UK bike sales plummet to early 1970s levels and were lower than any other year this century in 2024, reveals Bicycle Association report

Marcus_Ironman_Richardson wrote:

New bikes (in my opinion) are way over priced - I appreciate all the reasons why (team sponsorship, R&D, retail overheads etc) but 14k for a bike is outragious 

It is ridiculous, of course, but everyone has a choice not to spend that much and 99% of people take that choice. It would only be truly outrageous if that were all that was available; as it is there are new bikes available for less than £1000 that will do you almost exactly the same job (alright, you might be 90 seconds slower over a 30 km time trial, not something most people care about). Using the cycle to work scheme you can get about 40% off, so you're looking at £500 or less for a really good bike that, properly looked after, will last you at least a decade. A pound a week for something that could potentially save you hundreds a week (at a rough estimate, since Mrs H and I started cycle commuting and got rid of our car we have saved around £5000 a year on train fares, car servicing, insurance, petrol, parking permits et cetera) isn't a bad deal.

there are new bikes available for less than £1000 that will do you almost exactly the same job 

Yes!! Too often have I bored people on here about the revelatory £650 steel gravel bike with the fab cable disc brakes which I bought in the pre-disaster time of October 2019, and which has been the most used and abused bike I have ever had. I find myself much less perturbed about the existence of super-expensive bikes for the wealthy than I am about people in 'normal' £20-50,000 cars who would almost all cry 'What?!, £650 for a bike?'

Marcus_Ironman_Richardson wrote:

New bikes (in my opinion) are way over priced - I appreciate all the reasons why (team sponsorship, R&D, retail overheads etc) but 14k for a bike is outragious 

This is so wrong.

The vast majority of bikes on the market are far, far cheaper than the premium models. The retail landscape is in a dire way and the RRP of a Dura-Ace Di2 equipped Colnago, Pinarello or S-Works SL8 is totally irrelevant.

Ask any bike shop or distributor, they just aren't shifting enough bikes - whether £500, £1,000 or £5,000. If you drew a bell curve-style chart of bicycle sales volumes it would be heavily skewed towards the cheaper end, tailing off dramatically to a tiny number sold at the expensive end.

You don't need a Porsche Cayenne to drive to work and the shops and it's the same with bicycles. Brands like Colnago, Pinarello etc are only charging what they think people will pay for those halo products, it has no real connection with the overall cost and is definitely not related to the cost of 'normal' bikes. 

You can get a Specialized Allez for £1,000. The carbon Giant TCR with disc brakes and 12 speed 105 is £1,750 while the Defy Advanced models are listed from £2,159 with 105 to £2,639 with Rival AXS. There are loads of other examples.

This is part of why the solution to the problem is not attempting to build separate infrastructures for each type of vehicle that appears, but rather it is enforcing the extant laws that require road users to cooperate and share that public space -- in particular, those that require motor vehicle operators to exercise caution and not, under any circumstances, kill and maim other road users.

This is where the entire focus of everyone concerned with road safety ought to be -- not on wasting time, money, and lives on pursuing hopeless construction-based strategies that have yet to be successful anywhere on this planet.

"Separate but equal" will never be the latter, and where infrastructure is concerned, it won't be the former, either.

It must be all the police... or maybe they're all just brave but incredibly foolish (for choosing to accept such inequality!  ... because they haven't realised they've pursued a hopeless construction-based strategy for 50+ years, leading to massive waste of lives!)  Oh no - the madness is spreading!

Fools to themselves these people, just because something quite obviously works they think...um...that it works. Chumps.

Rendel Harris wrote:

Fools to themselves these people, just because something quite obviously works they think...um...that it works. Chumps.

If it works, why is the Dutch cyclist fatality rate approximately triple that of the United States'?

( 280 fatalities among ~10M Dutch cyclists, versus 900 fatalities from 120M American cyclists -- using averages from the past few years. )

dh700 wrote:

If it works, why is the Dutch cyclist fatality rate approximately triple that of the United States'?

( 280 fatalities among ~10M Dutch cyclists, versus 900 fatalities from 120M American cyclists -- using averages from the past few years. )

Oh dear me. Average distance ridden by Dutch cyclists per year, 800km+. Average distance ridden by American cyclists per year, less than 50km. Deaths per billion miles cycled in the Netherlands, 15. Deaths per billion miles cycled in the USA, 45. US cyclist fatalities are in fact three times higher than in the Netherlands, not three times lower. Are you Donald Trump?

Same school of rhetoric perhaps.

I'm surprised nobody's cited the moon's great road traffic safety record - there's certainly driving there but no cycle infra - yet zero cycling fatalities! Explain that!

Really, if they're simply concerned about safety they should be demanding UK traffic policies *! The UK still has one of the best overall road safety rates for a developed country. Of course - we've done than by literally driving people off the roads AND as part of this making it *much* less convenient for cyclists and pedestrians ** - all in the name of safety!

* Don't copy the UK, we don't even have a coordinated road safety concept like "Sustainable Safety".

** From a US perspective of course that may sound ridiculous - many otherwise walkable / cycleable places there are lacking *pedestrian* infra never mind cycle infra!

chrisonabike wrote:

** From a US perspective of course that may sound ridiculous - many otherwise walkable / cycleable places there are lacking *pedestrian* infra never mind cycle infra!

That's not ridiculous at all.  We know how to solve this problem, because it has already been done.  Japan has next to no dedicated infrastructure of any type, yet has the safest roads in the wold for pedestrians and cyclists.

How?

They enforce their traffic laws, and send persons who hit pedestrians or cyclists with their car to jail, pretty much without exception.

Rendel Harris wrote:

Oh dear me. Average distance ridden by Dutch cyclists per year, 800km+. Average distance ridden by American cyclists per year, less than 50km. 

No one has ever tracked American cyclist mileage to any significant precision.

50km is a comically low guess.  That would total 6 billion km nationally.  Just 10M slightly-serious cyclists would achieve that total by riding only 600 km annually -- even if the other 110M cyclsts managed to combine for zero miles.  So that's clearly impossible.  There are almost a million bicycle commuters alone, who cover ~25% of that 6B number just by commuting.

Also, for cultural and political reasons, the Dutch routinely exaggerate their cycling statistics ( https://www.dutchnews.nl/2021/09/cycling-injuries-three-times-more-than-... ).  For example, they like to claim 15.5 billion annual km, which equates to about 15.5 million cyclists -- from a population of only 18M.  Meanwhile, when that population is actually surveyed, about 40% of them report not cycling, and in fact, not having access to a bicycle.

Rendel Harris wrote:

Deaths per billion miles cycled in the Netherlands, 15. Deaths per billion miles cycled in the USA, 45. US cyclist fatalities are in fact three times higher than in the Netherlands, not three times lower.

Neither country has sufficiently accurate mileage statistics available to attempt the calculation that you suggest.  But we can determine that the Netherlands sees ~28 fatalities per million cyclists annually, compared to just ~8 per million in the US.

So we still lack an explanation for why US cyclists are so much safer than the Dutch.

We also lack an explanation for why Dutch cyclist fatalities have increased by ~50 percent over the past decade or so.  Are they tearing up those cycle tracks?

dh700 wrote:

Meanwhile, when that population is actually surveyed, about 40% of them report not cycling, and in fact, not having access to a bicycle.

Ah, I see you've moved on from attempting to manipulate statistics (every American who rides a bicycle once a year is a cyclist) to downright lying in order to try to support your absurd contentions. In fact 16% of Dutch people say they do not own a bicycle (this does not of course mean that they do not cycle, given the immense popularity of bike hire schemes). 40% of Dutch people report that cycling is not their primary mode of transport, not that they never cycle. Anyone who's ever been to the Netherlands or spoken with Dutch people can plainly see the assertion that nearly half of them don't have access to a bicycle for the desperate lie it is. The fact that you have to resort to such utter rubbish demonstrates how risibly weak your arguments are. 

Rendel Harris wrote:

Ah, I see you've moved on from attempting to manipulate statistics to downright lying

And then moved straight past that to being personally abusive about their interlocutors - the knockdown argument to end all knockdown arguments...

mdavidford wrote:

 

And then moved straight past that to being personally abusive about their interlocutors 

Go ahead and cite that.

Maybe you were confusing me with the people who are insulting me, because they are unable to formulate any counterarguments that comport with reality?

But clearly parody / defend the indefensible for the exercise, no? Lengthy pedantry with complaints about others wasting time, getting into the weeds but with clear inaccuracies?

There are some interesting stories to explore beyond the bare facts since eg. if we reduce "road safety" to a single casualty number - or even subdivide it slightly - an *odd* group of places emerges at the top. Though mostly "(northern) europe" except Japan.

Even just for European examples - all kinds of different things feed into this. (Reaching into history and even - in things like infra - political organisation eg. the different bodies, how they relate and how they're held accountable.)

But that is definitely the stuff of (very) long-form, not a comment thread!

Anyway, apparently this one started being about bike sales in the UK...?

Rendel Harris wrote:

Ah, I see you've moved on from attempting to manipulate statistics (every American who rides a bicycle once a year is a cyclist) to downright lying

I'm just reporting what the survey found.  I'll dig up the reference if I have time later.  And yes, every single person who rides a bicycle is a cyclist.  You can stop any time with that one, which is one of your more assinine remarks here.

Rendel Harris wrote:

40% of Dutch people report that cycling is not their primary mode of transport, not that they never cycle. Anyone who's ever been to the Netherlands or spoken with Dutch people can plainly see the assertion that nearly half of them don't have access to a bicycle for the desperate lie it is.

Yet another ridiculous claim, evidencing a complete failure to understand basic concepts like statistics.  Speaking with a few Dutch people does not constitute a statistically-valid sampling of the population.

And, as a matter of fact, my company is owned by a Dutch conglomerate, so I have and do speak with Dutch people on the regular.  About half of them do not ride.

dh700 wrote:

Speaking with a few Dutch people does not constitute a statistically-valid sampling of the population.

And, as a matter of fact, my company is owned by a Dutch conglomerate, so I have and do speak with Dutch people on the regular.  About half of them do not ride.

Hilarious, speaking with a few Dutch people (in fact I have a number of Dutch friends and have spent a considerable amount of time visiting in the Netherlands; I also spent five years of my childhood living next door in Belgium so I probably know rather more about the habits of people in those countries than you do) means nothing but apparently you talking to a few Dutch colleagues is some sort of proof. It's quite extraordinary that you claim that 120 million Americans are cyclists on the basis that they cycle a minimum of once a year, but when it's known that 62% of Dutch people cycle at least once a week you claim that 40% of the Dutch population never cycle, not even one ride a year, and don't own a bike. Surely even you can see how ridiculous you're making yourself look? Do please produce this research which conveniently you don't have time to reference that shows this 40% figure you claim to be true.

The figures analysed from 2023 here show that - if you took a small sample of Dutch people - you might find ones that didn't cycle.  There are variations; if those people come from the countryside and have lots of cars they are less likely to cycle.  Also IIRC some studies show that above the very poorest, the working class tend to drive more in NL.  (Perhaps because "tradespeople" or having to travel between less-well-served by public transport places, or that cars more strongly equate with social status, IDK?)

Not really a surprise but apparently:

Netherlands Institute for Transport Policy Analysis wrote:

Adults without a driving licence make significantly more journeys by bicycle than adults who do have a driving licence. Their cycling share in trips is almost 1.5 times higher than for driving licence holders.  [...]
As more cars become available in a household, the members of that household will cycle less ofen. The bicycle share is highest in households without cars (37%), and lowest in households with 3 or more cars (20%,[...]).

People who live in areas with a (very) strong or moderate level of urban development cycle relatively more than people in areas with a low level of urban development or non-urban areas (see Figure 16). This is partly due to the distances to the destinations, which are generally shorter in urban areas than elsewhere.

But also there are variations which may be due to regional (political) choices?

Netherlands Institute for Transport Policy Analysis wrote:

For journeys within the municipal boundaries, the role played by bicycles is greater
in some municipalities than in others. For example, the share of cycling in many
municipalities in Limburg province is lower than in the rest of the Netherlands
[...]

More "presentation" versions of Dutch cycling figures (with links to primary sources) here: 2018, 2023 (with more of a focus on "safety").

Rendel Harris wrote:

 

Hilarious, speaking with a few Dutch people (in fact I have a number of Dutch friends and have spent a considerable amount of time visiting in the Netherlands; I also spent five years of my childhood living next door in Belgium so I probably know rather more about the habits of people in those countries than you do) means nothing but apparently you talking to a few Dutch colleagues is some sort of proof.

Hey look, Harris is figuring out what "statistically significant" means.  Cool -- hopefully I won't have to explain it to you next time.

Rendel Harris wrote:

It's quite extraordinary that you claim that 120 million Americans are cyclists on the basis that they cycle a minimum of once a year, but when it's known that 62% of Dutch people cycle at least once a week you claim that 40% of the Dutch population never cycle, not even one ride a year, and don't own a bike.

Oh right, "it's known".

While I look for the aforementioned source, here's another one that calls into serious question many of the Dutch statistics that "are known".  It turns out that the Dutch cycle frequently -- but they travel almost no where.  1.2km.  A distance that, in most countries, no one is going to bother hauling out a bike -- and risking its theft -- to travel, they'll just walk.  Especially since the Dutch ride so slowly that door-to-door, walking is barely slower.

https://www.peopleforbikes.org/news/best-kept-secret-dutch-biking-dutch-...

Rendel Harris wrote:

Surely even you can see how ridiculous you're making yourself look? Do please produce this research which conveniently you don't have time to reference that shows this 40% figure you claim to be true.

At least I didn't have to have the concept of statistical significence explained to me, like you did.  Or need it repeatedly explained that a "cyclist" is a person who cycles.  Or that 50km is an absurdly-low guess at the average annual mileage for just about any national group of cyclists.  Or any one of about 50 other comments you've made, apparently with the sole purpose of wasting everyone's time.

chrisonabike wrote:

It must be all the police... or maybe they're all just brave but incredibly foolish (for choosing to accept such inequality!  ... because they haven't realised they've pursued a hopeless construction-based strategy for 50+ years, leading to massive waste of lives!)  Oh no - the madness is spreading!

Now investigate, as I'm pretty sure I've told you previously, how frequently those Dutch cyclists die.

They average 280 cyclist deaths annually, from a tiny population that rides incredibly short distances at slow speeds -- per their official statistics.

In other words, as I said, that infrastructure does not work to improve safety.

It's strange, you don't appear to have ever suggested that we should make things safer for *drivers* by removing all that expensive motor infra... or do you feel that perhaps that's not a fair comparison because fewer would drive? 🤔

Y'know, I *also* hope to die on my bike * - but not under a motor vehicle.

Instead I'd like to improve my chances of doing so by having an environment which encourages me to actually cycle (can only die on my bike if I'm on it). Indeed one where I might feel comfortable doing so into an advanced age - when I'm more likely just to die whatever I'm doing.

And I'm far more likely to have a bad outcome just by falling off my bike when elderly **.

Of course, if I was driving *I* might be safer personally when I made age-related errors - but I might drive into someone else (or a house). Or I could just stay at home... but I think overall that would lead to worse health outcomes while alive (certainly averaged over population).

* I'm not in a hurry.

** I've injured myself falling off on roads, but not yet on cycle infra. I'd definitely prefer to fall off on the latter - it would hurt about the same but my chances of bonus injury from motor vehicles are drastically reduced.

chrisonabike wrote:

It's strange, you don't appear to have ever suggested that we should make things safer for *drivers* by removing all that expensive motor infra... or do you feel that perhaps that's not a fair comparison because fewer would drive?

First of all, I never suggested removing infrastructure -- I said that building it is pointless, and has never yet improved safety anywhere on the planet.  From an environmental standpoint, tearing it out is questionably worthwhile.  From a safety standpoint, it ought to be removed, because it sends precisely the wrong message to motor vehicle operators, which is that they own the roads.  They do not.

Second, you brushed up against the best argument against attempting to build dedicated cycling infrastructure, which is that it does absolutely nothing to improve the safety lot of motor vehicle occupants or pedestrians.  Using US numbers because they are convenient to me, those two classes of road users die vastly more often than cyclists -- 50k occupants, 6k pedestrians, and 900 cyclists on rough average.  On the other hand, correcting road user behavior benefits everyone -- even wildlife, potentially.

chrisonabike wrote:

Instead I'd like to improve my chances of doing so by having an environment which encourages me to actually cycle (can only die on my bike if I'm on it). Indeed one where I might feel comfortable doing so into an advanced age - when I'm more likely just to die whatever I'm doing.

Sounds great.  Let's fix the actual problem then, and not screw around pouring completely ineffectual concrete and paint -- which are among the worst activities we can find, from an environmental standpoint.

The entire problem, is road user behavior.  We can fix that.  We know how to do it.  We just have to decade that we want to -- and get law enforcement off their indolent duffs, which I do recognize is easier said than done, but still possible.

Your country, like mine, already has roads that go damn near everywhere, and which are perfectly suitable for any sort of vehicle, or walking.  The one and only problem is that some of the people who use those roads refuse to operate their vehicles legally and safely on those roads.  Let's fix that problem.  Then we instantly have bike routes everywhere!  You can ride to any shop you want, any office you want, any ocean that you want.  That's the goal, innit?

Then we can spend billions of whatevers on whatevers else we need or want -- better schools, lower taxes, whatever.  Then we can skip the environmental damage of millions of acres of concrete and paint.  Then when someone invents a new vehicle type in 20 years, we don't have to have this same conversation all over again.  Then we can stop contributing to an "us vs them" culture war, and stop fighting with shop owners over whether or not a bike lane will shutter their business.

We've already tried construction-based strategies in a bunch of places.  They don't work at all to improve safety.  They encourage strife between cyclists and everyone else.  They aren't cheap.  They don't scale.

How many times should we repeat that mistake, before at least trying the strategy that is known to be effective?

dh700 wrote:

First of all, I never suggested removing infrastructure -- I said that building it is pointless, and has never yet improved safety anywhere on the planet.

I didn't say you had - and you didn't, because the idea of removing *motoring infra* and expecting better safety is silly on the face of it *.

Anyway, gives me an excuse to post some more fools I saw out today. I did try telling them some person on the internet had clearly demonstrated they'd be safer on the road and it would be more convenient to eg. mix it with the buses normally here or wait in the traffic then sprint to the next light **, and would save us all money just to have left an extra vehicle lane - but they weren't having it... 😉

* Natural experiments have been provided - by the past and by some less developed places. Turns out that humans plus cars without a lot of control measures (and I'm happy to agree that police and societal pressures play a small part - just rather small in eg. Europe) kill themselves at a good rate.

And even in low-speed applications stuff like "shared space" has been tried (by many countries, NL included) and found to be neither safe nor convenient for vulnerable road users (not even particularly great for drivers).

** It's Wester Coates in Edinburgh FWIW - busy during rush hour and when there is an event on.

"Quick - get onto the road and call for the police - it's the only way to avoid a crash! Infra doesn't work you know!" (Link to the Roseburn to the Canal path).

chrisonabike wrote:

I didn't say you had - and you didn't, because the idea of removing *motoring infra* and expecting better safety is silly on the face of it *.

Please do not adopt Harris' habit of just wasting everyone's time with nonsense.  His comments are such unremitting garbage that I will soon have to stop even responding to them, as they are a complete waste of even the minimal energy required to transmit and display them.

The point you have missed is that it is not "motoring infra" -- it is just infrastructure.  It is supposed to be used by all vehicle types, and the one and only reason that such does not presently work as well as it ought to, is -- again -- road user behavior.

So let's fix the actual problem.

chrisonabike wrote:

Anyway, gives me an excuse to post some more fools I saw out today. I did try telling them some person on the internet had clearly demonstrated they'd be safer on the road

Again, not what I said.  Cyclists are not necessarily safer on the road, they just are not safer on dedicated cycling infrastructure.  This point has been proven so many times that I am frankly shocked that the alleged cycling experts here seem to remain totally unaware of it.

chrisonabike wrote:

 And even in low-speed applications stuff like "shared space" has been tried (by many countries, NL included) and found to be neither safe nor convenient for vulnerable road users (not even particularly great for drivers). ** It's Wester Coates in Edinburgh FWIW - busy during rush hour and when there is an event on.

And again, such a configuration is no worse than dedicated cycling infrastructure in any location on this planet where it has yet been tried.  Especially including the Netherlands, where they've been building such for well-nigh a century now.  Can you advise regarding how many centuries we should expect it to take, before all that infrastructure in the Netherlands begins to improve cyclist safety?

Also, you neglected to explain why the world's safest roads are found in Japan -- home of virtually no dedicated cycling infrastructure.  How does that comport with your various theories?  It does not, at all.

Finally, what, exactly, prevents a motor vehicle from using that cycle lane that you pictured -- if, say, the roadway was congested or blocked, or if the motor vehicle operator just felt like doing so?  Absolutely nothing except fear of law enforcement.  So let's apply that same concept to preventing motor vehicle operators from driving dangerously everywhere -- and save billions, and save millions of acres of concrete and paint, and save years of argument over construction projects.

We know that works, so why are you opposed to it?  Do you own a concrete or paint company?  Do you have some other interest in seeing municpalities pursue strategies that are; expensive, ineffective, the precise opposite of future-proof, not remotely scalable, and which fuel dissent between road user groups?