OPINION
somewhat through 1974 and 1975, although nowhere near the increase seen in the US in the same period, when the four-year-long early-1970s “bike boom” was built on baby- boomer wealth, burgeoning environmental concerns, and the same health kick that saw the rise of jogging. The Great American Bicycle Boom of 1971-4 (which spawned Cannondale, Specialized and other US brands) resulted in bumper sales far larger than the mountain-bike boom that followed in the 1980s. A contemporary Bank of America report said US bicycle sales had been “rolling along” at six million a year “until the boom began.” In 1971, sales jumped to nine million, and in 1972 they reached 14 million. In the following year, this climbed further to 15.3 million. Yet in 1974, the market shrank precipitously almost
overnight. The reasons why are complex, but they include the fact that the bikes sold at the height of the US boom were poor-quality imports, which eventually deflated the desire to ride. It was also the case that it had been environmentalists fighting bicycling’s corner, and they moved on to other issues, such as anti-nuclear campaigns and saving whales. Perhaps the biggest reason for the sales collapse was the hoola-hoop problem: 1970s cycling in the US was a craze, and those attracted to it were not sufficiently sold on the idea to keep riding long-term, either recreationally or for Dutch-style daily transport. The cycle industry is classically, ahem, cyclical. Spikes and dips are normal, going right back to the early days of cycling. The 1890s “bike boom” — when cycling was super popular with elites, from the middle classes to royalty, not yet the workers — was a bust by 1897. There’s nobody alive who experienced this
pre-car golden era of cycling, but there will be a few industry veterans who personally remember the dark days of the 1970s, when, in the UK, so few bicycles were sold. More veterans experienced the BMX booms and busts of the early 1980s and then, a few years later, the rise and fall of mountain bikes. I’m guessing those who survived such booms and busts were saddened but not surprised by the calamitous post-COVID fall in cycle sales. As a veteran of the bicycle industry — I founded this magazine in 1999 and previously worked for the long-since-defunct Cycle Industry trade magazine — I assumed there would be a massive slump after the COVID bike boom. That’s because I reported researched cycling’s booms and busts down the years (I wrote the history book Bike Boom, a follow-up to Roads Were Not Built for Cars). Exceptional events such as global pandemics notwithstanding, bicycling booms generally happen every twenty years or so.
www.bikebiz.com
Carlton Reid
Clearly, we’d sell more bicycles if more people were cycling. How to achieve this, though? A prominent school of thought holds that veining the country with cycleways would do the trick, and that the cycle industry should focus all of its promotional efforts on advocacy to achieve this goal. Many assume that the expansion of the
Dutch cycleway network in the 1970s and 1980s ‘THE CYCLE
INDUSTRY IS CLASSICALLY, AHEM, CYCLICAL. SPIKES AND DIPS ARE NORMAL, GOING RIGHT BACK TO THE EARLY DAYS OF CYCLING.’
must have led to a renaissance of everyday cycling in the Netherlands. In fact, it arrested a precipitous decline, with cycle use in the Netherlands in the 1970s being not a patch on what it had been in the 1930s. Cyclists in Amsterdam accounted for more than 70 per cent of traffic on the roads in 1925. In the Dutch city of Enschede, cycling’s “modal share” was closer to 90 per cent at the time. Between 1950 and 1970, cycle use in the Netherlands declined, but it stabilised after 1975, thanks in part to the reallocation of
roadspace away from motor cars and the expansion of cycle networks. Enschede now has a cycling modal share of under 40 per cent, and Amsterdam a little over 30 per cent.
So, a cynic might say that the easiest way for a city to
achieve a cycling modal share of 25 per cent is to start with one of 50 per cent. Falling in and out of favour is not something that can be
and fashion, by definition, is fickle. Looking on the bright side, there are bumper days ahead for the cycle industry; just be aware there will likely be a dip in sales soon thereafter.
January 2026 | 39
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