And The ALARM Bells Won't Let Up

The Asphalt Industry Alliance has released it's 2016 Annual Local Authority Road Maintenance (ALARM) Survey and it is predicable enough in that our local roads are not improving.

As ever, I recommend you read the full report yourself, but the headlines are not surprising. I should be clear that the report only covers England and Wales, so apologies to Scotland and Northern Ireland.

The headline figure for the one-off investment to bring things up to a reasonable standard is £11.8bn, slightly down from £12.2bn last year, although when we are talking about such vast sums, it's not much of an improvement. So, let's have a quick look at the other headlines (taken from the summary which I have broken down). I like this year's format, although it makes it a little trickier to compare with previous years.

The percentage of authorities responding is up from 52% last year to 56% which means the figures remain pretty representative in my view. Budgets are up a little in London and Wales, but this is to the detriment of England and overall, budgets are down. Around half of maintenance budgets are spent on carriageways, although there are lots of other things which need maintaining and so I am not sure how this really helps as a metric. Overall, carriageway budgets are down.

On shortfalls, the headline one-time catch up figure is down a little as is the length of time needed to clear the backlog, but the picture remains pretty static to be honest

This extends to the amount of work done (in terms of the government's favourite silly statistic of potholes filled), although the length of time to resurface an average road is down too. Again, the changes are small and so trends can't really be pulled out of the data.

On claims, London is paying out a little more overall and Wales a little more per claim, but overall, the total payout and costs associated with claims are down.

* England, London & Wales

** Excluding London

What we are seeing is that local authorities continue to improve efficiency (doing more with less), but they have been doing this for a long time and we are now in the realms of marginal gains. They probably know more about the condition of their network than ever before and there is more cross-authority collaboration than ever before.

The reality is that we are standing still and we still have a huge highway maintenance backlog. As the Chancellor continues to hammer local government, funding is being taken out of highway maintenance and put into other areas, but at the same time, national funding is being put into the strategic road network (through Highways England and also through the Welsh Government, both looking a motorway expansion). For local roads, where people live and work, the outlook remains grim as we juggle to paper of the cracks of a failing asset. 

Cycle Cider

In an unseasonal and unusual departure, this week's post is about booze; well, free booze with a bit of cycling and homebrewed technology.

In the Autumn, I posted about the wonders and challenges of using a trailer with my bike and part of the post included photos of it full of apples. I didn't actually explain what the apples were for. Well, they were for making cider and over the weekend I casually tweeted that I had bottled my brew ready for drinking in a few weeks' time. It turns out that quite a few people were interested in how it was done and so in the spirit (geddit) of sharing the wealth, I'm giving you the lowdown. We are a long way from apple season, but it gives you a few months to plan your own homemade cider run!

One of my hobbies (other than ranting about infrastructure and pootling around on bikes) is brewing. I am not an expert by any means, but after a few years of messing around, I have settled on making my own beer, wine and cider. The beer is made from bought ingredients, so I cannot claim to be self-sufficient in the miles department, but it is far tastier than the cheap supermarket deals. Wine is mainly red and it is made from Terry-down-the-road's grapes, but the sugar still has miles (although UK-produced). I also make vodka with sloes and fennel, the former foraged in my local area, the latter from my fennel plant (vodka is cheapest I can buy, but still the sugar is needed).

Cider is a different matter. I mainly use apples and pears* foraged within 3km of home, sometimes supplemented with those from friends who were passing. A work colleague has a house in France and this autumn he has promised to bring some back (OK, car miles, but he is making the trip anyway). The point is, the fruit is free and it is full of sugar, plus it has its own natural yeast. In terms of recipes (and brewing more generally) I have two bibles; Booze for Free by Andy Hamilton and Booze: River Cottage Handbook No.12 by John Wright. They are interesting reads in their own right and give plenty of alcohol-related ideas.

I got into home brewing when my Brother bought me a starter kit for Christmas one year. It was a one-box to get you going affair with a plastic fermenting bucket, beer can kit, yeast and so on. I bought some bottles and away I went; although my first ever brew was a nettle beer after seeing Hugh Fearnly-Whittingstall make some on one of his River Cottage shows. These days I have nettle patch, plus some fruit trees which were planted to give me some brewing raw materials (well eventually).

Back to the Cider. I have been making it for three years using a home made press which was based on this one and it works quite well. So, let's run through the process with some photos.

The first job is to get some apples and/ or pears and smash them up. I am planning to make a hand-powered smasher at some point (called a scratter), but apparently a garden shredder does the job. At the moment, I use a big plastic trug, sledgehammer and muscle-power to smash the apples to a pulp. Actually, perhaps I need a bike-powered scratter!

It take a bit of effort to get going, but it works. You can use cider apples (grown for the right taste), but I use what I can find and generally, the more you mix them up, the less risk there is for it to go wrong and you maximise catching a decent yeast from the apple skins.

The press itself is made from planed roofing timber (100mm x 47mm, or the old fashioned 4 by 2 in inches - although timber is specified in its un-planed dimensions just to be confusing). The press is held together with steel threaded bolt and nuts. You can see a couple of stainless steel cooking pots on the press. The larger one has a 10mm hole drilled in the bottom, near the edge to allow the juice to run out when the apple pulp is squeezed. The smaller one on the floor catches the juice.

The clever bit is the upper pot is lined on its base and walls with expanded plastic mesh. It's loose laid as the pulp holds it in place as you fill. I had the mesh from an old pond filter and so I am not quite sure where you would get it, but there are websites showing the kind of thing I mean.

The mesh creates a gap between the pulp and the pot wall which allows juice to run down inside the walls of the pot. A double layer of mesh at the bottom allows the juice to flow into the base and out of the hole.

A bit smaller then the mesh-lined pot is a circular plunger which I cut from a work top off-cut with a jigsaw. If it catches the mesh, it's not a problem as the mesh is very flexible. The squashing is done with a small bottle jack (2 tonne, about a tenner) with various blocks of timber as shown (this bit needs to be refined if I ever get round to it). The important point is to try and keep the jack and timber vertical otherwise the jack can pop out at you! The top of the jack pushes on a timber block bolted into the top of the frame. At some point, I'm attaching a thick steel plate as the jack does rather embed itself!

Operating the set up is pretty easy. Juice from the smashed apples flows easily and when I build the scratter, I should be able to get a little more juice out. I couldn't tell you the yield as some apples are drier than others, but I aim to make about 15 to 20 litres in the season (time is the issue normally). Fruit picking time varies with apple type. The fruit will store a while until you have enough to use, but take out anything too damaged as it can set the lot going bad.

The spent apple pulp should be dry and I throw it in the compost (although the fruit flies love it). You get a feel for the effort versus juice - I have taken out spent pulp and given it another quick smash to really get the last drop of juice out, but this is greater effort for less reward.

It;s a good idea to strain the juice to get any bits of apple out whereby you then put it in a demijohn with an airlock (or bubbler); you can get them from a variety of place although I recommend Dorset Homebrew for brewing stuff, I've found them good in recent years.

The juice will take several days for the fermentation to start (with the natural yeast on the apple skins) and although it is tempting to chuck some yeast in, let nature do its job. A warm room is a good place to get things started. Some people transfer the fermenting juice to clean demijohns a couple of times to reduce the amount of sediment to play with, although tend not to bother as I am pretty good with a syphon. You need to leave things for about 4 to 6 months. The cider starts really cloudy, but settles out to a clear, golden colour.

Bottling is best done into either fizzy pop bottles or Grolsch type bottles (called swing top) as they can take pressure if the juice carries on fermenting. Timing is the issue and if you know how to measure the sugar content of the juice, you can track fermentation to the point where you can bottle and let fermentation continue to give a little fizz (and you can measure alcohol content). I tend to do it when it feels right which can go either way (tip: open bottles outside in case the fizz is a bit much!). I do sometimes recap beer bottles (you need a crown capper), but this will be on the basis that the cider will be opened to drink within a week or two and be kept in the fridge to make sure the fermentation slows right down. If you bottle too early, you are at some risk of having exploding bottles which has happened to me before (not with cider, but the risk is there).

The cider once bottled keeps for ages because it's alcohol content is high enough (perhaps 8 to 10%, but it can vary a lot); I have some a couple of years old which is pretty dry, but with a little fizz. It is also very strong! So there you have it, with a bit DIY skill and messing about, you can have free booze. If you think small scale is interesting, you should check out London Glider who do this on a much larger suburban scale! Cheers!

* Yes pear cider is Perry, but it is all booze to me!

Is Leadership Political Or Professional?

Leadership is an interesting concept and if I was an expert, I'd be writing management books. This is one take on the subject.

This post is inspired by JobRot following a debate on Twitter (yes, that) on why don't professionals simply refuse to build crap (cycling) infrastructure which itself (as best I can remember) stemmed from a discussion on why professional institutions don't show leadership. The point was made that despite knowing about concepts such as induced demand and the health impact from non-active travel modes, why do professionals still push road-building schemes? Perhaps it's a touch of cognitive dissonance, perhaps they really don't care, perhaps they disagree. Is it any different to health professionals who smoke?

With this in mind, I also read the Chartered Institution of Highway's & Transportation's "Transportation Professional" magazine this week which featured its usual monthly poll called the "CIHT 100"; that is 100 institution members who answer a question to give a snapshot of members' position on a subject which is also linked to an article where one person supports the "yes" answer and one person supports the "no" position. This month, it was East London river crossings;

Now to be clear, this is a poll of member's views and not a reflection of Institution policy (I'll come back to that later). I did find the result interesting as I thought the "no's" would be higher and so 42% is a win as far as I am concerned! 

Let's take a step back. We often see politicians and professionals being accused of lacking leadership, but often, this is because the person making the comment disagrees with the position being taken. Take a local authority seen as anti-walking and cycling by pro-walking and cycling campaigners. The accusation will be levelled that for active travel, the councillors and senior officers running the authority show no leadership on active travel. 

They are right of course, but this is often tempered by the fact that the "leaders" may actually be disregarding active travel in favour of private car journeys and car parking. I have heard politicians state that they have been elected by people who want the freedom to use their cars and so they have a mandate to facilitate this freedom. There will be many of my peers who completely agree with the position and in their work, enabling this freedom will be at the forefront. I know that local authorities have policies promoting active travel, but even those with really strong policies can end up ignoring them in the face of pressure or the at the behest of the decision-makers.

For those working in such an environment, you may have high principles in favour of active travel and this will be supported in policy terms, but your job is to facilitate the political direction and position (up until the point it is illegal a very sage boss once said to me). For consultants, life can be more difficult as they are there to do the client's bidding. Good consultants will show what things could be, but ultimately, you get paid for doing what the client wants. Principles are a great thing to have, until they hit you in the pocket. Unless you are financially self-sufficient, I'm afraid that the reality of life ends up with compromise. We therefore should not confuse principles with leadership.

Returning to the CIHT poll. I don't know, but I would expect most members responding to have a fair grasp of the arguments, it is just that some completely agree with the idea that such roads should be built for private car journeys and accommodating active travel is a nice to have, but not really important. Many transport professionals will be driving to work, getting free parking, getting mileage for business trips and they simply don't know any different. Yes, their design guides will talk about "vulnerable road users" and "non-motorised users", but consideration of walking and especially cycling will be bolt-on at best.

Organisations such as CIHT are member-led. They have full-time staff, but policy comes from the council and the technical panels, with trustees dealing with the charitable side of things. This is no different to countless member-led organisations. Bodies such as the council are elected by the membership and as with any election, we choose people who reflect our views and therefore we give a mandate for leadership of the institution. This is the same as local authorities and the government of the day and we essentially get the representation we deserve. Ultimately, the leaders will be the ones who step up for election, rather than staying at home muttering.

Back to the river crossings. On the recent Transport for London consultation for crossings at Gallions Reach and Belvedere, TfL is reporting 90% support (full report here). There were 4,450 respondents and so TfL will be emboldened to proceed as they are with the Silvertown Tunnel which will start to go through the formal procedures this year. 

The current Mayor supports these schemes as do some of the candidates for the May election. The Mayor feels he has a mandate from the electorate, there is a positive response to the initial consultation. TfL staff and their consultants working on the projects will know full well what the implications might be in terms of induced demand, pollution, severance and so on. Some might agree with the schemes, some might not. A pragmatic position could be that some will do their damnedest to make sure that active travel is included knowing full well that the politicians want the crossings built anyway. 

I might fundamentally disagree with these schemes, but I have to recognise that leadership has been given to ensure their progress. Of course, the same Mayor and organisation has shown leadership (belatedly) in building some of the World-class cycling infrastructure we can see in London now - it's not simple is it?

Monotonous Autonomous

The media is buzzing with the prospect of "driverless" cars being let loose on UK roads after it has been reported that the Chancellor will making an announcement in next week's budget.

Personally, I am bored and worried about the whole thing in equal measures. Bored, because I think we have far more serious things to worry about with transport in the UK and worried, because the whole idea is being pushed by the big interests which continue to stifle change, especially in urban areas.

Proponents of the technology talk about how it will make roads safer for all users. Don't get me wrong, vehicle technology has done wonders for occupant safety over the years and we now have things like assisted braking, collision detection and anti-skid detection. Heck, some cars even park themselves nowadays. I have no doubt that in an autonomous-utopian future cars will be safer for the people inside and outside the vehicles because on average and over time, computers will perform better than humans. Even with our cleverest cars now, the humans in control still mange to screw things up.

The real reason for the official push and the massive investment by companies is that of the need to make and sell stuff as without people spending money, the current economic model would collapse. They are also a way of cutting costs and improving the bottom line. For example, there will be tests of autonomous HGVs on the M6 which will see platoons of lorries running closely spaced, with the lead truck under human control. The following lorries will have drivers (for safety as it is a trial), but the idea will essentially squeeze lorries into a smaller length of road and in theory, use the road space for efficiently. The other benefit is being closer together, the following lorries will slipstream each other and so reduce fuel consumption. 

The end game with this of course would be lorries not needing drivers at all and thus cutting out costly humans. A haulage depot could send its fleet out in the evening and customers could arrive with their goods waiting to be offloaded - hell, in a modern warehouse set up, lorries could be self-docking and robots could unload them which means even less staff are needed. Industrial robots have been here for decades, so it's not pie in the sky. Don't forget beyond road transport, aircraft and container ships have been piloted by computers for a long time!

Beyond the big trucks, there will always be a need for local deliveries and it is no coincidence that research into autonomous vehicles and drones takes place to cover the last mile. There is a real possibility that one could order something on a website and the widget turns up having never been touched by human hands!

For personal transport, the future is varied and by this I mean split between those who can afford cars and those who can't afford them or don't want them. For those that can, one will be able to jump in the car and enjoy a chauffeured journey to work with time to read, catch up with emails or nap (more than we see now at any rate!); those without will have booked a car with an app - taxi drivers will be a thing of the past as observed by the People's Cycling Front of South Gloucestershire.

For motorways and trunk roads, again, there will be similar benefits as with lorries, one can join a platoon of cars and just relax as one is whisked along. Imagine not having the fatigue of driving long distances! Actually, who even needs to learn to drive any more - yay cars for everyone (who can afford them). 

Of course, there are flaws in the plan and that is the ones about road capacity and people not in cars. On motorways and trunk roads, things are already pretty safe because the road layouts are enshrined in standards which have been made mandatory. There are no people walking and cycling (banned on motorways and not provided for on trunk roads) and so control over vehicles will be relatively simple. The vehicles would talk to the road control computers and so speeds would be adjusted in real time with the system anticipating hold-ups ahead; in short, the automation would actually increase capacity and improve safety. 

Of course we know that creating capacity gives more opportunities for induced demand, so the long-term flaw must be that we will end up with a strategic road system which will end up just as full as it was before.

The thing which bothers me most is what happens away from the carefully controlled conditions of the strategic road system. Cities, rural lanes, residential streets. We are told that autonomous vehicles will be safer around people walking and cycling than humans. That might be true, but it depends on the model the cars are running. For example, if autonomous vehicles are programmed to pass people cycling with a 2 metre gap, then overtaking opportunities will be hampered in town (and perhaps that would be a very good thing) but the people in the car will still get frustrated and may take control back (I'm assuming there would be an override of course) and so the safety argument goes. 

What about people crossing the road? With traffic signals, the vehicles can talk to the signal controller and know when the lights will change and slow down in good time. What about zebra crossings or people just crossing - will the sensors ever be good enough to cope? There have been thought experiments about autonomous vehicles sacrificing the occupants to save other people or the vehicles being able to run over one person to avoid a crowd. In reality, the forthcoming test vehicles will be very cautious because the "powers that be" wouldn't want carnage to be the output of the experiments - although there have been issues!

Perhaps the future will be more complicated. Like cruise control, one gets on the motorway and then the car takes over, but touch the pedals or the wheel and the car cedes control to the driver. In town, I can't see the technology taking over because of the complicated way the urban environment works. If it is pushed, then expect to see people walking and cycling having a bit of fun. 

Unless vehicles go 100% autonomous and with no way for people to take control, then the idea is already a busted flush. The promised mobility for non-drivers won't be possible, so apart from out-of-town logistics and clever motorway cruise control, the technology won't improve our towns and cities. We will still have the problems of congestion and car storage and until we tackle that, we are heading up the business as usual dead end.

Cycling & The Big Box Stores - You Are Not Part Of The Business Model

This morning, I popped to my local B&Q to pick up a few bits and pieces for some decorating. I didn't need much, so I hopped on my bike.

The store is 1.2 miles from home and so cycling, it takes no more than 8 minutes each way. I can use a cycle track next to a trunk road to get there and back (albeit shared, a bit narrow in places and a bit bumpy). Now, if I was after 20 bags of ballast, then the car would take the strain; but a pot of PVA glue, a paint brush and a paint kettle fitted in my pannier bag without a problem. In terms of journey time, the car might be slightly quicker first thing on a Saturday morning, although as a driver, there are more traffic signals to get through so it's marginal.

Arriving at the store, I cycled across the car park to the main entrance and looked for somewhere to park. It was no surprise that there was no cycle parking (I know the store after all), I was looking to see if there was a stock display cage I could tie my bike to.

I was in luck; there was - filled with logs and so with my D-lock, the bike was secure enough. I have turned up when there hasn't been anything suitable and so I have to use the steel fence around a trolley park at the edge of the car park. I raised this issue privately with B&Q several months ago (perhaps 18) and a very nice person from their customer services team assured my that they would pass the matter to their store manager who would contact me. Did, I get a reply from the local store? No, of course not, so a public whinge is in order.

The store has been there for 20 years and so when planning consent was granted, cycling was not a consideration in planning policy terms. There was no cycle track passing the site back then and cycling in the area was not even a consideration. Time has moved on and even in this low cycling London backwater, the trunk road now has a cycle track on each side and it is at least possible to get to the store by bike in relative safety and quite easily. There is a retail park on the other side of the road (with Toucan crossings to get there) and they have provided cycle parking right by the shop doors. In fact, Next took over a retail unit a couple of years ago and they installed even more cycle parking!

B&Q has cycle parking at its other big stores in the area, but they are newer and whether planning for cycling was thought about or not, modern local authority planning policies ensured that a certain provision was made (whether the quality of the installation was checked is a another matter).

It is so easy and low cost to install cycle parking. There is plenty of design advice out there such as Chapter 8 of the London Cycling Design Standards. Basic Sheffield hoops can be purchased really cheaply; £29.99 plus VAT from Broxap will get you a basic galvanised hoop which can be concreted into the ground. For situations such as my local B&Q, for a little more, a plated version can be obtained for bolting down to a power-floated concrete floor.

In fact, I have a couple of Sheffield hoops in my front garden for cycle parking which I installed myself and so it should not be beyond the capability of a DIY superstore which has literally all of the materials and tools needed to install a couple of cycle hoops! I don't want to criticise just B&Q. My local Tesco superstore has some cycle parking, but it is well away from the main store entrance. It is useful for staff (being by the staff door), but for the public, it should be relocated where it is useful because (surprise, surprise), people using cycles are lazy (ish) and don't want to lug their shopping to the other end of the store in the same way as customers arriving by car vie for the best parking spots!

I think the real issue for many of the big box stores is that cycling doesn't feature in their business models, or even on their horizons; they are based on providing access and parking for people arriving by car or van (in the case of B&Q). Most only provide cycle parking because they have a planning condition telling them to do so. It would take a tiny amount of effort for them to undertake an audit of their stores and very little cost to plan, design and provide even a few Sheffield stands. They might just attract a few more customers.

So, B&Q, if you read this post, don't bother asking me to DM the store location, or email your customer services. Get you network of store managers to undertake an audit and provide a couple of lines back on how cycle parking could be provided - it will take 30 minutes out of their day. For those on Twitter, I think it is time to start naming and shaming the retailers who are not providing cycle parking or providing crap cycle parking!