Take up Dancing.....

2012 was the year of cycling. Now we need a revolution...   As bike use reaches critical mass we must keep up the momentum, for our health and for the good of the environment.   Call it the Richmond Park test. Yesterday morning, amazing to report, it wasn't belting down with rain, and the park was crammed. It was a joyful sight – families, dog-walkers, runners. But what would have amazed a time traveller from a couple of decades ago would have been the thousands and thousands of cyclists. Something has happened.

There are the dolphin-like schools of muscular men and women in matching Lycra, teams from Britain and the continent, moving as one; there are the men of a certain age, still on racing bikes, but swaddled in woollens; there are the kids with their parents; and there are the stately amateurs, sitting up straight on their three-gear Raleighs. But the main thing is the sheer number of them, a constant, gleaming, metallic stream.

Richmond Park is unusual, granted. It's a huge urban park, with hills and views that attract the big cycling clubs as well as many individuals from the rest of London. It now has a 20mph speed limit. But the something that's happened there is hardly unique, and is spreading, and should spread.

And it's simply that cycling has reached a tipping point, a critical mass, that has turned the motorists into a minority, and an increasingly boxed-in, nervous minority at that. On most of Britain's roads, if a couple of cyclists are side by side, causing cars or vans to brake, there will be shouts and hoots and waved fists. Here, drivers simply have to accept that the world has changed. Drivers who lose their temper find it isn't so easy in the park. They can't zoom off. And they are outnumbered by cyclists.

I've written about the cycling revolution before,........
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/dec/30/cycling-bikes-wiggins-environment-transport