Some years ago, some one muttered something like “i don’t know what stops young people from using their bikes instead of public transport”. I didn’t know what to answer at the time but I have been thinking in an articulate answer ever since. So here is a list of things that do stop friends of mine from biking:
* the price of a bike – add this to the big chance of it, or parts of it, getting nicked
* the need for a place to keep it
* the big distances in London
* the sweat
* the need for special clothes when biking
* the dirt
* the danger
* any physical discomfort
Of course most of these things can be sorted – but nothing is for free. What I can gather from the periods that I have biked and the periods when I have used public transport, biking requires an additional mental disposition and effort, apart from the physical one. You get out of your house to get the bus and you pick up your bus pass and whatever you need for your destination. You get on your bike, and you need a whole bit of equipment on top of what you need for your destination. When you go empty handed this looks like bollocks, but when you go around with equipment like microphone or minidisks – let alone books – a backpack is not an option.
I know there are accessories to make life on a bike easier. These vary in size to fit in different bikes. But of course bikes evolve, and so do accessories. So if you have a twenty year old bike for which accessories are no longer made, you have two options: do without them or buy another bike. Doesn’t it sound like computers.
