This is my idea of the week, a very simple one. Each year schools pay for bus passes for their pupils, costing hundreds of pounds per pupil. My simple idea is offering the same value in bicycle to pupils as an alternative.
Advantages for the pupil:
- Shiny new bicycle!
- No additional cost
- Can use it to travel at weekends, when bus passes doesn’t work
- Can travel to/from school around extra-curricular activities, not bus timetables
Advantages for all of us:
- After the first year, money could be saved on school bus passes
- Less carbon
- Healthier schools pupils
- The more cyclists there are, the safer cycling becomes
- Could promote buying of British bikes, boost British manufacturing economy.
Beautiful article by Kasey Klimes on ‘Next American City’. Although the pretension of the initial proposition of the bicycle as “an instrument of experiential understanding” may put you off, it’s well worth continuing. The pretension is justified.
Yes, the bicycle is a stunningly efficient machine of transportation, but in the city it is so much more. The bicycle is new vision for the blind man. It is a thrilling tool of communication, an experiential device for the beauty and the ills of the urban context. One cannot turn a blind eye on a bicycle - they must acknowledge their community, all of it.
Interaction with an urban environment - and a rural environment - on a bicycle is a so much more complete experience. Connection to humanity and the built environment we have created makes cycling so much more personal than the detachment of a car.
The Department for Transport’s recurring problem is that it focussing on large scale, long-distance journeys rather than the short ones people make every day. Bath’s ‘Two Tunnels’ project falls in the latter category, using old railway tunnels to forge a link between Midford and the centre of Bath.
He (Norman Baker) will meet volunteers and representatives of the environmental charity Sustrans to talk about the link being driven through two old railway tunnels between Oldfield Park and Midford.
This is a most pleasant surprise to see a
transport minister will be visiting the project today! Hopefully this signals a welcome change in direction and renewed interest in cycle infrastructure.
