The Future of Cycling Depends on the Youth

Welcome to the Bike Bulletin. We take care of your biking needs almost as well as ChatGPT takes care of your homework.

Here’s what we have today.

• 🌍 RIDE: Salar de Uyuni

• ❓ RESEARCH: The Future of Ridership Depends on the Youth

• 🎥 WATCH: Calvin Retires from Park Tool

• 📰 NEWS: New funding and new construction

Written by Sam Westby, @samcwestby

ROUTE ON MY RADAR

Salar de Uyuni, Bolivia

Here’s what you’d be getting yourself into.

• The world’s largest salt flat

• Spend a week criss-crossing through flat, otherworldly terrain

• Great resupply options

• Read about Cass Gilbert’s experience on bikepacking.com

• Watch Ryan Kodak Brown’s video on YouTube

Note: there’s a tradition to ride a part of this naked, so let the buyer beware.

RESEARCH

The Future of Ridership Depends on the Youth

My love for bicycles started early. There were 20+ bikes hanging from the ceiling in my garage growing up. Every sunny weekend, my family would grab our mountain bikes and go to some local trails. On school days, I would meet my friends at a corner, and we’d all ride to school together. In my free time in high school, I liked building bikes.

Our behaviors aren’t built at age 30. They’re built in childhood and adolescence. To get more people on bikes, we should play the long game and focus on the next generation. 

The research backs this up.

Adults who rode bikes as children, especially with parents or peers, are more likely to become regular adult cyclists than those without that early exposure [1, 2, 3]

To put this into practice, remember that the biggest barriers to adults cycling are psychological, not physical (generally speaking) [3, 4]. People have fear and lack confidence. Getting kids on bikes provides an early opportunity to conquer these issues.

There are standard ideas for increasing bicycle ridership:

• Protected bike lanes

• Connected bike network

• Safe intersections

• Reliable bike parking

• Slower vehicle speeds

The playbook is different for kids. We need to:

• Make biking feel allowed. Give them a feeling of freedom and independence.

• Start early. Treat biking like swim lessons.

• Treat bikes as transportation. If you only bike for fun, the car still dominates daily life.

• Make owning and using a bike easy. Cities can subsidize bike ownership and bike repair.

If we want a future where biking is normal and widespread, we have to stop treating it as an adult behavior change problem. The real opportunity is earlier, when habits, confidence, and freedom are first formed. Building bike culture starts with giving kids the chance to feel the freedom and joy that come with riding bikes.

References

1. Kaseva, K., Lounassalo, I., Yang, X., Kukko, T., Hakonen, H., Kulmala, J., ... & Salin, K. (2023). Associations of active commuting to school in childhood and physical activity in adulthood. Scientific Reports, 13(1), 7642. [link]

2. Yang, X., Telama, R., Hirvensalo, M., Tammelin, T., Viikari, J. S., & Raitakari, O. T. (2014). Active commuting from youth to adulthood and as a predictor of physical activity in early midlife: the young Finns study. Preventive medicine, 59, 5-11. [link]

3. Thigpen, C. G., & Handy, S. L. (2018). Effects of building a stock of bicycling experience in youth. Transportation research record, 2672(36), 12-23. [link]

4. Handy, S., Van Wee, B., & Kroesen, M. (2014). Promoting cycling for transport: research needs and challenges. Transport reviews, 34(1), 4-24. [link]

WHAT I’M WATCHING

Calvin Jones is Retiring

I have watched this man explain pretty much any issue you could imagine. His “How to Bleed Your Hydraulic Brakes” video is probably my most-watched (too many times to count).

Thankfully, YouTube videos stick around forever, but there will be a noticeable absence in the bike tutorial community.

Watch on YouTube

• £50. London is adding 3 new stop lights to Regent’s Park, one of the few places in the city for road cyclists. This will make the park safer for pedestrians and put a damper on the cycling experience. Anyone rolling through a red will be fined £50 (Bike Radar).

• $21 billion. In Arizona alone, this is the estimated losses from car crashes in 2024. (AZDOT - page 2)

• New bridge. The Red Oak Nature Center (1 hour from Chicago) approved plans for a new pedestrian/bike bridge connecting two parts of the park. (Chicago Tribune)

• 2028. The construction start date for newly approved renovations of the SE Stark x Washington corridor in Portland. Residents can look forward to protected bike lanes, slower vehicle speeds, more parking, and more trees. (Bike Portland).

• Dismissed. In Brooklynn, a lawsuit against the Court Street bike lane has been dismissed. It lives to see another day. (Streetsblog)

A Note From Sam

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