Originally Posted by
thdave
I understand but disagree. I know a lot of roadies never park their nice bikes and they aren't at real risk of being stolen. Same with MTB's. Riders put them in their truck or on their rack, and drive to their destination.
Likely, many are frustrated with bike thefts and won't ride them around town and park them because of that.
But, there's no doubt you can safely lock a good bike in most neighborhoods. Still, more should be done to address this problem. While many will, most people won't spend $50 on a good lock. I'd love to see a locator chip installed in a bike, for instance.
Besides the folks with good locks, there are a lot of folks who work in places where they could store their bikes inside or in a secured area. In that case, a $1000 bike suddenly appears reasonably priced, if it's well equipped and you like riding it. Plus, you aren't spending a lot of cash in gas, and you're getting fit. It's a win-win.
I agree that if the department stores start selling them, the LBS's will to. This will hopefully drive demand up, since these bikes are the kinds of bikes most people need for transportation. That is so key to bike use adaptation by mainstream society. I pray this happens, so it could lead us to less urban sprawl, better physical fitness, a lower weight society, and less dependency on oil.
The trend in car interiors is to make them more and more like rolling living rooms. In a lot of cases, people's cars have
more creature comforts than their homes with heated power seats and the like. Another selling point for cars is all the safety features, - air bags, crumple zones, etc. A bike is a total antithesis to this.
It's not for lack of a specialized "commuter bike" that keep people in their cars. Creature comforts aside, I'd bet if you could create a nice bike path that lead straight from every person's garage to their place of work magically negating the need to ride in traffic or through "bad" neighborhoods, you would get more commuters than if you gave everyone the most expensive, well equipped "commuter" bike for free.
It's not about the bikes.
I'm not saying that equipment doesn't matter at all, I'm just saying that by the time someone starts worrying about equipment, they've probably already overcome the major barriers to bicycle commuting.