Cycling
Following the explosion of an e-bike battery at Rayners Lane station last month TfL has banned non-folding e-bikes from its rail and tube services
For many disabled people in Britain, the simple act of getting from A to B is a daily battle against an inaccessible, unreliable, and often indifferent transport system. A new report from the Transport Committee lays bare the shocking reality: people left stranded at airports for hours, taxi drivers refusing to take passengers with assistance dogs, and a fragmented complaints system that leads nowhere.
E-bikes are flying off the shelves across Europe. Here in the UK, not so much. In Germany, over 2 million e-bikes sold last year – that’s over half of all bikes sold there and four times the number of electric cars sold. Meanwhile, our own e-bike sales hover at a modest 150,000 units a year. So, what’s Germany doing right that Britain is getting so wrong?
The urban car is about as well-suited to the modern metropolis as a hippopotamus to a studio flat. Summer streets sag under its weight, our air thickens with its exhalations of nitrogen oxides and soot, and all the while, the creature demands more - more space to move, more space to rest. The sheer spatial absurdity of it: Each steel-and-glass sarcophagus idling for hours, occupying far more square footage than the bodies it transports. And yet, bizarrely, we persist.
The explosion of an e-bike battery at Rayners Lane station last month was undeniably alarming. Flames and toxic fumes disrupted services on the Piccadilly and Metropolitan lines, and the London Fire Brigade had to intervene. In response, the RMT and Aslef unions calling for a total ban on e-bikes on the London Underground, threatening industrial action if Transport for London (TfL) does not comply.
