juxtaposition of coach-loads of radicalised grannies from local airport residents' opposition groups standing side by side with the young climate change activists who had broken up the conference earlier that day with an inspired combination of balls [ovaries?] and brains. This looked interesting...

At the Camp…

Why is road building back on the agenda after the infamous protests against road building in the 1990s forced a dramatic turn around in government transport policy away from building roads? Why is the government following yet again a “predict and provide” model, and allowing for massive traffic growth, when road transport contributes 20 per cent of UKCO2 emissions? What is being done about this?

In the 1990s the then Conservative government launched what they termed “the largest road…

Phil Reardon (PN obit July/August) was a gem of a bloke “very much in the William Morris News From Nowhere tradition” as Howard Clark put it and his wonderfully inventive tract on re-cycling cycles is still my constant companion.

Here in Stroud, the founders of Bicycology shyly admit to having never heard of Phil or his great work but they are clearly his philosophical descendants. By osmosis, or otherwise, their excellent guide has been compiled with the same wit and flair…

For several years campaigners have been working to protect the ancient Sussex woodland at Titnore, just outside Worthing, as a proposed 875 new homes and associated road-widening scheme threatens 265 old growth trees.

Despite the efforts of police and private security to intimidate and make life difficult, a camp has been sustained on the development site for the past four months in an attempt to defend the woodland through occupation. At the end of August however, campers lost…

There was a mood of celebration - and also relief - on the well attended Critical Mass cycle ride in central London on 30 June, following a High Court ruling a few days earlier that a police attempt to declare the event “unlawful” should have “had the benefit of sounder legal advice”.
Participants in the Central London ride last September - when they met on the South Bank at 6pm on the last Friday of the month as usual - were handed letters by the police saying that the event was not…