Hmm, the rural road. The problem, as with so many things could actually be put at the door of the cyclists in terms of history. It is they who demanded unimpeded travel on rural roads at unlimited speeds no matter what social and economic cost to established road users and those who lived by them. It is they who lobbied successfully for roads to be maintained and improved at public expense for their own benefit. All those many jokettes of high bicycles coming a cropper on farm amimals and so on tend to be read from the point of view of the cyclists, not the animals or the farmers. The arrogance of cyclists was unbounded, even stretching to considering it a legal right to run road races...even the government had to balk at that one...thank goodness, but only after a lot of whingeing and griping and dowright subversion on the part of the cycling lobby. By the time the motor car had come into being the groundwork of lodging the right of the road in its most problematic and unnecessary users had been established mainly by the NCU, CTC and their tame Roads Improvement Association (which set the patten for RoSPA and other such lobby groups). Motorists just learned at the feet of cyclists, but, unlike the cyclists, their form of transport has become a necessity and a somewhat stronger force.
Nicholas Oddy
________________________________
From: Cycling and Society Research Group discussion list on behalf of Richard Mann
Sent: Fri 19/08/2011 09:36
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Urban vs rural[Scanned-Clean]
The A48 is the old east-west road in South Wales; now replaced by the
M4. It's probably grossly over-engineered for the traffic that ought
to be on it. Painting a hard shoulder/cycle lane and sweeping it
mechanically should be easy/cheap enough.
The trick to prioritising is to keep your interventions cheap, and to
put them in a framework that people understand and agree to: the
framework is probably missing - the highway authority probably still
believes in motoring freedom, where possible.
As Joe says, the solutions are there - narrowing the road, imposing a
speed limit, controlling it with cameras. What's lacking is the will.
I think the route to cracking car culture is to build an alternative
culture in towns. The numbers eventually will shift the balance.
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