The blog

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 […]

Speed cameras were foretold in 1894 (by the richest guy to die on the Titanic; he also patented a bicycle brake)

by carltonreid / on November 14, 2013 /

Colonel John Jacob Astor was an interesting chap. Stinking rich, too. He was one of the wealthiest men of America’s Gilded Age. Educated at Harvard, he thought highly enough of his own literary talents to write a science fiction novel. […]

Don’t be rude on the road (or, how Governments have very short memories)

by carltonreid / on July 30, 2013 /

Scotland’s Transport Minister Keith Brown has unveiled a “ground-breaking” new campaign aimed at road users. The £500,000 promotional campaign for the ‘Niceway Code’ launches on 5th August and will use posters and TV ads to ask motorists, cyclists and pedestrians […]

Montreal police inspector’s transportation timeline: horses, then cars, then cyclists, then pedestrians

by carltonreid / on July 15, 2013 /

A crackdown on law-breaking by cyclists in Canada is descending into farce. As well being ticketed for obvious offences such as riding on sidewalks, roadies in Montréal riding with strobing LEDs are being fined for not having reflectors on their […]

"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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