Mark Nelson

If Sustainability is a sacrifice, you're doing it wrong - Terra Infirma It’s about 30 months since we sold our family car. Do I miss it? Very occasionally. Certainly not day to day, or even week to week. The main challenge is our usual holiday of a couple of weeks in a re...

All this talk of self-sacrifice to save the planet makes me grind my teeth. Sustainability is cool, so let's do good things excellently.
www.terrainfirma.co.uk/if-sustainab...

What Seems to be the Problem? Can we make any progress on transport while we don't recognise there's a problem to be solved and can't recognise solutions?

First newsletter published! simple.ghost.io/what-seems-t...

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Having said that, the first half hour wasn't that much fun.
Anybody who has to wear glasses and has cycled in fog will know know the pain of riding in fog (is it still foggy or do I just need to wipe my lenses, again 🤔🤷🏻‍♀️)

Four stone dragons heads in the park land in front of Wallington Hall, which can be seen in the background.

A GPS track showing a circular cycle ride from Newcastle to Capheaton and back. 100km, 973m of climbing.

It's been a beautiful autumnal day for a ride to Capheaton.
I'm glad a managed to get out after a failed attempt yesterday.

A chart showing the percentage change in traffic from before to after implementation of the LTN. All bars except two show a negative change, indicating a drop in traffic.

In October 2022 modal filters were installed on streets in Heaton as part of a trial.
Thanks to a permanent traffic counter it was possible to see what effect that had on one of the boundary roads.
Traffic was down every week, by ~500 vehicles per day.
Then the filters were removed...
1/3

I like the sound of that!
Having just spend the previous three hours thinking about leaving the house it might provide the missing motivation.

That might be why the roads are so busy...

There were. I think they may have been linked now as more has been build but the first part to be built by the A1068 had no way out other than duel carriage way with no pavement for a couple of years.
Less than 2km from the station and shops and about 500m from the cycle network too, but no link.

The town right next to that junction has a very good cycle network in older parts of it. It hasn't been extended as the town has grown though, doesn't link to the hospital mentioned. There are no links across the duel carriageways surrounding the town either.

Kenyan Catholic Church drops Mass wine after it becomes common in bars - BBC News The previous brand was said to have lost its sanctity due to its widespread use outside the church.

The last student house I lived in for catalogue of church essentials through the door which included wine.
We did consider ordering some as it was pretty cheap, but I think decided it wasn't strong enough in the end (and also wasn't beer 🙄) www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

What's really needed is more viable alternatives to driving, which ¾ of a billion pounds could go some way to providing.

¾ of a billion pounds to change a junction, that won't fix queues on the A189 and just moves the queues on the A19 to the next junction, which then needs fixing too, contributing to the enormous cost.
That's the cost of two and a bit Northumberland Lines (currently still not fully open).

The image is a bar chart showing solar generation by month for the last 5 years. 2025 has been higher or equal to the previous couple of years for most months so far.

The image is a pie chart showing electricity by source. Solar 55%, Grid 45%

All the ☀️ this year means my solar array had already generated more ⚡at the end of September than the whole of last year.
It also meant free energy for almost 6 months for the first time, missing out by £5:30, as exports covered imports, gas and standing charges from April onwards.

Colouring by Numbers A data visualisation of British road numbering produces surprisingly beautiful results.

We think road numbers are beautiful. Not everyone agrees, but we defy you not to be amazed by this incredbile visualisation of all Great Britain's classified roads. #roadnumbers www.roads.org.uk/blog/colouri...

What's a 'side'? Sounds like an interesting concept.

I watched that earlier. Never realised in all the times I've passed it.
I did notice another more obvious one last autumn hidden in a hedge that I passed quite a few times previously without seeing.
maps.app.goo.gl/PjGT1rgGc1mm...

Ale and rice pudding is the sort of nutrition advice I could get behind, though I don't worry many records.

100 anti-migrant protesters drowned out by counter march in UK city There are hundreds of people in the city centre.

Great headline:

“Newcastle protest: 100 anti-migrant protesters drowned out by counter march”

www.express.co.uk/news/uk/2114...

Did you make it home?

Farage pledges to expel hundreds of thousands of migrants Reform says mass deportation would save £234bn as it warns ‘Boriswave’ of migration will take critical toll on welfare system

Any journalist quoting this absurd, invented £234 billion number cited by Farage/Reform should make absolutely clear that it has been withdrawn by *its own authors* (the Centre for Policy Studies) after they admitted it contained several major errors (1/3)

After this morning's ramping up of cruel rhetoric, it's time to refer to them as "the far-right party, Reform UK Ltd".

Picture shows a number of hydraulic lifts lined up next to a train in a maintenance shed.

A view from a walkway taken half way along an Azuma looking back at a shorter Trans Pennine trains and an even shorter local train.

A close view of the front of a Trans Pennine train with it's nose cone removed to expose the coupling mechanism.

A view from the driver's seat of a train that's inside a maintenance shed.

I've had an interesting morning at Northern Trains Heaton Train Maintenance Depo open day. Lots of train to see from a perspective you don't usually get and various stalls to explain things.

View from the driver's seat of a Pacer train.

Just pretending to drive a Pacer.

I bar chart with two series on it. The 1st show the total number of Micras licenced in GB by year. It starts high in 2015 and decreases each year after. The 2nd shows Range Rovers, which starts around half the number of Micras and increases, passing Micras in 2019 to end up roughly double in 2025.

As it's the weekend, just for fun I looked at how the total number of Micras licenced to be on the road compares to the number of Range Rovers for the last ten years.

That's quite a lot of space lost in the cause of doing the same thing more excessively.

I had to triplecheck this because I didn't believe it...

All of the world's discovered reserves of fossil fuels = the same energy as just 5 days of sunlight hitting the Earth🤯

Solar power is basically unlimited🤷‍♂️

this is ridiculous

A new two-way cycle lane will be built along the stretch of Pilgrim Street between Mosley Street and Market Street and new paving and resurfacing will also take place. The full programme of works is due to be completed in summer 2024, with further improvements to the Market Street junction expected to be carried out at the end of the Pilgrim Street works.

Summer 2024...

www.newcastle.gov.uk/citylife-new...

I'm so used to dismissing annoying popups and notifications that I instantly clicked the button without reading it despite knowing it was happening and wanting to know what it said, which is a bit of a design fault.
I assume it said 'this is a test', but I'll never know!

Yeah, I'm fine thanks. If they are doing it to me they are probably doing it to other people, who might feel a bit more intimidated though.
I've got very clear images, and they were on a hire scooter which may help, so I'll see what happens.

I then cycled home and got spat on in Jesmond by some scrote on a hire scooter, which was nice.
I've also got that on video, but that's going somewhere else!