Thread by @magnatom

Something that is often overlooked about riding a bike in a city, is that it opens your eyes. Your see things you never saw, or at least noticed, before. Early in 2005 I had only ever rode a bike as a kid. In my local area and the occasional longer canal path ride... 1/n

... but never with traffic and absolutely never in a city. With the birth of my first child I had a choice, buy another car, or buy a bike. I chose a bike. Why? I'm not sure why. Probably as it would cost a lot less and help keep me fit.
I knew nothing of the issues that... 2/n

... cyclists faced on the roads. More importantly in 2005 I honestly can't remember thinking there was a problem on the roads. Roads were mainly full of cars and buses and HGVs. What problem?
Then I started cycling.
The problems I faced with poor drivers etc are well... 3/n

... documented in my blog and in my videos. Go look for them if your interested. But they mostly miss something important. The more and more I cycled on the streets, the more that something didn't feel right. Something felt out of place. Despite what many of my haters... 4/n

... at the time may have suggested it wasn't me. Then I looked. I really, really looked. I realised that the hardest thing to see was the thing that was the easiest to see. Everywhere. In fact it was so ubiquitous that it became impossible to see unless you separated... 5/n

... yourself from it. No I'm not not talking about the cars, I'm talking about absolutely everything else, everywhere that was and is designed to accommodate the car. Everything. Buildings have to be set distances apart to let cars drive around them. Shops are built... 6/n

... to allow their customers to park outside them. Communities are flattened to allow faster cars to drive through cities. Houses are built with a minimum amount of parking spaces for each house. Monuments have cars parks surrounding them whilst we spend money scraping... 7/n

.... the car pollution off of them. Parks are shaped and felled to allow car access, an even the trails on remote mountains are shaped by where people can start walking, after having parked their cars. Our whole environment has been shaped, not by the forces of nature.. 8/n

... No. Nature has lost. Its shaped by the very tool that is supposed to provide us with 'freedom'. Are we truly free in a world shaped by a tool that pollutes, congests, eats up resources, contributes significantly to global warming, contributes to obesity and poor... 9/n

... mental health!?
Does that mean we should eradicate the tool? Banish it and punish those who use it? No, but we all need to take that step back that cycling allowed me to do, to look at the world directly around us and ask, is this really what we want or need? 10/n

Then we need to start repairing our world such that we start using the appropriate tools for the appropriate jobs and avoid designing a world to fit one tool.
That will inevitably mean that our relationship with the car will need to change. New models of 'ownership' or.... 11/n

... perhaps car sharing will be the way forward. Significant investment and perhaps state ownership of public transport will be required. More investment in people orientated active transport will be needed as well, with bike sharing and electric bike sharing schemes... 12/n

.... being part of the mix.
Electric cars? Well yes, but rather than being a 'driver' of change this will just become part of the mix of transport options. Oh, an no... I can't see a place for Elon's car tunnels in this mix, can you?
But what benefits will all of this bring? 13/n

They will be significant. Look back at all the problems I listed earlier. Some of them vanish and some improve. The only real downside is the initial cost and that needs to be weighed against the significant long term economic benefits that healthier, happier, less 14/n

... congested cities will bring. Will they're be losers? In the short term, almost certainly. Many people benefit from car depenance. But with any change in approach comes opportunity. It just needs to be grasped.
So what do we need to do to get there?! Talk. Not to me, or...15/n

... your followers on Twitter. That's an echo chamber. Talk to your friends and family. Ask them to 'take that step back' . But most importantly, talk to your politicians. They are the ones who can actually change things. An email is, easy. A face to face, not so easy... 16/n

... but its more powerful. But however you talk to them, keep talking and get your friends to talk to them. Together we can start changing the places where we live, and if everyone did that, you'd soon notice, that you'd changed the world.
With all the crap thing on in the...17/n

... World at the moment, perhaps 2019 is a good time to start pushing for positive change. It's certainly not the year to Bury our heads on the sand. Let's start a revolution by changing the wheels that revolve from engine powered to people powered.