The blog

“Is that a bicycle pump in your pocket or are you just glad to see me?”

by carltonreid / on September 13, 2013 /

1893 advert, Good Roads magazine, published by the League of American Wheelmen. Trivia: Hollywood’s bawdy actress Mae West is popularly thought to have said “Is that a gun [or pistol] in your pocket, or are you just glad to see […]

A cycle touring US President kickstarted the paving of America

by carltonreid / on September 11, 2013 /

History books have long said that Thomas Woodrow Wilson, the President of the United States during and three years after the First World War, was a huge fan of the automobile. “No more ardent motorist ever occupied the White House […]

The Dutch bike isn’t Dutch it’s English (and proudly not updated since 1911)

by carltonreid / on August 19, 2013 /

The Dutch bike – the omafiets, or grandmother bike – seems to be as Dutch as tulips and clogs. Just as tulips and clogs are not Dutch (tulips were first commercially grown in Persia and wooden shoes are global) the […]

Go Dutch, 1981

by carltonreid / on August 18, 2013 /

Why hasn’t the UK got Dutch-style cycle networks in every town, city and village? Partly it’s down to culture: the Netherlands has had 100+ years of bicycle-based national identification. This is so strong that the Dutch bike – the omafiets, […]

Sky Cycle, 1892

by carltonreid / on July 08, 2013 /

Team Sky’s Chris Froome may be an awesome climber but he can’t fly. This Sky Cyclist can. Well, on paper anyway. The unknown fellow is shown piloting his bicycle above an engineering works in New York state. The illustration below […]

US Bicycle Master Plan, 1903

by carltonreid / on June 26, 2013 /

The following is from A Treatise on Roads and Pavements of 1903 by Ira Osborn Baker, Professor of Civil Engineering at the University of Illinois. A bicycle in the eyes of the law is a vehicle and is entitled to […]

“We can’t go on in the present way much longer…let’s build little light bridges for cyclists”

by carltonreid / on June 10, 2013 /

English dramatist, novelist, poet and all-round bon vivant George R. Sims was one of the star journalists of the late Victorian and Edwardian eras. His views were sought on all manner of subjects and he could command stellar fees. No […]

“Copenhagen swarms with riders during all hours of the day”

by carltonreid / on May 20, 2013 /

“No other country has done more for the pleasure and comfort of its wheelmen than Denmark,” said a news piece in The Wheel for February 19th 1897. The American magazine was quoting from an earlier editorial in the New York […]

US senator: “[Automobiles are the future but] I cannot conceive our active Americans in carriages moved by any other motor but the horse”

by carltonreid / on May 03, 2013 /

“I imagine that one fine morning we shall wake up with apparatus ready to take us to our offices by an automobile carriage…But…I cannot conceive our active Americans adapting themselves to the pursuit of pleasure in carriages moved…by any other […]

Road users should “take care owing to the children who make the road their playground”

by carltonreid / on April 11, 2013 /

Arthur T. Poyser of the Cyclists’ Touring Club wrote a series of itinerary-style touring books for the organisation he worked for. The British Road Book, produced in 1897, came in five volumes, covering the whole of Great Britain. Scotland was […]

"How cyclists were the first to push for good roads & became the pioneers of motoring." ROADS WERE NOT BUILT FOR CARS is a print, Kindle, iPad and free e-book about roads history.

The coming of the railways in the 1830s killed off the stage-coach trade; almost all rural roads reverted to low-level local use. Cyclists were the first group in a generation to use roads and were the first to push for high-quality sealed surfaces and were the first to lobby for national funding and leadership for roads. They were also the first promoters of motoring; the first motoring journalists had first been cycling journalists; and there was a transfer of technology from cycling to motoring without which cars as we know them wouldn't exist! Nearly seventy car marques – including Rolls-Royce, Aston Martin, Chevrolet, Cadillac and GMC – had bicycling beginnings.

'Roads Were Not Built for Cars' is a history book, focussing on a time when cyclists had political clout, in Britain and especially in America. The book researches the Roads Improvement Association - a lobbying group created by the Cyclists' Touring Club in 1886 - and the Good Roads movement organised by the League of American Wheelmen in the same period.

The book was published in a Kickstarter limited-edition in September 2014. Island Press of Washington, D.C. published a revised second-edition in April 2015.

Thanks to research grants and advertising support, text-only PDF chapters from the book are slowly being made available for free to read online. The free distribution model is being used in order to get the book seen by as many eyes as possible. The paid-for publications are richly illustrated; the free versions have had the pix stripped out and replaced with adverts.

To get notification of the paid-for and free publications subscribe to the (infrequent) email newsletter. See below or in the sidebars.

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MOTORISTS' FRONT OF JUDEA: Apart from the pneumatic tyre, ball bearings, differential gears, roads, motoring, car ads, and aviation, what have the cyclists ever done for us?

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