Originally Posted by Retro Grouch
I think that if your objective is to promote bike use, then you have to look to why more people choose not to use bikes today.
I don't know where you live. What I see (living in a suburb of St Louis) is a metro area that was designed around the use of personal automobiles. Everything is spread out. Connector roads are high speed, unpleasant, and sometimes even illegal to bicycle on. To use a bike for day-to-day transportation requires a commitment to find reasonably safe routes that lead from where you are to wherever you want to go. Then you have to figure out what to do to park and safeguard your bike when you get there. There simply isn't a very high percentage of people who want to do that.
If your objective is to promote bike use, you need to create a whole community such that more people want to use bikes. You can make incremental improvements in the bike itself, but that won't impact the underlying problem.
These are all good points but, even if the improvements were all implemented, bike use would increase only marginally due to safety and comfort concerns by the general population.
In the early-1980's, right after the first two "gas crises", Yamaha did a survey to determine if the driving population would convert to motorcycles/scooters if gas got a lot more expensive, or worse, was hard to get. The answer was overwhelmingly negative. Something like 85% of the respondents said no citing safety and weather concerns.
Keep in mind, motorcycles require almost no more physical effort than a driving a car, offer better weather protection (full fenders, windshields and fairings, heated grips, etc.) than any bicycle and can easily keep up with car traffic.
If that was the response to motorcycle use, do you think bicycles would do any better?