@distelfliege @vfrmedia Is it? It's been years since I got on bicycle forums that had this kind of activism. Basically, once I made up my mind on the issue for myself, I lost interest in the question. It didn't help that the VC crowd lived in a bizarro world where it was appropriate to pity the Dutch for having bike lanes everywhere.

@Reinderdijkhuis @vfrmedia In Germany, the turn for lobbying for bikelanes took place 4 years ago, I think. Not long ago. before that, the main german cycling organisation, the ADFC, was nearly completely in favour of VC.

I'm not too interested in that eigther but you get a lot of debate... on german twitter :D

@distelfliege @Reinderdijkhuis@mastodon.

in UK our cycling clubs have been "sport dominated" and attracted the kind of people who were strong/fit enough for VC.

I suspect a reason for change in DE and UK is a desire to encourage high kids to cycle to/from school to improve their physical health,much safer when they have sufficient space

Last week I had to slow down for school kids cycling home as there were so many, a benefit of the reallocated fast road I mentioned previously.

@vfrmedia @distelfliege
Yeah, I remember that well. It's a vision of cycling that is fundamentally incompatible with mass cycling.

@Reinderdijkhuis @distelfliege and I guess in NL it would be easy to take for granted that thousands of children are *already* cycling to/from school..

An interlinked issue that might affect views is the economic depression since 10 years ago has had an effect of reducing birth rates EU wide - and thus the numbers of children who would now be interested in cycling, but its important not to forget the ones who are around!

@vfrmedia @distelfliege Always remember that activists had to literally scream bloody murder to get to the point where having kids cycle safely was even possible.

@Reinderdijkhuis @distelfliege a young woman in my town got told off by a motorist for cycling with her kids to to school a couple of winters ago (mild compared to now, not with snow/ice etc) and carrying a smaller one in a bakfiets and the drivers said they would report her to cops/social services.

But it was empty threat, and even it happened there are already social workers, a policeman and *two* MPs (who have kids of their
own) on our local cycle campaign group anyway 😉 )

@Reinderdijkhuis @vfrmedia we haven't gotten to that point yet in Berlin :-/

@distelfliege @Reinderdijkhuis the rise in cycling numbers in my town has been very recent, TBH I suspect a lot of it is due to rising petrol prices, congestion and roads now being no safer in cars!

The kids I see cycling are more often from high schools in the rural area (I've seen about 2 or 3 from the town).

Possibly the case a family has had to give up 1 of 2 cars at the same time kids get to high school age and want independence, so cycling appeals to them more anyway..