Hah! Ever tried to ride a bike on a gravel road? I think they’ve got a surprise coming...
The only thing rougher is hitting a pothole--or a lot of them. Some of the county roads here have been replaced with pavement--the asphalt layers were ground up and re-used elsewhere because there is still some material in them and the 'mix' (sand, gravel, etc) is right already.
We have very good gravel roads here for vehicle traffic. It is not uncommon to do 50 or 60 on them, but they are well packed and maintained.
The 'equal priority for bicycles' is crap, though, when major towns are 100 miles apart--especially with our winters.
When was the last time you bought a bike? They have shock absorbers now.
I can see it now, "The federal govt. has announce a new program by BHO. We will now pay up to $100 to refit every bike with shock absorbers. This $200 million dollar program will create at least 12 new jobs."
Yous dollars at work. Bike paths by state. http://stimuluswatch.org/2.0/
Especially those roads they use the ‘big gravel’ on.
True, but understand that the government first began paving roads in the 1890s for bicycles - not automobiles.
The best surfaces I ever knew for bike riding were dirt roads around where I grew up, many of them have never been paved yet. There were areas that were a little rough but the best stretches were like rolling on silk, especially some of the clay roads when the weather was dry and they had not been graded for some time. Riding the clay surface that the cars had compacted was perfect. Some of the sand roads were very nice too but the sand was more likely to washboard and riding washboard on a bike is misery, most of the time a person will just give up and get off and push the bike to a smoother stretch.