I think it is a personal decision whether to ride a bike or not. People here in Los Angeles will rather starve or drop dead than be caught riding a bike because they cannot afford gas/petrol (for the most part, they do it to look "cool" to their friends, or some vague exercise or weight reason). It is starting to really hurt now. Whether biking will catch on as a alternative form of getting around remains to be seen. It happened once before in the 1970s and nothing changed.