Apparently, according to the Guardian’s cyclist blog, cyclists own the roads.
Car drivers assume the roads were built for them, but it was cyclists who first lobbied for flat roads more than 100 years ago
Remind me, who built Watling Street? And why? How did those Romans move their troops about? By bicycle it seems…
😀
Fine by me. Let ’em pay the tax too.
The article also perpetuates the canard about the roads being virtually unused during the railway era from about 1840 to 1900. In fact, although the railways had taken the long-distance traffic, the roads had never been busier with horse-drawn traffic serving as feeders to the railways.
I thought BMW drivers owned the roads, the price is included in the cars price? Or at least the left bit in the UK.
Haha, I’m a bicycle fan too. Funny. We really own the roads, yeah !
Strange that.The people that thinkof things owns them.
So cyclists thought of roads, someone else pays for them and they are theirs.
Who was it that thought of houses, cars, planes? They are worth a fortune.
Romans…..I always thought it was McAlpine’s Fusiliers.
Bicycles would have been good for the troops and would have moved them faster. The pannier bags could have held their spare weaponry.
I enjoyed a long number of years as a cyclist, 20 miles on the weekdays and 60 miles on the weekends, for many years and never an incident with a car. However when I see bicyclists these days, it’s disturbing to see that they are bound to obey the same traffic laws as automobile drivers must obey, yet it is daily I see nearly everyone on bicycle go through red lights, stop signs and nearly run over pedestrians on some occassions.
And a Zundapp outfit with machine gun mounted to the sidecar would move even more weaponey even faster. 😆
Er, Bucko (and Lord T etc.), we DO pay the tax. Roads are paid for out of general taxation, such as income tax, and I pay thousands of pounds of that a year, far more than your paltry £200 or so of vehicle excise, which goes into the same general treasury account. PS ‘road tax’ was abolished in 1937!
Round here 90% of cyclists use the pavement. Who owns that then?
Guzzibasher, You are joking aren’t you. Cars, lorries etc. pay billions of pounds and only a small percentage goes on the roads the rest goes in socialist vote buying such as cycle lanes. That is in addition to the general taxation we both pay. Which btw I doubt pays a bean towards the roads. Regardless, if I take your theory I pay twice.
Longrider, the Roaman road network had fallen in to disrepair and decay long before the Victorians who, undoubtedly lobbied by the cyclists and because of McAdams surface dressing, started to repair them and build a national infrastructure. So they are correct in pointing out that our roads were originally developed for cyclists.
What part of “humour” bypassed you? Even the title should have given away the tongue in cheek nature of my comment.