Where have all the cyclists gone?

"Fifty years and no change" said the headlines of the Kentish Express, but oh how it has. Over the last 50 years the population of Ashford has almost doubled. The amount of motor-vehicles on poor Ashford's roads has almost tripled, (and it will get much worse), and to add to all that lorries have got much bigger.

Raising the bridge a mere 12" was a very costly exercise with not much being achieved.

However there is one aspect which has indeed changed markedly; and that is the number of everyday cyclists. There are none to be seen in the 2014 picture, whilst there are at least seven bicycles in the 1964 photo, and what is more there were pedestrians, but none in 2014.

     My mother would have been able to sum up this scenario quite accurately, by observing that: "It is not that the bridge is too low, it is that the lorries are too high". She is right you know.