Green transport latest news

The Times this week dedicated two front covers and a further four full pages inside the newspaper to its campaign to improve road conditions for urban cyclists. The campaign by The Times to improve road safety is laudable and has the potential to improve conditions for anyone who lives in, or passes through, a town or city, but alarmist headlines risk exacerbating the problem that, where cycling is concerned, we have nothing to fear but fear itself.

A print-out-and-keep guide for cyclists on how to deal with abuse from motorists suggests forgoing verbal or physical retaliation in favour of psychological warfare. According to the guide:

Most of us plump for a cycling jacket that simply keeps out the wind and rain, but it doesn’t stop designers devising increasingly complex features. Speedometers, lasers, indicator lights, even air bags…our high-tech cycling jackets hall of fame has them all.

The women’s rights advocate Susan B. Anthony may have said that the bicycle did “more to emancipate women than anything else in the world”, but the road along which it travelled was bumpy. On 21st June 1895, the Newark Sunday Advocate ran the following article: The Unique Cycling club of Chicago is all that its name implies. One of its laws is that on all runs bloomers and knickerbockers shall be worn, and two members who disobeyed this rule recently met with a punishment that they will not forget soon. Union park was the rendezvous for the last run, and 50 members turned out. The president, Miss Bunker, observed two women wearing short skirts over their bloomers…