alo

It is a novelty. In some places there are a lot of poor people. Somebody starts up a company making bamboo bikes. People buy them because they are supporting a company which employs poor people. Others buy them as a souvenir of their travels. Normally it is both.

Nobody I have heard of, uses a bamboo bicycle for regular cycling.

In tension, compression, and bending, bamboo is stronger than steel pipe of equal weight. Bamboo is light, so it would be a larger diameter of a steel pipe of equal weight.

The weakness of bamboo is that it splits. It is also like softwood, in that it deteriorates over time. If exposed to the weather, bamboo would not last as long as steel, aluminum, or carbon fiber. It would be like making a bike out of pine. If you wanted to ride in salt water, bamboo would last longer than steel.

On a bicycle, the weakness is the joints. If you rode existing bamboo bike on rough tracks for some time, the joints would fail.

However, if someone was to put the same sort of technology into bamboo bikes, as they put into carbon fiber bikes, a strong bike could be made. Particularly if the bamboo was coated with carbon fiber to stop it splitting, and deteriorating when exposed to the weather. But there would be no advantage, when you can just have a carbon fiber bike.