Platy

Once upon a time everybody did ride a bike! This article is too difficult for middle school, but it's interesting nevertheless:

The Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine
Volume 50, Page 474 (1895)

Bicycle Problems and Benefits.

As a revolutionary force in the social world the bicycle has had no equal in modern times. What it is doing is, in fact, to put the human race on wheels for the first time in its history. The proportion of people who are riding bicycles in nearly every community is astonishingly large. In many instances it maybe said that nearly every able-bodied man, woman, and child has a wheel, and is a regular rider. When we consider the increase in rapidity of locomotion which is attained, and the fact that it is self-supplied with such ease, it is not surprising that the changes required to meet the demands of the new order of things are so many and so radical as to amount virtually to making the world over again, so far as traveling is concerned.

This is peculiarly the case in the great cities. In and about New York, for example, there are at present something like half a million bicycle-riders. In the city itself, on pleasant holidays, they swarm like flies upon all the parkways and other thoroughfares having asphalt or macadam pavement. It is very clear that sooner or later they or the vehicles must give way, for both cannot find room to remain with safety. Indeed, there have been many fatal accidents already, some of them shocking in the extreme. The dangers increase as the number of wheelmen multiplies. In a collision with any kind of vehicle drawn by a horse the bicycle-rider is certain to get the worst of it. His vehicle, instead of being in any way a protection to him, is a menace to his welfare the moment it comes in contact with any other moving body. The fact that he cannot stand still for a moment is also an element of additional danger. These conditions make it an absolute necessity that in all communities in which there are large numbers of wheelmen there should be separate roadways set apart for their especial use. No city park should be laid out in future without its bicycle pathway, nor is it likely to be. The need of a separate roadway for horseback-riders has been recognized in all our great parks, yet in a roadway filled with carriages an equestrian is much safer from harm than a bicycle-rider. At present the wheelmen outnumber the horsemen a hundred or more to one, and the need of separate provision for them is consequently too obvious to be questioned.

But it is not in the parks alone that such accommodation is necessary. There has been much discussion in the New York press for some months past about providing a suitable roadway for bicycles from one end of the city to the other, so that riders may pass to and from their business on their wheels. It has been urged that the covering with asphalt of a continuous or connected line of streets would supply this; but this is doubtful. The chances would be that heavy wagons and carriages of all kinds would seek the same line of travel because of the superior road-bed, and that it would become too crowded to be either a safe or a speedy thoroughfare for bicycles. It is not impossible that in time we may see in all our great cities lines of streets reserved for bicycles. This might be done were all the streets of the city paved equally well, and it is one of the most beneficent effects of the bicycle that it is making the advent of this condition of our city streets certain in the near future. There are enthusiasts also who predict that in New York it will not be many years before a lightly built elevated structure will be run through the streets on the water-front for the exclusive use of wheelmen.

If separate thoroughfares of any kind are set apart for this use, the result will be a considerable loss of income to the street transit companies. It is a fact that many trolley lines running between Western cities and their suburbs have suffered serious financial loss through the use of the bicycle, since thousands of persons travel to and fro between their offices and their homes on wheels. But while the transit companies have been injured in this way, the whole country has been the gainer by means of the wide-spread demand for good roads which the advent of the bicycle has aroused. Many States, led by Massachusetts and New Jersey, have taken up the subject seriously and systematically, and the next few years are certain to see great progress in this direction. Massachusetts, in 1893, appropriated $300,000 to be expended by a highway commission in scientific road-building, and about forty sections of such roads are now under construction. New Jersey has spent many thousands of dollars in the same way, and its number of good roads is increasing year by year, each new one being the most persuasive kind of argument for others. The recent legislature of New York State recognized the needs of wheelmen more specifically by passing a bill authorizing the construction of a bicycle roadway upon the top of the Croton aqueduct, running for forty miles through a beautiful part of the country north of the city.

An interesting effect of the new order of things is the revival which has been started in the old wayside tavern business. Within the next few years we are certain to see comfortable inns spring up along all the roads which are suitable for bicycle-riding. The wheelman cannot carry much luggage, and is especially unable to find accommodation for food. His ability to travel easily fifty or seventy-five miles a day makes comfortable lodging-places at night and comfortable eating-places by day great desiderata along his pathway. There are old inns within a radius of fifty miles of New York city that have known scarcely more than a customer a week for years which are now overrun with wheelmen, and are adapting themselves rapidly to the new situation. Good inns, like good roads, will add immeasurably to the attractiveness of the country, and will spread a love for country life among the dwellers in cities which will be in all ways a benefit to us as a people.

The bicycle is, in fact, the agent of health and of a wider civilization. It will give stronger bodies to the rising generation than their fathers have had, and it will bring the city and the country into closer relations than have existed since the days of the stagecoach. What the summer boarder has been doing for the abandoned farms and deserted villages of New England, the wheelman is doing for the regions surrounding our great cities. He is distributing through them modern ideas and modern ways of living, and is fructifying them with gentle distillations of city wealth. Above all, he is teaching their people that a sure way to prosperity lies before them in the beautifying of the country in which they live, and in the preservation of all its attractive natural features.