Couldn't agree more there Hal, much of Northern Europe is infinitely more cycle friendly. I'm at a loss to understand for certain why, for in the 1940s and 1950s we were a cycling nation, car ownership being vanishingly small and the roads swarming with bikes at commuting times, providing a healthy living for an extensive trade.
For some reason our population seemed to be desperate to get motorised, first with cyclemotors, then scooters and finally cars, while the low countries, Germany and Denmark were quite content to continue using bikes even when they later owned cars.
I've only seen two influential differences. In many cases they had more space to create cycle facilities, where in our old and confined towns and cities and in much of our small island there was little space to do anything.
The other difference is a totally different attitude to new facilities. Propose a new airport or motorway here and the protesters are out on the streets. Propose them in many European countries and cities compete to get the facility with the enthusiastic backing of the local population.
Sorry to highlight it, but the response in this thread to the Manchester proposal is typical of that British attitude of course. It's why we still have such a rubbish railway system and main road network and why we are now running short of generating capacity, areas where those other countries make us look silly while having their cycling as well.
.
|