Riding a bicycle is life-affirming, but I never thought writing a history book about cycling could have the sort of impact I’m about to relate. Montreal in Quebec, Canada, was a hot-bed of cycle advocacy in the 1970s and 1980s, one of the key reasons that city now has hundreds of miles of cycleways, including a two-mile curb-protected cycleway smack-bang …
Author: carltonreid
In 1935, cyclists accounted for 80 percent of the traffic in some English towns and cities
In May 1935, a Divisional Road Engineer in the Ministry of Transport wrote to the Chief Engineer in London giving the latest traffic counts: “The cycle traffic on the Wolverton Road [near Stony Stratford in Buckinghamshire] represents in numbers 54 percent of the traffic on the road throughout the day. At rush hours it reaches 80 percent of the total …
#AlternativeFact: “Cyclists cause air pollution”
“Cyclists cause air pollution” is becoming one of the regular tropes to attack cycling, wheeled out by shock-jocks, NIMBYs and even black-cab drivers (possibly tweeting such views from their diesel-powered vehicles, idling at taxi stands). It’s insidious. Have a look at this A-level physics exam paper from Edexcel: I was alerted to the questions by my 17-year-old daughter. The exam …
Let’s rescue Britain’s forgotten 1930s protected cycleways
Between 1934 and 1940 Britain’s Ministry of Transport paid local authorities to install cycle tracks. As seen and heard on the BBC, ninety or so schemes were built, resulting in perhaps as many as 500 miles of cycle tracks, some of them protected with curbs. The great majority were built – 9-ft wide and both sides of the roads – next …
Despite the car boom, cycle use doubled in the 1930s
From 1912 to 1934 the county surveyor for the County Council of Durham conducted traffic surveys on the increasingly busy Great North Road at Framwellgate Moor and Teams Crossing. “Generally, the statistics show an increase in lorry traffic and in motor cars, together with ordinary cycles. … This year ordinary cycles have more than doubled in number the figures recorded …
Netherlands vs Britain
Zoom in and out of OpenCycleMap: the difference between the Netherlands and the UK is stark, as is the difference between Belgium and France, countries which share the same topography at the border, and in parts the same language, but where the provision of cycleways is so different. There are also stark differences between the two “halves” of Belgium, the …
Just 2 percent of motorists plan to be nicer to cyclists in 2017, finds AA poll
According to the AA more than half of its members plan to drive less in 2017. The poll of 17,979 AA members found that the most common New Year’s driving resolution was to walk more. Ten percent will also try to cycle more. But the least popular resolution – with less than 2 percent of all respondents selecting it – …
Bike Boom?
Tables and graphs from Transport Statistics Great Britain: 2016 by the Department for Transport, published 8th December 2016.
Go Danish to save lives, urge motoring and cycling organisations
British Cycling, the AA and the RAC Foundation have joined forces to call for the next edition of the Highway Code to have a Danish-style priority rule with motorists giving priority to cyclists at junctions. This “Universal Duty to Give Way” rule has been operational in Nordic countries since the 1930s. In the UK the need for drivers to give …
UK government 1946: “Segregation should be the key-note of modern road design”
Long before Buchanan’s Traffic in Towns of 1963 (which dismissed cycling as a transport mode in decline and therefore unworthy of design considerations) there was an official Government style-guide: Design & Layout of Roads in Built-up Areas. This was issued by the Ministry of War Transport in 1946, and coloured transport thinking for a number of years. This document recommended …