"Being facetious will get you nowhere fast."

So said randya in another thread.

In my dreams, I see bands of altruistic skilled cyclists bringing VC education to adoring noobs. Or rich roadies donating money to the League of American Bicyclists to sponsor road safety classes to noobs.

I don't think there will EVER be a huge shift to bicycle transportation. If the oil runs out or becomes unaffordable to the common man, something else will takes its place. Society has become accustomed to motorized vehicle transportation, and the lack of a feasible inexpensive gasoline powered engine is not likely to have a lasting impact on motorized transportation. Something new will come along to take its place. Most people don't like to think outside the box and think we are constrained to what is possible now. That isn't the way the world has evolved to this point. Thirty years ago, who would've thought that it would be common for people to carry phones that store numbers, have games, play music, check email (what's email anyway 30 years ago?), take pictures, shoot video, etc.

We are due for some new automotive technology. Car manufacturers and oil companies have unnaturally suppressed innovation in this area for years. The gasoline powered engine will go the way of the horse and buggy, but bikes will not become the new automobile.

I disagree. It is all about energy and living on a finite planet. Your assumption that something else will take the place of gasoline is naive. Petroleum is (or was) an abundant easy source for energy. Economic demand will not automatically produce a cheap source of energy - that is magical thinking. Sure we have lots of fancy electronic gadgets, but whatever happened to flying cars, personal robots, jetpacks, etc.? Americans worship two things - technology and consumerism. Keep praying that the geeks will save us, I'm gonna go for a bike ride. (And by the way, I do have a degree in mechanical engineering, so I know a little bit about physics, etc.).

You may have a degree, but you lack vision. Your argument is akin to saying everyone who got laid off when the tech bubble burst will go into farming. Those days are gone my friend. Let them go. Actually it's quite simple. There is an overwhelming demand for motorized transportation. Talk about magical thinking, this demand will not magically disappear because our current sources of cheap energy dry up. The future rarely evolves the way 'futurists' predict (jet packs, flying cars, etc), but demand is met in some way shape or form. If there is money to be made, someone will find a way to make it. Yes, we live on a planet with finite energy. When the sun burns itself out in another million years, we will not care if we have cars, helicopters or rickshaws. It's not naive to think that motorized transportation will evolve to adapt to changing conditions. It is naive to think that we live in a time when every thing has been discovered and nothing new is possible. Anyway, call it what you will but I have history on my side. I don't care if it happens or not because I'm adaptable, but the smart money says that in 30 - 50 years, the streets will not be any more full of bicycles than they are now. I wouldn't necessarily call a contrary opinion 'magical', but it certainly is 'wishful' thinking.

History has it's appeals...you can often predict the future from the past. For example many great civilizations have collapsed in the past, and knowledge and technology lost, and you can't rule out the same happening again. But the present is not an exact replica of the past; we've never had a global civilization before, so you can't say for sure what the effects will be if it does collapse.

Who knows what the future will bring? Right now I believe that private petroleum powered vehicles are an unnecessary evil. The alternatives that currently exist are mass transit and bicycles. I hate busses, so I'll ride my bike. . . for now.

Your scared of people doing what you do? But not as well?

I cannot forsee the future. No one can unless you are Nostradamus or Edgar Cayce. I can still make a good educated guess with my own backround in Sociology based on a probable mix of various variables. I agree with human beings being self-interested in their own welfare. That is human nature and with a few exceptions that is what we are deep inside.

When the oil situatuon becomes more apparent, people will switch from SUVs, mall shopping, too much television gazing and other vices and switch to more of an alternatice self sustaining lifestyle. I will not say it will be an easy transition. It will surely be a very difficult one for most. The ones that will adjust more easily will be the early adopters of bikes for transportation rather than a "sport", smaller homes and appliances. less dependance on throwaway lifestyles, and different set of values than the advertising media pushes on masses daily.

Good luck to all who participates in this forum as well as similar ones. We need more leaders like you.

Do we really want this to be more popular?

Yes we do.

Woo

First, the sun is only about halfway through its life-cycle, so it has about 5 billion more years. Quite awhile.

Second, to simply dismiss a growth in bicycling is to ignore the increasing environmentalism movement. It definitely lulled in the 80's and early 90's, but the ratio of people conscious about their environmental footprint has risen quite a bit now that the technological wonder of the 50's is mostly a a ghostly memory for two generations.

We have lived in a rather unique past 100 years in that our population has exploded. Appeals to history break down somewhat given this.

Something significant must necessarily change if the population continues to grow. (And I personally don't see the population not growing as one of those changes. People are fanatically devoted to the idea of offspring, and their "right" to spread their genes. It would be easier to make everyone carless than to get most people to question whether they want to be potentially responsibile for the actions of thousands of spawn.)

One direct way I can envision more cycling is to simply put in the infrastructure. For instance, here in Sweden there is great bicycling infrastructure. You can get just about anywhere without really having to ride near vehicles. As a result, the bicycling commuting population is gigantic, at least here in Uppsala (as a caveat, Uppsala University students make a sizeable porition of this population). But anyway, people routinely cycle during all seasons, through snow, ice, rain, wind, whatever. And these are not hardcore cyclist. It's just what you do here. This is markedly different different than the States, where you are some kind of hero for cycling in snow.

I mention Sweden just to show how idealogies can differ based on intrastructure. People behave the way they do because they do not really know any other way to behave, so the current way of thinking in America is not set in stone.