I’ve finished the cycles-begat-automobiles chapter of the book. It’s 65,000 words long. This “chapter” is really a book and I’ll probably flesh it out even further and bring it out as a standalone e-book: pedalling petrolheads will love it. However, […]
Continue ReadingWide, smooth cycleways adjacent to main roads but separated from cars and pedestrians. Perpetually-lit, airy, safe underpasses beneath roundabouts. Direct, convenient and attractive cycle routes designed not by car-centric town planners but by a transport engineer who cycled to work […]
Continue ReadingTransport academics tend to credit the discovery of ‘induced demand in transport’ to J.J. Leeming, a British road-traffic engineer and county surveyor, writing in 1969. He observed that the more roads are built, the more traffic there is to fill […]
Continue ReadingImagine, if you will, War of the Worlds in reverse. Imagine not a destructive alien invasion, but a constructive one. Imagine giant space-ships sucking up all of the wonderful bike paths in the Netherlands and depositing them in the UK, […]
Continue ReadingThe 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 […]
Continue ReadingThis cartoon by illustrator Borin Van Loon was used as a campaigning image for Friends of the Earth in the early 1980s. Cycling at the time was recovering after a long period in the doldrums. Cycle use in the mid-80s […]
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