Your review of research about attitudes to cycling is very disappointing and a contrast to my recent visit to Amsterdam, where the visitor finds well-marked cycle pathways everywhere, cycle parks the size of a multi-storey car park and hire prices as little as £7 per day (On your bike: cycling is for children, study finds, June 4). As petrol prices rise, cycling should also rise, but living close to Birmingham city centre, it is a very daunting prospect to try and cross the city on a bike and the second city is clearly not alone with its terrible disregard and disincentive to cyclists – young or old.
Robert Penn observed in his excellent book, It’s All About the Bike, that the status of the cyclist dipped from the mid-70s and that many imagine you’ve lost your driving licence or are simply too poor to drive. And to think Peugeot and Rover began as cycle manufacturers, and in the 1950s there were around 12 million regular cyclists.
Adrian Johnson
Birmingham
• What a pity that the researchers didn’t come to Doncaster, to see the unbounded enthusiasm for cycling in this town. Here, scores of adults use their bikes every day for all sorts of reasons, but one common thing unites them: they aren’t out on the roads, they are on the pavements.
Some of them are so safety conscious that they wear their helmets, just in case a pedestrian protests at the invasion of their rightful space and gives them a playful shove on to the paving slabs. Doncaster’s cyclists are also determined to complete their journeys in double-quick time, and to that end they are frequently seen riding the wrong way up one-way streets as a shortcut. And they have a sense of humour, too, for only earlier this week one of them rang his bell as he approached me from the rear, giving me ample time to stumble out of his way. Here, the cyclists easily avoid harassment by motorists. They simply terrorise those of us on foot, and ignore the Highway Code.
Phil Penfold
Doncaster, South Yorkshire
• Of course 25% of people in the Netherlands cycle. The Netherlands is flat. I live in Sheffield – a city built on seven hills. I’d love to cycle, but if the hills and car/van/bus/lorry drivers don’t kill me, the potholes in the roads will.
Gill Fuller
Sheffield
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