Many years ago while I was showing my 8 year old nephew my bicycle collection, of which I own N+1, the first question he asked was “which one is fastest”. Clearly he didn’t understand that it wasn’t the bike that was fastest but the person pedalling.
We are a nation obsessed with the speed of a vehicle but we don’t seem to be obsessed with how quick a journey can be. Take our railways for example, many years ago as a child riding British Rail a journey to London would take about 3 hours on an intercity 125. Nowadays that journey time is just over 2 hours on a similar if not the same rolling stock as 30 years ago. Why has this change occurred if the speed of the train is the same, we’ll track improvements have happened and timetables have been altered to allow routes to be more express and to allow trains to go further quicker.
This isn't about speed this is about the journey.
We regularly get asked about ebikes and how fast they go, but just like a normal non electric bike they can only legally go as fast as you can pedal and the motor is there to make cycling the bike easier not faster.
My cycle journey to work over 3 miles takes about 15 mins on the bicycle, with a physical top speed of about 25mph going down Burngreave Road between the traffic lights. How fast can my car do the journey? Well when you take into account that i’d have to find a parking space and walk from there toy work it could take me a whole lot longer. But my car is faster?
I’ve had surreal conversations while stationary at traffic light with drivers who have overtaken me dangerously on roads who complain that I was going too slow, do you see the irony?
Speed is not about the vehicle you are driving/riding it’s about the journey and making it as simple and easy as possible for all road users. Creating more safe space for people to cycle shorter distances means people who have to drive or those that take public transport aren’t slowed down by all those cyclists driving their cars around the city. It can be a concept that many people find difficult to reconcile but it is true and the less we talk about how fast the vehicle can go and more about the speed of the journey the better it will be for all of us.