I loathe my wife's car, if that's any help...
CityCyclingEdinburgh Forum » Debate!
Brother can you spare a paradigm?
(36 posts)-
Posted 13 years ago #
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I think, with no disrespect, that some of the comments are looking not for a tipping point, but a role reversal.
imho that will not happen.What we have reached now is the state in Edinburgh where a large number of people who I suspect would not categorise themselves as "cyclists" feel able to use bikes to get about town. This is making that use of bicycles acceptable, even trendy, and is pushing it into the public consciousness.
This is a world away from the situation ten or twenty years ago.
Now to look for the end of car dominance and the ubiquity of bicycles seen in some other countries is, to my mind, to wish your life away seeking the impossible. (Not saying it's bad, just not going to happen in my lifetime, I think! lol)
I enjoy driving, I enjoy riding my motorcycle, and I enjoy cycling. Each has their advantages and each have their place. To my mind the target is to have the majority using an appropriate choice of vehicle for a given location/time/task and using it in a responsible and safe manner.
If we achieve that particular impossibility we've cracked it ;-) :-p
Posted 13 years ago # -
Around the time they tried to introduce the congestion charge in Edinburgh (I was in the minority who voted for this] there was a survey looking at Edinburgh car owner attitudes. Capital came out as top in Scotland/possibly UK for owning and loving cars. Alas IO cannot cite the survey, it made an impression on me at the time [I was very young]. I also thought David Begg had some good ideas.
As this was all some time ago things may have changed?
Posted 13 years ago # -
I do love my car.
This is not, however, analogous to wanting to drive it all the time.
Posted 13 years ago # -
I used to love our mini-clubman estate when we were kids. You opened the doors at the rear, it had a carpet, you could cram many kids into it. Alas as it was the 1970s it was olive green with a brown wood effect go slower stripe. The reinvention of this motor that belongs to Anth [if my recollection is true] is even nicer.
With love of car correlated to driving it r= 0.7 (i.e. explaining 49% of the variance) what we need to chip away at is people reaching for the keys to go to the shops [anth posted previously on his neighbours doing this], take the kids to school, etc. There are too many non-essential car journeys going on because people love using their cars. N.B. this is purely a hypothesis and the correlation coefficient is one I have made up. The first step is to get the non-essential journeys down. After that the switch to bike may come along as a next step?
Posted 13 years ago # -
"
cyclistsinthecity
(@citycyclists)
Posted at 12:30 PM March 10, 2012 on Twitter
"I like the way @VELOBerlin talks about bicycles as 'the new urban mobility'. Kind of says it all, really.""
Posted 13 years ago #
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