Background

The most amazing thing about bicycles is that among all machines and animals that move they are the most efficient devices for transporting weight over a distance for a fixed amount of energy consumption (about 0.15 cal/g km). ^[1] Apparently , the mechanical assemblage of pedals, a chain, and wheels, in combination with the powerful thigh muscles of the human body, is the best arrangement to achieve forward motion. It beats a salmon swimming, a jet plane or seagull flying, or a train or a horse running. It is curious that none of the life forms on this planet have locomotion systems in any form resembling wheels.

Be that as it may, the bicycle is a respectable contemporary form of transportation, but it is also much more than that. Because it has many dimensions, it is frequently hard to deal with the bike option as a simple utilitarian mode and to develop from it serious service systems. Yet, the bicycle today has no known or acknowledged enemies; it is absolutely politically correct because of its nonpolluting, space-saving, resource-conserving, and health-enhancing characteristics. Politicians endorse it, and there are dedicated support groups that vocally promote bicycle systems as the solution for almost all city mobility problems. The advocates are mostly right, but the world would have to be largely populated by socially responsible and physically fit persons, thinking the right thoughts, to achieve effective pure bike systems in cities.

Just about all of us learned how to ride a...