I’m pretty sure it’s safe to assume that many of you reading this are long time viewers of the Youtube channels Not Just Bikes, Climate Town and probably Adam Something. All three of these channels have mentioned in their videos that car companies lobbied governments and pressured urban planners to create infrastructure suited for cars. So if car companies can throw money at politicians to get legislation passed that suit their needs why can’t bike companies counteract by playing at their own game? Hell, shoe companies could ‘counter-lobby’ as well. Nike, Adidas, New Balance, etc. would benefit greatly from walkable and bikeable cities. So why don’t bike companies like Trek, GT and Tern lobby governments to make cities more bikable? They could ask for subsidies so they can open official shops in city centers and with it the promise of employment. I’m pretty there are flaw this approach so I would like to know your thoughts on the matter. Thanks in advance!
Total revenue of Germany’s bike sector in 2022: 7 bn €
Employees: 5300
Total revenue of Germany’s car sector in 2022: 400 bn €
Employees: 780’000
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Ah yes, the immense lobbying power of “big bike”
Big Bike is behind the plan to keep us trapped inside these 15 minute cities… WAKE UP, SHEEPLE!!!
“Big bike” also called the Netherlands.
Now that’s corporate power that I can get behind!
@SpiceDealer my guess is the bike companies don’t have as much profit for lobbying, but I like the direction of this. I’d love to see a grassroots movement demanding infrastructure for active travel.
I certainly don’t. It’s just as possible for us to make the same mistakes with bike infrastructure as we did with car infrastructure. The purpose of all types of traffic should be getting people from where they are to where they want to go, but these “bike superhighways” are the same bullshit we’re fighting against with cars.
Out of curiosity, what are bike-highways like where you are? The most I’ve seen are bike streets where cars need to yield to bikes, or one way streets that work for bikes both ways
There aren’t any bike highways near me at the moment, though some cities are starting to design bike highways the same way they made highways for cars. I want cities to thoughtfully design their bike infrastructure, instead of designing infrastructure to benefit lobbyists.
That’s fair. I am also completely in favour of well thought out bike infrastructure solutions. Bike lanes just for the sake of bike ways with no connection to people’s lives and usage patterns will do us no favours
But we should eliminate the worst forms of transit, shouldn’t we?
Absolutely. But we also need to do thoughtful planning in rolling out our next forms of infrastructure
@rockSlayer why do you assume “active travel” is only bikes? what about walkable communities? what if I like to roller skate? why can’t we collaborate in each community on how we want to get around and what the rules are?
Why are you assuming that I don’t want mixed use travel? This conversation is specifically about bikes, and I was pointing out a specific design trend that’s appearing in cities that is antithetical to the point of reducing car travel.
@rockSlayer I see later in the thread that you’ve talked about thoughtful infrastructure, which I starred. Unfortunately, that wasn’t in my notifications, which is what I replied to.
Not just the car companies, but oil companies as well.
And it was not just lobbing. Standard Oil purchased the LA tram network, and shut it down.
The scale of the car lobby and the money behind them is 100s of times larger than the bicycle industry.
If I bought them both new my bike would’ve cost $850 and my car $34k. Somebody made a fuckload more money.
Edit: just thought of this but it’s kind of funny in context, my bike is from a small town Nebraska police department that sold off all their bikes upon realizing they don’t have the kind of pedestrian infrastructure that justifies bicycle cops.
If you are serious your first step is to weaponize bikes and subcontract to the military (NO NO /S)
Like those bazooka Vespas the French used in the 50s?
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In Washington DC there is
WABA
Washington Area Bicyclists Association
the bicycling movement and community and infrastructure are all pretty excellent over there.
Many people have mentioned good reasons in this thread, but another thing too is that Oil and car companies are still making a bunch of money now, they would and probably continue to lobby against better walking and biking infrastructure. Bike companies would need to get a bunch of support to overcome them.
Very good point. Many here have also mentioned that car companies had the help of oil companies to pressure governments. When thinking of a potential “partner-in-crime” that could help bike companies lobby governments I thought of tire companies. But my dumbass later realized that those same tire companies also work with car companies. I mentioned shoe companies in my post but as @[email protected] mentioned shoe companies could care less if cities are walkable or not. It’s a real shame that “big bike” (as @[email protected] puts it) doesn’t have an aforementioned “parnter-in-crime” that could help them get more bike infrastructure made. Back to the drawing board.
Maybe Big Tram…
There are very few ‘bike companies.’ Schwinn bikes in the US is owned by a Dutch company with numerous other interests. Most other makers are the same, a company name that is a small cog in a much bigger enterprise. Lobbying is incredibly expensive and these corporations have other irons in the fire.
Bike companies sell a much less expensive product and don’t, I would assume, sell that much more of it than car companies do. Thus they have a lot less money to spend on lobbying efforts. Also, they don’t tend to be well-known. My assumption is that having a base of support or popularity in the population, or at least having politicians be aware of your brand and your market share is important to have your voice heard in lobbying.
It also helps car companies that, as someone else mentioned, oil companies lobby with them. For many of the reasons we like the idea of bikes - they don’t use oil, they are generally easy to fix, sustainable, last a while, etc., they are harder to lobby for, because they don’t lobby with anyone and they’d have to lobby against the profit motive.
As for shoe companies, I’m not sure they would benefit from better walkability of cities. My feeling is, they make money mostly for aesthetic reasons or explicitly for gym shoes - neither of which would change much if people walked more. Their money is probably better spent on advertising.
I like the direction of your thinking in the sense of “Hey, there’s a power imbalance here, how do we tip it in our favor?” Others have pointed out good reasons why bike manufacturers probably aren’t going to move the needle. I do think it’s worth thinking about how we build power.
A basic boring answer might be better democracy - eliminate gerrymandering, prohibit lobbying, prohibit legalized bribery, ranked choice voting/proportional representation.
My experience working on anti gerrymandering campaigns is they can be demoralizing because as individuals we really don’t have much power and any change is slow. In terms of gaining more tangible power there’s also unionizing and worker cooperatives. Basically any kind of organized group is going to be more effective.
So cute thinking it’s the car manufacturers.
