Why Cycling Just Hasn’t Caught On In The United States

As we were discussing, the sport of cycling does not exactly garner a lot of interest in the United States  Certainly not the level of interest experience by the major sports like football, basketball, etc.  I can’t help but wonder why that is…

I’ve spent a little time thinking about this subject, and these are what I believe are the primary reasons for this bias:

1. Urban sprawl
2. Road and community design
3. The perception that cycling is a kids activity
4. The inherent love affair that Americans have with their cars

Urban sprawl

The way U.S. cities have developed, population centers are widely distributed, so transportation between cities requires an automobile to be practical.  I’ll give you this example.  I grew up in a town of about 5,000 people.  It was a simple matter for me to ride my bicycle to visit my grandparents, who lived less than a mile away.  However, if I wanted to go visit my friend who lived 18-miles away, a bike just wasn’t practical, because I’d be looking 2-hours in transportation time (round trip).  Furthermore, the closest city with a movie theater was 35-miles away.  Not exactly conducive to going to see a movie, or transport items of any size.  This eliminates the use of a bicycle for transportation between cities.

To further exacerbate the problem, most families aspire to a “suburban” lifestyle.  So people live large distances away from their workplace.  In fact, according to this NRP piece, most American commute an average of 25-minutes to work.  That’s 25 minutes in a car.  We can probably assume that’s a minimum of 30-miles, 1-way.  For a trained cyclist, you’d be doing awesome to travel that distance in just over an hour.

These facts essentially eliminate a bicycle as the primary means of transportation for most Americans.  But, of course, there’s more to the equation…

Road and community design

Most communities I’ve visited, at least in the southern U.S., are not conducive to cycling.  The roads are narrow, with little-to-no shoulder.  And to be honest, drivers are not respectful of a cyclist’s right to be on the road.  I’ve been on a bicycle on state-run highways and had drivers slow down just to yell at me that I need to get off the road.  The fact of the matter is that bicycles are supposed to be treated the same as motor vehicles.  That doesn’t matter if a driver decides to run you off the road because he (or she) doesn’t like your presence.  Women drivers are just as bad as men in my experience.

Communities are, generally speaking, not laid out for cyclists, either.  From a legal perspective, you are not allowed to ride a bicycle on a sidewalk.  If you factor in the possible hazards of riding on poorly designed roadways, that leaves very few options for cyclists.  Now, to be fair, many larger cities are starting to build “greenways.”  These are paved paths designated for foot traffic and cyclists.  Greenways eliminate the dangers of sharing a road with motorized vehicles, but are not practical for transportation until they cover a large area of a city.

To be fair, I’ve recently been in several larger cities that are heavily promoting the use if bicycles.  I had cause to visit Minneapolis, and was impressed by the presence of bike lanes and greenways.  I even noticed that the light rail system has bicycle racks in the passenger cars to encourage cyclists presence.

Cycling is a “kids” activity

Most adults I talk to seem to perceive cycling as an activity reserved for their children.  When their kids are old enough, they go buy them an inexpensive bicycle to ride around the backyard or neighborhood.  The kids drag out the bikes occasionally, but it isn’t really a means of transportation, so much as a way to go outside and play.  Eventually though, many kids begin to view bicycles as beneath them.  I probably don’t mean that as bad as it sounds, but our children want to “grow up,” and they pick up on the perception that bikes are for little kids.

I have a teenage stepson, and since he was about 12 years old, he has talked about getting his driver’s license.  Turning 16 and gaining the ability to drive is viewed as a right of passage into adulthood.  For a teenager, gaining a driver’s license is the path to freedom, independence, and control.  The ability to drive opens the door to dating, hanging out with friends, and doing things without the express permission and supervision of parents.  To forego that, would be to miss out on a right of passage.  Most normal teenagers in their right minds wouldn’t pass up on that in favor of riding a bicycle.

The American love affair

Let’s be honest.  Most of us truly love our cars.  We view them as an extension of ourselves.  Why do most Americans buy a truck?  It’s not because most of us are hunting, fishing, or building our own homes.  It’s because we like the image that is conferred by a truck.  People who drive trucks are tough, right?  They’re rugged.  Never mind the fact that most of use never put anything bigger than a few bags of groceries in the bed.  By the way, I’m not picking on truck drivers.  I drive a truck…  The same can be said of four-wheel drive, engines that put out 300+ horsepower, or a myriad of other amenities that we love to have in our cars, but never use.  What do you think of when you see a woman driving a minivan?  How about a guy driving a minivan.  Must be a whimp, right?

The point is that we view the car we drive as an extension of our personality.  I’m just a guilty of that as anyone else.  We express ourselves through our cars in a way that can never occur with a bicycle.  It’s ingrained in our culture, and the odds of changing that are pretty slim.

So what has to happen to change this?

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