Roads not built for cars

When motorists believe they’ve paid for use of the road, they can be dangerous

When motorists believe they’ve paid for use of the road, they can be dangerous

Some motorists believe cyclists are lesser beings, and shouldn’t get in the way of cars. Why? Because of the shockingly widespread belief that cyclists don’t pay for roads. In fact, we do. We all do. Everybody pays. Every tax-payer, that is. Road maintenance, road building and road design are all paid for out of general […]


Never mind the length, feel the width

Never mind the length, feel the width

You may call a spade a spade, but when it comes to roads, there are a confusing array of descriptive terms, many of them prescriptive. A public highway isn’t just a road, it can also be a footway. A whatway? A footway is ‘a way comprised in a highway which also comprises a carriageway, being […]


Most roads were not built for use of cars

Most roads were not built for use of cars

Viewed from a car windscreen, roads look as though they were built for cars and trucks. Motorways and the elevated arterial road systems of the 1960s and 1970s seem to bear this out but such car-centric highways are the exception not the norm. For every one mile of motorway, there are 95 miles of roads […]