Today is the last day to chip in and reserve a copy of Bike Boom, the new book by Carlton Reid.
Bike Boom: The Unexpected Resurgence in Cycling is a sequel to Reid’s earlier best-seller Roads Were Not Built for Cars, which grew out of his excellent blog of the same name. (The earlier book was so popular it’s already out of print and a bit of a cult object! Luckily a reprint is on the way, and an e-book version is available).
Reid’s first book, Roads Were Not Built for Cars, did exactly what it says on the tin – and more – by revealing the story of how modern roads were, in fact, built for bicycles. Read a great review here.
In a nutshell: paving and tarmac and drainage and curbs and all the modern roading features we take for granted? Brought to you by the bike lobby and designed for bikes. In other words, if you’ve ever gazed at a big highway and thought to yourself “Y’know, that could be the widest, smoothest bike path in the world…” you’re not far wrong.
The “Good Roads” movement in the US and the UK was a two-wheel phenomenon, dreamed up by those who could see the egalitarian and democratic appeal of mass bicycle use. In the 1880s, they lobbied hard for smooth passage for their magical new machines.
(Sidebar: anyone know the NZ history? It seems rather quiet on the subject of a bike lobby; maybe our roads were mostly built for bullocks and gold-miners and railways. And it took longer – even by 1929, less than 3% of our roading was sealed! Didn’t stop people cycling on them, though.)
Ironically – although it makes perfect sense, if you think about it – many of those early bike pioneers in the US and the UK went on to become combustion-engine tinkerers and car enthusiasts. Two wheels good, four wheels better? Enter Henry Ford (who borrowed ideas for his factories from the bike-building industry!) and the affordable motor car, and the rest is history – albeit a history that conveniently managed to forget the key role of bikes and bike-people in making it all possible.
Reid’s new book, Bike Boom, aims to pick up the story again in the 1970s, after the drastic drop in cycling numbers over the mid 20th century. It’ll tell the story of the deliberate push to free roads up for bikes again – a story that only becomes more urgent as it becomes increasingly clear that the combustion engine, not the human-powered bicycle, is the real dinosaur.
Bike Boom will aim to dig down into historical sources to find out how the Netherlands built a world-class network of bicycle paths – and much of the rest of the world didn’t. I’d also like to interview the bicycle advocates and planners of the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s (and those of today, too) to hear their stories, and learn from their successes and their mistakes.
Sounds extremely useful for our purposes! Read more about the new project (and sign up for a copy if you like) here.
And while you’re at it, check out this great list of quotes about bikes.
My fave:
“I’ll tell you what I think of bicycling. I think it has done more to emancipate women than any one thing in the world. I rejoice every time I see a woman ride by on a bike. It gives her a feeling of self-reliance and independence the moment she takes her seat; and away she goes, the picture of untrammelled womanhood.”
Susan B. Anthony, 1896
