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@tjagain. Shows how my rhetorical questions may have been too subtle 😉 Totally agree, by the way. My take (in an earlier post) is that Britain began othering the bicycle (and the people who ride them) at a crucial cultural junction (as far as personal transport and infrastructure) which is where (say) the Dutch did a u-turn while we steamrollered on with the car as king.
My conclusion after 40 years of being a weirdo on our roads (ie a Brit using a bike as regular transport) is that after 60-70 years of this car-culture there is no way back. Why would there be? Cycling (for transport and utility) remains a tiny minority/anomaly in the UK and this won’t change. We decided in favour of the motor vehicle for the vast majority of short journeys and the vast majority of infrastructure/planning has been exclusively for motor vehicles. The culture has been built. Generations and generations. Even ‘cyclists’ in Britain think regular people on bikes is weird. Cycling in the UK has increasingly become a minority/fetishist pursuit. A ‘sport’, a pose. It’s all about the gear.
As a younger cyclist I used to have a dream that England and Wales at least might one day claim/buy back some of what was lost to the public and repurpose the thousands of abandoned railways that Beeching tore up, and instead turn them into a green transport network, linking up all villages and towns with flat paths maintained for bicycles, ebikes, trikes, cargo bikes, recumbents, etc. For commuting, for shopping, for cycle-touring/tourism. Potentially transforming the country into a cycle-friendly place, with many new sustainable and supportive businesses cropping up along these ‘pedalways’, making the UK an exciting, safe tourist cycle-commuting and tourist destination for cyclists at home and from across world.
It was a nice dream, but it soon went the way of my hair when I finally woke up and realised that my thinking was as deluded as my combover. My biggest regret now was to have held hope/optimism rather than get out while I was young, and instead enjoy life in a cycle-normal country 🥚
Things may be different for out great-great-grandchildren. But it’s all academic IMO.
Cycling also seems to have become a locus in the culture war of late. The sovereignty and individualism of the car have become a symbol for all the gammon types to rally around. Cycling is a proxy for progressive ideas and change. That's one reason they hate it. BJ, as much as a detest him, at least has one foot in the cycling camp thankfully.