mconlonx

How many will be used as primary business/transportation, outside first world situations...?

Walter S

I agree. Your scepticism is well placed. Bicycles are not going to get a lot more popular if you have to pedal.

Ekdog

I think it has more to do with the lack of cycling infrastructure, the perception that cycling is dangerous and the long distances that separate people's homes from their jobs and vital services that keep them from being used more in the United States and certain other countries, although downright laziness is probably a big factor, too.

Rollfast

Since I stopped driving on December 26, 2006...probably, although a little reluctantly. I miss visiting some friends over 200 miles away.

Rollfast

No good if they aren't Shelbys and Rollfasts or Columbia Five-Stars, or Schwinn DX.


I hear you can find a repop duck head for a Shelby Donald Duck.


You don't need more new bikes as much as to fix an old one. I like Peugeots and road bikes of all sorts too, but I'm too fat.

tandempower

Discouragement tempts laziness. It's easier to sink into habitual laziness when you are discouraged by a perception of insufficient means, regardless of whether the insufficiency is more real or imagined.

Roody

Also, I believe children's bikes are included in the total, and they are well over half of all bikes made. The number of bikes produced has always exceeded the number of cars built.

Roody

Most people believe that cycling is much more difficult than it really is. I used to tell co-workers that I commuted 4 miles to work and they would be amazed that an ordinary mortal could accomplish such a feat.

I-Like-To-Bike

Of course laziness is a big factor - if/when lazy people are defined as those people who do not choose to participate in the same activities as the poster, or lazy people are those who have different ideas than the poster on how to prioritize their tasks, activities and life.

Rollfast

If they steal your bike and toss it in the river, then it's going downstream.

tandempower

I definitely think that's part of it but I think there's a social cultural factor about showing up with a certain kind of clothes on and without a drop of sweat that is the real obstacle for people even daring to attempt going places by bike or on foot.

Part of it is laziness. I notice it in myself how I dread rolling up my pants if I have to wear pants, or having to change back-and-forth from shorts to pants. And although there is a lot of leeway for situations where you can wear shorts, I would say that there is extremely strong cultural pressure to wear pants for men in certain kinds of situations, especially professional ones.

No one would think of this bias toward pants as a pro car, anti-bike bias, but that is how it works in practice.

I-Like-To-Bike

Apparently there is one person who would think of a long pants—automotivist—anti-bike conspiracy.

McBTC

Solution: become a life guard who can walk to work: don't need no stinkin suit'n tie, bike shorts, car or bike or even bother taking a shower...

lasauge 

I'm going to disagree with this although I've felt that same sentiment myself. The fact is, pants (or at least full-leg coverage) became de rigeur for well-dressed men long before the era of mass motoring, and if anything, standards of dress have actually become more relaxed compared to what was expected a century ago. Remember that before cars, most men would have walked or ridden a streetcar to go to work, maybe riding in a horse-drawn carriage if they lived somewhere rural or were wealthy - cycling was never a dominant mode of travel in North America, even during the 1890's bike boom.

If anything, dressing well and cycling at the same time has become easier, the only place where we've lost ground is that plus-fours and jodhpurs have gone out of style.

jon c. 

Although plus fours would keep chain grease off the cuffs, I think they would otherwise be very uncomfortable for riding in the modern style. I haven't actually tried riding with them, but the bagginess of the thighs isn't all that comfortable just walking.

StarBiker

Having a well paying job that requires you dress a certain way also helps. Along with Summer Heat sweating your ass off.
Again, when the area you live in is a well off suburb you are either poor, or the strange white guy on the bike. Or both.
Funny lot's of Cyclists on Falls Road, and it's very, very dangerous. No way in hell I would bike on any road around here for long distances.

And in Colorado Springs you might sweat in the summer, but not like you will in the DMV, or south east. Although you have a great chance of being hit by lightning. I just thought of this over hearing a women describing how she was hit by lighting leaning against a car after a rain storm, and everybody standing outside of the car was killed. And it was in Colorado where it happened.

Rollfast

It definitely is a stance away from boxers or briefs. Probably not biased but well-founded.

cooker

It's not a conspiracy theory - you seem to see those everywhere - it's simply reality. The expectation that people show up to work in office clothes is one impediment to cycling to work, which many people have experienced.

McBTC

All who are able to eschew motorized transport and still pull down a pension or pay off the house and set aside 8 x yearly gross wages by a desired retirement age... I say: good on 'ya!

jon c. 

My dad rode his bike to work in his suit and tie for decades. Although not in the winter. But in a temperate climate riding an upright bike at a moderate pace for 2 or 3 miles, that's quite doable.

cooker

Where and when was that? London?

jon c. 

Upstate (western) NY. From the 60s to the early part of this century. He's not an avid rider, he just found it the most convenient transportation. And I suspect he had an aversion to paying to park a car every day.

cooker

He sounds pretty eccentric (in a good way). I can't imagine many others in town did the same thing.

tandempower

Notice all the ladies in the picture not showing any leg. Nowadays it is perfectly ok, even modest and conservative, for women to wear skirts and dresses at or below the knee. But men in shorts? Postal workers, coaches/trainers, and certain other professions 'qualify' for shorts, but they're not a dress-code option in offices or other professional settings. I wouldn't call it a conscious conspiracy, except maybe to the extent that someone who attempts to add shorts to the dress code who rides a bike might be seen as 'pushing' cycling norms.

The funny thing about norms is that if someone suggests new ones, they are viewed as pushing an agenda, yet whoever benefits from the existing norms is not seen as 'pushing' their agenda by resisting the introduction/addition of new norms.

jon c. 

Changes in men's fashion take time. At least we're not all still wearing hats. I do think shorts in warm climates will become acceptable in time, but that's likely to be another 30 years or so. They're much more acceptable outside the office environment these days. Fifty years ago, they would have been inappropriate in a university lecture hall and now they're standard uniform.