Monthly Archives: July 2018

Hereford: Road Mania Continues

Copenhagen

More bicycles than cars now enter Copenhagen each day

Hereford council seems to be in a frenzy of road building mania. As with previous such frenzied periods of infrastructure investment there is an over estimate of future demand. Canal mania resulted in canals for which there never was an economic case, railway mania produced railways which were not really needed. Hereford has now built the Rotherwas Relief Road and the Link road, and is planning a Southern Link Road and a Western By-pass. There are those who also want to see a Northern Link Road and an Eastern By-pass, so completing their desired Hereford Orbital Road. All of this road building seems based on some very out of date assumptions about the economic advantages of road building and the future growth of traffic.

The Commission on Travel Demand has shown that people in the UK are now driving 10% fewer miles than in 2002, and spending 22 hours less travelling each year than a decade ago. There has been a 20% reduction in commuter trips per week since the 1990’s. The fall has been most rapid amongst young men, with 18 to 30 year olds now driving only half the distance their parents did at their age. After decades of growth the demand for road space has now levelled off. It could fall rapidly over the coming decades, and there would be many benefits to society if it did. We could combat a diverse range of problems from obesity to climate change, social isolation to air quality and asthma, while building a stronger local economy.

Hereford should cancel all road building. It would have been better had we not built the Rotherwas Relief Road and the new Link road. Here are some suggestions.

Make all local public transport within the county free. This is a growing movement in cities globally. Estonia has now extended this to the whole country, having successfully trialled it in Tallinn. Gradually replace all the counties buses with hydrogen fuel cell or battery electric, and our local railway lines would be strong candidates also to switch from diesel to hydrogen.

Build many more walking and cycling routes into Hereford, including bike superhighways. Make bus routes into the city much more frequent and reliable. Gradually and systematically reduce all car parking spaces within the city. By doing all these three things simultaneously and consistently over the last 45 years Copenhagen has successfully achieved a modal shift from cars to cycling, walking and public transport. In a small city like Hereford we could create this modal shift very much more quickly.

Safe walking and cycling routes to all schools should be created, while banning or at least massively restricting all car use close to schools during the start and finish of the school day. Slower speed limits, which might be variable and digitally displayed, so that a 20mph limit might the norm for residential roads but lowered to say 5mph in the vicinity of schools during the times children are arriving and departing.

As more and more people work from home the regular daily commute is becoming less the norm. Shopping too is changing, as more people shop online. In our family we do all our shopping by foot, with a shopping trolley for heavy stuff. Many new housing developments around the world are now being built with no or minimal car parking spaces, and where a condition of residency is not to own a car. Many people now find that they only need to use a car occasionally, say once or twice per week, per month, or even per year. For such people owning a car is unnecessary and a burden: much better to join a car share club. In Hereford we have a successful community run car sharing club that is open to new members. If you live in Hereford do contact us for more information. By next spring we hope and expect to be the first community car share club in the world to be using a hydrogen fuel cell car, in our case the groundbreaking Riversimple Rasa.

Hereford is an ideal size for walking and cycling. If more people felt safe to travel in this way the problem of traffic congestion would rapidly diminish, without the expense and damage caused by road building.

The public mood swings against Brexit

Molly

Molly Scott Cato, Green MEP: speaking sense on Brexit

Brexit is unfolding as an unmitigated disaster. Never has the British political establishment looked more dysfunctional, confused and weak. But as big a deal as Brexit undoubtedly is, it is only part of a bigger picture. The economic self interest of some very wealthy individuals is aligned with the Russian policy of weakening democratic structures and institutions on a global scale. Weakening tax and safety regulations is part of these people’s agenda, so too climate change denial and protecting the interests of the fossil fuel industries.

For those of us wanting a more peaceful, socially just, democratically accountable and ecologically sustainable future, where do we look? Economic equality is fundamental, and it was the rising inequality linked to globalization that led to the vulnerability of the liberal institutions to be attacked. It has been easy for the far right to tap into people’s anger and insecurities. How best to achieve radical equality and all the other goals to which this blog aspires?t

A few weeks ago I watched the film ‘Accidental Anarchist’, the account of Carne Ross’s trajectory from career diplomat to advocate of anarchism. A very powerful film and one I’d highly recommend. We certainly need more grassroots self organising democracy. Practically the most many of us can do is to engage in as many grassroots organisations as possible, but in the context of states such as the UK this has little effect on government. We do need good politicians and good journalists to expose the wrongdoing and to propose better ideas and policies. We need better technological options in order to pollute less, more grassroots organizations to help us effect bottom up change. Last week the Green MEP Molly Scott Cato spoke in Hereford to a packed hall on the subject of Brexit, and she was excellent. Do read her Bad Boys of Brexit. Also see her new Brexit Syndicate website.

As the UK disintegrates into chaos, many countries are flourishing. Sweden has just reached its 2030 renewable energy goal twelve years ahead of schedule; its policies on everything from pollution reduction to economic equality seem to be working well. Its system of proportional representation has resulted in a very well functioning red/green coalition government. In ‘Why Nations Fail: the origins of power, prosperity and poverty’ Daron Acemoglu and James A Robinson argue that the Glorious Revolution of 1688 when the English invited to Dutch to have our throne was a critical turning point in the growth of democracy in England. Might now be the time to say our main political parties are simply failing us? Should we simply invite the Swedes to run our country until we can get our act together? Of course I say this at least partly in jest, but we do certainly have a lot to learn from the Swedes about democracy, equality and sustainability. The EU is such an important institution where countries can learn from each other and collectively strive to improve the future for all of us.

Molly Scott Cato quoted the Joni Mitchell lines ‘you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone’. Only now that we are on the verge of leaving the EU are many people realizing what a good institution it is in many ways, and how it is worth staying in and working with our European friends to continually improve it. I feel the public mood swinging strongly against Brexit and the ghastly clique in whose interests Brexit is being pursued.

Azelio

Azelio is a Swedish engineering company who are developing concentrating solar power. Their technology is unusual for two reasons. Firstly, as far as I know, they are unique in that they are utilizing an aluminium alloy as a heat storage medium. Secondly, they plan to use a Stirling Engine rather than a steam turbine to actually generate the electricity. They are now working with the Moroccan solar agency, MASEN, to bring these technologies together and test them at MASEN’s Ouarzazate Solar Park. This is an excellent example of international cooperation, bringing together Swedish engineering expertise with Moroccan political commitment to developing their immense solar resource.

Azelio aim to commercialize this technology aimed in large part at mid scale off grid locations in the sunny tropics. This is where most of the 1.2 billion people without access to electricity live. For individual isolated households and hamlets solar photovoltaic panels plus batteries would be the appropriate technology. Azelio are aiming at the 0.5 to 20MW scale, so the village to town scale of infrastructure. These communities currently often have dirty and expensive diesel generators, with many people having no access to electricity at all. Conventional power stations and electricity grids never will reach them. Local solar plus storage is now a cheaper and more reliable alternative. Azelio is just one of a number of companies developing various forms of solar power which will further accelerate this aspect of humanity’s shift from ‘The Fossil Fuel Age’ to ‘The Solar Age’.

We all know the names of companies of ‘The Fossil Fuel Age’: BP, Shell, Exxon, Total, Gazprom, Ford, BMW and Volkswagen and of course, many more. How many of these companies will reinvent themselves as cleantech companies? My guess is that most of the biggest firms of The Solar Age’ will not be these, but rather the small innovative companies who are currently developing the best solar technologies. Perhaps Azelio will be a globally well known name in years to come. Their technology looks promising to me.