Our Bikes, Our Selves?

Do bicycles reflect their riders?

Or do cyclists  mirror their machines? 

Why Don't They Include Bicycles?

One of the more interesting (to me, anyway) ironies of my life is that I often ride in or through Flushing Meadow-Corona Park, the site of the 1964-65 World's Fair. 

My now-vague memories of having attended with my parents and younger siblings (whose memories are probably even vaguer than mine, if they have any at all!) include visions of flying cars and sidewalks that weren't because, well, people didn't walk:  They were conveyed on belts to their destinations.

It was a time when progress was depicted as inevitable, limitless and always aided and abetted by technologies that made our daily lives less arduous--and took ever-greater quantities of resources.  Nuclear energy would be the power source of the future because advances in its technology would render it "too cheap to meter." In those days, "sustainable" was not part of planners' vocabularies.

Sometimes I wonder just how much we've moved on from such thinking.  In his article for Next City, Nicolas Collignon points out that even as cities like New York  Paris Milan and Bogota invest in bike lanes and other incentives to trade four wheels and one pedal for two wheels and two pedals, too much of today's planning is based on such innovations as self-driving cars and flying delivery drones. At the same time, according to Collignon, too many planners neglect the role bicycles can play in making cities more livable, sustainable and affordable.

So why do planners have such a blind spot for our favorite means of transportation and, well, just having fun?  Well, since you, dear readers, are smart people, you probably have the answer:  money.  Specifically, where the money comes from:  automotive and high-tech companies, which have much deeper pockets than any in the bicycle industry.  

Photo by Francois Mori

Of course, those auto and tech companies--even the ones that tout themselves as "green"--have ties to the fossil fuel and military (given our recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, I cannot call it "defense") industries.  That may be a reason why those planners have similar blind spots to the effects clean-looking technologies and "cleaner" automobiles actually have--or why they bought Uber and Lyft's sales pitch that their services would reduce traffic.  If you live in almost any major city, you can see how much that prophecy has come to pass. 

I also can't help but to think that those companies--and, sometimes, the urban planners themselves--are, openly or covertly, stoking drivers' resentments toward cyclists.

British Cycling Told Them To Stop For The Queen

If a US President were to die in office and your club told you not to ride during his/her/their funeral, would you?

When William Henry Harrison and Zachary Taylor succumbed to illness (Harrison just a month after taking the oath of office) and Abraham Lincoln was shot, bicycles weren't, well, bicycles as we know them.  

At the time James Garfield was shot (only four months after he assumed his role), the US and Europe were on the eve of their first bike booms.  A few years later, "safety" bicycles (with two wheels of more or less equal size and chain-driven gearing) would displace high-wheelers and fuel the fin de siecle bike craze.  A few years after that, at the dawn of the new century, William McKinley would suffer the same fate as Lincoln and Garfield.  Bicycling was still a major part of American, European and other economies and cultures. But I could find no records of any club or public official's recommendation that people not ride their bikes during those Presidents' funerals or other memorials.

By the time Warren G. Harding died of a sudden heart attack, in the 1920s, the automobile had mostly displaced the bicycle as a primary means of transportation and recreation in the US.  There were still, however, a significant number of adult cyclists and six-day races would develop an enthusiastic following.  But, as with the deaths of Garrison and McKinley, I could find no calls not to ride.

That I could find no such pleas following the deaths of Franklin D. Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy is not surprising:  When FDR died, the US was entering what Sheldon Brown called its "Dark Ages" of cycling; when JFK was assassinated, the nation was a few years away from emerging out of that benighted era.  

When Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme tried to kill Gerald Ford, the 1970s Bike Boom had recently crested; when John Hinckley tried to end Ronald Reagan's presidency, the Boom had ended but millions of American adults were still cycling.  Had Ford and Reagan not survived those attempts, would any clubs (which were numerous by then) have told their members not to pedal to work or school, or for training or fun?

Now, you might be wondering why I am asking such questions.  It's not because today is a "slow news day" or I'm not riding.  Rather, I read that British Cycling called on its country's citizens not to ride their bicycles during Queen Elizabeth II's funeral scheduled for Monday.  

Photo by Stephen Fleming

Of course, cyclists of all kinds did not take kindly to this recommendation:  One cyclist said it was "worthy of the Stasi."  A bike commuter pointed out that ceremonies "coincide with my working hours." Others called it a "joke" or "farce" or referred to it in even less flatering terms.

British Cycling later admitted that it erred and apologized for any harm or inconvenience it caused to cyclists, especially those who rely on their bikes for transportation or their livings. The organization then amended its recommendation to say that official events should be cancelled, but individuals should be free to ride.