On the road

This Cycle Harrogate thing started off as a way to try and get cycle paths built up the Knaresborough Rd. That seemed a little selfish, a little self interested, I would benefit sure and it would be there for everyone but what about the cycle provision we already have? Shouldn't we be getting people to use it?

I'm no cycle zealot, I'm not anti-car. I have had some great and memorable journeys in a car; driving the length of the States across a few deserts in a clapped out Dodge, springs imediately to mind. The idea of the car is deeply associated with personal freedom, I get that, but cars don't make sense if you live and work in a town or a city, bikes do. Top Gear peddle the myth of the Open Road. In Top Gear World we are all Jack Kerouac driving on endless empty roads that disappear into the far distance of a blood red sunset. On that road, heading for a better future, discovering what is really happening, we live a life that is more full, more real.

Thing is we don't live in Top Gear World, most of us live an urban commuter life and we can all afford a lot more to eat than Kerouac could when he was spending most of his cash buying the booze and drugs that would help kill him early. The Americana myth is more powerful and evocative than the gritty reality.

That's where we are at with the car. They represent freedom, but a freedom few of us would actually be prepared to sacrifice our comfortable lives to experience for any length of time. The bike as a form of freedom on the other hand might just have a few things going for it:

Bikes are cheap, £200 will buy one that will last longer than you will. If that is you oil the chain, pump the tyres up and spend another ten to twenty quid on it once a year. Shell out five hundred to a thousand pounds and you get something that you really could go round the world on. A grand will buy you a car sure, but you won't be maintaining it for twenty quid a year and you will still need to put petrol in it.

Bikes are quick, not the high speed quick of stomping on the accelerator and getting up to forty on your street, only to brake like Sebastian Vettel as the junction comes up too fast, of the car driver. They are  quick in a tortoise and the hare kind of way. For most journeys around town a bike wins as it won't need to queue in traffic. Slow and steady, even pace, win the race.

The obesity epidemic will not be solved by driving to the gym. Seems obvious but that is what many of us do, I've done my share. What was I thinking paying the price of a decent meal once a month to go somewhere else to exercise because I was driving to work when I lived a cycle ride away?

Bikes have a future in their current form. Cars are maybe ten to twenty years away from needing a big re-think. Oil is going to get suprisingly expensive unless there is a whole lot hidden in places where its going to be easy to get at that we haven't found yet. As to low carbon alternatives there are some interesting developements on the horizon, but what if we already had the power source inside us?

So an idea that came into being around about the same time as the car was being born. The humble often unloved, often scorned bicycle might just be just about to overtake the fast, brash, aspirational-bling of the motor car as the preferred choice around town.

Seems to me Cycle Harrogate should be banging the drum loud for Cycling as well as cycling provision and trying to get as many bums on bike seats as possible.


Dave Prince

Image - Rachael Prince 2000,  Mojave Desert, California (taken from that clapped out Dodge)