Editorial

Roads and Cycling, a Long History

Based on high-quality papers presented at the Prague Congress in 2023, this issue of Routes/Roads deals with roads and two- (or three-) wheelers. Strangely enough, in a world dominated by cars, modes of transport that are much older than the car are often described as ‘new mobilities’: first and foremost walking, then scooters, rollerblades and, of course, two-wheelers. As a matter of fact, in most cases it is the car that constitutes the "new mobility", being clearly more recent than the others. The ancestor of the car, the famous Cugnot fardier, the highlight of the World Road Congress in Paris in 2007, dates back to 1769 (not forgetting a small steam-powered vehicle presented by a Dutch Jesuit, Verbiest, to the Emperor of China in 1668, a German hand-cranked carriage in 1689 and, even earlier, descriptions by Italian engineers as far back as the 15th century).), it has to be admitted that after various trials in Europe throughout the 19th c., with different fuels, the automobile did not really take off until the 1880s, after the major inventions of the internal combustion engine (Daimler, Maybach) and the tyre (Michelin, Dunlop). In passing, it should be noted that the word "automobile", which entered the dictionary in 1875, was then considered by the Académie française to be masculine (like the noun "mobile"), and changed gender in 1901!