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> The roads were built for cars. This is untrue. "The coming of the railways in the 1830s killed off the stage-coach trade; almost all rural roads reverted to
by alxndr 13y ago
> The roads were built for cars.
This is untrue.
"The coming of the railways in the 1830s killed off the stage-coach trade; almost all rural roads reverted to low-level local use. Cyclists were the first group in a generation to use roads and were the first to push for high-quality sealed surfaces and were the first to lobby for national funding and leadership for roads. Without cyclists, motorists wouldn't have hit the ground running when it came to places to drive this new form of transport."
http://www.roadswerenotbuiltforcars.com/ http://www.roadswerenotbuiltforcars.com/
- resu_nimda 13y agoI mean, that's nice and all, but it seems to be purposely obtuse. Again, just look at the current infrastructure. The width of the roads, traffic laws, signs and signals, intersections, highways, etc. I guess you "got me" in that, at some point, road construction was driven by cyclists, but that pretty clearly shifted some time ago. I'm not sure what point you're trying to make.
- alxndr 13y agoThe prevailing notion that "roads are made for cars" is self-fulfilling, as people use it as justification for making roads further unsafe for bicycles (and other road users).
- mlbmlb 13y agoBecause the majority of roads nowadays in use were built in 1830... /sarcasm Here, even 70 years ago, several roads were just a dusty path through fields and many of them didn't exist yet. When they were actually built as a road, it was done for cars, buses, trucks and it was done from steep consumption taxes on gas and later from country-wide toll imposed on cars. Of course, YMMV in your country. But I really think that you didn't have asphalt-paved 10 m wide roads 180 years ago.
- alxndr 13y agore: paying for building roads, http://www.frontiergroup.org/reports/fg/do-roads-pay-themselves http://www.frontiergroup.org/reports/fg/do-roads-pay-themsel...
- akgerber 13y agoLocal roads, which bicyclists mostly use, are generally paid for by property taxes or other local taxes, at least in the US. Only highways are paid for by federal gas taxes, and since that tax has been declining in real terms since 1993, highway funding also comes from general tax revenue.