Category Archives: Roads Were Not Built For Cars

Cycle advocacy, HGVs, Roads Were Not Built For Cars, Speed

Hate Media Inc.’s 45-point Style Guide for writing nasty pieces about cyclists

January 28, 2019 carltonreid Leave a comment

Got a quick column to write about evil cyclists? Need some pointers for a radio script poking fun at those misguided people who ride bicycles when they ought to drive cars? We’ve got your back here at Hate Media Inc.* In our definitive, 45-point Style Guide we show you the correct and proper way to blame cyclists for everything, including air pollution, traffic congestion and wasteful spending on boondoggle cycleways.

As an outgroup – “them,” not “us” – cyclists are fair game and they are easily triggered (which is good for your web traffic). But be aware that cyclists have no sense of humour, see #13, especially when you joke about killing them.

In your columns and scripts it is critical to mention that ALL cyclists are guilty of the transgressions listed below. When writing about motorists it is acceptable to write some drivers.

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1. ALL cyclists run red lights.

Some motorists may also be guilty of such rare transgressions but they are rogue and unrepresentative.

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2. Cyclists always ride on the pavement.

Cyclists should get off roads designed for motorists and ride on the pavement instead.

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3. Cyclists that ride in cities at 20mph are clearly riding too fast for the conditions and will almost certainly kill pedestrians.

It’s crazy talk to expect motorists to travel as cripplingly slow as 20mph.

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4. Cyclists ride two abreast, blocking the road.

Don’t mention the fact that motorists, even when driving solo, ride two abreast all of the time.

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5. Cyclists no longer tinkle little bells to warn pedestrians.

Cyclists expect pedestrians to jump out of the way when they rudely ring their stupid bells.

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6. Cyclists are paupers that cannot afford cars.

Cyclists are wealthy elites that own expensive carbon bikes which get in the way of poor people in cars just trying to earn a crust.

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7. Not enough cyclists wear helmets.

Cyclists wear mushrooms on their heads, haha!

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8. Cyclists don’t ride with lights.

Cyclists dazzle motorists with their flashing lights.

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9. Cyclists who ride with earbuds deserve it when they get run over and killed.

Motorists should be able to listen to loud music in their cars if they want to. It is not as though it is a distraction.

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10. Cyclists are smug treehuggers.

Cyclists emit CO2, endangering the planet.

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11. Cyclists cause pollution because of all the motorists stuck behind them forced to drive slowly.

Ergo, no cyclists, no pollution.

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12. Cycling is something you grow out of, it’s only for children not adults.

Children should stick to parks and should not be allowed to cycle on roads.

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13. Too few cyclists are killed.

Jeez, cyclists can’t take a joke.

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14. Cycling is leisure.

A motorist driving to the gym (to ride on a stationary bike) is a legitimate road user.

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15. Spending half a million on a cycleway is a subsidy too far, an incredible waste of taxpayers’ hard-earned cash.

Spending billions on new roads for more motoring is an investment.

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16. Society should pay for roads for motorists.

Cyclists should pay for cycleways.

17. Cyclists use the roads as a gym; they should ride on a velodrome instead.

Motorists have places to get to, you know.

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18. A cyclist going near a motorist’s sacrosanct car is a “jerk.”

Motorists should not give cyclists lots of space when overtaking them because that would waste, what, two seconds?

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19. Cyclists should wear yellow hi-viz jackets at all times for their own safety.

Motorists can choose whatever colour car they like: stealth grey is currently the most popular. Car? What car?

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20. Cycleways are an incredible waste of space.

Motorists should be provided with masses of free parking.

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21. Roads are dangerous so taking children to school by bicycle is criminally irresponsible.

It’s perfectly acceptable for motorists to rush their children to school in oversized SUVs and then to park right next to school gates. Kids not in cars are fair game.

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22. Dockless bikes and scooters clutter the streets.

Cars parked everywhere is totes okay.

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23. Cyclists don’t have to cycle, it’s a hairshirty, eco-loopy personal choice.

I HAVE to drive everywhere.

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24. Cycleways take up too much road space.

Roads should be widened for motorists, and especially today’s wider cars.

25. Cycle parking corrals are a waste of valuable space and, if they are to exist at all, should be hidden away.

A parking spot right outside the cafe/my house/local shop is a God-given right.

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26. Cyclists exhibit devious entitlement by demanding safety on the roads.

Motorists never exhibit any form of entitlement ever.

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27. Cycling on the sidewalk is a heinous crime.

It’s necessary for motorists to half-wheel sidewalks, where else is there to park?

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28. Cyclists should always use the cycleways provided for them at great expense, no matter how badly surfaced or stupidly routed the cycleway might be.

Motorists should have access to every road everywhere, and these roads should be butter smooth.

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29. Cyclists should be happy with cycleways that don’t go direct to destinations because they are riding for recreation not transport.

Motorists should be provided with the most direct routes possible because motoring is transport.

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30. Cyclists dress funny, they are all Lycra Louts.

Motorists are normal members of society and don’t wear silly clothes.

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31. Plans for a short stretch of cycleway should be put out to public consultation and should be blocked if it requires the loss of any car parking spaces whatsoever.

Hugely expensive road projects will cure congestion so should always be nodded through.

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32. It’s “accident.”

Never “crash.”

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33. Remember, it’s “the cyclist collided with” not “the cyclist was hit by” a car.

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34. Driverless cars roam the streets, so it’s “Four injured as car smashes into house” not “Four injured as motorist crashes car into house.”

On the other hand, always mention the mode of transport when it involves a miscreant who happens to have been riding a bicycle. So, it’s “Cyclist strangled cat,” but never “Motorist strangled cat.”

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35. Cyclists dangerously weave in and out of traffic.

It’s okay for motorists to switch lanes if there’s a gap in traffic.

36. Cyclists should not ride up the inside of trucks, putting themselves in danger.

It’s okay for truck drivers to overtake cyclists, putting these cyclists on the inside.

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37. Cycleways can start and end in the middle of nowhere.

Roads for motorists should be hyper-connected.

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38. Cyclists who ride fast are scofflaws.

Motorists may break the speed limit from time to time, but these are arbitrary war-on-the-motorist rules and, anyway, we are just trying to get somewhere in a reasonable length of time, the police should be out there catching real criminals.

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39. Cyclists who kill pedestrians deserve jail-time.

Motorists who kill pedestrians didn’t mean to so shouldn’t even be charged, never mind jailed.

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40. Any bicyclist in front of a motorist is “in the way” and has to be overtaken swiftly and aggressively.

Any car in front of a motorist is just how it is and it’s fine to wait patiently behind because it’s not like you’re going to get anywhere any faster.

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41. Electric cars should be subsidised.

Electric bikes are a luxury, middle class items and should never be subsidised.

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42. A motorist’s time is more important than a cyclist’s life.

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43. Roads were not built for bicyclists.

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44. Cyclists are very angry people, always shaking their fists.

Why do cyclists get so defensive about being nudged from behind by my bumper, cut up on corners or nearly being sideswiped when I shot out of that junction without looking for anything other than other motor vehicles? It’s a total mystery.

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45. Cycling is weird. Driving is normal.

* Naturally, Hate Media Inc. doesn’t exist, it’s a fictional representation of those mainstream media outlets that allow columnists and shock jocks to write or say things about cyclists that would never be said about other groups in society. This post was inspired by an earlier “Bingo card” and a Twitter thread.

1890s, 1900s, Roads Were Not Built For Cars

Cyclists created the European Union, sort of

May 24, 2016 carltonreid Leave a comment

British cycle tourists in Norway, c. 1887.

Who was the first to lobby for – and get – a European agreement for the cross-border free movement of people? Winston Churchill in 1946? The European Coal and Steel Community of 1951? The European Economic Community of 1957? Nope, a bunch of middle-class cyclists in 1897.

Just as cyclists have been written out of motoring’s history (when, in fact, it was cyclists who created and popularised automobiling) so the efforts of fin de siècle cyclists to create a more equitable Europe have also been largely ignored.

While Britain and Germany were steadily preparing to go to war at the end of the 19th Century cycling organisations across Europe were forging friendships, agreeing international treaties and creating a system of international governance.

Well-organised national cycling clubs across Europe – aided and abetted by the League of American Wheelmen – formed bonds to ease the travelling woes of touring cyclists. These clubs included Britain’s Cyclists’ Touring Club, founded in 1878, as well as the Union Vélocipédique de France (1881), the Dansk Cyklisk Forbund (1881), Royale Ligue Vélocipédique de Belge (1882), and the two German clubs, the Dutch Algemene Nederlandse Wielrijders Bond (1883), and the Deutsche Radfahrer Bund (1884). There were also influential national clubs in Italy, Switzerland, Austria, and Russia.

These clubs issued border permits and permits de circulation for bicycle touring but hated such bureaucratic restrictions on travel. Cycling clubs from Britain, Belgium, France, Luxembourg, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Italy and Russia met in Amsterdam in July 1897 at the invitation of the ANWB, the Dutch cycling organisation. (Today the ANWB is the main motoring and road rescue organisation in the Netherlands but was established in 1883 as a cycling club, the Algemene Nederlandse Wielrijders-bond, or the General Dutch Cyclist Union.) Later the same year the national cycling clubs met in Brussels, and agreed to start an international tourism organisation. This would go on to lobby for the removal of Europe’s borders.

The Ligue Internationale des Associations Touristes, or LIAT, was formally created at the Casino Bourgeois in Luxembourg City in August 1898. This was very much a cycling organisation to begin with but was later swamped by motoring interests. LIAT changed its name to the Alliance Internationale de Tourisme (AIT) in 1919, and is now an international federation of motoring organisations created to “represent the interests of national automobile associations and touring clubs.”

The AIT’s website makes no mention of its cycling beginnings.

One of the key campaign goals of the early Ligue Internationale des Associations Touristes was the removal of border tariffs on bicycles. Cycle tourists had to pay customs duties to “import” their machines into each European country they travelled through. This was both expensive and bothersome.

The ANWB pushed for LIAT to embrace two key principles, the “most favoured nation”, an economic trade agreement, and the “principle of reciprocity”, the concept that any favours granted by one state should be also granted to others, the bedrock of international treaties.

In pushing for such pan-European principles the ANWB and the other national cycling organisations were years ahead of nation states. Naturally, there were points of difference between the cycling organisations. The Austrian club used its veto to prevent the Czech cycling organisation from joining LIAT (the Austro-Hungarian Empire was fractured, the “sick man of Europe”), and the Union Vélocipédique de France didn’t want to end the tariff system because, as France was Europe’s most popular destination for cycle tourists, the UVF made a pretty penny from memberships sold to foreign cycle tourists.

Despite these differences, at a LIAT meeting in London in 1899, twelve national clubs (apart from the French one) signed a “principle of reciprocity” agreement.

This agreement isn’t an exact precursor to the European Union but cosmopolitan cyclists were certainly discussing the free international exchange of goods, people, and ideas long before the concepts solidified during the Cold War. At the height of the First World War, the president of the Italian Touring Club remembered the “fruitful international collaboration” between pre-war cycle and motor tourists, and wrote that “touring is a powerful expression of national unity and of solid social concord.”

And it was cyclists who were among the earliest to push for change in Europe because, according to German writer Eduard Bertz in his Philosophy of Bicycles of 1900, cyclists were members of a “great, world-encompassing party of reform.” Cyclists, in short, were agitators. They pushed to change the world – women’s emancipation was partly pedal-powered, for instance – but such agitation is now largely forgotten.

Cycle advocacy, London, Roads Were Not Built For Cars

Roads are not just about movement says London’s Transport Commissioner

January 28, 2016 carltonreid 2 Comments

London’s transport commissioner Mike Brown said last night that roads were not just for cars but for people, too. Roads have “place” and “movement” functions, he said. Pointedly, and in his first major pronouncement on cycling since becoming commissioner last year, he also had a strong message for those individuals and groups who wish to see fewer people on bikes, not more.

“I am a huge defender of our Cycle Superhighways,” he told an assembled audience of the great and good in transport and design. Prominent developers were in the audience as were leading architects and important people from the City. And just so none of those present could be in any doubt about his strength of commitment to “our” cycling infrastructure he stressed that those opposed to providing more protection for cyclists in London were “wrong”.

“Although [the Cycle Superhighways] may reduce some road space for motorised vehicles I have to tell you, to avoid a single death or serious injury for cyclists makes all that investment worthwhile,” said commissioner Brown.

“Those who are critical of it, I have to tell you, I think you’re wrong.”

A long stretch of Cycle Superhighway at Blackfriars is already open for business

To perhaps the consternation of some, he added: “Cycling will continue to grow.”

Brown was giving the keynote speech at the opening of Streets Ahead, a month-long exhibition on the future of London’s roads staged by New London Architecture, an influential think-forum and research organisation. The exhibition is being held in NLA’s posh London HQ. Last night was the preview evening; Brown joked that nobody should mention anything about the exhibition until it was officially opened by Boris Johnson this weekend. At least I hope it was a joke because I tweeted madly from the event, spurning the Italian wine and beer.

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I tweeted some pix, and below I’ve embedded a whole load more. As you can see, cycling plays a prominent role in the exhibition which comes as no surprise really as the chair of New London Architecture is architectural writer Peter Murray, a not-at-all-secret cyclist. (At a meeting we both attended at the Department for Transport the day before the Streets Ahead opening I learned that Murray had done what I did at the Velocity conference in Nantes last year, and that’s count the number of active-travel proponents riding on the expo’s escalators rather than bounding up.)

Peter Murray (left), Mike Brown and Ashok Sinha.

Ashok Sinha, chief executive of the London Cycling Campaign, told me it was “massively heartening” to hear commissioner Brown be so positive about the future of cycling in London.

“We have a crunch coming,” said Sinha. “There’s predicted to be a huge growth London’s population, and cycling is one of the ways we’ll be able to keep this city moving. The new infrastructure isn’t just about safety, it’s about planning our city for the future.”

Cycling is prominently featured at Streets Ahead

The NLA's HQ has a permanent 1:2000 scale model of London. The model is 12.5 metres-long and represents 85 square kilometres of London — The NLA’s HQ has a permanent 1:2000 scale model of London. The model is 12.5 metres-long and represents 85 square kilometres of London

The 1960s Buchanan Report warned of the dangers of mass motorisation ... — The 1960s Buchanan Report warned of the dangers of mass motorisation …

Walthamstow's "mini Holland" is featured in Streets Ahead — Walthamstow’s “mini Holland” is featured in Streets Ahead

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Thanks to Peter Murray for introducing me to Mike Brown – I was introduced as the author of Roads Were Not Built For Cars, the predecessor to Bike Boom. When Brown said he was interested in the history of London’s roads (which also features as part of Streets Ahead) I gave him a copy of the book which he asked me to sign. I have no idea whether commissioner Brown is a cyclist so instead of writing “Keep pedalling” as I often do when signing books, I wrote “Keep rolling”, which covers most transport modes.

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Streets Ahead: The future of London’s roads
Thursday 28 January – Wednesday 24 February 2016

As part of Streets Ahead NLA is staging lunchtime soapbox talks every Friday in February. The discussion on 12th February is on the future of cycling.

A Book about the Global Growth in Cycling 1905–1980