34 | DECEMBER 2018
Motoring
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‘ELECTRIFIED URBAN
VISION FOR THE FUTURE’
‘The Electrified Automotive
Future and its Relationship to
Architecture’ was the subject
of an evening hosted by Jaguar
design and a group of London’s
leading RIBA architects, planners,
property developers and infra-
structure experts.
The Royal Institute of British
Architects (RIBA), of which Ian
Callum is an Honorary Fellow, is
the professional body for archi-
tects in the UK with more than
40,000 members around the
world.
Ian Callum and several ar-
chitects led by award-winning
Jon Eaglesham of Barr Gazetas
presented concepts depicting a
joint-vision as to what an urban
future of automotive electrifica-
tion could look like.
The concepts are
described below:
Today – what a motorway
service station could be… In this
example we take a traditional,
tired motorway service station
and breathe new electrified life
in to it. Today motorway ser-
vices are often an unpleasant
jumble of commercial buildings
servicing noisy, polluted motor-
ways. With electrification, much
reduced noise and pollution
together with increased ‘dwell
time’, result in such stations
becoming destinations with an
array of amenities and services
including farm shops, gym-
nasiums, swimming pools and
restaurants to give travellers
greater options to occupy the
time required to charge their
vehicles.
Tomorrow – NCP of the fu-
ture… This is based on one of
the UK’s most iconic multi-sto-
rey car parks – on Welbeck
Street, hidden behind Oxford
Street in London’s West End.
Re-imagined as a self-sufficient
charging plaza, the proposal is
to reinvent the existing stock
of city centre multi-storey car
parks, where owners of electric
vehicles who are less likely to
have access to off-street park-
ing at their homes, can charge
their cars adjacent to good
public transport links.
Electric City – fast-ap-
proaching reality of completely
emission free major cities…
Reimagining post-industrial
wastelands. Here we have taken
Liverpool’s Stanley Dock as an
example. In this image it has
been reimagined as a com-
munity interchange, helping to
rejuvenate the city through the
creation of new community fa-
cilities and industries based on
green energy on redundant sites
country wide.
Electric future – opportu-
nity for wholesale change, up
and down the country… In this
image, London is a cleaner,
healthier city where repur-
posed, new infrastructure, con-
nected to electric vehicles, has
allowed a proliferation of veg-
etation and green space. Cities
across the UK are electrically
self-sufficient harnessing solar
and tidal power to power the
increased number of electric
vehicles, both land-based and
airborne.
www.jaguar.com
BUDGET POTHOLE FUND NOT NEARLY
ENOUGH FOR DISILLUSIONED DRIVERS
Leading road safety charity
IAM RoadSmart has said while the
£420 million in new investment in
tackling Britain’s pothole crisis is
welcome, it doesn’t go nearly far
enough and is merely a drop in the
ocean to deal with a long-term and
major issue.
Yesterday’s budget saw Chancel-
lor Philip Hammond announce the
cash injection for our beleaguered
roads, alongside a £28.8 billion
fund to upgrade England’s motor-
ways.
Mr Hammond announced £25.5
billion for Highways England for
major road upgrades between 2020
and 2025 and an extra £3.5 billion
of funding allocated to major local
routes, under the jurisdiction of
local councils. The £420 million for
potholes is on top of an existing
fund of almost £300 million.
However just three months ago
IAM RoadSmart conducted a sur-
vey of over 7,000 of its members,
finding how disillusioned they
had become with Britain’s rotten
roads.
Some 47% - over 3,400 respond-
ents – said they had experienced
damage to their car, commercial
vehicle, motorbike or bicycle or
personal injury because of hitting
a pothole.
Around 90% had spotted a
deterioration of some level in
the roads they use with just over
50% rating the state of their
roads as ‘much worse’ in the past
three years and 38% rating them
‘worse.’
Some 81% - close to 6,000 peo-
ple – said they have noticed ‘many
more’ potholes in the past three
years, adding in the 13% who
have seen ‘a few more,’ that gives
a total of 94% who report more
potholes.
Over 56% said they must take
avoiding action on every journey
to dodge potholes, while 27% said
they have to steer around a pot-
hole every day.
www.iamroadsmart.com/business