The blog

US Bicycle Master Plan, 1903

by carltonreid / on June 26, 2013 /

The following is from A Treatise on Roads and Pavements of 1903 by Ira Osborn Baker, Professor of Civil Engineering at the University of Illinois. A bicycle in the eyes of the law is a vehicle and is entitled to […]

H.G. Wells: on wind farms, dishwashers, motorways and segregated bike paths

by carltonreid / on November 29, 2012 /

Thirteen years before the start of the Great War, British author and futurist H. G. Wells predicted the European Union, tarmac roads, wind farms, tanks, motorways, sexual liberation and not just the internet but specific parts of the internet, including […]

Northern England’s cycle infrastructure is the best in Europe

by carltonreid / on June 03, 2012 /

The micro-infrastructure, that is. Britain’s bike paths are famously comically bad, but English aggregates – the little stones enrobed in asphalt – are in demand across the world. Specifically, some little stones from a quarry in deepest Northumberland. They’re naturally […]

Road rugosity, the CTC member who became transport minister, and cycling in the rain at the London Olympics in 1948

by carltonreid / on April 19, 2012 /

In 100 days from today the cycling road race of the London Olympics could see Mark Cavendish win gold for Britain. At the London Olympics of 1948 the Mark Cavendish of his day bagged silver medals on the track, but […]

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, […]

Victoria Pendleton, 1896

by carltonreid / on January 24, 2012 /

One of these two photographs was taken in the 1890s; the other is a photograph of Victoria Pendleton posing as an 1890s wearer of ‘rational dress.’

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 […]

Horse shit, steam power and crap cycling

by carltonreid / on December 20, 2011 /

Satirical artist William Heath produced this fascinating depiction of transport of the future in 1829, a year before the first passenger steam train service, and while horse-drawn stage coaches still ruled the road (they plied their trade on turnpikes, the […]

Widest road in Britain, 1936

by carltonreid / on December 15, 2011 /

The Team Valley Trading Estate in Gateshead looks pretty much like any other trading estate in Britain. But it was the first. It cost £2m to build and was meant to reinvigorate this corner of North East England. The road […]

"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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