CityCyclingEdinburgh Forum » Debate!

Why Britain's 1960s cycling revolution flopped

(3 posts)
  • Started 6 years ago by ejstubbs
  • Latest reply from crowriver

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  1. ejstubbs
    Member

    https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2017/sep/19/britains-1960s-cycling-revolution-flopped-stevenage

    I have had the...experience...of passing through St Evenage on a number of occasions over the past few years. I have relatives in nearish-by St Albans and St Evenage is the nearest station on the ECML from Edinburgh (it's less convenient these days: since VTEC re-jigged their timetable there are ~no direct services any more). My folks pick me up from and drop me off at the station. Despite all those journeys through the town, I never realised that St Evenage has a network of decent, segregated cycling infrastructure.

    Perhaps it is actually too segregated? If people can't see it from their cars, maybe they're less likely to think that maybe they could take the bike instead. And it makes it a lot less obvious that the cycleways can take you everywhere in the town that you currently go in your car.

    I have to agree with one of the BTL comments: allowing mopeds to use the cycleways sounds like a very poor idea.

    The other issues seem to be maintenance and policing - both victims of endless rounds of public spending cuts since St Evenage was built, fuelled by myopic middle income earning oafs who fall for the lie that tax cuts are for their benefit, rather than primarily helping to shovel even more wealth towards the super-rich.

    Posted 6 years ago #

  2. Min
    Member

    Before even reading it I knew it would be too much carrot, not enough stick. Drivers literally need to be beaten out of their cars.

    Posted 6 years ago #

  3. crowriver
    Member

    I winced reading the quotes from poor old Claxton there, bewildered and howling in the wind.

    This quote from Darnton has a lesson for us:

    “If the reasons for Stevenage’s failure to encourage cycling were that it was too easy to drive, then no amount of investment in marketing the town’s cycling facilities would have changed travel behaviour.”

    This is why cycling will never take off as popular transport in most of Scotland and the wider UK. There will be exceptions in the more congested densely populated urban areas, and university towns.

    We also need to remember that Claxton's cycle network was a lonely initiative (similar to the networks in Milton Keynes and Livingston) that was going against the interests of huge financial and economic forces. The car manufacturers, road builders, and road haulage companies had other ideas. They still have other ideas: hence A9 dualling and Queensferry crossing; proposed "road trains" of self-driving articulated lorries; the fantasy of electric cars for all; etc.

    “What a dreadful example these car drivers are setting for future generations … They become selfish and almost exclusively travel alone. They do not care about others.”

    Indeed. Nothing much has changed since 1992.

    Posted 6 years ago #

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