Stephen Harding <
[email protected]> wrote in message
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> Matt J wrote:
> >
> > Sure, there's teenagers riding in their Hummers. Whoop-dee. What about teens on BIKES, eh? Are
> > there many out in this ng? So much more fun than fording rivers and staying dry...
>
> I'm sorry to say that in the US, bicycle usage is in decline.
>
> Don't know if that is a reflection of kids not pedaling around neighborhoods anymore, or if the
> interest in road racing that brough many adults into bicycling has faded, or something else.
>
> I do know that suburban development, which is largely entirely "car-centric" in nature, makes
> riding around the neighborhood a risky business, even if a destination were near by.
Or if there were a destination to ride to *at all*. Drive two miles to get a loaf of bread. Three to
go to school.
This starts a downward spiral; road traffic increases, making riding on those roads an even more
intimidating prospect, which means more automotive traffic.
Housing development in the suburbs continues unabated; roads that had been previously narrow,
two-lane, seldom-trafficked byways remain narrow and two-lane--but clogged with thousands of more
single-occupancy SUVs, full of people going to work, shops etc, all of which are moving at dozens of
miles per hour beyond posted legal speed limits. None of this helps the cause of the kid being sent
down to the market for bread, or who wants to ride over to the park to play ball.
Fear plays a part. Parents are more afraid for their children, even as their environment (in
statistical terms) gets safer and safer. Random crime, especially as directed at children, sells
papers and generates fear vastly out of proportion to its real danger. Riding a bicycle, then,
becomes a high-risk activity, which parents are unwilling to allow their children to do.
For suburban teens, the car-centricity of the culture (arising, as I have suggested briefly above,
from the pattern of land-use and development) puts them in a social bind. To have a social
life--indeed, contact with your friends--means to get out of the house. But getting out of the
house means driving--therefore driving at the earliest possible opportunity. The bicycle, because
cannot carry them safely anywhere (so everybody tells them, and so they come to believe) is a toy.
Young children play with toys; proper people--as of course all adolescents dream themselves to
be--drive cars.
[These same adolescents will spend a great deal of cash on bicycles, but largely on mountain bikes
which are rarely if ever ridden in a transportational role. The appeal is status--being as cool as
the gravity-game guys on TV--and excess: I have enough cash to spend on a superfluous toy. Witness
the proliferation of over-spec mountain bikes that make college campuses such paradises for
professional bicycle thieves]
So who does get around by bicycle in the suburbs? Where my family lives (Northern Virginia) two
sorts of people: the very affluent, and the very poor.
The very affluent see themselves as the good guys. They are mild-mannered, clark-kent suburbanites
who get on their bikes and go to the nearest train station to go to work.
The very poor bicycle-riders are largely recent immigrants from Central America, for whom the
bicycle is the only choice for transportation. I have seen groups of workmen riding surprising
distances on 20 year old bike boom relics in their work clothes. They ride on sidewalks. They ride
slowly. They are not "Effective Cyclists," they behave like pedestrians. They ride because tehy
can't afford to drive. They can't even afford to buy a new *xmart bike. But they ride.
[This of course leads me to speculate that perhaps bicycle activism is misdirected--that instead of
being directed at the middle-class buyers of nice bikes (I include myself, as I enjoy my
half-kilobuck machine), they should rather be directed to speak to those people which necessity
compels onto two wheels. Education as to rights and responsibilities in traffic, safety, proper
lighting, and the like, *in the appropriate language(s!)* will do a great deal of public good,
reducing accident rates and increasing confidence among these groups]
-Luigi
(the above has been exclusively about my observations on transportational cycling in the suburbs.
Cycling for sport and recreation (largely but not exclusively an elite hobby, I would argue) has
been excluded, as I could attach to that discussion more digressions than can be fixed to a
trailer-hitch bicycle carrier on a Suburban)