The blog

The “Mecca of all good cyclists”: Ripley Road

by carltonreid / on March 02, 2012 /

The War of the Worlds, the pretty Dibble sisters, Occam’s Razor, women’s liberation, and the London Olympics: all are linked by the “most famous cycling highway in the world.” On Saturday, July 29th, 2012, a fast-moving peloton of professional cyclists […]

Puzzle-time, 1914. Or is it?

by carltonreid / on February 01, 2012 /

This is a puzzle. In more ways than one. It was published in a puzzle-book from 1914 but the dress and the subject matter don’t ring true for such a date. The League of American Wheelmen had morphed into the […]

New York City once had the best bike path in the world

by carltonreid / on January 31, 2012 /

Netherlands schmetherlands, the country with the best riding conditions for cyclists used to be America. Difficult to imagine, but in the 1890s a number of American cities could boast the world’s best bicycle-infrastructure. Part paid for by pushy, influential cyclists, […]

The Red Flag Run, motoring’s flagship event, was created by a bicycle builder

by carltonreid / on January 27, 2012 /

The famous Emanicipation Run of 1896, the drive from London to Brighton, now reenacted each year as one of the key events in British motoring history, was organised by a bicycle designer and bicycle company owner. Harry Lawson was the […]

Hanging from a railway bridge with one hand, carrying a heavy bicycle in the other

by carltonreid / on January 17, 2012 /

In the early years of the 20th Century, Sears Roebuck & Co. sold a device “popular with railroad and telegraph employees, both male and female.” The Harris 20th Century Railroad Attachment promised to make a “regular railroad velocipede out of […]

Tarmac exec said cyclists were the first to push for improved roads

by carltonreid / on January 12, 2012 /

In his 1968 book Black Top: A History of the British Flexible Roads Industry J. B. F. Earle (a former commercial director of Tarmac Ltd., and first chairman of the Federation of Coated Macadam Industries) wrote: “The first concerted pressure […]

Definition of ‘car’, 1907: “an ingenious device for public slaughter”

by carltonreid / on January 11, 2012 /

In its Victorian heyday the satirical magazine Punch (1841-2002) poked fun at bicyclists and automobilists: both were guilty of “scorching” (speeding) and both ignored the prior road rights of pedestrians. However, by the 1920s, ‘Motor Mania’ had seen to it […]

Ray LaHood, John the Scorcher, some bloomers and a bunch of brigands

by carltonreid / on January 10, 2012 /

When, in 2010, US Transport Secretary Ray LaHood promised “we are holding Toyota’s feet to the fire” over the accelerator-pedal car recall of that year he likely didn’t know there was a back-story to this fiery phrase, and that – […]

Fond of cycling? Bad teeth no bar

by carltonreid / on January 08, 2012 /

British, cycle-themed recruitment posters, c.1913 and 1912. “Without doubt the most important feature in this year’s [Stanley] exhibition is the number of machines fitted up for war purposes. Since the successful use of cyclists in the Easter manoeuvres last year […]

"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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