During the lockdown cold spell, I watched a young woman dragging her buggy along the centre of the road in Huddersfield. The snow-covered pavements were all but impassable for the pushchair’s tiny wheels and the road was the easier, yet arguably more dangerous option. To demonstrate this, a Range Rover sped past, splashing the woman and her child with dirty brown slush, beeping angrily as it whizzed by.

I stopped to sympathise and learned that she was walking back from an unsuccessful trip to the bank with her toddler. The buses weren’t running, she didn’t have a car, she didn’t have any money - the bank had been closed because of snow and the pandemic. She didn’t have a choice but to struggle home on foot.

Reflecting on this, I started thinking about our transport systems and our street design and maintenance. Who benefits? The woman and her child or the drivers in their warm cars aggressively demanding that she gets out of their way? Why are we designing systems that favour people who are already privileged and disadvantage people who have to travel on foot with young children in bad weather?

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