PaulH

In my experience, you are spot on. I think higher gas prices could even make motoring an act of conspicuous consumption and cause only a small decrease in driving (and possibly even encourage it.)

However, being able to go to a destination without circling the block for 15 minutes looking for a parking spot is an undeniable advantage of cycling. If and when people realise that cycling is easier and more convenient than driving for may trips, they will cycle. Otherwise, nothing will pry them out of their cars. Therefore, I suspect that cycling will slowly increase in congested cities, but remain rare in rural/suburban areas. Remember, Henry Ford mass-marketed the automobile as transportation for people in the country, not the city.

To a much lesser degree, I think higher availability of utility bikes might help -- nobody is going to want to deck out in spandex for a half mile trip to a restaurant. It's ironic that the 1950s cruisers were much better for such trips than the road and mountain bikes that replaced them.

On the whole, I suspect that more cars, more congestion, and more gridlock will continue to improve the prospects for cycling.

Paul

iceratt

I hope to take my boys( currently 9 and 10) on a tour of the English countryside in the summer of '06. I have to take them to Oxford, so that I can get a decent pint of mild, but are there other areas that you could recomend, that are particularly bike friendly? I'd like them to come back to the US appreciating that others, besides me, bicycle for transportation.

MichaelW

Cambridge and York are probably the top cycling cities. Bath and Norwich are pretty good. These cities all have a lot of original pre-motor car street layouts. Surprising, London is quite cycle friendly, if you know your way around the back streets.

Merriwether

To address one aspect of the article, when it comes to the economics of cycling, it's not just the gas savings that are nice-- though they are-- it's the reduced maintenance too.

If you're in a position to replace a car altogether with a bike-- and that may or may not be the same thing as living car-free-- the savings are huge. No initial capital cost, no insurance, no parking expenses, none of that.

Anyway, I want to say something about recruiting more cyclists. It is a curious thing that so many practical cyclists are zealous about winning converts. Many hobbies have the outreach component, but it's more intense in cycling.

There is a danger in recruiting more people to cycling, though. If more people rode for practical purposes, I fear that would be worse for the legal environment, not better. With more riders would come more attention to practical cycling, and what I fear would be an inevitable push for more regulation for "bike safety" purposes or to permit better "coordination" between bikes and cars.

I think, in other words, a dangerous situation for legal freedom to cycle would be the area between the way it is now, when the numbers of practical cyclists are vanishingly small, and everyone's cycling for practical purposes. In that area, there would be enough cyclists on the road to attract attention from motorists all the time, to get into noteworthy crashes (and there would be some), and to attract less skilled people who would behave stupidly. However, there wouldn't be enough cyclists to resist the inevitable push to greater legal restrictions that would be likely to follow.

I don't think any of us will ever live to see a society not dominated overwhelmingly by motorized vehicles. Given that fact, the ideal size of the group of practical cyclists to preserve our liberty might be no larger than just a few times larger than cycling's small population size now.

Chris L

Merriwether is correct. One of my major concerns in recruiting more people to cycling is the prospect that these people will take the "it's only a bike" attitude. This is a problem because they won't learn to ride properly and display behaviours such as riding against the flow of traffic, footpath cycling, red light running and so on, which is likely to put them at considerable personal risk. While I believe Darwinism is a good thing, the major risk here is that a few of them being killed will increase the perception of cycling as a "dangerous" activity -- meaning more restrictions on the places you are allowed to ride.

Don't think it can happen? Three years ago a cyclist was bashed by a car load of thugs here on the Gold Coast (within 5km of where I live), another was killed by a stoned driver. The only government action was a prompt ban on cyclists from using a major road (not the ones where the incidents took place).

Juha

About 10 years ago I was sitting in a bus, moving slowly through the morning rush hour. It seemed I would once again sit there >60mins, covering what I knew to be about 10-15 kms. Staring out of the window, bored, I started to figure out faster ways to commute: car (nope, same traffic), walking (nope, about 2 hrs), skiing (yes, but no snow right now) and finally biking. The moment it crossed my mind I knew I could do it. Next day I visited a friend who had a not-so-local bike store and bought my first hybrid. I haven't looked back since.

Do I want more people to have that same moment of enlightenment (sp)? I am not sure. To some extent less cars would be good for traffic and for the individuals choosing to bike. But bike lanes and bike/ped paths can occasionally get crowded as it is. I can easily picture myself having a fit of bike rage, stuck in the gridlock with hundreds of other cyclists... no thanks!

--J

iceratt

Either you live in a much different world than me, or you have a better imagination.

Juha

No, I cannot imagine what it would be like to ride among hundreds of other cyclists during my daily commute. But I can imagine I would become very irritated very soon.

--J

barenakedbiker

See below.

operator

I doubt a couple hundred or even a thousand cyclists could clog up the roadways like a 1000 cars could.