Dear RCC members
COP30 has started in Belem close to the Brazilian Amazon rainforest and the messages we are getting from the UN and from other observers are that the Paris agreement to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels is now impossible to meet.
We here in the UK are already seeing the impact of dramatic changes to our weather patterns, with news of towns being flooded as a result of the latest named storm, Claudia.
Just reading these reports could make me feel very pessimistic about the future. So, is there any light to be seen?
Reading Borough Council has set itself targets to achieve net zero by 2030 and to reduce emissions by 85% by the end of this year. The report for this year and the strategy for the period 2025 to 2030 has yet to be published, but I find that I can be a little bit optimistic when I look around and see some progress being made.
One of the main planks of the policy is decarbonising transport and travel in the town. Reading has a fine bus service and many of its vehicles are now much lower in tailpipe emissions than the older diesel buses. The controversial extension of the bus lane network shows there is a will to take road space away from private cars and other vehicles.
The last report from the Reading Climate Action Network makes much of the extension of the existing cycle network and obviously we in the RCC should be welcoming this certainly as a statement of intent.
There are, however, a few caveats which need to be made. The last report I can find for 2021/22 contains this amazing claim – Reading already boasts good cycling provision and a 2022 survey by COLAS ranked Reading as the UK’s third most ‘cycle-friendly’ city based on criteria including number of cycle lanes, safety/accident records and public opinion survey data.
If this is correct, how awful is the picture in the other towns and cities in this survey? I would point out that COLAS is a major civil engineering business and may not be totally uninterested in the results from a business point of view.
As I travel around the town, sadly not by bike so much at the moment after my recent trip to the Royal Berkshire Hospital orthopaedic theatre, I don’t get the impression the levels of cycling and especially the use of new and existing cycle lanes has significantly increased.
It is some years now since the Campaign carried out a cycle count, and I have yet to find out if the Council has any up-to-date information. What I do see is an increasing use of pavements by less confident cyclists, regardless of whether they have been designated as shared use or not. Will the proposed new PSPO powers make any difference in this area? We shall have to wait and see.
What I do not see is any attempt by RBC to assess how effective their efforts to promote active travel are proving. We are still waiting for the report of the Council’s scrutiny group on active travel schemes and maybe this will prompt a bit of soul-searching at the Civic Offices.
Our project with Dr. Street at the University to encourage research in this area is moving forward with the recruitment of a PhD candidate to take this on.
However, we are hampered by a lack of funding in this early stage, and we are still scoping the research while looking for a small scale project to prove the concept. In the background lurks the prospect of the major local authority reorganisation, which this government is threatening.
The cynical part of me says that this will inevitably lead to a reduction in monies for all sorts of schemes like this, as yet more ‘efficiency savings’ are sought.
Maybe I have a bad case of the winter blues, as I now have to draw the curtains and put the lights on at four-o-clock. Let’s hope things look better when next Spring arrives.
Joe Edwards
RCC Chairman
(chair@readingcyclecampaign.org.uk)
