“No one who has lived in London can doubt that the pressure on the streets is getting yearly heavier and heavier, and becoming more and more unmanageable.” That was the conclusion of civil engineer Sir John Wolfe-Barry, the son of […]
Continue ReadingThe King’s Highway is the common track for all classes of traffic—foot passengers, perambulators, bicycles, milk-carts, farm wagons and cattle—and no person has the right to behave on the common highway in such a manner as to imperil the safety […]
Continue ReadingEnglish 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 […]
Continue ReadingI’ve just left the stimulating Cycle City conference in Birmingham. 450 delegates from across the UK – and the world, in fact – came together to chew the cycling fat in a number of seminars and talks, some held in […]
Continue ReadingCities are living, breathing, evolving entities. British ones are rammed with cars right now. As I wrote on the Guardian Bike Blog yesterday, this isn’t necessarily how it will be in the future. Cities can be reshaped. And not just […]
Continue ReadingVictorian touring cyclists from Britain often complained about the rough granite setts used in Belgium, setts now famous as the pavé to be found on about 50kms of today’s Paris-Roubaix road race. 19th Century cyclists preferred macadam surfaces (small stones […]
Continue ReadingViewed from a windscreen, roads look as though they were built for cars and trucks. Britain’s motorways and the elevated arterial road systems of the 1960s and 1970s seem to bear this out but such car-centric highways are the exception […]
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