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You don't need to fly to the other side of the planet to undertake an expedition; The Hold-Up Paddle is an inflatable paddle board and tent that packs into a backpack. Once its fins have been removed, the paddle board becomes a mattress over which you can erect a specially designed tent. In the morning you need only fold up the tent and...

By 2050, the UN expects the global urban population to be 6.3 billion - the same size as the world’s entire population in 2004. Quite apart from the demand on natural resources, significant amounts of new housing will be required to accommodate this explosive level of growth. Architects are already delivering a new generation of high-rise...

When it comes to our choice of bicycle, we British are a pretty conservative bunch – despite a whole world of designs from which to choose, it can seem like every cyclist on the roads is on a road bike or something cheap and heavy from Halfords. Putting aside the fact that, as a nation, we wilfully overlook the practicality of town bikes...

As the debate in Britain over the high-speed rail project HS2 continues to simmer, in America, the billionaire inventor and entrepreneur Elon Musk has turned his attention to rail travel of the near future and a high-speed connection between Los Angeles and San Francisco code-named Hyperloop One - a 800 mph-concept referred to as “a cross...

January might have been a relatively dry month across Britain, but a combination of freezing temperatures and widespread gritting made the roads seem especially grimy. Cleaning a bike after every ride is an arduous task, but recommended if components are not to corrode or wear prematurely. Win a bicycle cleaning kit To make the task easier,...

Electric cars, bicycles, scooters and skateboards may offer a quieter and cleaner alternative to the internal combustion engine, but does battery technology threaten to make us even lazier than we are already? Gita means 'short trip' in Italian and the name Piaggio has given to its latest project; a smart, self-propelled shopping trolley....

Office workers who sit at a desk for eight hours need to take one hour’s physical activity a day to offset an increased risk of death, according to research by Cambridge University and published in The Lancet. The research found the risk of dying was 9.9 per cent for those who sat for eight or more hours a day compared with 6.8 per cent for...

We were asked this week to share our views on the changing face of transport in London. Here's what we said. One of Transport for London’s environmental goals is to decrease the emissions to the air from traffic. What do you see is being currently done to improve London’s transportation system from a sustainable perspective and in relation...

Faced with a generation of fatter and older drivers, engineers in America are building supersized crash test dummies. The current design of crash test dummy dates from the early 1970s and was modelled on the weight of a man on the 50th percentile. Since then, the average driver has become notably older and heavier....

A love affair with cars and decades of apathy from politicians and planners has perpetuated a transport caste system - a back-to-front approach to how we organise our lives which sees people forced to defer to motorised traffic. The cost of maintaining this status quo is high: Thousands of people in Britain each year die or are seriously...