Frank, et al, I can tell you from direct experience that many of those new bikes never get ridden more than a few miles and end up languishing in storage. Many of them are donated to recycling programs like Positive Spin. In fact when I started I thought that eventually we would run out of donated bikes when we had emptied all the garages, basements and sheds of derelict bikes. However, after collecting more than 3,000 bikes in 3 years and seeing no drop in supply I can only assume that this is about the number of bikes that are bought and not used for our area annually and this will be a recurring supply. I recently read that most department store bikes are only ridden 70 miles during their life (for some of the bikes I've seen in dept stores lately I doubt whether that's even possible).
I have great hope that this year's bike safety education program will lead to more people cycling right the first time so they don't have to recycle. In the long term I would like Positive Spin's mission to be advocacy rather than recycling. Our recycling mission will have merit though if we can underprice Walmart. Then they'll be forced to carry better bikes.
Have a great day/week/month/year. Nick
---------- Original Message ---------------------------------- From: Frank Gmeindl fgmeindl@verizon.net Date: Thu, 01 Jan 2009 10:47:19 -0500
BB members,
I want to thank Paul for sending that article. It says that 2008 bicycle sales almost equaled car and light truck sales. So, where are all those bikes? Can you imagine if all those bicyclists knew that the have the same rights to the roads as motor vehicles, if they all knew how to drive their bicycles as vehicles and if our roadways all had curb lanes wide enough for cars and bikes to travel together?
Frank /Cyclists fare best when they act and are treated as drivers of vehicles/
On 1/1/2009 10:15 AM, paul.becker@mail.wvu.edu wrote:
The New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/E-mail This *This page was sent to you by: * paul.becker@mail.wvu.edu
Message from sender: for your interest.
*BUSINESS / SMALL BUSINESS * | January 01, 2009
- A Surge in Bicyclists Appears to Be Waiting
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/01/business/smallbusiness/01sbiz.html?emc=eta1*
By JAN ELLEN SPIEGEL A run on bicycles during the summer raised hopes among bike store owners, but sales have leveled off since then.
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-- Nick Hein Director, Positive Spin Morgantown, WV ph 304-276-0213 --
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