Originally Posted by B. Carfree

Your guess would be wrong. When I moved to Davis, CA in 1980, it was the unquestioned bike capital of the world. That lack of "infra" in Davis noted in the video was even more lacking when we had streets full of bikes from 1975-85. The bike was so clearly the dominant means of transportation that no one even bothered to collect ridership numbers. We arrogantly assumed the war against the car was over and we had won.

And about only hard-core cyclists being interested in riding any distance. We put on a little ride every May called the Davis Double Century. In the '80s about 5% of the city population either rode the ride or volunteered to support it. Of course that was in the days before the Balkanization of cycling.

Back then, folks from the Netherlands would visit to learn from our success. I suspect that the zero-tolerance traffic law enforcement we had was something that influenced them. Interestingly enough, that policy disappeared in the mid-'80s, along with most of the bikes. I still mourn the loss of that once-wonderful cycling nirvana. I stayed long enough to have my family known as the "bike family" since we were just about the last holdouts to a vanished past.