Cycling is growing in Fort Worth and, judging from social media contacts, doing well elsewhere in Texas. My acquaintances in Houston, Austin, San Antonio and Dallas report good experiences and a vibrant cycling community. And I've met a couple of local and regional cyclists through bike forums.
Fort Worth's Mayor Betsy Price is a fitness buff and very supportive of cycling. She participates in group rides, including the summer Tour de Fort Worth corresponding with the Tour de France schedule, although our local rides are usually modestly paced 10-20 mile rides. That helps a lot. It also helps to ignore the usual handful of anti-cycling curmudgeons who infest the comment sections on local media pages.
The Trinity Trails and other cycling/jogging/pedestrian paths encourage more fitness cycling, especially among casual cyclists and folks who prefer to avoid city streets.
I'll use those for transportation routes to and from downtown, at least during rush hour. Outside rush hour it's often shorter and faster to take other routes.
I usually prefer the streets and ride mostly semi-rural and rural areas. Lots of serious cyclists riding the same routes. Over time we'll need to make adjustments as housing developments will increase traffic on narrow two lane farm to market roads that were never designed for that much traffic. One particularly popular route with cyclists will probably be unsafe to ride in five years.
I also see lots of utility cyclists, folks who are de-horsed by the economy and need transportation beyond the bare bones bus service to the outskirts of Fort Worth. I'm also a utility cyclist and ride or walk for most grocery shopping.
A key to promoting any cycling community -- whether casual group rides or competition -- is an energetic and charismatic promoter and organizer. This is true for any community activity, whether cycling or live community theater. The burden invariably falls onto the shoulders of one person, supported by a tiny handful of other folks.
If you want to see more casual family oriented rides, more pub crawls, more amateur competition in time trials, cyclocross, etc., *BE* that person. Nobody will do it for you. Usually it starts with a couple of friends chatting over coffee or beer, saying "Why don't we...?"
Next thing you know, one of the two people is posting schedules on Facebook, tacking up notices in bike shops, etc. They'll meet once a week or more often. The key is to be there, even if nobody else shows up. Keep doing it, post about it, support and encourage folks who express an interest and do show up, and it'll happen.
But it takes that one person. Almost invariably if that one person leaves the area, becomes incapacitated or experiences life changes that make it impossible to continue participating, the activity declines unless there's a small core group with someone else willing to pick up the slack.