Sir – Tongue-in-cheek Mark McArthur-Christie writes (Letters, May 14): “cyclists are “dreadfully hard done-to” and always “right” about almost everything“. What might a former policy director of the Association of British Drivers be saying? Why?

Motorised transport, compared with the 70s, is wonderfully fast, astonishingly nimble, remarkably economic to drive and cheap. Even buses are speedy and can be luxurious.

Cars are more comfortable and also bigger: the Ford Escort ‘grew’ 16 per cent wider over 40 years in production.

Not everything has grown: parking bays are still mostly the same, many traditional roads cannot change and people cycling take much the same space.

The consequence of bigger motor vehicles, on unchanged roads, is that they travel closer to cyclists. If you remember the original Mini, that’s much more. Cars occupy more area and have the ability to accelerate and take space more than ever they could. It’s simply easier to drive in a way that may threaten any cyclist.

Perhaps Mark’s worry is the flood of ‘cycle-friendly words’ in current county local plan consultations? The implication here, as we won’t be building lots of new roads, could be restraint on motorists’ ‘freedom’ in order to improve the safety of people choosing a bike for an average (ie short) journey.

He need not froth, many of the county’s words are #cyclewash: repetitious but not defining safe, convenient, connected space where it’s needed.

In the same paper, Michael Lawrence (misunderstanding that A34/M40 are Highways Agency roads, not the county’s), expects cyclists to use tracks, on which millions are spent, and fine them if they don’t. If the ‘tracks’ are disconnected, have dangerous side-road-crossings in London Road, with money spent on inscrutable tactile paving, these can’t be cycle tracks.

Then, at The Plain, the cycle project has less than 100th of its stone-paving cost spent on paint for bikes.

Graham Smith
Oxford