#Turbogate: the demise of Diesel?

Two weeks ago, Defra snuck out a report saying that Diesels were a key source of urban pollution, that aggressive action was going to be needed —despite the fact that Euro6 cars were significantly less polluting than their predecessors.

It was pushed out on a Saturday, while the labour party elections took the headlines, and primarily got coverage in the bike press. Some of the press coverage called out the fact that car manufacturers could ship cleaner cars in the US showed that they could do more.

It's interesting to wonder why Defra stuck it out on that Saturday. You'd think that this was a significant enough crisis that they'd want to highlight it, to create action. Yet they didn't. Assume there's been some power struggle between DfT "more roads are good", the Treasury, which also believe that more roads are good and clearly chose not to offer any mitigation funds, and the cabinet, who recognised that a crack down on diesels was going to be politically toxic. My delegating it to a local-government level, it's the councils that get the blame —not central government.

Since then, VW's Turbogate scandal has arrive, showing that

1. Cheating on emissions tests is ingrained into the companies to the extent they deliberately program their cars to cheat.
2. Claims Euro 6 diesels will reduce urban pollution are bollocks.
3. European car manufacturers don't give a fuck about the health of European and US citizens —let alone those in other countries.

The final point shows that Diesel car manufacturers are the new cigarette companies: willing to let their customers die in exchange for short-term profits.

Well, turbogate is here, and VW will be in the "who knew what, when" phase. The higher up the company the decision to cheat has gone (or the current position of those who knew of the cheating), the more serious it will be.

The UK and the rest of Europe cannot ignore this. They cannot lie to themselves that diesel pollution will go away as the fleet of cars, vans and buses upgrades. The governments are going to have to rush to do real-world tests, to identify which cars really are the most polluting —and push those that most diverge from the rigged tests to get fixed. It's going to reduce fuel efficiency and performance, so reduce the merits of diesel —but that is fine, because there are alternatives. Petrol and petrol hybrid cars in particular.

This cannot be brushed under the carpet.

And VW? Fucked.

Do you know their  2011-2014 model was only available in the EU in a diesel form. In the US, alongside the rigged diesels, they were happy to sell a petrol version, but here in the UK, diesel only. Models that we now know to be 4-40X more polluting than the US standards. Anyone who owns one of those cars has just taken a hit on resale value. With warnings from Defra of likely restrictions on diesel cars to come, all modern diesel cars are equally at risk —especially while there is suspicion of other car manufacturers cheating. With the EU companies being the ones who embraced diesel the most: VW, BMW, Mercedes, Renault and Peugeot in particular, French and German cars just took a hit. People selling off their petrol cars, on the other hand, are probably going to see an increase in resale value —there's less of them nowadays, and they are about to become more popular.

Meanwhile: nobody in their right minds should be buying a diesel car.

As for cyclists, maybe its time to stage some protests outside VW shops, "stop killing us' would make a good slogan.

Turbogate: the fuckup that keeps on giving

The Bedford Turbo Roundabout was already a fuckup-in-progress as soon as it was announced the cycle crossings at the roundabout exits were to be marked "cyclists dismount". Still, there were at least going to be the barriers to reduce cyclists being cut up by aggressively driving cars choosing straight-through routes

What's interesting is that -as David Hembrow regularly observes- the worst parts of Dutch Road infrastructure are being picked up and hailed as fantastic. Shared space is one example, turbo roundabouts the next. Not only are they mediocre bits of the NL roadspace, when brought to the UK they don't come with the rest of the system: bypasses and road blockings to reduce traffic flows into the shared space and viable alternative cycle routes for the roundabouts.

The South Gloucs shared space project ended up resulting in the Great Wall of Filton: a barrier added to stop motorcyclists getting through, and out of fear of pedestrians being hit by speeding cyclists. Even on a back road converted from a rat-run to a quiet road, cyclists aren't welcome.

The Bedford Turbo Roundabout is a mess spiralling down into a blatant abuse of cycling money. Sustrans should be backpedalling manically, using the death of the barriers as a way to exit without admitting that the original design was flawed the moment those blue "cyclists fuck off" signs appeared on the designs. Instead they are making things worse, issuing press releases claiming victory. If this is a victory, it is about as good as one as Blair and Bush's in Iraq, the one only those two still pretend was a a success.

It's not too late for the cycling groups to recover from this one. They need to go the council and say "no cycling cash unless the new proposed DfT signage "elephants feet" crossing goes in and those Dismount signs go out", with some raised road to indicate right of way alongside the belisha beacons. That's imperfect, but an improvement on the current debacle. Could we get it? Not while Sustrans is still giving its support.

Which is why Sustrans needs to be kicked into shape. They have got a good engineering department, and have apparently helped with some of the Bristol infrastructure development. But their campaigning group has got stuck in the late 1990s, giving the seal of approval to unacceptable mediocrity that is never going to encourage mass cycling.

They need to look at their goals and come with a nice metric: cycle routes good enough both for the 8 year old with their grandparent -and the commuter in a hurry. What is being proposed on the turbo roundabout doesn't suit either -and instead is theft of cycling money to improve traffic flow.

We get next to nothing for our infrastructure anyway -now the roundabout builders are stealing it in exchange for some cyclists dismount signs, with Sustrans saying "It's OK, take all of it". If the Bedford Turbo Roundabout gets to keep the cash, every civil engineer with a photo of a motorway junction on their wall be looking at their local cycling funding and thinking "How many cyclists dismount signs do I need to add to get that money for my junction?". Every project going over-budget can see the money and think "what little do I need to do get Sustrans approve me taking it".

And the worst part? Those civil engineers think they are doing the cyclists a favour. They will think the turbogate roundabout is an improvement; they do think that an unlit underpass with barriers and dismount signs acceptable facilities. And they will think that cycling groups that whine about this are ungrateful. Why do they think that? Because Sustrans encourages it.