Rachel Berman of the Wall Street Journal appears to be surprised that people actually ride bikes for other than mad racing in spandex. She speaks to one Austin rider who says:
“I ride my bike purely to get from one place to another—not, ‘I’m going to take this out for exercise for like 20 miles,’ ” says Cassie Rae DuBay, a 28-year-old law librarian in Dallas. She says she aims to “add a little exercise to my day by riding 2 miles, as opposed to driving.”
She goes on to compare the growth of running as a sport to that of cycling, and finds that cycling is lagging running, showing a graph that compares "people in the US ages 6 and up who bicycled on pavement or went running at least once during the calendar year." She then compares running events to cycling, and speaks to a bike dealer:
“When you look at a marathon or half-marathon, you will see people walking, and they’re not ashamed,” says Fred Clements, executive director of the National Bicycle Dealers Association. “They’re not made to feel embarrassed. And that’s something that you won’t really see at a bicycling event. I don’t think we’re as far along as running is in making events that appeal to everyone.”
I wonder what planet these people are on. There's been an explosion in the use of bikes as transportation in cities across North America, with a 61.6 percent increase in bicycle commuting since 2000. It's growing at about 10 percent per year.
Read more here.
