'RoadsWereNotBuiltForCars": "Build it and they will come didn't work for Stevenage's cycleways. Why not?"

"Wide, smooth cycleways adjacent to main roads but separated from cars and pedestrians. Perpetually-lit, airy, safe underpasses beneath roundabouts. Direct, convenient and attractive cycle routes designed not by car-centric town planners but by a transport engineer who cycled to work every day. Schools, workplaces, shops: all linked by protected cycleways. Recreational bike paths to nature areas. Colour-coded sign-posting. Plentiful cycle parking in the town centre, at workplaces and at the rail station. An urban cycle network lionised at global conferences and the subject of lectures, books and study tours.

"... [However, nowadays and in reality:] The car culture of Stevenage is not unusual. In fact, it's maddeningly mainstream. The British cultural affinity with motoring – even slow, inconvenient motoring – is all pervasive. Perhaps [cycleway designer] Claxton was trying to force water uphill by promoting cycling to Brits in the 1970s? Perhaps a cycle-friendly New Town built in the future could achieve far more than Stevenage’s current 2.7 percent cycle modal share?"

"... But by not restraining motor vehicle use – and, instead, encouraging it – Claxton is partly to blame for the bad behaviour he describes. The low use of Stevenage’s cycleway network is also probably the fault of Claxton, and his colleagues, because they failed to spot that cycling was a mass mode of transport in the Netherlands for reasons other than provision of infrastructure: culture, history and politics were – and are – major factors. It has been a societal norm to cycle in the Netherlands since the early 1900s, but it hasn’t been societal norm to cycle in the UK since the early 1950s.

"In a few areas of the UK there are pockets of high cycle use, places such as Cambridge and some London boroughs, and in these places there’s a clear case for installing Dutch-style infrastructure. A cycle census by Transport for London has found very high cycle usage on certain roads, where up to 64 percent of the traffic is bicycle traffic. On such roads, where bicycles already dominate, it would be perverse not to provide better, safer facilities. It's a chicken and egg thing, but providing cycle infrastructure in places where there's not already high cycle usage could lead to underuse of such facilities, as happened in Stevenage."

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