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Comment by scoofy | Hacker News Reader

Huh... so it seems. It appears that they only really exist in the UK, which is odd seeing as Specialized is based in the Bay Area. I see there are two locations in the Los Angeles area.

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I thought the UK was big into competitive bike culture, what with having big champs like Cavendish and Froome, the Ineos Grenadiers being based there too, as a really successful team.

UK has great funding for elite cycling but it’s not very popular generally, and definitely not as a mode of transport. The car is king.

> The car is king.

This seems a very strange observation to make about London. It actually has the lowest rate of car ownership of the cities in the UK.

In my experience the primary mode of travel is public transport (or it was before Covid-19 at any rate), with people occasionally using their cars for trips outside London and perhaps larger shopping trips. Though this clearly varies by Burrough, with those on the outskirts of Greater London being more car focused than those near the centre.

> This seems a very strange observation to make about London.

It was an observation about the UK.

Ireland checking in: if you go outside of Dublin, most people own cars and use them as their main mode of travel. A recent post on Reddit /r/AskUK came from an American who was astounded that someone would be given directions to a location and told "it's about a 30 minutes walk". They asked if British people really walked "that much". A redditor responded with Bill Bryson's piece about Americans and their cars, which included an anecdote about inviting his next door neighbors over to dinner, in which they drove. While Irish people certainly aren't allergic to walking considerable distances, I've seen "country people" here drive obscenely short distances. The car becomes a habit. Once you're outside the city, the car is still king, unfortunately. When I visit my family, I get a train to their nearest town, and if there's a convenient bus, I'll use it to do the last 20km. But that bus only runs every 2 hours and, stupidly, doesn't align with train times. When I'm there, my family constantly offer to drive me stupidly short distances. Occasionally I accept if it's raining or after dark, since most county roads have no foot path and are unlit. Also, because almost everybody in the country drives a car, there's a far higher percentage of idiots behind the wheel. For example, those between the ages of 17 and 21 who think that they're amazing, omniscient and indestructible, even after a few pints. In the city, many people hold off on the unnecessary expense of a car until they "need one", since rent costs a ton, and decent public transport makes a car a luxury that you don't need until you get a space-wagon with 3 child seats.

I agree with that observation; also somewhere in-between you have hobby/club cycle racing that has some popularity (Road, MTB, BMX, 4cross, CycloX etc), which are essential feeders into the national/pro/elite (my Brother is a British Cycling qualified coach/scout for BMX).

That really varies a lot by geographic location. Oxford, Cambridge (and to a lesser extent, London!) are very cycling intense places and the infrastructure is reasonable. Nothing compared to Denmark, Germany or Holland, but reasonable nevertheless.

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