Bike lanes

There's a nice extract from the Guardian's coverage of the UK's first bike lane in 1934 here.

The gist of it is that Hore Belisha, the transport minister (famed for belisha beacons), opened a stretch of Western Avenue in Ealing with bicycle lanes that separated cyclists from motorised traffic. The Cyclists Union wasn't entirely happy with all this, though I'm not clear why.

At the time, cyclists accounted for 1,324 out of 7,202 deaths on the roads in a year (by way of comparison 2008 figures were 115 out of 2,538).

While recognising that cyclists would no longer be able to ride four abreast, the Guardian seemed to be broadly in favour, and at least one letter writer seems to have agreed.