Originally Posted by
tandempower
That's fascinating. I'm always citing an old 1950s documentary someone posted here that said Model T's gained popularity to some extent because people could drive them on the unpaved country roads outside the city where cycling was difficult to impossible. I just assumed that city streets were cobblestone or other less-than-smooth surface and that smooth asphalt and cement weren't used until after motor cars had gained popularity.
Henry Ford started life as a farmer, and he clearly thought of cars being mainly for the rural market for at least the first 10 or 15 years of his company. I don't know if bikes were thought to be more rural or more urban at that time, or just universal.
BTW, Detroit also provided the first mile of concrete pavement in the world, on Woodward Ave. between Eight Mile and Nine Mile Roads. That's about eight miles north of the map in the OP--giving us some idea of how rapidly Detroit grew around the time it was first becoming the Motor City. (For example, population more than doubled between 1920 and 1930.) By this time, I think pavement was provided pretty much for the benefit of cars, not bikes.