Originally Posted by
RubeRad
Wouldn't all those components have to have come off another bike? If bamboo frames are just made locally to replace broken frames of other bikes, the net population of bikes can't really change. To really make a difference, it has to become super affordable and doable for a population to create lots of new bikes
That ship has sailed. Never again will emerging economies trudge upward on the evolutionary trail of human powered transportation innovation. Boneshaker to Penny Farthing to Safety Bike to 10 speed to Fat Bike to Recumbent to Velomobile to ??? Nutz to that!
Future economies are going to go straight from perambulation to self driving cars. Even in the developed world, bicycles exist in a unique class of quasi-plaything that is sometimes useful. In the Third World they are more useful than they aren't, but they really want to be driving cars like the grown up countries. There are scads of unserviceable bikes rusting in the tropics that can be donors for Bamboo Bike projects. They would be scrapped anyway. More will not be needed.