For too long, biking has been viewed skeptically as a white-people thing, a big city thing, an ultra-fit athlete thing, a 20-something thing, a guy thing, a warm weather thing, or an upper-middle class thing.
But times are changing. More than 100 million Americans rode a bike in 2014, and bicycles have outsold cars most years in the U.S. since 2003. Latinos bike more than any other racial group, followed by Asians and Native Americans. African Americans and whites bike at about the same rate. Most bicyclists are low-income, according to census figures—as many as 49 percent of bike commuters make less than $25,000 a year. From 1990 to 2012, bike commuting tripled in New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Washington D.C., Minneapolis, Portland.
What’s driving the culture shift in biking? “It’s the transition from a small group of people who strongly identify as bicyclists to a bigger, broader grouping of people who simply ride bikes.” explains Randy Neufeld, a veteran bike activist from Chicago. The music star Beyonce has been known to pedal to some of her own concerts, for example, and the NBA’s Lebron James bikes to his games.
[For more on this story by Jay Walljasper, go to http://www.yesmagazine.org/pea...ore-popular-20171216]
Photo: Renee Moore learned to ride at 25, and then founded Bicycling and the City to get more women on bikes in Washington, DC. Photo by Rakiya Moore
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