What Won’t Get Them To Ride

 In my childhood and adolescence, I imagined England as a quintessential cycling country.  After all, those Raleigh, Dunelt, Philips and Dawes three-speed bikes—“English Racers”—took people between homes, farms, factories and schools. At least, that was the image of the country we got from movies and magazines.  And those “English Racers” seemed, on the eve of the ‘70’s Bike Boom, as exotic as the latest Tour de France or World Championship track bike looks today—never mind that three-speeds bore as much relation to those bikes as a hay wagon to a Formula 1 car.

In other words, to neophyte cyclists like me who had never been more than a state or two—let alone an ocean—away from home, Albion seemed like today’s Amsterdam or Copenhagen.

Of course, my first trip there—the first part of my first European bike tour, in 1980–would change that image for me.  To be sure, I saw more people riding for transportation and recreation than I encountered in New Jersey, where I had just graduated from Rutgers College.  But people, while helpful, wondered why an American would come to their country—to ride a bicycle.

Perhaps that experience, and subsequent visits, make something I read more plausible: According to a newly-released government survey, 7 out of 10 Britons never ride a bicycle.

Perhaps even less surprising are the reasons why people don’t ride and what might persuade them to get on the saddle.  They’re less surprising, at least to me, because they’re the same reasons I hear in my home city and nation of New York and the United States.

The chief reason why people on both sides of the pond won’t ride, they say, is that they wouldn’t feel safe. Where perceptions might diverge a bit is in what might make them safer.  While a majority New Yorkers and Americans say bike lanes might entice them, only 29 percent of English respondents cited them. On the other hand, the two most common improvements—safer roads and better road surfaces—were cited by 61 and 51 percent, respectively, of English people.

What accounts for their perceptions? I think it might be that even if the vast majority of English people don’t ride bicycles, many still have memories of parents, grandparents or other adults pedaling to the shop or classroom on the same roads used by motorists. In other words, they didn’t see cyclists segregated from traffic. 

Few Americans have such memories. Moreover, they grew up inculcated with the idea that bicycles were for kids who weren’t old enough to drive. 

So, the British survey is interesting in that it shows a common perception—cycling isn’t safe—but a difference in the perception of what could make it safer and therefore more appealing.

Turning What You Ride Into What You Ride On

Bicycling is commonly seen as an environmentally-friendly form of transportation, recreation and exercise.  Some people ride their bikes for exactly that reason.  And, for the most part, bicycles are less damaging to the planet than many other things, including motorized vehicles.  But there are two bike parts that, too often, end up in landfills.

I am talking about bicycle tires and tubes.  Some of us re-use tubes that have been patched one too many times:  as tie-downs, for example, or underneath clamps to prevent them from slipping and marring a finish.  And, for a time, Pedro's made "Blowout bags" partially from re-cycled inner tubes.  Those bags strapped underneath a rider's saddle and were used to--you guessed it--carry a spare inner tube, patch kit, tire levers and maybe a small multi-tool.

The problem with old tires and tubes is that although they crack from drying out (which is how many Blowout bags, including two I used, met their endings), they don't decompose quickly in the way of some other materials. 

Since 2002, England and Wales have had a law forbidding the disposal of automotive and agricultural tires in landfills. But, interestingly, bicycle tires and tubes were exempt from the law although, according to chemical engineers, they are nearly identical in composition to car tires.

Five years ago, Russ Taylor founded Velorim to bridge this inequity.  He comes from Staffordshire, known for its bull terriers, so it is perhaps not a surprise that he is forward-thinking and ambitious.  He realized that all of those tires and tubes that were being sent to landfills--or overseas--for disposal could be put to better use, not only for consumer products, but in public works.  

As an example, Velorim has developed a process that is now being used to turn pellets from reclaimed rubber goods into a porous material that can be used to lay cycle paths in urban or rural landscapes.  This not only re-uses those old tires and tubes, but also lessens the need to make new asphalt or concrete, both of which involve processes that are harmful to the environment--to say nothing of the fact that asphalt is made from petrochemicals.

So, the tires you now ride could be rolling over...the tires you used to ride.  Somehow that's fitting in more ways than one.