Carless cycle streets are our future

In Cambridge, they are also our present. For a paltry cost of a few million, Adams Road there has been reconfigured to give cyclists priority over motorists.

Drivers have to give way to cyclists across the entire width of the road, and no on-street parking is allowed. That way cyclists are protected from car doors opening in their path, and I can just see you heaving a sigh of relief.

According to Brian Milnes, head of the Greater Cambridge Partnership, “This project is about putting people first, making everyday journeys safer and easier for everyone.”

Well, not quite for everyone, Brian. Some of us, intractable car drivers, still intone a modified version of the Orwellian chant: Four wheels good, two wheels bad. I doubt that many Cambridge motorists agree that this innovation will make their journeys easier.

But I do find it touching that every blatantly socialist, which is to say subversive, project is sold to the public as “putting people first”. Then again, expecting lefties to say honestly that they put ideology first would be presuming too much on human goodness.

That said, this particular project isn’t without some intrinsic, if perverse, logic. And in more ways than one.

Over the past couple of decades, we’ve seen cycle lanes first appearing in even major thoroughfares and then getting wider and wider. This has turned many streets even in London into single-lane roads, whereas in the past they boasted two or even three lanes.

Logically, this steady widening of cycle lanes, with the concomitant strangulation of car traffic, has to culminate in some, later most, still later all, streets converted to nothing but cycle lanes. Cambridge ought to be congratulated on taking the first step on that pioneering pathway.

Cyclists occupy a special place in the leftie heart because they are freeloaders: they don’t pay to use public roads. Motorists do, in London some £500 a year on average.

Then there is an additional £440 annually for the first five years if the car’s list price when new exceeded £40,000. Plus, there is an £18 congestion charge for entering London’s centre, plus £12.50 daily if the vehicle exceeds certain arbitrary emission levels, plus MOT… plus a hell of a lot. Penelope is in charge of our family finances, so I must ask her.

Bicycles, on the other hand, are neither taxed nor registered. That means socialists love them so much that they are prepared to put their innate taxing rapacity on hold.

Giving priority to tax consumers over tax payers comes naturally to them, so no surprises there. But the notion of putting people, meaning cyclists, first doesn’t quite add up.

You see, incessant propaganda of cycling as the morally superior alternative to driving has made many bike pushers smug and self-righteous. Hence they not only routinely flout good road manners, but, certain of their impunity, break the Highway Code. Every time I drive out in London, I see cyclists running red lights, ignoring zebra crossings, hogging the road by going two or three abreast even when a cycle lane is present.

Drivers, including me, turn puce with rage, which doesn’t add either to their cardiac health or to the gaiety of the nation. Neither does it add much to road safety, with drivers often having to swerve when a cyclist insouciantly floats into their lane.

This endangers not only drivers but also cyclists. It’s not for nothing that doctors at London’s A&E departments often refer to them as ‘organ donors’.

Socialists have always hated cars and drivers, an animus that predates the net zero idiocy. When cars first appeared on public roads, only well-to-do people could afford them, and loathing of such ‘capitalists’ defines socialism.

But inspired by their urgent need to save ‘our planet’, the lefties have now raised that emotion to fervour pitch. They climb onto their non-existent moral high ground to look down on common folk who like the speed, comfort and safety of their cars.

Reason has nothing to do with any of this, a point that recently has been confirmed by the councils of several villages in our part of France. People who know that corner of north Burgundy will confirm that the only time one can see any cyclists is when the Tour de France passes through.

In the 26 years that we’ve been going there, that momentous event has occurred exactly once. The rest of the time the roads (beautifully maintained, by the way, with nary a pothole anywhere in sight) are free for drivers to use.

There are so few of them in relation to the road miles available that, according to my visiting Dutch friends, the traffic is lighter than anywhere else in Europe. Hence, when we go somewhere, we know exactly how long the journey is going to take.

Adding sacrosanct if empty cycle lanes will remove that certainty and, considering the modest driving skills of local motorists, increase the number of accidents. But such rational considerations need not apply when socialists are in the throes of their punitive and bureaucratic zeal.

In defiance, all good people should launch a campaign of harassing cyclists. One good trick, especially if the chap has his earphones on, is to put the car into neutral when some 100 feet behind. Then, rolling noiselessly almost level with the cyclist and still keeping the car in neutral, you rev up the engine and hit the horn at the same time.

With good luck, you’ll drop the chap into the gutter. But, alas, with bad luck you may drop him under your wheels, in which case there will be some trouble with the police. Hence I don’t recommend you do any such irresponsible thing, However…