This week I was having a rare bored moment in which I ended up watching an online conference featuring Sir David King – he used to be the Government’s chief scientific adviser, and now he’s in Oxford heading the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment at Oxford University.

He and his team have been looking at reducing emissions from transport and how it will adapt with increases in the price of oil as supply gradually dwindles.

Unsurprisingly, the 10 largest world cities which have the lowest density are all in the US, not least as most of their growth took place after the car became popular.

European cities were generally built before cars and so people used their surroundings in different ways, travelling less, consuming goods produced largely nearby to the city, and transporting things by horse or ox and cart.

What happens as cities spread out further is that people spend far longer commuting each day. In Houston, Texas, people spend an average three-and-a-half hours a day commuting, almost entirely by car – so time that should be spent moving around is spent sat still in a car.

The result of this is a direct link with car use and obesity; clearly, if people spend a long time sitting in their car, they are more likely to be overweight.

What David King’s report says, in essence, is that we need to reduce the amount of fuel being wasted, and in turn this might make our lives easier too.

For instance, a smoother flow of traffic will reduce the stop/start of traffic jams – these increase the amount of fuel used, whereas if you keep a car moving at a steady speed it uses less (unless you’re pushing above 60mph when the car uses more again).

One way would be ‘smart’ traffic lights or take some away completely – a clear example where this would improve things in Oxford is at the snarl-up commonly known as Frideswide Square. Even Oxfordshire County Council has agreed that this has to go, and the redesign when it is eventually implemented will ensure that the junction can be negotiated without endless waits at lights.

Another more contentious issue brought up at the online conference was keeping the flow of traffic moving by allowing lorries to use bus lanes.

While this might improve traffic flows, as a cyclist this thought gives me the willies. Cyclists already share bus lanes with black cabs (who I have found personally, to be polite to cyclists) and now minicabs.

Lorries are large vehicles which have a notorious blind spot. Maybe we all need to go on training courses together, so that we can learn how to deal with the other road user? Or maybe this would cause a huge punch-up. Who knows?

However, there other ways of reducing emissions: in 2008 the driving test introduced a part dedicated to ‘Ecodriving’ (driving in a way that reduces the amount of fuel used).

Apparently if you increased the amount of driver training and use ITS (intelligent transport systems), you can reduce 15 per cent of carbon emissions from transport.

However, none of this will do anything about the fact that if cities continue to expand, the amount of vehicles on roads will keep rising if people’s transport patterns don’t change.

So as cyclists, we should allow ourselves a smug sense of satisfaction that increasing our role is part of the solution...