Danny Yee

A novella of mathematics and politics in post-war Germany, plus a short story about a deserting soldier dannyreviews.com/h/Deserters....

When push comes to shove, the University of Oxford doesn’t care at all about residents. Witness its insistence on increasing the car parking on the Warneford site, undermining any sustainable transport across Headington and …

Oxford Clarion@oxfordclarion.bsky.social

The strategy aims for Oxfordshire to produce 20 unicorns (businesses valued at $1 bn+) by 2035, attract £1 bn a year investment, create 30,000 tech jobs and also considers social value; That residents should feel the benefits of growth, and that more people are able to participate in that future.

The Little Clarendon Street / Wellington Square development is another example, reducing the public space and changing retail frontage to closed off teaching rooms.

And the university and colleges combining to block the county's Parking Standards for New Developments, without offering any constructive alternative, illustrates a failure to think about transport at any kind of strategic level.

Oxford Clarion@oxfordclarion.bsky.social

… making a mockery of Oxford University’s purported commitment to Vision Zero. Similarly, much of the college development around the outskirts of Oxford is being pushed through despite the social costs for everyone else in the city.

Danny Yee reposted

Active Travel Academy

@active-ata.bsky.social

Low Traffic Neighbourhoods - 'more research need'.. Well from 2022 to 2025, funded by the NIHR, we (& colleagues) did that research. And we have 10(!!) peer reviewed articles so far, with more on the way. Here's a summary of our papers so far (all open access so get reading):

This biography of Fyodor Dostoevsky stays close to him as a person, with no discussion of his works, let alone ventures into literary criticism. dannyreviews.com/h/Dostoevsky...

lithub.comA Bookstore Boom in a Time of Literacy DeclineI was standing in line at Chaucer’s Books, my local indie, when it occurred to me that the line was longer than usual. This has been happening regularly enough that I’ve stopped being s…

Bookshops booming while literacy declines lithub.com/a-bookstore-...

silentroom.mediaAI Has Finally Learned to Write Perfectly. That's the Worst Thing That Could Have Happened."Slop" went into Merriam-Webster in under two years; "spam" took fifteen. A history of the word, the ten tells that give machine prose away, and why the detector is always chasing a moving target.

A brief history of AI slop silentroom.media/the-craft/br... (Silent Room)

Danny Yee reposted

The Rancid Highwayman

@rantyhighwayman.eurosky.social

Hot news for cycling for transport. Well Managed Highway Infrastructure: A Code of Practice has been updated after a long wait. code.ukrlg.uk

code.ukrlg.ukcode.ukrlg.uk

3.15pm on a Tuesday (in uni term, with the schools all in) and Oxford traffic doesn't look terrible.

4.30pm and Banbury and Woodstock Rds both clearly worse than Botley Rd. Still school-run traffic?

5.20pm. Woodstock and Banbury still seem clearly worse than the other radials.

3.15pm on a Tuesday (in uni term, with the schools all in) and Oxford traffic doesn't look terrible.

3.30pm

Banbury Rd now backed up through Summertown. Frideswide Square not looking too bad.

wanderingdanny.comLTNs and inclusive mobilityNo inclusive transport system for Oxford is possible without low traffic neighbourhoods. A genuinely inclusive transport system has to work for everyone. For eight year olds walking or cycling to sc...

I am very disappointed that the City council is calling for measures that will endanger thousands of children trying to get too and from school, or make other trips around their neighbourhood. Please read wanderingdanny.com/oxford/2023/...

Oxford Clarion@oxfordclarion.bsky.social

She added: “A lot of the current work is being carried out by Oxfordshire County Council not utility companies. We are asking the County Council to review this week’s disruption to better coordinate their roadworks and use all available tools at their disposal to reduce congestion.”

Danny Yee reposted

Will Norman

@willnorman.co.uk

4 Sept

Croydon unlawfully removed a safety scheme paid for with public money. Rightly, TfL have required the money to be repaid & paused future funding - subject to the council submitting a revised plan that meets the requirements. mylondon.news/news/transpo...

Oxfordshire Liveable Streets

The Conservatives want more road injuries and slower public transport.

Peter Walker@peterwalker99.bsky.social

On the main stage at Conservative conference, the shadow transport team is discussing how to “counter” things like 20mph zones and bus lanes. The war on the motorist lives.

Danny Yee reposted

@oxlivstreets.bsky.social

1/ 70% of primary school kids killed or seriously injured on Britain's roads are hurt within 500m of their own school, according to DfT figures for 2025. ‼️ What this means is, the most dangerous part of a child's day is the journey to school ‼️ www.gov.uk/government/s...

gov.ukReported road casualties Great Britain: child casualty factsheet, 2025

Danny Yee reposted

Oxford Clarion

@oxfordclarion.bsky.social

Plans have been unveiled for a network of cycle routes linking nearby towns and villages to Oxford, backed by county and city councils – and unusually, the University of Oxford. The Oxford Greenways would connect 200,000 residents to the city on traffic-free paths. oxfordclarion.uk/oxford-green...

oxfordclarion.ukOxford Greenways: a cure for congestion?How far would you be prepared to cycle to work? Research suggests that, for most people, 2 to 5 miles is the sweet spot. That's 10 to 30 minutes each way. Enough for health benefits, but not too tiri...

Danny Yee reposted

Nathan Ley

@nathanley.com

cllrdrnathanley.substack.com/p/the-roofs-...

cllrdrnathanley.substack.comThe roofs won’t be enough“Just put them on roofs instead” is the most comfortable argument in British politics. It is also the one that quietly hands the bill to our children.

The route under the Botley railway bridge has fully opened, so I went down to see how the walking and cycling provision works. Summary: the route under the railway bridge is pretty good, the transitions on either side are terrible for cycling (and not that good for walking).

The sections with fence rather than wall have some extra effective with, with a bit of space for handlebars, and the fence on the southern side has been offset 0.09m towards the carriageway, which is even better.

Apparently the south-side fence is going to be replaced by black fencing as on the north side - I have asked that the offset be retained (or even increased).

At its narrowest, where there is a solid wall under the bridge itself, the cycle track on the south side has an effective width of only 1.36m (0.14m lost to the thermoplastic white divider and 0.5m taken off for the wall, following LTN 1/20 Table 5-3).

So this fails compliance wth LTN 1/20, where the "absolute minimum" width for a cycle track is 1.5m. In practice people can cycle on the footpath side if necessary, just as people walking can use the cycle side - and possibly this would be better if it were formally a 4m wide shared path.

It will be interesting to see how this changes with different levels of congestion and improved user knowledge. (But the wayfinding here needs this to be legible to tourists, visitors, and occasional users.)

[ As an aside, the 120 cycle movements I counted in half an hour is a lot for a Sunday outside term time. It would be good to get some better count data, but it is possible that Botley Rd will now be the busiest of Oxford's arterials (excluding Magdalen Bridge). ]

There were a lot of people cycling on the carriageway rather than using the cycle tracks, and far more eastbound (35%) than westbound (8%). This may be because the start of the cycle track is a lot less easy to see coming from Botley Rd...

... And for much of my counting period the westbound carriageway was congested (Thames Water still has one-way working over the bridge).

There were people cycling "the wrong way", but not that many - 8 out of 120 in thirty minutes of counting. Given the complete lack of signs or marking to indicate that cycling is supposed to be one way, this was less than I expected.

(Note that cycling "the wrong way" here is perfectly legal: in the UK there is no real way to make a cycle track one-way. But the county has put in advisory directional markings elsewhere, so probably should here too.)

The actual routes under the bridge seemed to work pretty well. There were people walking everywhere, and sometimes cycling on the footpath to get around people on the cycle path, and I heard a few bells being sounded, but there didn't seem like much conflict between people walking and cycling.

wanderingdanny.comagainst "dual provision" for cyclingOne of the biggest problems with cycling infrastructure in Oxford is that it is riddled with what I call "dual provision", where two bad options are offered to people cycling instead of one good one. ...

The problem on the east side is that Frideswide Square doesn’t allocate any space for cycling wanderingdanny.com/oxford/2025/... so there is a complete mess where the separate provision under the railway bridge ends abruptly.

Tony in Oxford@anthonyinoxford.bsky.social

@oxfordclarion.bsky.social heh, can you do piece on Botley bridge road and cycle layouts? Illegible and dangerous. Lots of local chatter about it being a mess. Design by WSP. FOI on who in the local councils signed off would be useful. My prediction, serious accident within 3 months😥 Thank you.

Danny Yee reposted

George Monbiot

@georgemonbiot.bsky.social

18 Sept

A short thread on “legitimate concerns”. The phrase is used repeatedly by UK government ministers. The Home Secretary is at it again this week. But only ever - as far as I can tell - in one context: people’s response to the arrival of asylum seekers. Please read whole 🧵before responding - thanks

So I made a second Sydney cycle trip, this time from Circular Quay to Newtown. Based on just two rides I am of course competent to comment on the Sydney CBD cycling network... bsky.app/profile/dann...

Danny Yee@dannyyee.bsky.social

I hadn't ridden a bike in Sydney for fifteen years (and hardly at all before that), but I couldn't resist trying out the new Harbour Bridge ramp. So I took a Lime hire bike and cycled from Waverton station to Taylor Square - about 7km (and $23).

Another thing I wonder about is the cycle track on Wilson St. East of Golden Grove St traffic volumes are very low (there were fewer cars than cycles when I cycled it), so it seems entirely unnecessary to have a cycle track.

wanderingdanny.comcycle streets for Oxford?In Britain the term "cycle street" is not well known and there seem to be few implementations. I am talking about what the Dutch call a fietsstraat, the French a vélorue and the Germans a Fahrradstraß...

Or, looking at this another way, entirely unfair that people cycling get 2 metres of width and motor traffic gets 5.5m (plus all the space for parking). At least the eastern half of Wilson St would work better as a "cycle street". wanderingdanny.com/oxford/2024/...

Danny Yee@dannyyee.bsky.social

Moving between Castlereagh St and Prince Alfred Park, for example, or getting from the George St to the Wilson St cycle track. In general, it feels like the major cycle tracks have been "tacked on" to the existing road network, rather than the road network being redesigned to support cycling.

A small suggestion is that the kerbing separating cycle tracks from the main carriageway should be chamfered (on the cycle side) to increase the effective width of the track and reduce the risk of pedal strike. (If no one is manufacturing chamfered kerbing there's a market opportunity.)

Danny Yee@dannyyee.bsky.social

Most of the city centre roads have a lot of reasonably fast-moving motor traffic and no cycling infrastructure at all -- not even relatively cheap/easy measures such as advanced stop lines -- making getting to or from the cycle tracks problematic.

The connections between segments of cycle track are also poor, involving sections shared with pedestrians (or even pedestrianised, with "dismount" signs), wayfinding that is difficult or confusing, etc.

Danny Yee@dannyyee.bsky.social

It doesn't seem like a problem yet, but some of the tracks will be too narrow if cycling numbers increase. In some places the best way to solve this might be to make them one-way and add a cycle track the other way on the other side of the street. Two metres is an ok width for a one-way track...

In general, getting onto or off the main cycle tracks is not really provided for. This is "addressed" in some places by simply banning cycle left or right turns from the tracks -- or by providing options that involve cycles turning on a dime.

Danny Yee@dannyyee.bsky.social

First of all, the major cycle tracks - along Castlereagh St, Wilson St, etc - basically work well. This is hugely better than anything that existed fifteen years ago, and opens up cycling as an option for a much broader range of people and trips.

One major problem is the "red wave" phenomenon I mentioned before, where signal optimisation for motor traffic results in people cycling getting red lights at every junction. (Which contributes to riders jumping red lights, which contributes to anti-cycling sentiment.)

Danny Yee reposted