The great bicycle boom of 2020
bbc.com
bbc.com
Some numbers. These are total monthly counts of riders observed at the same 17 measurement points:
2019 2020
Sep 1,670,000 2,387,000. + 43 %
Dec 900,000 1,100,000. + 22 %
It's also a good datapoint to counter concerns about the weather.
It's interesting that there's an effect going on here that's somewhat close to a Giffen good (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giffen_good): People avoid public transport and any single one might opt for a car instead. But because road capacity is fixed (that's income in the analogy), more of it needs to be devoted to the most efficient option, i. e. bikes. So the city converted car to bike lanes, and car traffic is actually down.
That statistic only observes a change in behaviour. It doesn't explain why it changed.
So, I think that claim can/should be falsified:
If there's an increase in bike usage, that's not because people feel the weather - in it's own regard - is less of an impediment to prefer biking over public transport. It's because people choose enduring changing weather conditions over accepting serious risk to their health for the sake of convenience.
> It's interesting that there's an effect going on here that's somewhat close to a Giffen good
According to Wikipedia [1]
> There are three necessary preconditions for this situation to arise:[citation needed] > the good in question must be an inferior good, > there must be a lack of close substitute goods, and > the goods must constitute a substantial percentage of the buyer's income, but not such > a substantial percentage of the buyer's income that none of the associated normal > goods are consumed.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giffen_good
So, if the only other close alternate to bicycling was public transportation, and other options (car) are because their costs outweigh the benefits, then biking would be a Giffen good.
This can be explained either because the perceived costs of the alternative - public transportation - became prohibitively expensive in terms of an increased health risk and the potentially associated costs that come with that risk (death, disabilities, healthcare costs, income loss,...). Or because people are now more willing to accept changing weather conditions (per your claim).
Of course the only way to confirm this is to actually do a survey and gauge the motivations that prompted a population to change their behaviour.
As an anecdotal aside: I was a heavy user of public transportation. I switched to going on foot, or taking my bike to get around exactly because of the pandemic.
As to Giffen: people are shifting public transport -> car & bike. The "budget" (road capacity) is fixed and close to full utilisation. Increased demand with inelastic supply results "inflation", which is the somewhat convoluted way the income effect comes about. Aaaand... yeah, I can't quite remember how I made the next part fit. so you may be right.
When you say car traffic, I presume congestion and not volume of cars. I'm sure volume is down overall and I recall from discussions about congestion pricing, even a 10% decrease in volume can result in congestion completely dissipating. In normal times, Induced Demand would lead to volume going back up as transit users convert back to cars.
DFW Metro: https://dart.org/about/dartkpi.asp
So I hope and believe the numbers will be even greater for 20211, actually. Multiple new people with bikes, and soon people will move about as usual.
So, it's amazing how much the cycling numbers here have gone up even with people like me staying home. I'm looking forward to seeing how many people are cycling once it's all over. Will people like me going back to cycling be added on top of all the others who switched from subway to cycling, or will they go back to subway?
That being said, I sincerely hope people who took up cycling during the pandemic will continue to do so 2021+ forward. More cyclists = more planning focus on cycling = better & safer cycling infrastructure.
Now with lockdowns, I'm not biking nearly as much, the weekly five-a-side football is closed, there's nothing open, so little motivation to walk around town, and so on.
[1] https://ampedcycling.com/is-an-e-bike-actually-worth-it/
I find that it really helps my energy levels and mental state in the same way my commute used to. Obviously, it takes a bit more discipline, but I actually look forward to it - a chance to check in on the neighborhood etc.
Another hint is it do something new on the route every day. It has grown to be quite a mental challenge to figure out a street or alley (or way of hooking things up) that I haven't taken before!
The latter group is likely two orders of magnitude larger than the former, so the interesting thing will be if some people become "converts" as it were, when the restrictions are released. I can see arguments both for and against.
It would be interesting to see an analysis of this in a couple of years, but comparing areas of long term disruption (e.g. USA) vs. shorter (e.g. New Zealand) but that also has all the usual problems of comparison.
[2] https://turfvasterbotten.wordpress.com/2020/11/11/eat-sleep-...
Sep -5 % to -13 %
Dec -20 % to -41 % [incomplete data]
People want to buy, but stock is depleted and production reduced, and many small dealers won't survive 2021 for lack of inventory.
Sorry, all in German:
https://bellevue.nzz.ch/reisen-entdecken/velo-boom-in-der-sc...
https://www.velosuisse.ch/e-bike-markt-waechst-weiter-mit-gr...
While public transportation is phenomenal, clean, and can be relied on, it’s a pandemic. So, it makes sense that people are riding their bikes.
So like a lock? It's an arms race, and if these things did really take off, bike thieves would find a way to defeat them (easy enough to detect if a bike has one after all).
Also it's not as if many many iPhones aren't being swiped on the streets of London either.
A tracking device though would be embedded inside the frame itself, and thus not be removable without cutting up (and thus likely destroying) the frame. The frame is the single-most valuable component on a bike.
Depends. And parts can be fenced with much less risk than entire bikes. I doubt that trackers provide any actual safety improvement, neither in the small (what will you do with the information you might get?) nor in the big (will trackers eventually reduce the number of thieves?).
What might help, I think, are serial number registries. Rohloff hub serials can be registered by owners and checked by would-be buyers, which I think does have some of the desired effect of making those bikes less attractive to thieves.
Bicycle frames have to be a lot stronger than phones and laptops. That means greater wall thickness (I think ½ mm is on the lower side for steel bicycle tubing)
Contrary to what the other commenter said, this is not attractive for carbon frame owners as I wasn't thinking GPS tracking, but low power, snitching networks (like Apple's stuff, where the stolen iPhone only needs to be seen by another iPhone; or like corona tracking). How often do you see a carbon bikes in the wild? A frame like that may also have other components worth destroying the frame over.
The Guardian bike tracker is one potential option. I would caution against a generic bluetooth tracker, I am not sure if you can integrate it with a SIM card easily.
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005001742170443.html?spm=a2...
https://www.bicycleretailer.com/
If you go through the past news articles there, lots of info about import data, sales boom and sell out of in stock inventory during 2020, etc.
As another commenter has said - why don't shops charge according to the increased demand? This situation benefits them.
I got really lucky and found one a 2 hour drive away. Now it’s an appreciating asset in my garage if you can believe it. I ride it of course but ever have I seen this kind of demand for bikes in my entire life.
I hope this is going to serve as a global correction on our need to be more self sufficient. I’ve been thinking a lot recently about how we took two steps forward with globalization and tech and we probably need to take one step back. Pretty much every bike and bike part is made in Taiwan or China. I’d love to have a made in the USA bike just as much as I’d imagine folks in the UK, South America, etc... feel the same.
Here, in NYC of all places, I have 0 returned emails and even having cast a wider net.
Of course there's plenty of cheap e-bikes with junky components.
I want a decent commuter with belt drive and higher end components. Disc brakes.
I can get the cheap versions of this all day but not really the best stuff unless I possibly order it built by Maxx or get a Riese & Müller e-bike. Still looks like waiting until at least April though.
One of the bike shops I had contacted suggested it, since a lot of shops around the country have a good stock of parts and you can usually find a nice used frameset online.
Complete bikes are a highly competitive market whereas bike parts are mostly not.
You will get much more mileage for your dollars buying completes that have exactly what you want or with some small delta of upgrades.
They also did some custom work on my commuting bike (which involves quite a hodgepodge of fender/brake compromises) which was 10x better than I could do myself.
http://longbikes.com located in Colorado https://www.terratrike.com located in Michigan
There are atleast 3 others I can think of off the top of my head.
If you are looking for "A Generic Bicycle at Walmart prices", then yes you are SOL.
Anyway, I think it's getting really cold the next months, so demand will probably go down a bit.
Well, that depends on who you ask.
Several local stores here saw it coming, and places enormous orders with their distributors when there was still inventory. My local did WELL -- they were aggressive and basically maxed their credit buying bikes from $400 to about $1200 (ie the sweet spot for casual riders), and sold every single one they could get their hands on.
They're now the go-to joint in inner Houston for e-bikes, too.
So there was a play to be made, and a way to surf this thing, but I also wouldn't be surprised to learn that this shop in particular was one of the few to really do it right.
My local shop that is a Trek Dealer said last October that they were only just starting to get the bikes that they ordered back in February (pre-pandemic). Meaning that their standard inventory for summer never arrived. I just talked to this shop again this weekend because I was in there for ski service (like many bike shops in the Rocky Mountains, they are ski shops in the winter and bike shops in the summer), and the guy showed me their list of pending orders. They are expecting an order of bikes from Trek by the end of January that will complete the order they placed LAST APRIL. So at least for Trek, that is how far behind they are.
I have also visited 2 different dealers that sell Specialized ("Specialized" is the brand name). One of them (the smaller one) told me that they have $100,000 worth of bikes and accessories on order and have been waiting for over 5 months on them to arrive with no update on any changes.
The other Specialized Dealer is a big dealer in this area and they only have one bike in stock, a Peter Sagan edition Race Bike priced around $10k and 2 child sized bikes. They said they are still waiting for their orders from April to arrive.
One good sign was from a local shop that sells Santa Cruz Mountain Bikes. They apparently are only about 2 months behind. But that shop has still struggled to keep bikes in stock. So their demo fleet for people to take up to the ski resort (for downhill mountain biking) last summer was all previous model-year bikes because they couldn't set aside bikes for their demo fleet because they were selling as fast as they arrived. In fact he told me that they have been selling bikes off a waiting list for people 4-5 states away who are driving 12-24 straight hours to pick up bikes because this shop has been able to keep some in stock.
The shop I mentioned that was clever and has done well as a result isn't a dealer for either. They carry BMC, Cervelo, Santa Cruz, Salsa, and some others, and they've managed to stay busy and stocked all year.
Because they typically introduce new technology which is somewhat incompatible with previous generations (they were expected to go to 2x12 speed like the two other manufacturers), everyone was holding off on orders and the end of 2018 and beginning of 2019.
The manufacturers also expected a low volume year, hence they did not order that many components and frames either, so everyone was caught off-guard when the pandemic hit.
Just to clarify:
He doesn't meant that each year's new kit is incompatible with last year's. He just means that major generational changes introduce incompatibilities.
11-speed cassettes have been the rule for most new road bikes for quite some time now, but obviously when it was introduced it wasn't compatible with 10-speed systems.
11 has been around for a while now. Shimano has 3 "serious" tiers of road bike components: Dura Ace, Ultegra, and 105 at the "bottom". (The bottom here is the bottom of serious cycling, not the bottom of cycling generally; the lowest 105-equipped bike in Specialized's road line is $1,400 MSRP.)
When I bought a bike in late 2014, Dura Ace and Ultegra were 11-speed, but 105 was still 10. Then, for a while, everything was 11. You could (and can) mix and match within Shimano or within SRAM as long as everything was 11 speed (with the exception that you can't mix mechanical derailleurs and electronic shifters, or vice versa).
A year or two ago, SRAM introduced a new 12-speed electronic-only group at its high end ("RED"), which has since filtered down to its middle-grade ("Force"). SRAM still makes 11-speed mechanical and, I think, still makes parts for its first electronic setup ("eTap") which was 11-speed.
Shimano is behind, and still hasn't introduced a 12-speed system, but there's a lot of anticipation for it, which is what OP is referring to.
(I should also note for the record that Shimano still makes and sells lower-grade component groups, too; the cheapest road bike on the Specialized web site is intro level Allez at just $900. It comes with an 8-speed Shimano groupset called Claris, which is currently Shimano's bottom-of-the-line. They also still make a 9-speed (Sora) and a 10-speed (Tiagra).)
However, people who buy a new high-end bikes are generally reluctant to get a bike with a groupset that will not be the the latest in less than a years time. Especially because traditionally you could get extremely good deals on bikes with the old groupsets once the new one came out.
I have a vague sense that the move through 9 and 10 to 11 speed was pretty quick, and that the moment of effective 11-speed hegemony has been long and really shows no sign of truly fading, but I have only a few points to go on.
The biggest one is that SRAM has kept its 12-speed stuff segregated. They still sell mechanical Red and Force in 11, and the web site still shows Red eTap (the 11-speed electronic groupset). All the 12-speed stuff is at another tier and uses the "AXS" suffix for branding.
Nobody knows yet what Shimano will do. Campy is really on its own in lots of ways (I dunno about you, but in my circles riding Campy is mostly a way to say "I have lots of discretionary income and/or a very understanding spouse").
My neighbor is a bike tinkerer and serious rider. He's moved a couple of his bikes to AXS, but only by doing some wheeling/dealing on eBay & whatnot. It does not appear to have made him materially faster. ;)
I was itching for an upgrade on my bike back in the spring, and found the upgrade price for even Force AXS really offputting. I ended up putting Red eTap on, and have REALLY loved it, especially at < 1/2 the cost. I didn't really even consider the Shimano stuff, as I DRASTICALLY prefer the SRAM cockpit interface -- to say nothing of the simpler install, as eTap is wireless.
I just looked this up and on DA both 9 and 10 speed lasted 8 years, so not faster than the move to 12 speed (btw it is pretty much confirmed that both Ultegra and DA will move to 12 speed this year, somewhat different to the usual cycle which had a 1-2 year delay for Ultegra to adopt DA tech).
Regarding Campagnolo, it's unfortunate that they have the reputation of being expensive. I think one reason for this is that they hardly do any OEM, so you have to build your own bike, which often ends up more expensive. In particular if you otherwise buy bikes when they are on sale. The other reason is because the groups don't really compare with the Shimano and SRAM groups, i.e. the equivalent to Ultegra is probably Potenza not Chorus, and to DA and RED it's probably Record (this isn't helped by the fact that Campa now only does SR in electronic).
I've recently after many years riding shimano moved back to campa (I got an awesome deal on a SR-EPS equipped bike) and I have to say it is an awesome groupset. From all I have read, especially if you want mechanical Campa super-record and record is what to get.
Regarding SRAM AXS, I want to like them, but I've heard about way to many quality control problems (Force AXS front derailleur chainsuck has been widely reported) , Red Etap was much better.
That said, I don't think any groupset will make you substantially faster.
However, none of the four online shops I tried deliver outside Denmark.
One positive is that those dealers drowning in older, unsold stock have been able to turn a lot of that into cash. That's allowed a few of them to restore some financial health to their business and get out from under some of their debt to vendors and other creditors.
But even so, the bike business is so commoditized and the supply chain is so lose that bike shops (and manufacturers as well) have a pretty low ceiling of profitability. Even in the midst of a boom, the economics of the bike business restrict it to a lifestyle business at best. For some shops, this (likely temporary) boom probably presents the best window of opportunity to close their doors.
The idea "I could do some bike work on my own, so bike work can't be expensive" has to die, simple as that. People can pop open a beer at home just fine, nobody expects bars to sell beer at a similar price.
If shops insist on offering workshop services at a loss for bikes bought at the establishment, they are free to offer huge rebates as a hardware sales argument.
Also, servicing a lower-end bike ends up meaning the service is a large percentage of the original cost. So the prospect of paying, say, $150 for a tune-up, cables, and a new chain on a $400 bike feels excessive. But if you do it for any cheaper than that, you are either compromising the quality of your work or compromising your ability to turn a profit.
That part of the market is usually served, quite well actually for both sides, by a shop that is one third preowned bikes, one third budget parts and one third highschool job repairs (sometimes they also rent out the preowned). Lifesavers for my theft-immune three speed (they'll happily take on daring salvage operations nobidy else would even attempt), but I surely no place were I'd leave one of my Campag steeds even for just a tire inflation.
A local bike shop repair has two benefits over doing it myself - experience and convenience.
Unfortunately for bike shops the people who are most in need of their experience are those who are newer to riding (or dusting off a 20 year old unridden bike). When the workshop labour charge is approaching the perceived worth of a bike the customer is not going to want to use those services (more likely to dump the bike and buy a new one from a sporting goods store or Walmart).
People who ride regularly are more likely to have bikes where the cost of a repair is a small fraction of the bike's worth (personal or actual) but they are also more likely to have the tools and experience to do the work themselves.
I go back into mtb riding 2 years ago and upgraded to a mid-range full suspension bike at the end of 2019. While I was familiar with basic bike maintenance I didn't know what I was doing with some of the newer bike tech. When my bike needed a service in the summer I tried to use my local bike store - they needed my bike for a month in order to get the work done (backed up due to Covid demand).
Rather than miss all those rides I bought the tools and figured how to do the jobs myself. Now I have the tools I can do those jobs again for almost no outlay (and wrenching is therapeutic).
I had to replace some spokes, that would have taken me a while to do on my own and some specialized equipment I won't need again for a decade.
In the town I used to live in, Performance bought out the only decent bike shop in town so I got into the habit of buying online because I could wrench better than the Performance mechanics. When I moved up to Oregon there are 5 good bike shops here in town and they all charge reasonable rates so I use them whenever possible.
I do still buy online and install parts myself, not to save a buck, but because it's more convenient than taking my bike into the shop and leaving it there for a few days.
If the shop charges more than I value my time, than I won't go to the shop except to buy parts and tools to fix my bike with. Not sure why you think DIY needs to die. This is a supply/demand problem and ease of repair will depress prices.
Where the workshop model might work is the fabrication of parts. The supply chain has tanked; I'd be willing to pay double on that chainring I busted and nobody can stock.
I very much learned the importance of business models and product-market fit, though!
I find it interesting though that you say the bike business is commoditized. In particular there are several bike manufacturers who have transitioned into live-style brands (the big one being specialized). Their prices have gone through the roof, while their manufacturing is all outsourced to cheapest bidders in China. It's now common for top of the line race bikes to cost >$10,000 while the frames for the bikes cost them ~$300 shipped to the US (and the total bike might be on the order of $1000-$2000 max). Mind you nothing of that ends up with the dealers.
Not true, the very expensive bikes definitely have better margins.
What I heard from friends of mine is that the margins are not really any better on high-end bikes. Because you sell significantly less of those it used to be that it was much easier to make decent money on low end bikes (i.e. everyday bikes used for riding around town). I think things changed a bit with the popularity of e-bikes now (they are generally more expensive but also much more in demand, don't know about the margins exactly).
Those four things will get you a long way with most bikes that "ran when parked" 10-20 years ago. There is a vast number of bikes in the US that meet basically that description.
Source: was a volunteer bike mechanic at the Ohio City Bike Co-op. They got a lot of donations in that were at most 60 minutes of work from being rideable.
And for what it's worth my mechanic ran low on chains and sprockets at some point. I don't know if that was just him or larger supply chain issues though.
Possible exception: glazed brake pads, but still relatively uncommon. Cables and housing are much bigger wear items for most bikes. Mostly because they aren't stainless at the low end and rust.
Chains will also rust, but it's pretty hard to end up with an unsalvageable chain unless a bike has been left outside for a long time. Source: left my beater road bike outside at the curb for 9 years in Boston, including winters. Lubed the chain a couple times a year. It still runs.
Getting oil on pads is also fairly easy to (accidentally) do. Learnt to be less liberal with the spray oil the hard way!
Unfortunately for bike shops replacing disk brake pads is trivial. Bleeding the Hydraulic system not so much, if it wasn't for the stopping power I'd trade back to brake cables any day.
But now even his inventory is bare. Maybe I should sell one of my bikes to help relieve the pressure.
Hmm
Nah.
Bikes, and electric bikes make a lot of sense these days and they are way more CC friendly than a cybertruck.
I keep trying to point my local government, since they've already taken my money anyway, towards the Bentonville model. Instead of building bike lanes, build single track that runs through the town. This has been incredibly successful for them. Instead of building sidewalks they build dirt paths.
The other option is streamway buffer trails which completely remove bikes from traffic and provide shortcuts without red lights through the city.
Protected bicycle lanes is a misnomer. Protected, in traffic engineering terms, refers to something like a protected traffic light phase where one stream of traffic has exclusive access to the intersection (e.g., a protected left turn arrow).
The barrier separated lanes reduce the visibility of cyclists from the motorists' point of view and vice versa. When both get to an intersecton and the motorist needs to turn right, it's not possible for them to see the cyclist well enough in advance to actually yield to them. The same thing happens to cyclists because they can't easily see approaching traffic due to visual obstructions.
The safest solution is to have cyclists follow the same rules of the road that all other vehicle operators follow and allow cyclists full use of the lane they're in. That is, get rid of laws that require cyclists to ride as far right as practicable regardless of the presence of marked lanes or use a bike lane (e.g., https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/laws/VAT/1234).
A cyclist 20 to 30 feet away will not be in view of the motorist who is in the process of accelerating as they exit the intersection.
Making intersecton navigation more complex makes it more likely that someone will make a mistake.
http://www.protectedintersection.com
https://altago.com/wp-content/uploads/Evolution-of-the-Prote...
Yet, the one example of a protected intersection I'm aware of in the US in Salt Lake City Utah[1] doesn't have bicycle specific traffic signals that regulate turning movements. They rely on motorists yielding to cyclists, or cyclists yielding to motorists. This causes problems when cyclists believe they have pedestrian style right-of-way when there's no law supporting that notion and it's not possible to see a cyclist moving at 20 to 30 feet per second in time to yield to them as they're about to cross the path of the motorist.
American bike infra design and culture has been a failure on nearly every level, and yet you're rejecting the lessons from the world leader.
Do you really think American drivers wouldn't eventually adapt to better infrastructure? Even the Dutch had to learn at some point.
In what way? I live in a town with a major university and there are plenty of cyclists on the roads leading to and from campus as well as on campus itself. This is the case at many universities I've been to.
Also, as far as I'm aware, there are no protected bike lane installations anywhere around campus or in town, but we do have a nice rail trail.
I'm using the standard definition of protected (as opposed to permissive) as used in the traffic engineering profession. Besides, I've heard the term protected used for lanes where flexi bollards are placed between the general purpose lane and bike lane. This in no way is going to provide any notion of protection and there's no intersection management separating traffic flow in terms of time slices (as would be done using a traffic signal).
> Protection is as simple as physical curbs and other barriers that prevent vehicles from being able to get into the bike lanes. That's protection. Intersections actually do tend to be protected the most because they have started building some curbs at corners as pedestrian refuges between the bike and vehicle lanes,
Except, that protection/barrier, as you define it does not extend all the way through the intersection. At some point, the paths of a motorist and cyclist will cross (e.g., cyclist going straight while motorist is turning). If you have bicycle specific signals that regulate traffic in such a way that cyclists and motorists never go through the intersection at the same time, then you do have protection.
The Netherlands does this with protected lanes, often with a little bit of extra separation from cars, and it works great. They also do mixing, but only in areas that can accommodate low speeds.
Could you provide a citation supporting this assertion using data obtained in the US or Canada?
Look, on safe, Dutch-style infrastructure, you'll have even six year olds riding bikes semi-independently around (their parents will be near, but not, like, constantly bodyblocking cars from them). I know, because here in Munich we have some infrastructure like this, not as much as the Dutch, but some.
Now, how many six year olds do you think can safely 'take the lane' on busy American arterials independently from their parents? The idea is absurd on its face.
I have actual experience here with our son being as young as five, biking on city streets with us, and not just the calm local residential roads, something I would never do in the states at that age, and certainly not having him 'take the lane'. If I did that, I'd probably be getting a talking to from CPS, and rightly so.
Because then you can make a direct comparison in terms of crash rates, counts, etc. between roads that have these facilities and those that don't, or compare the data before and after facilities have been put in place.
> Now, how many six year olds do you think can safely 'take the lane' on busy American arterials independently from their parents?
How many 6 year olds do you see traveling independently around places outside their immediate neighborhood? It seems you're using an example of a need that simply doesn't exist. As a parent and knowing other parents, I've and they have never sent a 6 year old child to travel independently to some destination that requires they ride their bicycle for a couple of miles to get to.
In contrast, how many 6 year olds understand where to look for approaching traffic when cycling in the pedestrian position. Do they understand the risk of a right hook, left cross, or drive out? I tried asking my 9 year old and she wasn't able to figure it out even with me showing a picture of a barrier separated bike lane approaching an intersection and asking her leading questions about where to look for approaching vehicles.
That being said, I would never let my children ride in a barrier separated bike lane because they don't understand where they need to check for traffic when crossing an intersection.
As for taking the lane, one must understand the rules of the road for drivers of vehicles prior to doing that. I'm still working on that with my 9 year old. I don't think that most 6 year olds are capable of that.
In a nutshell: To construct a separate bike lane which cyclists are then obligated by law to use, is only permissible in rare circumstances where the road would be exceptionally dangerous for cyclists to use. In 2009 improved standards for the construction of separated bike lanes were codified.
Previously separate cycling lanes were constructed mostly to help cars move faster. Their quality (width, separation from foot traffic or parked cars, surface quality, etc.) was often horrendously bad and it is in no way enjoyable or expedient to use them.
Additionally if separated from the road by a row of parked cars or a hedge drivers turning right at intersections have a hard time to spot cyclists. As a cyclist you always have to be on the lookout even if you would have the right of way because a driver just might not have seen you.
I'm in Munich and agree that it's not Netherlands-level infrastructure, but it still blows basically anywhere in the US out of the water.
They're making several assumptions:
1. The cyclist will be looking to their left for traffic to the front rather than paying attention to what's directly in front of them
2. The cyclist assumes that the motorist cannot see them and will not yield
For the first item, there may be slower traffic in front of them they need to watch out for, taking their attention away from the street beside them. Same thing for surface hazards. For the second item, the cyclist may believe that since they can see the motorist, the motorist can see them and they can go ahead and proceed through the intersection.
From the motorist point of view, they're assuming that the motorist is lookinat the bikeway rather than at the road (checking the color of the traffic light, verifying that a car making a left turn is going to yield, pedestrians, etc). A motorist traveling between 15 to 25 mph is going to cover the clear sight distance of 50 feet in a second or two, meaning they don't have much time at all to assess the situation on the bikeway.
The second thing they claim [2] is that a bikeway setback increases visibility. Yet the pictures they use at the bottom of the page are the same picture cropped differently. One would think that they would have tried to use an actual example of this in their guide, but they did not. The other fundamental problem is that cyclists move between 15 to 30 feet per second. That means that a car driver needs to be able to see 30 to 60 feet down the bikeway in order to see an approaching cyclist in order to have enough time to yield to them. And they need to do this while moving through the turn at 10 to 15 feet per second.
[1] https://nacto.org/publication/dont-give-up-at-the-intersecti...
[2] https://nacto.org/publication/dont-give-up-at-the-intersecti...
This is how they do it in the Netherlands, world leader in safe biking for everyone.
Just from talking to people out riding this summer it seems like a lot of people bought bikes they could technically afford but were way above their preferred price range simply due to availability.
What people wanted was $500 bikes but there were only $2500 bikes so that's what they got. It's not like they're stupid or even necessarily made a bad choice. They wanted a bike and got the bike they could get.
Not being able to dine out, take vacations, or go to concerts has put a lot of disposable income in the hands of a good chunk of the population this year.
Some of those people are probably on bikes that don't fit that great due to availability and they'll be looking for better sizing as they get more into it.
And of course the majority probably won't get super into cycling but again they weren't going to either way so it's not really a "lost" sale.
Plus I mean it's kind of a running joke among bike people that you don't really upgrade like it's a piece of technology. You keep the old ones and just accumulate more as you go.
Once the market stabilizes the bike manufacturers and dealers will go back to offering generous trade-in and 'last years model' discounts and those impulse bikes will have to drop a lot off their original price to look like a bargain. I suspect it will look a lot like the US used car market where a new car is cheaper than the same thing with 20k miles - by the time you account for manufacturer promotional discounts and dealer haggling.
Also I'm not sure I'd want to roll the dice on any used carbon frameset or wheels. Are modern carbon frames less brittle than I am led to believe?
Also it's the winter right now-- a historically low biking season. Your friends might pick it up again in the spring.
Don't get me wrong, bike usage in Warsaw (where I am right now) is increasing, but it isn't nearly the revolution other EU cities have seen, and the support from authorities is lukewarm.
2020 continues on sucking, right into 2021
Of course the 2nd hand market for all this stuff has been booming too, physically as well as on fb/ebay. People have been paying new prices for old goods. I could have made a bit of money buying and selling kayaks this year!
Also, I observed lots and lots of blue-tired rented bicycles during the summer, though their numbers seems to have reduced a lot since the weather got wet and cold.