Cycling UK Forum

Any insights from those that were around?

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/s ... gb0101.xls

In 1952 people did:

1840 km/year/capita by bus
1160 km/year/capita by car/van/taxi
760 km/year/capita by rail
460 km/year by pedal cycle
140 km/year/capita by motorcycle

Today the figures are:

10,100 km by car/van/taxi
1200 km by rail
600 km by bus
140 km by domestic airplane (previously negligible)
76 km by motorcycle
76 km by pedal cycle

So a massive rise in car journeys, and the biggest % drop in cycle journeys. (Unfortunately the data start in 1952, presumably things were already in decline by 1952)

Where were people going? Short journeys to the shops and school? Longer distances? It took 10 years from 1952 to 1961 for cycle journeys to half, and another 5 or 6 years to half again, from which point there hasn't really been a decline since about 1970. So a change that took place between 1950 and 1970, and obviously due to the extra car journeys.

In my experience there has been a huge decline in cycling since the 70s.

At the start of the 70s I can remember that lots of children cycled to school, many people rode bikes to work and many women rode bikes around town to do their shopping.

People couldn't afford a car.

Women stayed at home looking after the children.
Men went to work by bus/walk/cycle/motorbike.

Not that long ago.
I was born in the very early 1950s.

I grew up in Portsmouth in the 1950s, when the Royal Naval Dockyard - which for two centuries untl about 1890 had been the world's largest industrial complex - still employed 15000 men. Most of them commuted by bike.When the siren went for the end of the day shift, thousands of bikes streamed out of the Dockyard gates and dispersed to all corners of Portsea Island. For the next half hour or so, bikes ruled the road - the trolley buses still kept going, but the few motorists knew better than to venture onto the streets. In retrospect it was an awesome sight, but of course I thought nothing of it at the time. Similar scenes, I would guess, took place around large factory sites throughout the country.

1950's dad cycled across the city (coventry) to work and to visit my mum, would often cycle to meet her, leave bike, go by bus to the date venue, escort her home then ride back home himself.
When they married they lived a couple of miles from his work and he continued cycling, even after they got a car.
I too remember the days when mum sometimes picked him up from work and the mass exodus from the factory gates...... though this was usually on foot as the years passed.
The car was acquired in the early '60's when dad decided going on holiday with 2 young children on public transport was not so easy... also we were more restricted with what we could do and where we could go once at the destination...... esp on wet days.

We always walked to school or used school bus, and public bus to get to and from my college. We were very rarely escorted anywhere by car.

In later years dad was one of the oldest still using the bike sheds at his factory.
Interestingly these days when I pick Phil up from his place of work, there appears to be more people now using bikes at the factory and from all walks of life.

Nice story eileithyia, a different life wasn't it.

ChrisButch wrote:I grew up in Portsmouth in the 1950s, when the Royal Naval Dockyard - which for two centuries untl about 1890 had been the world's largest industrial complex - still employed 15000 men. Most of them commuted by bike.When the siren went for the end of the day shift, thousands of bikes streamed out of the Dockyard gates and dispersed to all corners of Portsea Island. For the next half hour or so, bikes ruled the road - the trolley buses still kept going, but the few motorists knew better than to venture onto the streets. In retrospect it was an awesome sight, but of course I thought nothing of it at the time. Similar scenes, I would guess, took place around large factory sites throughout the country.

I used to cycle to work at Devonport Dackyard...every day even in
the freezing winter. Happy days,

I was born in 55 so I'm too young to comment first hand, but from what older relatives have said to me over the years I think the bicycle was much more of an all round tool than we view it today. My father spoke of rides to Stoke on Trent from London as being everyday type occurancies, I knew one bloke who would 'commute' weekly from Coventry to Newark on Trent by bike, but these were the same people who rode the same machine to and from work everyday, and might go for a leisure ride on it at the weekend. They would - I gather - think nothing of locking the bike in the garden shed to go by train on their annual holiday to the seaside, or using the bus if it was more convenient.

I don't /think/ people didn't have cars simply because they were too expensive- my perception (from my family / social group) is that people like them didn't have cars because people like them didn't have cars!


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I was born in 1956 in Thurnscoe, South Yorkshire, but I can remember the pits at chucking out time in the 60s, bikes everywhere. My dad never learned to drive (although he drove a bit in the RAF during the war) so all our holidays were by bus, train or on a couple of occasions we went in a mini-bus that one of his mates had as a sideline. Until dad retired in 1980 he was still cycling to the pit on his old sturmey-archer 3-speed bike with metal bar linkage brakes. I went to school on the bus courtesy of a bus pass (we were over 2 miles away), although I occasionally cycled after I got my first bike for Christmas when I was 14. I had to share the bike with my sister so it had a ladies frame - I had the micturate taken out of me for that. Typically my sister never rode it. I cycled all round South Yorkshire from 1968 to 1972 looking for railway sheds etc and I don't recall feeling at all intimidated by sharing the roads with motorists, so different to today.

IIRC in the early 60s I was first kid on our street to have gears and a dynamo, both SA jobs on a second-hand bike bought for £5. My Dad took great delight in installing his old drop pre-war bars for me - he was a CTC member in the 30s and rode all over NI on a single-speed, not for whatever arcane reason folk these days eschew gears but because it was all he could afford. Anyway, I took his handlebars over a good few more miles of Norn Iron for him until I went to university in Scotland in 1966. My old bike probably remained in the shed behind the house until the 90s when my mum died and the house was sold.

One of his stories concerned a chum called Arthur Barbour. Touring in Donegal, they stayed overnight in a B&B run by a woman whose husband had a fishing-boat. A couple of weeks later, Arthur received by post a parcel of fish addressed to "Arthur Barbour, Cyclist, Belfast". They were still fresh.

Born end 1944.

I think the biggest difference, then and now, is the amount of utility cycling. However, I don't think it's accurate to suggest that throughout the land, the mill hooter sounded and the streets were flooded with cyclists. Some places were like that, and from personal experience I remember York and to an even greater extent Hull. I don't remember that level of utility cycling in Leeds where there was a big commitment to municipal public transport. Extra trams (prior to 1959) and buses were laid on for big events and Leeds City Transport inspectors actively managed the system, directing duplicate sevices as needed.

Leisure cycling involved a lot more people who couldn't afford a car, not necessarily because they wanted to go cycling for its own sake. Touring was easy because there used to be a complete YHA network (with SYHA, YHANI, An Oige elsewhere.) It was physically easier because main roads were cycleable. Beeching put more freight on the roads.

I'd say that typically, commuting distances, with the possible exception of some London workers were much less. Many people lived near work. My mother managed a shop and for some years we lived in the flat above.

ChrisButch wrote:I grew up in Portsmouth in the 1950s, when the Royal Naval Dockyard - which for two centuries untl about 1890 had been the world's largest industrial complex - still employed 15000 men. Most of them commuted by bike.When the siren went for the end of the day shift, thousands of bikes streamed out of the Dockyard gates and dispersed to all corners of Portsea Island. For the next half hour or so, bikes ruled the road - the trolley buses still kept going, but the few motorists knew better than to venture onto the streets. In retrospect it was an awesome sight, but of course I thought nothing of it at the time. Similar scenes, I would guess, took place around large factory sites throughout the country.

you only have to watch the Ealing Films of the time to see that

Vetus Ossa wrote:I used to cycle to work at Devonport Dackyard...every day even in
the freezing winter. Happy days,

I think you mean "Dockyard"

Me too, BTW ........ but I rode from Gunnislake to Devonport when I could. It varied a bit if I was going to be working late or off to sea. 17miles each way. I shudder to think of trying that nowadays, not because of the traffic, but because I'm not in my 30s any more.

As for cycling in the dockyard, there used to be a "standstill" at 4pm(?) weekdays for fifteen minutes. All vehicles came to a stop at the sound of the siren to let the workers WALK to and out of the gates. Not only motor vehicles, but bicycles as well! Woe betide you actually propelling your bike and the dockyard police caught you. You had to WALK with your bike, not scoot or run with it.
I used to wait until the second siren sounded to allow normal vehicular passage, as it was quicker and easier to ride.

In later years, the standstill was abolished.

mercalia wrote: .... you only have to watch the Ealing Films of the time to see that

Perhaps the classic is during the opening scenes of Saturday Night and Sunday Morning when Albert Finney is seen getting his pay packet then joining the rush to the bike rack. Bearing in mind that the character he was playing was a machine operator turning out bottom bracket spindles at the Raleigh factory, you might expect a scene like that. I can't remember loads more.

My parents would think nothing of cycling from south London to the south coast after work on a Friday night or even sometimes earlier in the week. Tales of regular 100 mile plus rides abound from the mid fifties to car ownership in @ 1960. Their cycling became much less and stopped altogether when I came along.

There was a similar story with many of their cycling friends, pretty much all leisure riding had ceased by the mid 60's as they all had cars.

It wasn't until the late '70's when I started riding that they returned to cycling in a much more restricted way - before the leisure revolution.

When I started work here in Sheffield @ 1980 most workers used public transport or were close enough to walk. I rode to work but most youngsters went straight to car ownership, the works special buses (when I started there would be 3 or 4 buses at the gates each evening) were taken off and the car took over.
Sheffield is possibly atypical due to the geography but there are probably more daily cycle commutes in 2017 than there were back in the 50's/60's! But there are more cars too, less car sharing and shorter car journeys. City policy restricted car parking in the centre and public transport subsidised - with de regulation the buses ran out of control, people turned to cars and never returned. Out of town shopping, longer acceptable commutes from new greenfield housing have all impacted on the rise of the car. Now some of the biggest recent builds in the city have been car parks!