Bike shops (and this comment trail) are populated with folks who care deeply about bikes. People who are very interested in the subtle differences like gear ratios and head tube angles. People who can pull an old 520 out of the trash and with only $100 and a short bit of work have a commuter in good-as-new shape.

For bike commuting to really catch on, it needs to be accessible to people who don’t know, or care, about bikes. People for whom understanding the difference between a cross bike and a touring bike is an uninteresting chore. People who would rather not be expected to change their own tires.

Let’s consider cars as an analogy. Imagine if all dealerships were staffed with people who spent a great deal of their free time and money either building and racing mud trucks or Super Stock cars. You’d have a hard time walking into a dealership and finding someone to talk to about seat comfort, or the number of kids to fit in the back of a given minivan. The mud truck and super stock guys would have a hard time even bringing themselves to carry station wagons.

I think this is where bike commuting is today. I also think that sexy, interesting, high margin products like the Civia Hyland, Trek Portland, Breezers, Fisher Simple City, and many others will play a role in bridging that gap. Both the manufacturers and the shops are exploring now, to figure out what product details will actually make a commuter bike that many people can buy and use.

The commuting population is also transitioning now. I think there are a lot of people who can’t rearrange their lives so that home and work are obviously only a bike ride apart, but who are now interested in getting a bike that will enable them, if they can figure out the other details, to commute by bike. I think a lot of people are starting to work out this change in lifestyle, but it will take a long time for each individual or family to work out the practicalities, and to become confident that they have done so, and start giving up cars.

All we can do today is start, and that’s happening.

I, too, am from Des Moines…well, one of the western suburbs. I refuse to ride street during my morning commute as I’ve been hit before and it’s just too much for me. I use the trail system, as we don’t really have bike lanes (and if you call the 3 ft margin on the side of some DSM roads a bike lane, you’re f’ing crazy.) and our trail system is purely built for recreation. I would love to see more bike lanes built, but it won’t happen in our town for years. Counties around here are trying to figure out ways to get around liability for riders, rather than improving road conditions for all as it is.

But one thing that I think is important is that we lead by example. I live farthest from my office and am one of the more out-of-shape folks, but I do it. Not every day, but as much as I can. I ran a quick analysis of our office and 3/4 live within 5 miles. So, I add ideas to my general water cooler talk about bus systems, walking to work or at least lunch and car pooling routes and it’s at least getting people to think alternatively.

Since you cannot ask a person to risk their life to get to work, commuting isn’t much of an option. You can get a bike, in addition to a car. I made arrangements with a local church to park my car at their lot. They are exactly 1/2 the distance to my work, and at their location a bike route exists to my employer. So I save exactly 1/2 the mileage. I get some exercise. But I still need the car, so I still pay 1/2 the gas, 1/2 the mileage, 100% of the insurance, and about 90% of the depreciation, because thats more based on age than mileage.

All in all, I do it because I enjoy it, its hard to calculate it as much of a cost savings.

The bike I bought? Absolute garbage, I didn’t know anything about bikes, the brakes didn’t work, the seat fell off it, the shifter kept shifting up at odd times.

I have no way to use a ‘LBS’…have no clue where one would be, and why anyone would pay them anything, bikes are supposed to be maintained by the owner. So…I’ve fixed all the issues that the bike came with, but I cannot imagine why they treated me like that.

i also have a rack with fold-out baskets. If they are wire baskets, you can go shopping without a trailer: just take, or ask for, a cardboard box and bungee it to the platform formed by the fold out baskets and the rear rack. You can put a BIG box back there and you can load in the wire baskets as well as in the cardboard box, which will itself hold 2 full grocery bags.

one thing to watch out for is weight, though. If you have a lot of heavy items (2 gals of milk, a big tin of olive oil,) it can potentially wipe out your rear wheel . In that case, a trailer is a great option. Especially since you already have one!

I’m betting that most bike shops could increase their sales of add-on stuff by making a display of, say, a regular bike with good racks and a trailer attached that has 3 or 4 bags of groceries loaded onto it (mock groceries–boxed goods) and a briefcase.

That puts the message out that “hey, here’s something that people do with their bikes”.

Also, it gets people thinking, if they are buying a bike, that they might want to get a trailer or have a rack and baskets installed on their bike.

Experienced bicyclists don’t necessarily know what makes a great utility bike. True afficionados do, but they get their info on the web! But you can show the average casual cyclist, educate them about utility cycling and its possibilities, in the shop.

Sales people have to be friendly and be interested in their customers to be effective. And people come into the shop because they are interested on some level in buying. But it is up to the sales person to let them know the possibilities. If, as some respondents seem to imply, salespeople are only “responding” to their clientele , they are not good at their job, maybe because they never studied it or because they aren’t primarily salespeople, but bike technical people.

Look at the car industry. For years, they said publicly that “we make SUVs because people want SUVs.” That was a partial truth. A bigger truth was that the car cos. PRESENTED SUVs to people as a desirable option,(and it was in their interest to do so, because they were able to make a mint doing it) people tend to select from the 2 or 3 options that you put in front of them.

If bike shops make a visual and verbal presentation of practical utility cycling, more people will set up their bikes for regular utility use.

Pushing people out of the “cycling-as-a-sport mentality” and into the “cycling-as-legitimate-transportation mentality” don’t have to be mutually exclusive things. You can have both. Both are legit, both are welcome, both are necessary. The goal of an LBS employee shouldn’t be to convince a prospective buyer that the biking style they enjoy isn’t the “right” one.

Just a small point. I think your article on the whole is great and makes an excellent point. Oh, and FWIW, I commute on a Salsa Casseroll (and a Surly Cross-check), ha.