Roseburn to Leith Walk Cycleway: the website

There is a new website in support of the Roseburn to Leith Walk Cycleway. I especially like their promise to be evidence-based and to cover both sides, something increasingly rare in political discourse.

We are an informal association of local residents working to get the best for our community from the Proposed Cycle Route.  We've spent hundreds of hours gathering the facts.

1. Even if you don't cycle, the Cycle Route has big benefits for you
2. Common concerns don't match the facts
3. The Council's latest revised design has addressed key concerns.

Our promise

Our site is evidence-based, including the disadvantages.  We are ready to engage in discussion with anyone.  Tell us about errors or omissions and we'll fix them as soon as we can.

Our goals

• Get the best for all residents. This is not a website advocating cycling.  It's true that many of the founders do cycle, and many of us also drive.
• Make decisions based on the facts.  We are concerned how many people are voicing fears and criticisms yet don't seem to know about some of the most important data and studies.
• Listen to all views, and bring people together for discussion.  We don't accept the whole notion of classifying people as 'cyclists' and 'drivers'.  We are all ordinary people who use a variety of means of travel appropriate to different situations.

Where we find ourselves

Jonathan Freedland at the Guardian sums up the state of affairs.

It’s gripping, of course. Game of Thrones meets House of Cards, played out at the tempo of a binge-viewed box-set. ...
This week’s antics of Gove and Johnson are a useful reminder. For the way one has treated the other is the way both have treated the country. ...
[Johnson] didn’t believe a word of his own rhetoric, we know that now. His face last Friday morning, ashen with the terror of victory, proved it. That hot mess of a column he served up on Monday confirmed it again: he was trying to back out of the very decision he’d persuaded the country to make.  ...
When doctrine is kept distilled, pure and fervently uncontaminated by reality, it turns into zealotry
So we have the appalling sight of Gove on Friday, proclaiming himself a proud believer in the UK even though it was obvious to anyone who cared to look that a leave vote would propel Scotland towards saying yes in a second independence referendum. The more honest leavers admit – as Melanie Phillips did when the two of us appeared on Newsnight this week – that they believe the break-up of the union is a price worth paying for the prize of sovereignty. ...
They did it with lies, whether the false promise that we could both halt immigration and enjoy full access to the single market or that deceitful £350m figure, still defended by Gove, which tricked millions into believing a leave vote would bring a cash windfall to the NHS. They did it with no plan, as clueless about post-Brexit Britain as Bush and Blair were about post-invasion Iraq.
Senior civil servants say Brexit will consume their energies for years to come, as they seek to disentangle 40 years of agreements. It will be the central focus of our politics and our government, a massive collective effort demanding ingenuity and creativity. Just think of what could have been achieved if all those resources had been directed elsewhere. Into addressing, for instance, the desperate, decades-long needs – for jobs, for housing, for a future – of those towns that have been left behind by the last 30 years of change, those towns whose people voted leave the way a passenger on a doomed train pulls the emergency cord.

Roseburn to Leith Walk Cycleway: A vs B

Edinburgh City Council has released its report on consultation on the Roseburn to Leith Walk cycleway, and Henry Whaley has written a comment for the Edinburgh Evening News.

A few shopkeepers in the area are concerned that the cycleway will have a negative impact on their shops, a well-known cycling fallacy. Whaley describes the current impasse:

The Council have responded to specific concerns from some shopkeepers and residents by reinstating the loading bay on the north side of Roseburn Terrace, increasing the right turn lane and eliminating the floating bus stop whilst maintaining the cyclepath to form a much improved ‘Option A’.
The Council are also assessing an alternative ‘Option B’, which would take the cyclepath away from Roseburn Terrace, on an indirect and complicated route involving three road crossings as well as restricting the space for motor vehicles at the already tight Roseburn Street Junction and not widening the Roseburn Terrace pavements. It’s another option, but one that is worse for most people.

And from the City Council:

Transport Convener Councillor Lesley Hinds said: "We had an overwhelming response to the consultation and the exercise has been extremely helpful to officers working on the proposed Roseburn to Leith Walk cycleway and street improvements.
"Thanks to the feedback received, we've been able to make deliverable adjustments to a number of aspects of the scheme. In terms of the Roseburn section, local concerns have prompted us to present an alternative route (Option B) via Roseburn Place and Roseburn Street for consideration by committee members. However, we remain in favour of Option A because it will enhance the street environment in Roseburn Terrace and is more direct for cyclists - involving one road crossing rather than the three that would be required for Option B.
"After further planned consultation with businesses, community councils and the Council's Active Travel Forum, the project team will consolidate feedback and finalise the preliminary design scheme for presentation to the Transport and Environment Committee on 30 August 2016."

Brexit implies Techxit?

In the wake of the EU referendum, there appears to be considerable information about its consequences that many might wish to have seen before the vote. Some of this concerns the negative impact of Brexit on technology firms. Among others, the BBC has a summary.

I was particularly struck by one comment in the story, made by start-up mentor Theo Priestley (pictured above),.

And Mr Priestley thinks that in the event of a Scottish independence referendum that leads to reunification with the EU, it's possible some start-ups could move north of the border, perhaps to rekindle "Silicon Glen" - a 1980s attempt to compete in the semiconductor industry.

A sad day

I don't know what to say. I feel let down, and I feel the UK has let the world down, as well as itself.

Brexit is a fake revolt – working-class culture is being hijacked to help the elite

What dismays me most about the EU debate is that what people say it is about and what it is really about are quite different. Paul Mason in the Guardian analyses the problem clearly.

To people getting ready for the mother of all revolts on Thursday, I want to point out the crucial difference between a real revolt and a fake one. The elite does not usually lead the real ones. In a real revolt, the rich and powerful usually head for the hills, terrified. Nor are the Sun and the Daily Mail usually to be found egging on a real insurrection. ...

I want to have one last go at convincing you that leaving now, under these conditions, would be a disaster. First, let’s recognise the problem. For people in the working classes, wages are at rock bottom. Their employers treat them like dirt. Their high streets are lined with empty shops. Their grownup kids cannot afford to buy a home. Class sizes at school are too high. NHS waiting times are too long. ...

But a Brexit led by Ukip and the Tory right will not make any of these things better: it will make them worse. Take a look at the people leading the Brexit movement. Nigel Farage, Neil Hamilton, Boris Johnson, Michael Gove. They have fought all their lives for one objective: to give more power to employers and less to workers. Many leading Brexiters are on record as wanting to privatise the NHS. They revelled in the destruction of the working-class communities and cultures capable of staging real revolt. Sir James Dyson moved his factory to Malaysia, so much did he love the British workforce. They talk about defying the “elite”. But they are the elite.

Joy of Coding

Despite a gamy leg, I had a fantastic time in Rotterdam at Joy of Coding. They do a fantastic job taking care of their speakers and their attendees. Highlight was learning from a fellow guest about Ethereum ('We used to have one computer per institution, then one per person, and now one per planet'), and then coming home to a post about it tweeted by Crista Lopes.

Brexit: The cost to Tech and the cost to Universities

Two articles by computer security researcher Ross Anderson.

• Brexit and technology: How network effects will damage UK IT industry
• Brexit will cost Cambridge University £100M a year

A UK that makes up 1% of world population and 3% of world GDP has little influence on IT markets; a post-Brexit Britain would have even less. Most software markets have been global for decades.
The EU has real clout though. From the viewpoint of Silicon Valley, Brussels is the world’s privacy regulator, since Washington doesn’t care and nobody else is big enough to matter.
Brussels also calls the shots on competition policy. The reason you get offered a randomised choice of default browser when switching on a new Windows PC in Europe is that the EU competition authorities insisted on it. This was punishment for Microsoft using its desktop monopoly to trash Netscape – which was an offence in the US too, but the Bush administration couldn’t be bothered to prosecute it.
If you want someone to police the side-effects of network effects and globalisation, the European Commission is just about the only sheriff in town.

But in the long term the biggest problem may not just be money.
Great universities thrive by drawing the best and the brightest from round the world, to be our students, to be our research staff, and to be our academics. Most of our new hires are foreign.
We already have a hard time competing with America for the best people. What will happen if Britain votes to leave Europe following a campaign of xenophobia – which has spilled over into outright racism?
This is not just about money; it's about who we are, and also about what other people perceive us to be.
Even if Remain wins on Thursday, we've all been damaged. If it goes the other way, the world may conclude that Britain is no longer the best place to send your kids, or to build one of your research labs.

“Dishonesty on an industrial scale”: EU law expert analyses referendum debate

Authoritative sources in the EU debate are thin on the ground, so I was pleased when a colleague pointed me to a video by University of Liverpool Law School’s Professor Michael Dougan, a leading expert in EU law. It runs 25 minutes and is well worth the time. I've transcribed a couple of segments below.

I've just watched with increasing dismay as this referendum debate has unfolded, and though I have to say the Remain side has not covered themselves in glory at points with their use of dodgy statistics, I think the Leave campaign has degenerated into dishonesty, really, on an industrial scale --- there's really no other way to put it ...  For someone who works in the field like I do, it's probably the equivalent of an evolutionary biologist listening to a bunch of creationists tell the public that creation theory is right and evolution is completely wrong. It really is that bad ... and yet it's working.

The second idea I think which has become pervasive is that somehow this is a debate about us and them. The EU is somebody else, and we are somehow the pathetic victims of Brussels as if this country was incapable of looking after itself.  To an EU lawyer, indeed to anyone who works in the field, this is just absolutely bizarre.  ... In the field we refer to The Big Three, the UK, France, and Germany, because between them the UK, France, and Germany provide the EU with its political, its economic, its diplomatic leadership. And indeed, virtually nothing happens in the EU without the big three being in control of it. The UK, to put it simply, has enormous influence within the EU.  It sets agendas, it negotiates alliances, it builds and brokers compromises.  ... Remember, the EU is not run by the unelected eurocrats of the commission as we hear all the time, it's actually run by the 28 governments of the council working together with the European Parliament.  Despite the fact that majority voting is the normal rule within the council, in practice about 90% of EU decisions are still taken by consensus.  In other words, the member states negotiate until everyone feels basically happy with the decision. And it couldn't be otherwise.  The EU is the creation of its member states, it has to serve their basic national interests, and it does so through a process of compromise and negotiation. So the EU isn't someone else, it's not something that happens to us, we are major players, leading players, within the European Union.

Here's to an informed debate!

CAPS: Cycling Action Plan for Scotland

In 2010, the Scottish Government set out a 'vision' that 10% of all trips should be made by cycle and foot by 2020. In the recent Scottish parliamentary elections, the SNP maintained it is 'determined' to achieve this vision, but funding remains low, at 2% of the transport budget. But the government established CAPS, the Cycling Action Plan for Scotland, and its most recent report includes a heartening call to action.

CAPS 2016 Pre-requisites for Success: A successful modal shift to cycling requires the following six pre-requisites for success being met:

• A shared national vision for a 10% modal share of everyday journeys should remain, with a related clear aspiration for reduction in car use, especially for short journeys, by both national and local government.

• A long term increase in sustained funding is required, with year-on-year increases over time towards a 10% allocation of national and council transport budgets as Edinburgh is achieving. The long term commitment to 2030 to dual carriageways between seven Scottish cities should be matched by an equally long term commitment to cycling if modal shift ambitions are to be met and sustained.

• The national 10% modal share vision should be supported by local cycling strategies and delivery plans at council and regional levels. Local modal share objectives should be coordinated with the national vision to create a feasible route to 10%.

• Cities will be the driver of significant modal shift and the national vision should be directly coordinated with a specific focus on reaching at least 10% modal share in the cities and the largest urban areas, implementing best practice.

• The primary investment focus should be on enabling cycling through changing the physical environment for short journeys to enable anyone to cycle.

• Government at all levels needs to build and maintain staff capacity to manage cycle infrastructure and the local road network in the present financial climate. 

Build and maintain dedicated cycling infrastructure, enabling people aged 8-80 to cycle on coherent cycle networks in cities and towns. This entails cohesive, comprehensive and seamless networks of on-road segregated paths in cities and, where appropriate, alongside trunk roads and busier local roads in rural areas. In the urban setting such networks will link into and incorporate existing off-road networks where they deliver direct and high quality routes. ‘Success’ should not only be measured in terms of additional kilometres of network but have a qualitative aspect, including following good practice design standards, numbers of segregated cycle lanes, and integration with public transport. Perceptions of safety and protection of non-motorised users - both of which must be tackled - will be enhanced by the introduction of measures such as 20 mph speed limits in urban settings. 

Develop a long term communication plan that represents cycling as something that anyone can do, not simply a minority and is a transport mode that brings many benefits to Scotland: a healthier, less polluting nation, enjoying better public space, improved air quality and less congested streets. A continuous and consistent campaign would aim to win ‘the hearts and minds’ of the public about the benefits of cycling. Rather than about behaviour, or indeed about the environment, the main message for this campaign should be about improved quality of life for people. The economic benefits for rural and suburban areas should not be overlooked. Cycling for leisure, recreation and sport can be essential gateway activities to enable more people to try and enjoy everyday utility cycling and the economic benefits of leisure and tourism-related cycling, especially in remote areas, should not be overlooked. Programmes should reinforce different forms of cycling to maximise inclusiveness while never losing sight of the over-riding need for modal shift.