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July 17, 2002-9
Copyright © 2002 Earth Policy Institute
WORLD TURNING TO BICYCLE FOR MOBILITY AND EXERCISE
Bicycle Sales Top 100 Million In 2000
Lester R. Brown and Janet Larsen
In the year 2000, world bicycle production climbed to 101 million,
more than double the 41 million cars produced. Sales of bikes are
soaring because they provide affordable mobility for billions of
people, increase physical fitness, alleviate traffic congestion,
and do not pollute the air or emit climate-disrupting carbon dioxide.
A half-century ago, it was widely expected that automobile production
would quickly exceed that of bicycles. Indeed by 1965, car production,
which had been growing rapidly since World War II, was poised to
overtake bicycle production. But it never did. Mounting environmental
concerns slowed the growth in car output and accelerated that of
bikes. Between 1969 and 1970, the year of the first Earth Day, bike
sales jumped from 25 million to 36 million.
Shortly after the first Earth Day, the two oil-price shocks of the
1970s underlined the risks of oil-dependent mobility. Car sales
stalled near 30 million from 1973 to 1983. Bicycle sales, meanwhile,
jumped from 52 million to 74 million.
The bicycle's principal attraction is its low cost. With cars costing
easily 100 times as much, the bicycle offers mobility to billions
of people who cannot afford a car. The widely affordable bike attracted
960 million buyers during the 1990s, compared with 370 million for
the car.
The bicycle also reduces the amount of land that needs to be paved.
Six bicycles typically can fit into the road space used by one car.
For parking, the advantage is even greater, with 20 bicycles occupying
the space required for a car.
As the world automobile fleet expanded and as people moved in droves
to cities, ever worsening traffic congestion highlighted the inherent
conflict between the automobile and the city. In London today, the
average speed of a car is roughly the same as that of a horse-drawn
carriage a century ago. Each year, the average motorist in Bangkok
spends the equivalent of 44 working days sitting in a car going
nowhere. After a point, more cars mean less mobility. Another attraction
of the bicycle is that it does not contribute to the air pollution
that claims 3 million lives annually.
In recent decades, the densely populated countries of northern Europe
have turned to the bicycle to alleviate traffic congestion and reduce
air pollution. In Stockholm, one of the world's wealthiest cities,
car use has declined in recent years. Railroads and buses are increasingly
linked with pedestrian and bicycle routes. In Sweden's urban areas,
roughly 10 percent of all trips are taken by bicycle, about the
same number as by public transit. Almost 40 percent of trips are
on foot. Only 36 percent are by car.
In the Netherlands, bicycles account for up to half of all trips
in some cities. Extensive bike paths and lanes in both the Netherlands
(almost 19,000 kilometers) and Germany (over 31,000 kilometers)
connect rural and urban areas. These networks offer the cyclist
separate right-of-way, making for safer trips and less direct competition
with cars and trucks. In Copenhagen, one third of the population
commutes to work by bicycle. By 2005, Copenhagen's innovative city-bike
program will provide 3,000 bicycles for free use within the city.
Bike use there is expected to continue growing as city planners
increase already high car parking fees by 3 percent annually over
the next 15 years, impose high fuel taxes and vehicle registration
costs, and concentrate future development around rail lines.
In many cities in the United States, bikes provide mobility that
cars cannot match. More than four fifths of all urban police departments
now have some of their force on bicycles. Officers on bikes can
usually reach the scene of a crime before those in squad cars, typically
making 50 percent more arrests per day. For fiscally sensitive city
managers, the low cost of operating a bicycle and the high productivity
of an officer using one is a winning combination.
Urban bicycle messenger services are now common in large cities.
For firms that market on the Internet, quick delivery means more
customers. In a city like New York, where this creates an enormous
potential for the use of bicycle messengers, an estimated 300 bicycle
messenger firms compete for $700 million worth of business each
year.
Land scarcity is also driving the world toward the bicycle, particularly
in densely populated Asia, where half the world lives. In heavily
populated, affluent Japan, the bicycle plays a strategic role. In
Tokyo, where 90 percent of workers commute by rail, 30 percent use
a bicycle to reach their local rail station.
When the Chinese government announced in 1994 that it was going
to develop an automobile-centered transportation system, the policy
was quickly challenged by a group of eminent scientists who produced
a white paper indicating several reasons this approach would not
work. The first reason was that China did not have enough land both
to build the roads, highways, and parking lots needed for automobiles
and to feed its people. The scientists argued instead for a rail/bicycle-based
transport system.
Although some cities in China, such as Beijing and Shanghai, are
restricting bicycle use in favor of the car, bike ownership throughout
the country is still on the rise. Automobile ownership in China
is measured in the millions, but bicycle ownership is in the hundreds
of millions.
Bicycles are also used to transport goods. In rural Africa where
women use bicycles to transport farm produce to market, the resulting
market expansion has raised farm output. In Ghana, bikes help HIV/AIDS
educators reach 50 percent more people than those on foot.
For decades, the United States largely ignored the bicycle in transport
system planning as federal funds were channeled almost exclusively
into highway construction. This began to change in 1991 when Congress
passed landmark legislation recognizing the role of the bicycle
in the development of transport systems and requiring each state
to have a bicycle coordinator. From 1992 through 1997, more than
$1 billion of federal funds were invested in bicycle infrastructure.
In New Jersey, this translated into an 800-mile statewide network
of bicycle trails.
This new federal commitment helped boost U.S. bike sales from 15
million in 1991 to 21 million in 2000. When President Clinton signed
the Transportation Equity Act for the 21st Century in 1998, he set
the stage for further integration of bicycles into transportation
planning.
Bicycles are gaining popularity in industrial countries because
they provide exercise. With half or more of adults now overweight
in countries like the United States, Russia, Germany, and the United
Kingdom, obesity is one of the world's leading public health problems.
In the United States, obesity-related deaths currently total 300,000
a year, fast approaching the 420,000 for cigarette smoking.
The bicycle's role in the world transport system is expanding. Not
only does it provide low-cost mobility, but in cities it often provides
more mobility than the automobile. Because it provides mobility
and exercise, does not pollute the air or disrupt the earth's climate,
and is efficient in its use of land, the bicycle is emerging as
the transport vehicle of the future.
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Copyright
© 2002 Earth Policy Institute
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FOR ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
From Earth Policy Institute
Lester R. Brown, Eco-Economy:
Building an Economy for the Earth (New York: W.W. Norton
& Company, 2001).
Lester R. Brown, "Paving the Planet: Cars and Crops
Competing for Land," Earth Policy
Alert, 14 February 2001.
From Worldwatch Institute
Michael Renner, "Vehicle Production Declines Slightly,"
in Worldwatch Institute, Vital Signs 2002: The Trends that are
Shaping Our Future (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2002),
pp. 74-75.
Gary Gardner, "Bicycle Production Rolls Forward,"
in Worldwatch Institute, Vital Signs 2002: The Trends that are
Shaping Our Future (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2002),
pp. 76-77.
From Other Sources
Bicycle Retailer and Industry News, "World Market
Report," Industry Directory 2002 (Santa Fe, NM: Bill Communications,
2002).
Todd Litman, Evaluating Transportation Land Use
Impacts (Victoria, BC, Canada: Victoria Transport Policy Institute,
2 April 2002).
Todd Litman, Quantifying the Benefits of Non-Motorized
Transport for Achieving TDM Objectives (Victoria, BC, Canada:
Victoria Transport Policy Institute, 1 December 1999).
Peter Newman and Jeffrey Kenworthy, Sustainability
and Cities (Washington, DC: Island Press, 1999).
John Pucher and Lewis Dijkstra, "Making Walking
and Cycling Safer: Lessons from Europe," Transportation Quarterly,
vol. 54, no. 3 (summer 2000).
LINKS
Bicycle Retailer and Industry News
http:/www.bicycleretailer.com
Institute for Transportation and Development Policy
http:/www.itdp.org
League of American Bicyclists
http:/www.bikeleague.org
National Center for Bicycling and Walking
http:/www.bikewalk.org
Pedestrian and Bicycle Information Center
http:/www.bicyclinginfo.org
Surface Transportation Policy Project
http:/www.transact.org
Victoria Transport Policy Institute
http:/www.vtpi.org
Washington Area Bicyclist Association
http:/www.waba.org
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