Reasons to be hopeful?

As I cycled through East Oxford with my kids this morning, I began to realise there may be some positives to the present worrying situation. Unrelentingly glum as these times may feel, I did notice that my immediate surroundings were transformed – hugely for the better!

You should have seen the beam on my daughter’s face when I actually agreed to let her ride her bike on the street. She has been campaigning for this for months, but until now I have always said no, as sadly our road does not yet have protected cycle lanes to allow for safe cycling. But today the normally choked route was blissfully free of motor traffic. The noise and menace of lorries, vans and hundreds of single-occupancy cars was gone – we even heard birdsong on Iffley Road!

And when we arrived at school (still open for us key workers at the time of writing), the headteacher was busy taking photographs at the entrance: “We seemed to have solved the problem of dangerous driving and car parking” he remarked wryly.

Not only were the pavements free of people-carriers; the air seemed cleaner too. Whilst that was just an impression, I later read that the National Centre for Atmospheric Science have confirmed that air pollution is falling dramatically across major cities – something that those with respiratory conditions must welcome at a time when they are more vulnerable to the virus.

I am not alone: on my ‘statutory daily exercise’ yesterday I noticed many people out walking and cycling, thankfully all well distanced from each other. This is a cause for celebration, just what we have been trying to encourage people to do to help tackle the country’s obesity crisis – an epidemic every bit as serious as our present concern, and one which will certainly not be getting better by Easter.

Many people are also now working from home, and finding that it can be done and may even have advantages. I’m hopeful that a good proportion of those poor folk who used to sit fuming in their metal boxes near my home every morning and evening won’t go back to doing that. Is it too much to hope that those who can, will continue to work from home at least some of the time? Or start cycling instead of driving, having unexpectedly rediscovered the joys of two wheels?

On a wider note, if we as a country can take rapid and unprecedented actions to overcome our present challenge, then maybe we will take similarly radical steps to tackle our even greater and longer-lasting existential threat, the climate emergency? There are already some optimistic signs, with the government quietly publishing its ‘Decarbonising Transport’ plan last week, whose ambition has been described as “gob smacking”.

Maybe some good will come from these strange times after all. Keep well, and let’s focus on the reasons to be hopeful.

Healthy streets: something we can all agree on?

In current times, we’d be hard pressed not to find ourselves privy to multiple divisive debates. 

In this country, the toxic legacy of the Brexit referendum can appear to have left us with a broken society. We struggle to enter civil conversations about issues that affect us all, such as how to respond to the great existential issue of our time: the climate emergency. We might accept the scientific consensus that man-made climate change is real and urgent, but what we can and should actually do about it – and how quickly – still seems to split families, friends, and communities.

One of our major contributions to the climate crisis is transport; yet here, we are also rife with divisions. We slip easily into unhelpful tribalism based around modes of transport: motorists against bus users; pedestrians versus motorists; everyone against cyclists! I do it myself, often oversimplifying travelling in Oxford as a choice between those selfishly fuming in their congesting metal boxes, versus the clean, green angels flying past on their bikes.

These categories are really unhelpful: many cyclists are also motorists; most train-users also use buses or taxis; and we are all pedestrians! The words themselves can be problematic too: it will always be difficult to promote a ‘pedestrian’ future, when the dictionary definition is: “showing little imagination, not interesting, boring”.

These categories are also silly: why would we define ourselves solely by our mode of transport? I walk the kids to school, ride a bike to work, take the bus to the train station, and hire a car for occasional trips to the countryside. What does that make me?

According to Lucy Saunders, an inspiring and highly experienced public health consultant, finding better words to describe our various travel choices is an important step towards showing respect for different viewpoints, reaching agreement across groups and making much-needed progress. Instead of classifying ourselves (and each other) as pedestrians, drivers, cyclists etc. She suggests we talk about people; people walking, people cycling, people driving cars, people riding on buses. The way we choose to travel does not define us.

Lucy started by researching the health impacts of transport, public space and urban planning. Happily, it turns out that public spaces designed with improving people’s health in mind, also create city streets that are – quite simply – nice places to be in; places that foster social interaction, economic vibrancy and environmental sustainability.

What’s more, she has developed ten clearly defined and measurable indicators about the health of our streets, which may just be the holy grail we’ve been looking for: impossible to argue with! After all, who doesn’t want streets that are easy to cross, have shade and shelter, places to stop and rest, are not too noisy, and where people choose to walk and cycle? Is there anyone who would protest against streets with clean air, where people have things to see and do, and everyone feels safe, relaxed, and welcome?

‘Healthy and attractive streets for all’: this is the ambition. Surely that’s something we can all agree on?