"We need to build roads faster" says PM Liz Truss, but who were they built for originally?

"We need to build roads faster" said new British prime minister, Lis Truss, yesterday during the short speech she gave in Downing Street.

According to the Department for Transport there are 245,000 miles of roads in Britain; a distance equivalent to circumnavigating the earth 10 times. In other words, we have more than enough roads already. In order to reduce environmental degradation and increase the quality of life our towns and cities, we need proper investment in public transport and active travel. To borrow from political rhetoric, we need to go back to basics. After all, our current network of roads were not built for cars.

In 1887 Karl Kron published Thousand Miles on a Bicycle thanks to book pledges from cyclists as he pedalled his penny farthing around America. In 2013, Carlton Reid used crowdfunding website Kickstarter to do much the same thing. Roads Were Not Built For Cars is a fascinating account of how cyclists were the first to push for good roads and became the pioneers of motoring.

| “despaired and neglected roads”

A relatively tiny proportion of our road network was designed and built for cars and lorries; for every one mile of motorway, there are 95 miles of roads conceived originally for non-motorised traffic.

After the railway killed off stage-coach traffic in the 1830s, it was another 50 years before cyclists took to the roads and pushed for high-quality sealed surfaces and were the first to lobby for national funding and leadership for roads.

Rees Jeffreys might have been an early advocate for motorways, but he started his career campaigning on behalf of cyclists for the improvement of what he referred to as “despaired and neglected roads”, lobbying for the of spreading tar on Britain’s roads long before cars became a form of mass transport.

The bicycle is not only entwined with the earliest days of the motor car, it literally paved the way for its widespread uptake. Cyclists were to be written out of highway history in the 1920s and 1930s by the all-powerful motor lobby but even the venerable Automobile Association had been formed by a group that broke away from the Cyclists Touring Club.

This fascinating period in history period from 1880-1905, which witnessed the first cycling boom and the start of our global obsession with motoring is explored in a gratifying degree of detail in a new book about roads history.

The book brings the history of our roads up to date by delving into the psychology of road users today. The following extract is from one of a number of sample pages available to view here

Social scientists theorise that humans believe in three kinds of territorial space. One is personal territory, like home. The second involves space that is only temporarily available, such as a gym locker. The third kind is public territory, such as roads.

“Territoriality is hard-wired into our ancestors,” believes Paul Bell, co-author of a study on road rage. “Animals are territorial because it had survival value. If you could keep others away from your hunting groups, you had more game to spear, it becomes part of the biology.”

When they are on the road, some motorists forget they are in public territory because the cues surrounding them – personal music, fluffy dice, protective shells – suggest they are in private space.

“If you are in a vehicle that you identify as primary territory, you would defend that against other people whom you perceive as being disrespectful of your space,” added Bell. “What you ignore is that you are on a public roadway – and you don’t own the road.”

The ethical choice

The ETA was established in 1990 as an ethical provider of green, reliable travel services. Over 30 years on, we continue to offer cycle insurance , breakdown cover and mobility scooter insurance while putting concern for the environment at the heart of all we do.

The Good Shopping Guide judges us to be the UK's most ethical provider.

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