"Just zis Guy, you know?" wrote:

| David Arditti wrote:
|
| The major deterrent to more cycling is laziness. Bulding new roads
| spreads out the congestion; building cycle paths does not amke people
| less lazy.
|
| So the British just happen to be the laziest nation in Europe, hence
| low cycling levels? I doubt it.
|
| How else would you explain people who live less than 15 minutes' ride from
| an office but choose to spend 25 minutes driving it instead?
|
| I would have thought it was pretty
| generally accepted that the reason more people do not cycle is the
| environment.
|
| That's one of the excuses. Remove that and it becomes the hills. Or the
| weather. Or the lack of changing facilities at the office. Or they ran
| outta gas. Had a flat tyre. Didn't have enough money for cab fare. Their tux
| didn't come back from the cleaners. An old friend came in from outta town.
| Someone stole their bike. There was an earthquake, a terrible flood,
| locusts. It isn't their fault, they swear to God!

IMHO a major unacknowledged factor is wanting to prolong personal
space for as long as possible, particularly when commuting to work.
Houses and cars are personal space; bikes, pavements, buses, offices
are not.

| Virtually every household has a bike but few people
| cycle regularly. Many British people on holiday cycle in continental
| cities when they would not dream of cycling at home. If we created
| the right environment in British cities we would get high levels of
| cycling.
|
| It's conceivable but not terribly likely; I have lived in places which are
| quite bike-friendly and people still drive.

I suspect a main reason why people just don't see cycling as an
obvious solution for short utility trips isn't that they don't see
their bike as a solution but that they just don't see their car as a
problem. And even if they do everyone else is doing it too...

| A part of that is to create the motor traffic-free cycle
| routes that most people who don't currently cycle say are what it
| would take to get them cycling.
|
| But you can't have a traffic free route door to door. All you do by trying
| is put off the inevitable: at some point cyclists have to take to the roads.
| So my view of good cycle provision is roads which don't leave you feeling
| squeezed out and marginalised, so that you can just ride from A to B and not
| plan your journey around somebody else's vision of which way you would like
| to go (which is generally around the houses in the little bits of land left
| over after the cars have had first, second and third choice).

But roads also are the result of somebody else's vision of which way
you would like to go, or else a relic of which way was to the pig
market and which to the grazing meadows.

| You might say they are lying - that
| they are just lazy, and wouldn't cycle anyway. But evidence of the
| few places in the UK where it has been well-done suggests to me this
| is wrong.
|
| Cycling levels in these places still doesn't get anywhere close to bike
| ownership levels.
|
| I don't think we'll be winning until riding half a mile to the shops becomes
| the norm instead of a Big Deal, showing your fgreen credentials so you can
| brag to your mates when you drive to the pub later in your 4x4.

If it's to be the norm you wouldn't want them to be doing it for
"special" reasons like being green or getting them bragging points,
they'd be doing it without thinking, or is that what you meant?

....
| Sure. There is very limited capacity to add such provision where I live and
| work. Better to make the roads less hostile.

Actually, that was going to be my follow-up point after the "obvious"
one about segregated cycle ways [1] being good things.

An easy solution to the whole thing would be to make the speed limit
in built-up areas 12mph, practically everywhere. Almost everyone can
cycle at 12mph. Cyclists could in general move out into the main flow
of traffic without holding it up. Complete integration of modes of
transport. Heck, fit runners could join in too. It would even give
some point to wearing helmets, though I still wouldn't. Trouble is
there would be less point in having a 'bent...

[1] Shall we call them segways, just to stir the plot to make it
thicker?

--
Patrick Herring, Sheffield, UK
http://www.anweald.co.uk