A few weeks ago I came across this web-site https://www.britishcycletracks.com/, which is worth a read. It covers, from the cyclists' point of view, the road building programme of the nineteen thirties up to the early nineteen fifties.
In the early 1930s a problem that the Ministry of Transport was addressing was the bicycle - specifically, the huge number of bicycles in regular use. The Ministry of Transport's own figures, based on roadside traffic surveys, showed that there were about twelve million of them. This mass of cyclists obviously led to congestion, and motorists, then as now, saw them as an obstacle to progress. There were fewer than a million motorists at the time.
The Dutch, well known for their cycling culture, were approached for advice, and they offered a standardised road design of two dual carriageways, one for each direction. Outside each dual carriageway and separate from it was a cycleway, again one for each direction, and outside that, far from the cars, a footpath.
This seemed a sensible plan, and a number of 'bypasses' on this general pattern were built throughout the country, with the general intention being that they would, over time, be joined up into a national network.
The Second World War put a stop to the road building programme, and, although some of the 'bypasses' were completed in the 1950s, the design clearly had significant shortcomings. The bicycle problem had resolved itself, in that numbers were now below a million and still falling. No-one was going to spend much on that. Although the dual carriageways promised 'three and a half miles of motoring pleasure', no-one had mentioned the queue at the roundabout at the end. The motorways of the 1960s swept them away.
The CTC was against these cycleways. It grudgingly admitted that, if they were any good, people would use them, but asserted a God-given right of passage on the Kings Highway. Clubmen and women would ride, two abreast, on the dual carriageway. This right seems to have been forgotten by the time the M1 was built. The core of the CTC's objection was compulsion, which was indeed part of the plan. If there was a cycleway, the Dutch required a cyclist to use it, and that was the intent here, too. It never happened.
Anyway, the Mickleham Bypass was a bit of a poster child for these cycleways. It was opened in 1937, and there were a number of photographs and publicity brochures describing it. For the most part, Wayfarers are familiar with it, but there is an odd, perhaps slightly mad aspect which may be less well known. The Mickleham Bypass is possibly unique in having the south bound cycleway between the two dual carriageways, rather than outside the southbound lane.
2 comments:
Thanks Mark. Fascinating insight into Highway engineering. Reading about the Formby bypass, with four miles of cycle track, revived memories of cycling from Crosby to Ainsdale as teenagers- thinking it was a big adventure!
Mark, Thanks for posting that. I was very interested to read the sections about Coventry which is where I harked from in the distant past. In particular the different approaches taken to post war rebuilding in Dresden vs Coventry. Such a shame that medieval Coventry was not recreated after the war. My older relatives would often lament it's loss to the ugly modernist buildings.
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