From The Guardian – a book review: Roads Were Not Built for Cars, by Carlton Reid
There were plenty of roads before cars came along, and originally cars were seen as the interlopers. MP Sir Ernest Soares told parliament in 1903: “Motorists are in the position of statutary trespassers on the road … roads were never made for motor-cars. Those who designed them and laid them out never thought of motor-cars.”
Out of this, Reid develops a more nuanced and hitherto underreported story. It wasn’t motorists who began the process of improving roads in the UK and US, after decades of neglect during the age of the train. It was late-19th-century cyclists and well-organised lobbying organisations such as the Cycling Touring Club in the UK and the Wheelmen of America. …
Roads Were Not Built for Cars is gloriously eccentric. Reid calls himself a “velocipedestrianisticalistinarianologist (one who studies the study of studying cycling)”. He’s clearly in a field of his own – and his determination to plough this solitary furrow is admirable. This book has been self-published and funded on Kickstarter.
