I was mostly responding to the OP, whose comments go far beyond those in the article.

As for the article: I could barely make it through. The first 2/3rds, in particular, is very scattershot, but basically explains that there are no good bike options for people with small budgets; the latter 1/3rd makes the pitch for bike coops as a solution, though I can think of several much more efficient and efficacious solutions, some of which could exist alongside bike coops.

Big box store bikes have an earned reputation of having no such thing. So basically anything is an improvement - starting with someone knowing which way the fork goes on. I'm arguing you can retain such knowledge in a community organization (and potentially lverage it when there's a pallet of each part) in a way that you can't when someone in the back room is being payed $5 per kitted box they open, has to work with exactly what's in that particular box, good or bad, and has to report to a manager who can't tell a bike from a kick scooter.

It can't be the only selling point, and to not break the others it can't cost much, but the social virtue of a product is actually a huge market interest.

Indeed they do.

Simplicity, volume, getting things right the first time for lower waste. Eg, why should a servicable 1x8 drivetrain cost more than a crappy 21 speed one? Less than half as many parts, made of slightly thicker metal.

Plus the partnerships that are getting them assembled having a role in calling attention to them as a good choice.

I agree I wouldn't buy it. but its not a fantasy of a pallet of parts. Its a bike that someone who is poor can just go buy and ride.

this BSO think is literally something that only a elitist group of people would say about things that poor people own and use happily every day.

You can probably go to goodwill or the salvation army and find a much better bike for less money. Every poor person I have ever know is well aware of places to get a bike, they also have all known someone that could fix a bike. Heck the homeless dudes around here basically made their own bike coop at one point until the city shut down their tent city.

Might be worth reading the streetsblog article in the first post, because it's about the coops trying to keep BSO's (and very old better things) going for precisely the people who can't afford anything else.

My own firsthand but limited experience with them has actually been better, so ironically in echoing their frustration that there's a problem in need of solving, I'm listening to rather than dismissing their perspective.

What I'm arguing for is that our consumer supply chain should provide a better "feedstock" for those efforts to keep folks who need wheels, rolling on them, by refocusing from what's flashy to what's important.

A lot of those sources have dried up under the present demand; they're also being replenished less and less as fewer of the new objects sold are going to last.

I did read it. they are doing exactly what I just said. they are fixing or helping poor people keep their bike running. I doubt any of those people care if you the rest of BF, or I call their bike a BSO... this is pretty much what all the Coops I am familiar with do. its what the homeless camp coop did.

consumer supply chain is probably as good as it will ever get. getting pallets of mid range parts to put on budget bike frames is about as realistic as expecting a person at walmart installing a fork on a bike the right way.

people want the stupid parts that big box stores put on the low end bikes, they dont care if a shock works they just want a shock because "nice" bikes have shocks. as was mentioned farther up its not like walmart hasnt tried to sell a sensible usable bike they have. No body wants a IGH 3 speed bike with fenders and a rack. thats what grandma had.


I see you added about used bikes drying up. Yeah no kidding I was going to mention that about the supply chain thing to but didn't. I mean at this point people with money cant get a bike or parts without waiting. I highly doubt all the manufactures are real concerned with the poor people bikes getting nicer parts by the pallet.

Don't we agree this commerce model isn't satisfactory?

I'd bet they aren't as horrible as people here like to say they are. If the big box stores sell a million bikes in a year, how many are totally unrideable? A thousand? 900-thousand? Probably closer to the former than the latter.

My feeling is that its mis-targeted rather than fundamentally useless.

I want the supply chain know-how that imports the 21-speed BSO to instead commission and import the parts of a solid 1x8 rigid frame, work with a community/jobs program to put them together right rather than have a kid in the back room put the fork on backwards, etc.

In the end I don't see anything wrong with people wanting to buy bikes in department stores, it's more that I want the bikes available there to be a better balance of durability vs. cheese flavoring.

Well, again I bought a used one for a relative last fall, and apart from needing new grips it's mostly been fine, especially as I got to pay what it was actually worth.

How many are ridden a few times despite the fork being on backwards, sit in the garage for five years then get trashed or given away?

How many have immediate mechanical issues that push on-the-fence people to decide maybe cycling isn't fun after all?

Like I said, probably a lot less than we're led to believe by the conventional wisdom here on the forum.

Bike co-ops are good. But what is really needed, is a good ole fashioned pick-your-part bicycle junk yard. Junk yards have kept the working class rolling in their cars for all these years, they will do the same with bicycles.

It's been pretty well established that most bicycles sold to average consumers get very little ultimate use at all, especially for any duration of time.

The distinction would be "cyclists" and "economic necessity utility transport"

Go to Holland or Japan and you will see the ultimate utilitarian bicycles ever created.


https://cimg2.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...dd007479fb.jpg

But I sure wouldn't ride one.

The problem is no matter how good your bike is If you don't do the maintenance it's going to grind to a halt. My best friend has been riding around on his dept store MTB almost everyday for over 10 years. But he makes sure everything is greased up. I've had other friends who rode their rather expensive road bikes for a few years without even oiling the chain and get upset when "It doesn't shift anymore". You can't run your car forever without changing oil, so why is it so shocking your bike needs TLC to keep running?

Some people I know who work in bike shops have told me some funny stories. Like people who bring back their brand new bikes a couple of months after buying them, saying there is something wrong with the tires. The problem? You guessed it. They didn't know that every so often, they were supposed to inflate them.

And to support his conclusion he rejects all the common methods of obtaining a bike for little money.

Injustice for non-binary people. What ever does that mean?

The disc brakes add costs. So do tariffs. The Chinese government doesn't pay the tariffs. Chinese factory owners don't pay the tariffs. Consumers do.

Besides, even $400 is beyond the reach of 10s of millions Americans and billions of residents of this planet.

Someone mentioned the Sears Free Spirit, which I bought in 1973 for about 89 bucks. I think that Huffy is probably a nicer bike.

While fully agreeing that Streetsblog tends to play all of the political victimhood cards all of the time, that's not a fair analysis of either the linked article or my posts here.

The article specifically talks about how coops get used bikes back on the road. And I've already mentioned at least twice in this thread that the last bike I bought was on the used market. It's not that those options don't exist - and not that they don't end up being one of the more common solutions - rather it's that they are insufficient to fill the need.

Consider that a used bike has to start out new, someone has to buy it, and it has to have enough residual worth after they're through to be useful to ride, fix up, or as a source of parts. Fewer and fewer of the bike-like things sold have that staying power - if it works (as the one I found did) fine, but otherwise who wants the bendy components off a department store bike?

Next realize that the used market has drastically dried up over the past year. Last fall it took me about a week of looking to find something for my nephew. Given that the goal was just to get him from a 20" onto a 24 to break into 20-30 mile rail trail rides while the weather was still nice instead of that step-up only happening in the Christmas time frame in which something new and shiny might have been in the cards, a week of looking was fine. But if instead of enabling recreation for a kid, if the need was for someone who needed to get to their job after their car broke or their previous bike was stolen, a week of searching the used market doesn't cut it.

Used bikes certainly have a place - but by themselves, they're not a sufficient supply for the need, especially when fewer and fewer re-use worthy assemblies are starting into the system.

Given all the effort bike coops put into keeping things going, I'd like to see them have a feed of quality basic bikes to be maintaining, rather that a lot of crummy junk with the occasional "real bike" find or donation mixed in.

How long ago was your experience with HelMart bikes? I have to work on them at my local co-op constantly and have zero respect for them. I would rather the people buying them saved their money or bought a far better used bike. Among the things I see on a constant basis are bearings that are both soft and brittle. The bearings grind down to dust or a hemispherical shape in the bearing cup. Of the bearing cup, often they pull apart which trying to extract them. They feel like they are cross threaded...and they are...but the threads are actually separating. Steel crank arms round off while still attached firmly to the crank spindle. And crank spindles have come to me looking like finials that you find on the top of some wrought iron fences. They have also come to me dangerously cracked

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/...bcd61a2d_k.jpgUntitled by Stuart Black, on Flickr

This particular one was cracked on both sides in exactly the same place. It’s a laceration waiting to happen.

Blame those Big Box stores you want people to buy bikes from. The features that they add are meant to bring people in to buy a bike that won’t do what they are advertising them for. A low end mountain bike from a bike shop can’t be sold for about $100 but it is much more trail worth then those BSO mountain bikes are. That’s the problem with HelMart bikes...the price. Twenty or 30 years ago, $100 could get you a fairly good bike. Today that $100 buys you a $50 bike from 1990. They cut costs on HelMart bikes so severely that the metal they are using is more slag then iron.

There are fairly good bikes out there. They are the lower end bikes at bike shops. But they cost $500 which is a very fair cost and good value. But the uninitiated wants to spend only $100 and they get what they are paying for...basically nothing.

$500 is simply not an acceptable price for basic capability. It needs to cost half of that, and given that there are things on the market for a quarter of that, half seems achievable.

I'd rather consider how to move them from being part of the problem to being part of the solution.

No disagreement there. Neither the problem nor the solution is on the stores alone - purchasers clearly own the other half of the problem. We're "stuck" in grove where an inexpensive bike has to be featureful crap.

But there exists another grove where an inexpensive bike can instead be simpler and more durable.

Neither the stores nor the purchasers can alone climb out of one grove and drop into the other; it would have be be an organized effort of multiple players in partnership - stores and their supply chains, organizations like coops to provide mechanical support and education - including why you want the simple one, and not the 21 speed with suspension.

Case in point, over on the streetblog article someone observed:



To which I'd simply say, don't use indexed shifting - it's a delicate and unnecessary feature. It never worked right on my college-era big-box MTB, so I just switched it to friction mode and shifted by feel and ear.

That $130 Heavy is most definitely not nicer than your Sears Free Spirit. You paid $89 for that bike in 1973. In todays dollars, that’s about $530. A Trek FX 1 costs $500. It’s about the same quality as that Free Spirit you bought in 1973. Not great but at least it is rideable without being a danger to its owner.

If you had paid $25 for your Free Spirit, you’d have a comparable bike and it likely would be the same quality.

So what do you suggest cutting in terms of features to reach this $250 price point? State Bicycle makes $300 single speeds. That’s the features that you have to get rid of to make it affordable. Single speed might work for young, athletic riders but not for most. The world ain’t flat. The Trek FX 1 I gave as an example above is about the lowest price you could go for a multigeared and still get something that hasn’t be cost cut to the point where it is a danger to the rider. Even it uses very low quality components.

Good luck with that. HelMart makes no money on the bikes they sell. At $100 per, they probably lose money. But the buyer that is willing to buy from HelMart is also going to buy some other stuff that does make HelMart money. Bicycles are a loss leader. Bike shops barely make money on the actual bicycle

There are simple ones. See the Trek above. I would say that a single speed is useless so they have to have some kind of gearing. Gearing, whether 10 or 21 or 30 speed, doesn’t cost that much. But the lower the cost, the less the quality. That’s where HelMart is at now. Too low a cost, too low the quality.

How much do you think index shifting adds to the cost? You buy SRAM MRX grip shifts retail for $20. You can get them wholesale for about half that. In bulk quantities, for a manufacturer, probably a quarter of that price. Friction shifters cost about the same. Index shifting isn’t delicate and it does make shifting easier. Anyone who can’t make it work properly...even the appallingly bad ones on HelMart bikes...just isn’t trying hard enough. Again, I have lots of familiarity with these BSO and have no problem with making them work properly.

On what basis do you reach this conclusion?

Make one shifting assembly from thicker metal rather than two from what they do. If you can do 21 speed that works even momentarily for $129, you should be able to do 8 that has some service life for $250.

I'm not actually arguing for single speed in the US market, but speaking as someone neither young nor fit who rides centuries on such...

Ironically if you look at "the world" you do see a lot of single speed (two foot gear is underappreciated) - but again, I don't think it's actually necessary to pare things down that far.

But notice how share bikes are often 3-speed tanks, yet very popular.

It's what being able to use index shifting demands in terms of manufacturing accuracy and adjustment from the derailleur. Give the rider a continuous control, and they'll quickly learn to accomplish whatever getting the chain on the sprocket they want and having it run there smoothly is going to take on that particular day.

Instead of a mechanism that needs adjustment to stay working, you have a mechanism that needs a few minutes worth of learning to ride with.

Are you aware of how small a fraction of households - even seemingly middle class ones - have even $300 in available savings to meet a sudden expense? It's one of the things the linked article goes into.

Being that close to the edge feels unfathomable, but it's a surprising number of people's reality.

For the economic necessity bikes, you also have to consider things like theft risk - commuting 5 miles each way is maybe 3000 miles a year, not much to ask for a bike, but will the buyer still have it in a year, or two to justify spending more?

Even if they could, we're back to the problem of not being able to make up-front investments, as also evidenced by doing things like buying household staples at full price and small containers when you need them, rather than stocking up when it's on sale or periodically venturing to where the prices are better.

Then, when you get into the category where there is some savings, you start seeing a lot of thought go into getting value for money. So sure, someone who's convinced themselves they're going to ride a hundred fitness miles a week may go put a fair amount of money into something decent at the LBS or order something impressive looking online. Conversely someone who's just going to do 10-20 miles on the rail trail with their kids on the occasional weekend isn't a cyclist, they're just someone who wants to ride a bike sometimes, and don't need anything fancy. Nor do they want to spend a lot on little Johnnie's _ size bike since he'll outgrow it in a year, and even though it can probably be passed on to his sister Sallie... and then maybe given to Sadie across the street, it's still a temporary solution. Maybe then it's time to get Johnnie a bike for college, but since he'll just be riding a half mile across campus and its likely to get stolen anyway...

I am probably better-informed than you about income and wealth distribution in the US, but that is beside the point. You seem to think that something should cost a certain amount just because you want it to, because you think it is "fair." The actual cost of producing such bikes doesn't seem to enter into your thinking.

The market for new bicycles is fairly competitive -- in an economic sense, meaning that that are many firms of various sizes, low barriers to entry, etc. If it were possible to produce a reliable and durable commuter bike for $250, and there was sufficient demand for it, someone would be producing it. My sense of this market, having bought (and maintained) dozens of such bikes, tells me that your conclusion is incorrect.

Great - apply that knowledge and see where it leads - but do keep in mind that neither "income" nor "wealth" is quite "$300 in the bank someone could spend today"

More the exact opposite. I'm quite confident that the prices I'm proposing are achievable, by taking the same means used to achieve the current prices, but applying them to a more suitable design that's simpler and more solid.

Yet there's a 2x price difference just within the range of budget BSO's.

It is - some of the better BSO's aren't all that terribly far off, yet they come laden with anti-features. Remove those and make what they actually need just a bit better, by making it simpler.

What I've been pointing out consistently through this is that it can't be a unilateral move by any one party, it would take the cooperation of the stores and the customers and community support to retarget from featureitis BSO's to solid, simple budget solutions.

Neither saying "I want to pay X" nor "here's a low-feature solid budget bike" works on its own without the cooperation of the other party; it would really have to be approached from all directions at once: supply, maintenance, and community-based consumer education about what's actually important in a bike (for example, think about the people who've kidnapped share bikes to do various challenge rides, and instead do vlog's about doing them on the $250 budget bike, ones about working on it, etc)

Or we can keep turning resources into short-lived crap.

How much did a bike cost in 1920? Probably a worker's monthly wages or more and that was a heavy single speed bike. For a monthly wage, even at minimum wage, you can buy a decent commuter bike nowadays.

People say they want a simple bike, then buy the colorful full suspension bike at Walmart. Walmart sells exactly what people actually buy. If people buy a decent rigid commuter bike for $500, Walmart would sell it. But people only talk about buying a decent bike, then end up with the cheap one.

The terrible truth is, to buy a decent bike people would have to give up smoking, drinking, drugs and Starbucks. And that actually tells us people's priorities.

It is not different with cars. Many years ago I worked at Starbucks. People came every day to buy a $5 coffee. But didn't have money to fix their driver side mirror that had fallen off. 1 month brewing coffee at home would have paid for a life saving safety feature. Priorities....

Manufacturing is drastically more automated today. Think about it, and there aren't really any more steps in producing a sound basic bike than a BSO - actually there are fewer parts to be made. They just need to be very slightly better, the heat treat of the BB axle needs to not end up screwed up in occasional batches to the point where it produces cheese or glass, etc.

So I'll explain again, for what - the fourth time - what I said in the post immediately above yours, which is that it would have to be a shift of all parties, not just a unilateral change by one. To repeat again what was in the post literally above yours, neither "hey buy this" or "I want" works by itself, it would take both together.

No, that's near double what it needs to cost.

And looking at what they do sell, shows it's possible.

Manufacturers should change their current business models so that the ‘unbanked’ can get a $250 well built, brand new bike on a few hours notice?
Nope.
Please elaborate on who the ‘unbanked’ are though?