If you don’t build it, they won’t come – John Dales – transportxtra

If you don’t build it, they won’t come
The 1989 film, Field of Dreams, is one of those from which a particular line has become a popular saying: “If you build it, they will come.” This is, as pedants like me will tiresomely remind people, a misquote of the original: “If you build it, he will come.” The ‘he’ in this case is the deceased father of the lead character (Ray, played by Kevin Costner), and the line is uttered by an ethereal voice only he can hear. The ‘it’ Ray had to build in the film was a baseball pitch, so that a ghostly ballgame could take place. The ‘it’ most often referred to in contemporary discourse on streets is cycle tracks, with the ‘they’ being people on cycles who would not otherwise travel that way.