OFF TRACK SPOKES
Genie to bike execs: bike paths or glorious weather?
Carlton Reid wonders whether bike industry executives, given a choice between the two, would prefer to have guaranteed glorious weather or urban bike path networks.
FOR AS long as I’ve been in the bicycle business – and that would be, gulp, since about 1986 – I’ve had it drummed into me by industry executives that the main causal factor for increased bike sales is increased sunshine. Dry, bright weather equals more cash in bike shop tills across the country. Blue sky weekends can lead to suppliers’ phones ringing
off the hook on Monday. I’ve also been led to believe bike sales track very closely to ice-cream and ice lolly sales. Ice cream sales do well up to “glorious”, with ice lolly sales taking over when it gets to “sweltering”. Bike sales do best when it’s
“glorious” but people don’t ride – or buy – as much when it’s “sweltering.” Such reliance on the weather would be fine and dandy in, say, Southern California, but to be so dependent on Britain’s weather gods can’t be good for spreadsheet sanity. Weather gods are fickle. Last year was damp at best, a wash-out at worst. Sales of high-end road bikes were the bright spot in an otherwise lacklustre market. The heatwave summer of 2013 was manna from heaven for retailers of bikes (and ice cream). In last month’s Spokesman I argued that it’s
understandable that the Bicycle Association doesn’t lobby exclusively for separated cycle paths: the market is broader than that and the Bicycle Association doesn’t lobby for velodromes or MTB trail centres either. The BA has to represent all members, all parts of the bicycle supply chain. That doesn’t mean the Bicycle Association is *opposed* to separated cycle paths, as some have suggested, just as the BA isn’t opposed to velodromes or
MTB trail centres. The BA – and the Bike Hub levy coordinated by the BA and the Association of Cycle Traders – has only a finite amount of money to spend and spending it on projects mostly aimed at children is a good use of the money, I think. Children are the cyclists of the future, and the consumers of the future, too. We’ve already lost one or two generations since the great slump in bicycle usage which started in the 1950s. Investing in programmes that get children excited about cycling cannot be a bad thing. More children cycling to
school – and cycling outside of school too – creates everyday cyclists. And it’s everyday cyclists who can keep the tills ringing all year long. One of the criticisms from some bicycle advocates is that
programs such as Bikeability and
Bike-It can’t deliver long-term, because kids taught to cycle don’t
have anywhere to ride, the roads are too busy. This is only partially true. Not all roads
are busy. And even if – by some magic – the Government invested big-time in cycle infrastructure, not all roads would get protected bike paths. If I was a genie and could grant the British bicycle industry one wish – either wall to wall sunshine or protected bike paths everywhere – I’m pretty sure the answer would be wall to wall sunshine, glorious rather than sweltering. Clearly, the bicycle industry would welcome more bicycle infrastructure provision, but the thing that really gets Brits out on bikes – for recreation and transport – is dependably pleasant weather.
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'Rams bananas in his back pocket'... That's NOT a
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The New Forest, Peak District, South Downs and Dartmoor
areas will also each share another £17m funding for national parks. #cycling @cyclestore
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Never done that before. @Velocentric
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