Originally Posted by
hagen2456
What's the contrast suposed to tell us? That Americans are somehow genetically different? That Americans can't bike?
Cycling (as far as I know) was ever a large proportion of the means of getting around in the US. In the US, cars were (are) much less expensive than they are in Europe. That, the related push to build-out suburbs (which increased after WWII, and the "urban flight" of the middle class (among other things), assured that automobiles (and commuter mass transit) would become the dominant form of transport in the US.
Not that long ago, many typical Europeans could manage without a car. If you don't have a car, it isn't remarkable to consider using a bicycle.
If you have a car and it's convenient to use (what's been the situation in the US for 70+ years), it's not likely that many people are going to consider using a bicycle.
That is, the US is/was different than Europe.
What would be interesting is to see the automobile usage compared to bicycle use in the Netherlands and Denmark over the past 100 years.
Originally Posted by
hagen2456
Bullocks yourself. Mode share dived dramatically with increasing car traffic and car-related cyclist fatalities. Biking increased again with the dedicated infrastructure. It's as simple as that.
So, bicycling
was prevalent before "diving dramatically". It was never prevalent in the US.