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Current statistics emerging from the bike industry paint a discouraging picture of slumping
sales. The rampant growth of cycling’s popularity of the early and mid 1990s has gradually
ebbed, like a slow leak in a tire. This is not to say that bicycling has passed its prime or
that it is only a matter of time before the sport disappears altogether into the fringe pockets
of multisport activity.
Some blame the fall-off in sales to competition from the Internet, video games, fear of safety,
crowded roads, and apathy.
Like the name itself, cycling’s appeal goes in cycles. I just read in a recent issue of
Outside magazine that cycling was an American rage in the late 1800s and that in “1893
cyclists successfully petitioned Congress for the first $10,000 grant to study the possibility
of a paved highway system...Cyclists actually started the push for paved roads.”
Nowadays, most busy highways have signs posted at entrance ramps prohibiting pedestrians and
bicycles.
There was a spate of other interesting stats in that article on the joy of commuting by bike.
The average American drives nearly 40 miles per day, yet only 1.67 percent of our fitness-crazed
population commutes to work by bike. You want to know something crazier? More than one-half of
“the working population lives within five miles of their workplace.”
The writer of the article, Mark Jenkins, suggests that if “American workers biked to
their job only two days a week it would eliminate our dependence on Middle East oil.”
That sounds like a healthy tradeoff, given the fact that there are 200 million cars and trucks
in the United States. And as someone who regularly prefers to travel by bike when doing local
shopping errands, I only go through about two bottles of bike chain lube per year.
How can the bike compete against the mighty automobile and its big, beefy brother, the sports
utility vehicle? Where I live, in the tony, forested enclave of Marin County in California,
which boasts one of the highest median prices for homes in the country (I happen to rent), the
most common vehicle on the road is the SUV. It’s comical yet pathetic to sit outside one
of the coffee bars in the morning and watch an endless parade of gas-guzzling SUVs park in
front, engines still running of course, while the drivers rush inside for their morning cup of
joe or a cappuccino.
Am I being judgmental? Yes. And proudly so. Maybe because I have owned a pickup truck or jeep since
1979, long before the urban assault vehicle took hold in this country. But my attitude is directed
at a number of targets: the government’s inability to truly embrace the bicycle as a solution
to pollution; mass transportation; rising heath care costs; American’s resistance to think of
the bike as more than a child’s toy or as a one-wheel stationary exercise contraption only to
be used in the local health club; and the bike industry itself.
Why the bike industry? In my opinion, it’s because in its ceaseless effort to attract new consumers, the simple and sturdy
Schwinns of yesteryear have technologically mutated into an unrecognizable machine with too
many gears, too many parts, too many things that can malfunction. The bike should return to its
more simple roots.
Twenty years ago I biked across America on a 10-speed. The bike had two chain rings in front,
a five-cog freewheel in the back, and center-pull brakes. When I walk into a bike store today,
I am confronted with a dazzling display of bikes made with space-age alloys, all bristling with
triple chain rings, and nine-speed cassettes.
Now take a country like China, which depends on the bike as its population’s main mode of
transportation. Bikes there are simple, affordable, sturdy, one-speeds, and seem to last
forever. Having a bike with 27 gears only complicates matters for beginning riders; it
doesn’t necessarily add to their enjoyment.
While there will be a segment of this country’s athletic population who will insist, and
rightly so, on the latest and greatest gizmo when it comes to souping up their mountain, road,
or cyclocross bikes, the majority of folks in couch-potato land could make do with an
easy-to-use bike. These bikes do exist in the market—beach cruisers, simple hybrids—but
they lack a certain cycling sex appeal.
Is there hope for the vulnerable bicycle in this nation of unbridled wealth that’s
obsessed with health? I have my doubts. Why? Take the following test: Think back to Super Bowl
Sunday and count how many car and truck commercials you remember seeing and compare that to
the number of commercials for bike companies. In football terms, the final score is a lopsided
rout, a complete shutout.
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