26 | New Scientist | 25 January 2020
Editor’s pick
Pedestrian-friendly cities
need room to play too
21/28 December 2019, p 10
From Rob Wheway,
Coventry, West Midlands, UK
Researchers in Canada and the
US find that grid street layouts
encourage people to walk rather
than drive, unlike those dominated
by cul-de-sacs, Alice Klein reports.
There are more factors to consider.
In the Children’s Play Advisory
Service report that I co-wrote –
Child’s Play: Facilitating play on
housing estates – we estimate
that if a housing area contains
100 children and roads that are
safe enough for them to play
outside, they will make around
280,000 journeys per year on foot.
Not only is this free exercise, but a
lot of vehicle pollution is avoided.
The domination of the car
prevents children from playing
freely, an essential part of their
physical and social development.
They still do play out in cul-de-sacs
and where there are measures to
slow traffic: parents permit this
because the roads are safe. Grid
layouts are more dangerous, and
parents understandably keep their
children indoors, condemning them
to increased obesity and stress.From Graham Jones,
Bridgham, Norfolk, UK
This finding made me think of three
UK towns: Colchester in Essex,
where I grew up, Diss in Norfolk,
where I worked for many years, and
Towcester in Northamptonshire,
which I visit. In all, residential areas
laid out in the years after 1945
have curvy streets with cul-de-sacs.
Most of these, though, are
connected by footpaths, often only
1 or 2 metres in width and ideally
suited to pedestrians. So the
walking route between points up
to a half-hour’s walk apart is very
nearly a straight line, while the
driving route may be as much as
five times that distance. Pedestrian
access to public transport is a red
herring in the many places where
there are now no buses.As for cycling, the main problem
in the UK is the weather. If you
commute by bike, you really need a
shower and clothes storage at your
place of work. Planners could insist
on this, in the same way as they
often insist on off-street car parking
for new business developments.Some things we should
learn about roundabouts
21/28 December 2019, p 65
From Robert Hale,
Evesham, Worcestershire, UK
Richard Webb rightly extols the
virtues of roundabouts and
identifies problems implementing
them in the US. There is also great
scope for improvement on the
way they are laid out in the UK. I
do suspect that our Department of
Transport may be as intransigent
as the US authorities.
I am thinking of a Swiss design
that allows safe, low-speed entry
and exit in all traffic conditions for
all vehicles, including articulated
bendy buses, with high traffic
flows. This is achieved by slight
curves to the arms, each a single
carriageway just wide enough
for bus wheels. Yellow zebra
pedestrian crossings on each armremind drivers that they don’t
have priority under Swiss law
and offer easy and safe passage
for walkers and cyclists. In the
UK, anyone crossing the arm
of a roundabout is likely to be
intimidated by speeding drivers,
in part because it unnecessarily
has two lanes.
All parties in the UK’s recent
election promised to promote
cycling and walking for health
and climate change advantage.
That will be impossible unless we
learn from the Swiss, not only on
roundabouts, but more generally
on road and path design.What more can the
aviation industry do?
11 January, p 18
From Butch Dalrymple Smith,
La Ciotat, France
What more could the aviation
industry do to reduce carbon
emissions? The decision by Airbus
to stop making the double-decker
A380 in 2021 may need to be
reviewed. This plane, particularly
if configured with all seats in
economy for intercontinental
travel, has higher efficiency in
terms of fuel used per passengerper kilometre than others.
Incorporating railway stations
into more airport passenger
terminals would help reverse
the current trend of scheduling
hundreds of flights between
regional airports, which may be
convenient, but is more unkind
to the environment than doing
a final leg by train.
A jet engine’s maximum
efficiency is at high throttle
settings. So can we design a plane
with booster engines used only for
take-off, with more modest
engines for cruising flight?
Running big engines for the
entire flight is an absurd waste
of kerosene and an abuse of the
atmosphere. Clearly a new design
of aircraft would be needed to stop
the drag of extra engines ruining
the economy gains of the concept.Vacuum airship plan
faces an uphill battle
21/28 December 2019, p 68
From Simon Goodman,
Griesheim, Germany
The article on vacuum lift airships
by Philip Ball was, in a manner of
speaking, a gas. But some aspects
of the idea sound like so much hotViews You r le t te r s