Article: New cycling stories

Dave Horton persuasively explains that cycling advocates have been too pragmatic about fitting proposals into other's agendas (health, congestion, the evironment) and speak of evolution not revolution. The cost is that there is no compelling vision to share with others:

"We have jumbles of ideas, impulses and convictions around cycling’s worth. But we lack the confidence to develop these jumbles into coherent visions, because they’re about bicycles, and bicycles don’t count. We work towards visions we can’t articulate, and we are shy in sharing our ambitions for cycling... How powerful is the dominant ideology that it stops us articulating even to ourselves, let alone asking for, what it is we really want! Thus our silence contributes to cycling’s continued repression.

We believe bikes should replace cars. We think half of all journeys could easily be made by bike. We see a bicycle-based society as better than a car-based one. We look forward to the time when bicycles proliferate as cars disappear and die. People won’t know these things unless we tell them, so we should tell them. We need to make our stories, to help make sense of the changes we’re calling for."

Link: Thinking About Cycling: New cycling stories