Roads were Not built for cars
 

Quote:
".... the surprising truth is that back in the 1890s and early 1900s, it was mainly cyclists who first advocated for cities in the US and Europe to pave their streets and build new roads. ..."


Article:
"Roads were not built for cars": how cyclists, not drivers, first fought to pave US roads - Vox

Book:
Roads Were Not Built For Cars

Back then they weren't... now they are.

National Complete Streets Coalition | Smart Growth America

There is a "Complete Streets" movement afoot...

And the statistics of improved cycle ways shows usage does what?

Wonderful. Way back in the 1890s and early 1900s, it was mainly cyclists who first advocated for paved streets and new roads. Only a daydreamer/wishful thinker will believe that that "advocacy" was instrumental or the significant reason for the building of roads and paving of streets anywhere, but at best, a few isolated locations.

The bottom line is that the streets were actually paved and new roads built, including farm to market roads, only after the need for them was created and made obvious to the general public and their representatives with the advent of motorized transportation.

Not really.

This is what public streets looked like up until the mid-1920s:

https://cdn2.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/_Bn...82104296.0.jpg

However, fatalities by motor vehicles were skyrocketing, into the tens of thousands (at a time of far fewer vehicles on the road than today). Around 1923-1924 there was such public outcry about motorists mowing down people, especially the elderly and children, that there were serious proposals put forward to install speed governors on cars by law.

The motor industry responded with a media campaign that included the invention of the word "jaywalker" as a derogatory term for a country rube-type person who didn't know how to stay out of the way of cars. Boy Scouts were enlisted to hand out cards to people warning them "don't be a jay". Lots of "roads are for cars" propaganda. And it worked. Newspapers quickly discovered that automobile manufacturers and dealers were prepared to pull their advertising in response to negative press. The media went pro-streets-are-for-cars.

In 1925, this is what roads looked like. A very different picture. Pedestrians, vendors, etc. were all pushed to the fringes. It was a hostile takeover which persists today.

https://cdn2.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/c8A.../2695814.0.jpg

They weren't they built for bicycles, or any other particular vehicle that didn't represent the primary form of transportation for its time. To believe otherwise is simply willful gullibility.

They were originally built for everyone to use as a shared environment, not for the exclusive use of the "primary" form of transportation. Only with the advent of motor vehicles did one form of transportation manage to utterly dominate and give rise to the idea of primacy of cars over everyone else.

You are right... roads existed before cycling. Ancient Rome had roads... they were paved in stone.

Cyclists however were the first to advocate for paving of roads in the US... and at the time in history, cycling was very very popular.

Shortly after the paving of some select and popular roads in the east, the motor car came on the scene... You can see the rest of the history of roads in post # 6.

Positive bicycling advocacy is not forwarded by anti motorist ranting, conspiracy mongering, and daydreaming about the good old days before the advent of motor vehicles when flower sniffers could stroll down the boulevards of every city and town.

And that's not what any of this is. Only a deranged mind or a propagandist ("flower sniffers", really?) would think that this is the case. The history of the roads and the very recent (within the past century) upending of thousands of years of how societies understood the role of streets is very relevant to the discussion of what streets should be. The open streets/living streets/complete streets movement is very much that...reclaiming how roads have been for the vast majority of human civilization. Very very few people are alive that were around when things were different. We've lost the memory of what things were. It's not the "good ol' days" as some archaic idea. It's a recognition that what we have, isn't all that great. That the model hastily discarded in the face of overwhelming motorization may really be something worth reclaiming.

Sorry if your utopia of cars blasting everyone else out of their path isn't a shared dream.

Actually, Hester and Orchard has survived amazingly intact since then.

34 Orchard & 28 Orchard are still here for example.

The street markets are still around the corner, but yes, the markets and pedestrians are banished to the sidewalk.

-mr. bill

Contemporary revisionist sources on this subject always manage to ignore that hard surfacing roads predates bicycles by a long shot in the US. I would hardly consider the efforts of the gentry to pave popular promenades as anything more than an interesting footnote in the evolution of our road networks, and the concept that motor vehicles "hijacked" roads from bicycles is absurd.

Coincidentally, someone I went to college with almost 30 years ago posted this on facebook today: "Roads were not built for cars": how cyclists, not drivers, first fought to pave US roads - Vox

I don't think that attributing the initial interest in paved roads to cyclists implies that bicycles have more of a right to the roads than cars. I think it speaks more to the point that the common "roads are made for cars" argument that we often hear when riding is nonsense and roadways should be available to all modes of transportation. Personally, I am also all for providing ubiquitous pedestrian walkways as well.

I don't even understand the logic behind such arguments. It makes no sense to blame an inanimate object for the choices people make, motor vehicles don't kidnap people and force them to ride around in them. Our roads are simply a reflection of the desires of an overwhelming majority and limited resources. Roads will continue to evolve as demand dictates, and demand is changing. Its patience, not fairy tails that's needed.

And I recall riding on some of those stone-paved Roman roads when I lived in Italy.


If you dig into the history of road improvement, you'll find that the Post Office and the Dept of Agriculture had more to do with it than LAW and other cycling groups. The real motivation was to more efficiently transport goods as well as to sell products and services to rural customers. The advocacy of cycling groups, including the support of Alfred Pope, was relentless but largely less effective than you would think. It's all about supply and demand (and money to be gained).

It isn't blaming the inanimate object, itself. But the usage and thinking that has come along with it.

Horses were the primary mode of transportation, including in urban areas, in those days (especially in Europe). You didn't want to do much sniffing!

In London, small boys were hired to essentially spend their days shoveling manure off of the streets.

And as such it represents the the needs and desires of an era.....which is constantly changing. There's no reason to believe todays reality will represent tomorrows.

Every generation has the benefit of hindsight and a certainty of their enlightenment. There was a time when the automobile was hailed as the solution to the stench and filth of the horse, and whatever supplants the automobile will likely be vilified by its contemporaries.

Recognizing the small contributions early cycling advocates made to urban road development would be a cute storyline for a Disney movie, or childrens book, but attempting to use it as a justification for righting the wrongs made against the cycling community as part of todays transportation planning will only make the cycling community look delusional.
If the non cycling majority can't trust our perceptions of the past, how can we expect them to trust our visions of the future?

Um, not sure who you are talking about here, but no one is blaming an inanimate object. Where do you even get these straw men? There were competing visions for what roads should be. One side (auto industry) had massive financial interest in changing it, and set about a campaign to change it. And succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. This isn't raving conspiracy theory, it's well documented history and simple economics.

Leaving access to roads to the free market ("demand" in your words) and the tyranny of the majority is not really in the interest of a just and equal society, though it is in the interest of a narrow vision of maximizing a certain kind of economic benefit.

If society had not yielded up roads utterly to motor vehicles, if all road users maintained equal access, American society would have evolved different. The history of transportation has taught us that if you add capacity to alleviate congestion, traffic will increase to fill it to the same level of congestion. So instead of cramming as many cars on the roads as possible, we would have had to organize our cities differently. Alternatives to using cars as much as we do today would have been developed. Public transportation might have turned out a lot better than it exists today. Communities would be structured in a different way and perhaps the suburbs might not have sprawled out the way they do. Some things would have been better, and some things worse. But on the whole, I think that a fundamentally more just allocation of the use of streets would have made a better society. It seems you disagree and things are just great with everyone but motor vehicles marginalized.

History re-written decades after the events. There are lots of "false history". I love bicycles and cycling. But the fact is right up until AFTER cars already dominated the streets and roads... bicycles were very expensive and rare toys of the wealthy.

It's funny how culture can change. I'm an avid motorcyclist; and in the early part of the century Motorcycles were definitely a rich mans sport. They were just bicycles with an engine strapped on; some still had pedals. They got better quick but were mostly for racing or cruising around wearing expensive clothes. The whole "outlaw biker" thing cropped up after WWII and especially after Viet Nam; both with guys coming back after the war, not being quite sure how to get back into society and forming their own societies on two wheels.

No, you're apparantly only seeing what you choose to see to fit your personal beliefs.
I'm a strong supporter of providing safe, efficient alternatives to the POV, but built on a foundation biased on reality, not smoke and mirrors.

I don't expect them to. Just abide by the law.

Wouldn't you prefer both lawful behavior and roads configured to safely accommodate all users?