The blog

Driving on pavements is illegal but parking on them isn’t, confirms Britain’s top traffic cop

by carltonreid / on November 25, 2015 /

Five years after the taking of this famous photograph of a car parked on the pavement (sorry about those blokes blocking the view of the VW Beetle) it was made an offence for motorists for park on footways. But only […]

Will today’s motorways suffer a similar fate to the railway lines that are now rail-trails?

by carltonreid / on November 03, 2015 /

Last night I gave a book talk in Canterbury at the AGM of Spokes, the cycle campaign group of East Kent. I stayed with my sister overnight – she and her family live in Temple Ewell, a bypassed village on […]

If they’re good enough there’s no need for compulsion to use bike paths

by carltonreid / on October 20, 2015 /

“If the paths are by any miracle to be made of such width and quality as to be equal to our present road system, it would not be necessary to pass any laws to compel cyclists to use them; the […]

Newcastle’s Nürburgring: my part in its downfall

by carltonreid / on October 16, 2015 /

Jesmond Dene, a steep-sided wooded valley and park less than a mile from the centre of Newcastle, has a leafy, winding road running on the edge of its western side. Because, in parts, it hangs over the edge of the […]

“Take it easy, motorist”

by carltonreid / on July 28, 2015 /

Scoundrel Ernest Marples – the first CTC member to become minister of transport (he and his wife toured by bicycle) – officially opened the M1, Britain’s first city-to-city motorway, in November 1959. His ribbon-cutting speech was probably considered twee even […]

Parliamentary talk with All-Party motoring and cycling groups

by carltonreid / on November 05, 2014 /

I’ll be giving a history talk in committee room 8 in the House of Commons on 19th November. The talk is invite-only and I have a tiny number of invites. Contact me if you’d be interested in attending. You’d need […]

Punishment pass, 1869

by carltonreid / on March 30, 2014 /

I’m currently putting the finishing touches to the chapter about the road rights of pedestrians, equestrians, cyclists, and motorists. The right to “pass and repass” on Britain’s highways is ancient and has long been cherished. Many of these ancient rights […]

When juries weren’t packed with motorists

by carltonreid / on February 20, 2014 /

Operation Safeway, 1870

by carltonreid / on January 15, 2014 /

According to a report from Transport for London, in 2012 there were 134 deaths of non-motorists: 69 pedestrians, 27 motorbike/scooter riders and 14 cyclists. Perhaps amazingly, the death rate in 1870 was almost the same as today (albeit the mix […]

Today calling 1948: oi, where are our cycleways?

by carltonreid / on November 30, 2013 /

In 1948, Britain’s Minister for Transport Alfred Barnes introduced the Special Roads Bill. This would – eventually – lead to the creation of Britain’s motorway network. But where are the cycleways promised in the 1948 plans? Apart from the New […]

"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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