New bike racks at London stations.

number9

£1,400 for a bike rack?

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/ ... tations.do

£14 million for 10,000 bike racks?

That drops out at £1,400 a pop.

Plus a cycling article that isn't rubbish and doesn't feature an implausible instance of lycra-nazism:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/commen ... 850125.ece

Actually, a fascinating report, Making Cycling Irresistible, by the American academics John Puchera and Ralph Buehler, reveals that in the early 1950s cycling in Britain and Denmark started tailing off as car ownership increased.

Indeed, for some years, we were keener bikers than were the Danes.

The difference was, in the mid-1970s, the governments of Germany, Denmark and the Netherlands resolved to stop the car’s dominance of the streets and championed the bike and pedestrian while the British allowed our townscapes to be ground beneath the wheels of the car.


And yet these three continental countries own just as many cars per head as we do — the Germans more — it’s just that, unlike us, they aren’t glued into their driving seats.

biondino

"Of this cash, £5million will be spent on cycle hubs, £3million on extra cycle parking spaces at nearly 350 stations across the country and £2million to improve cycle access at stations."

So, no, the stands don't cost £1,400 each.

biondino

I do like this description of cyclists though:

The Times wrote:

angry men with tiny bums

number9

Since the James \Martin kerfuffle there have been some Godawful "lycra nazi" stories in the press.

Nice to see cyclists portrayed as normal people.

moonio

It would also be nice to have bike space on rush hour trains...

biondino

moonio wrote:

It would also be nice to have bike space on rush hour trains...

Yeah, but if that means actual people can't fit on them, I don't think it's going to happen (and tbh I'm on the railway company's side on that one, though exceptions must be made for folders).

Headhuunter

Interesting about the decline of cycling in the UK. My dad, who's in his 60s remembers rush hour in the late 50s and early 60s in Luton where he was born, he said that back then, when factories like Vauxhall and Skefko finished for the day, the streets were literally filled with bikes in rush hour.

But it's true what you say about the UK's passion for cars which continued well into the 1980s with Thatcherite policy. Look at the 1960s and 70s plane for a "Motorway Box" in London. The plan was to demolish large sections of residential central London and create an inner London orbital motorway which would roughly pass through travel zones 1 and 2. Thousands of homes were going to be demolished to feed all the major motorways like the M1 into central London to link up to the motorway box. Governments at that time thought that the car was the transport of the future and everything else (including trains - witness the Beeching cuts) was secondary. Thank god London residents opposed the motorway box.

However back in the 1950s the UK was the world's 2nd largest car manufacturer (hard to believe now) so we had a big industry to support.

moonio

Yes i've seen 1980's footage of mass cycle riding by steel workers in the north of England. Everyone was on road bikes..

I'll try find the clip.