We are entering the second great age of the bicycle, and this one could be here for a very long time.
The first bicycle age was a product of industrial transformation happening in the latter part of the 1800’s and the early 1900’s. The idea of a human powered velocipede had been around for a very long time, possibly since the time of Leonardo Da Vinci, and finally technology developed enough to bring the bicycle into reality. All kinds of cycles were built and ridden in those heady early days–upright and recumbent, with tiny and huge wheels numbering 2, 3, 4, and even 5, and with 1, 2, 3 and more seats. Cities, roads and social relationships all were transformed by the arrival of the bike.
But, how fickle we are. How soon we forget. Humans became enamored of the next technology of transportation, the loud and flashy automobile, and it took a century for that fling to be recognized for the highly codependent and doomed mismatch that it was.
Now, trends are pointing to a future condition in which human powered vehicles are poised to become ever more popular and in which this form of transport can thrive.
What is bringing this about? Has bicycle technology improved so much that it is catalyzing profound change? Or has our need for bicycles changed? The trends and developments are several:
Climate change has been recognized as real and profoundly destructive. The technologies that aggravate it have been identified as those that consume fuels containing fossil carbon, and foremost among these is the production and use of the automobile. As challenging as it will be to restrict the use of this rich and almost-free source of energy, getting past putting fossil carbon into the atmosphere will simply have to happen.
The ascendancy of the Age of Spaceship Earth is complete. This profound change to human understanding was initiated by the first voyage to the moon and the first outside view of Earth, a delicate green and blue lifeboat, the only life to be seen, floating alone in the immensity of space. The baby boom generation took this understanding to heart. The new generations see it too.
Some resources are becoming constrained.
A backlash is taking place against the dead end Sedentary Age. A recognition has grown that humans need to move, exert and breath deeply for our health. A change has happened in public perception that accepts and values the individual who transports themselves by the sweat of muscular effort.
A backlash against passive consumerism has started and is growing. We now question the impact to our health and the health of the living planet that the bulk consumption of commodities creates. We have started to turn away from huge cars, giant houses and conspicuous consumption.
What will the Renaissance look like? It is very hard to say. These are some likely developments:
We will try, and often succeed, to innovate our way toward increasing affluence by using new resources and new technologies in ever more effective and efficient ways.
Fit women will be increasingly happy to date muscular men who live in compact houses and ride bikes and don’t have a Mercedes.
More businesses will install showers. Antiperspirants will evolve.
The human powered vehicle will share the roads, streets and trails with a number of other vehicles types that utilize new technologies. Scooters, electric bikes, micro-cars and NHEVs will proliferate and confuse traffic regulation. What a human powered vehicle is will have to be defined more closely.
Power assists will integrate ever more seamlessly. It is likely that human/assist hybrids will exist only at bicycle scale, since pedaling makes little sense if your input is such a small proportion of a vehicle’s overall power system that it cannot be felt. Proportional assists may bump the overall horsepower controlled by the pedaler up to a higher power level. Still, it seems likely that a person pedaling just strongly enough to actuate a powerful slave motor may not have enough incentive to continue pedaling, and a practical limit to power assists will be reached.
Solar charging will continue to improve. On-board charging systems will be lighter and more efficient. More and more electric and electrically assisted vehicles will carry them, and they will make increasing sense even in cloudier climates.
Batteries will continue to get better. Power density will continue to climb, and a lighter battery will carry you further. Quality and dependability will continue to improve.
Bikes will continue to get lighter. Until weight goes strongly negative, however, the effect will be minimal; a 30 pound steel bicycle is at least 99% as ride-able as a 3 pound hyper-carbon bioengineered-spider-silk bike. Persons using multi-modal and folding bikes to be lifted and carried will benefit from lighter weight.
Bike paths will improve and proliferate. Arguments about which of the increasing variety of human powered vehicles will be allowed on paths will take a while to resolve. The appropriateness of electric bikes on paths will be debated and limits will be legislated.
Traffic integration of bikes will improve and become safer. Fewer roads will be built that have no thought given to accommodating slower speed human powered vehicles. With greater numbers of riders on the road, awareness of cyclists and a tolerance for their lower speeds and vulnerability will increase, and roads will become safer for all users.
Paradigms will shift. Riding a bike will seem no more a fringe activity than wearing shoes. Professing love for and working to care for the life of the planet will seem no more odd or regressive than loving and caring for your children.
Like most heterotrophs, humans have to move in order to collect food, find shelter and gather and distribute resources. This is true of persons living in both primitive and advanced technological conditions. We will never cease to need to move about. The most efficient way to move ourselves over intermediate or ‘community’ distances (500 meters to 10 kilometers) is the bicycle. Efficiency, along with all the other above reasons, will only become more important as human numbers grow and we increasingly seek to safeguard our fragile planet. The bike is finding its place, and its place is the living earth.