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Notes & References

by carltonreid / on August 17, 2014 /

…the great world of London.”⁠ The Old War Office: a history, Ministry of Defence, 10 December 2012, https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachmentdata/file/49055/oldwarofficebuild.pdf “I shall never forget the sight that met my gaze when I…

Info changes or upgrades

by carltonreid / on September 10, 2014 /

Sorry, it’s no longer possible to make changes….

The “Mecca of all good cyclists”: Ripley Road

by carltonreid / on March 02, 2012 /

…Answered the fair Annie ‘Cold ham, cold mutton, cold beef.’ ‘Anything hot?’ asked I. ‘Mustard,’ said she, and scored one.” Annie, then 22 (that’s probably her on the left in…

Newcastle’s Nürburgring: my part in its downfall

by carltonreid / on October 16, 2015 /

…of pedestrians in order to make the point he felt they would not hold sway for much longer. A former leisure cyclist and, by 1901, an enthusiastic motorist, Wells predicted…

The Human Hen

by carltonreid / on December 06, 2014 /

…honour, that when I leaped and bounded through a crowd without giving audible warning I jostled the old trouts, and sometimes knocked them down; and the old trouts naturally resented…

MOTORISTS’ FRONT OF JUDEA: What Have The Cyclists Ever Done for Us?

by carltonreid / on January 20, 2012 /

…wrote Rees Jeffreys. “Not only were houses made distressingly uncomfortable by dust, but household work was increased greatly by the mud and dust which children brought into the house on…

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

by carltonreid / on November 03, 2015 /

…“spokes” radiating out from London.[8] “The face of any old road,” wrote Montague, “is as visibly filled with expression and lined with experience as any old man’s.” That was still…

“The remarkable manner in which new roads create new traffic”: a history of induced demand

by carltonreid / on February 01, 2013 /

…alter their old Properties, and to recede from building their houses again on their old Ground and Foundations; as also the distrust in many, and Unwillingness to give up their…

Roads Were Not Built For Cars

by carltonreid / on November 29, 2011 /

…£4000) I found out there was demand for the information. If you haven’t already signed up for the book notification email, please do so. Your details won’t be sold or…

Where driving is easy, Brits drive

by carltonreid / on February 25, 2013 /

…managed to secure permission and funding for his cycleways and his cycle bridges and his underpasses. Claxton’s grand-daughter Joanna Brown told me he was very proud of his cycleways and…

"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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