"naked_draughtsman" <[email hidden]> wrote in
[snip]
Quoted message said:An interesting read though. I didn't realise cycle lanes had been
around for such a long time!
Modern bike lanes descend from the ones introduced into Davis,
California, in 1967, as a compromise between the cycling students of
the University of California, and the locals who wanted bikes banned
completely. However, although Davis invented the term "bike lane",
they were a reinvention there. Belgium had what were essentially
bike lanes in the 1940s, for example. Belgian cyclists liked them
because they were less dangerous than cycle tracks.
The oldest cycle track I know of will be one-hundred-and-twelve years
old in June. It's in Brooklyn, New York
There's remarkably little institutional memory in cycling. In 1958
Professor Sir Colin Buchanan wrote in his book "Mixed Blessing, The
Motor in Britain"
"The meagre efforts to separate cyclists from motor traffic have
failed, tracks are inadequate, the problem of treating them at
junctions and intersections is completely unsolved, and the attitude
of cyclists themselves to these admittedly unsatisfactory tracks has
not been as helpful as it might have been."
How much have things changed?
Jeremy Parker
