From my file marked well-that-never-happened-did-it?: “If Parliament sees fit to grant the necessary powers, it would be my intention to start on a further number of motor roads where that course is found to be preferable to the widening or […]
Continue Reading“The man who owns a bicycle rides his own steed. He throws his dust in the face of the man in the carriage, so that it is no longer pleasant to ride in a coach and four.” John D. Long, […]
Continue ReadingThirty miles of protected bike lanes have been opened in Chicago, part of a planned, 645-mile network of joined-up on-street bikeways. This is impressive, but it’s not new. Chicago was once certifiably bicycle-mad. For a few brief years in the […]
Continue ReadingAutomobile magazine, in October 1908, lauded the Long Island Motor Parkway as “the world’s first road designed and built for daily use of the automobile.” By 1938, a section of the two lane highway for exclusive use of “pleasure automobiles” […]
Continue ReadingThis is an advert for bicycle insurance contained on a cyclists’ map of New York State, from 1895. The “bike” is in inverted commas because bike is the relatively new word for bicycle. Most bicyclists of the day rode “wheels”, […]
Continue ReadingMichael Bloomberg, Mayor of New York City, yesterday cut the ribbon on a new 20mph ‘slow zone’, one of thirteen to be in place in the city by the end of next year. Tellingly, he said: “Our roads are not […]
Continue ReadingAt just after 11pm on March 6th 1896 the first motorcar on the streets of Detroit was piloted to a stop on Woodward Avenue. This car was driven by its builder, 28-year old mechanical engineer Charles Brady King. King’s horseless […]
Continue ReadingOn September 20th, 1893, the Duryea Brothers road-tested the first gasoline-powered American-built automobile. Most people assume it was early cars such as these – and later ones from the likes of Ford and Buick – which paved America. In fact, […]
Continue ReadingThis is a line-drawing of the world’s “first header”, a forward fall from a bicycle. It’s also a line-drawing of the probable creator of the world’s first pedal-operated bicycle. The rider is Frenchman Pierre Lallement. The location is Birmingham, close […]
Continue ReadingNetherlands 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, […]
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