Now let's be clear. Being pro driver and pro tax payer and pro community isn't automatically anti cyclist Ok?
We are now well into our second fact finding roads use European tour and that is because the demands of the UK cycle lobby on UK drivers, and taxpayers alike are very large and indeed to give cyclists what they want, amounts to many billions of pounds of infrastructure change and draconian laws and liabilities against drivers.
Part of their case is how much Europe does for cycling and cyclists and indeed how predominant cyclists are there.
It is a lie. Drivers' Union has already published a page of evidence based on last year's trip. Here
Paris is totally motorised traffic and we have pictures of whole unused Boris Bike racks and no cyclists in sight. Miles of very costly and empty cycle ways with the very occasional lycra clad enthusiast. Oh yes on Sunday pelotons of them, like joggers on wheels out for some fun, but are we really being asked to uproot our whole life to satisfy some-one's fetish?
London is not like Paris. Wide boulevards everywhere with plenty of green space to lay cycle tracks except in the centre.
Here in Geneva, and so far I have only driven at night, but hiving off carriageway to create cycle lanes is crazy. Motors are infrastructure whilst cycling isn't. This is a point we must hammer into politicians.
Out on the open road, the arteries and life blood of any nation, not a cyclist to be seen in hundreds of miles. So no Europe isn't depending on cyclists either. Come and see for yourselves.
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No cyclists to be seen for 100s of miles and yet you seem to be obsessed by them? How odd.
ReplyDeleteI think it's right to rebut the claims by cyclists in the UK that Europe runs on them. I am a cyclist and don't expect any favours at all.
DeleteCould you point out where cyclists claim that Europe runs on bikes please?
ReplyDeleteEurope, particularly Holland, is continually cited as examples that the UK should follow and the UK is continually fed with the notion that everyone cycles everywhere there. However, apart from a different history, particularly five years of occupation, which meant more reliance on cycles, the fact is,, on the open road, cyclists are few and far between. The average Brit never gets to do a road trip and so is easily led to think Europe is based on cycling. Far from it..
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