Originally Posted by
TheReal Houdini
So true. It kills me every time I see some poor (literally) guy lugging himself to work on a 45 lb. full suspension BSO that functions most effectively as a pogo stick. No wonder these guys buy cars the minute they can afford them.
The same money properly applied could have purchased a semi-decent commuter, if mainstream America even knew what a proper commuter bicycle looks like. I was just in Germany. Almost every bike I saw had fenders, racks, and lights. Many had generators and IGHs. Why aren't there fleets of these things in U.S. cities?
The problem is that we have a split market place. The big box stores want to market "bargain" look-like-better bikes to the general casual riding public, and the bike shop marketplace has too large a premium on niche bikes such as commuters. The commuter bikes are too over featured and expensive for the kind of people I'm talking about.
There's no reason that we can't produce and market a well designed basic commuter priced affordably and targeted to the working class. Problem is that the client base sees dealers as too expensive, and big boxes don't know how to sell them. The other issue is that the numbers of customers is still fairly small, and they tend to keep bikes a long time, spending only the minimum possible, so dealers don't see them as high revenue potential.
Look around, the US bike industry is now built around a "consumable" bike with a short life cycle, and frequent replacement. Working class commuters just don't fit the model well.