Cycling

• 1. Introduction

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  Cycling is one of the most versatile human inventions ever to roll down a road. In Japan's 1937 invasion of China, some 50,000 bicycle troops pedaled into battle. Across the English Channel, British airborne commandos folded their bikes into aircraft and dropped into occupied Europe. Along the Ho Chi Minh Trail, communist forces during the Vietnam War moved cargo on two wheels where motorized vehicles could not go. The bicycle, it turns out, has never been just a way to get somewhere. It has carried soldiers, postal workers, paramedics, and protesters. It has extended human lifespans, reshaped city streets, and cut the carbon cost of a commute to a fraction of a car journey. How did a machine built for pedaling become so deeply woven into war, health, commerce, and political struggle? And why does Switzerland, which kept a regiment of bicycle troops longer than any other nation, matter to understanding what the bicycle really is?

• 2. The Bicycle at War

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  Switzerland disbanded its last bicycle military unit in 2003, making it the final country known to have maintained a regiment of such troops. That quiet retirement closed a chapter stretching back to the Second Boer War, when both the British and Boer sides used bicycles for scouting. By the First World War, France, Germany, Australia, and New Zealand were all moving troops on two wheels. The military bicycle offered what horses and trucks could not always guarantee: silence, low cost, and the ability to navigate narrow or damaged roads.

  Japan deployed those advantages with particular scale. In its 1937 campaign in China, Japan employed some 50,000 bicycle troops. That number grew into a strategic asset in World War II, when similar forces moved rapidly through Malaya. The speed of that advance surprised opponents who had planned around motorized logistics. Germany also relied on bicycles in World War II, while Britain took the concept airborne by equipping commandos with folding bikes they could carry in aircraft.

  The role of the bicycle in Vietnam was different in character. Along the Ho Chi Minh Trail, communist forces used bicycles primarily as cargo carriers rather than fighting platforms. The trail was dense jungle; the bicycle could be walked, loaded, and hidden in ways that trucks could not manage. The lesson that military planners kept relearning was that the bicycle thrives precisely where machines with engines struggle.

• 3. Utility and Daily Life

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  The British Royal Mail first started using bicycles in 1880. By the time that tradition was well established, bicycle delivery fleets numbered 37,000 in the UK alone, with 25,700 in Germany, 10,500 in Hungary, and 7,000 in Sweden. Australia Post reintroduced bicycle postal deliveries on certain routes after struggling to recruit enough licensed riders willing to use motorbikes. The humble delivery bicycle outlasted nearly every prediction of its obsolescence.

  In Mumbai, many of the city's Dabbawalas use bicycles to carry home-cooked lunches to workers across the city. In Bogota, Colombia, the city's largest bakery replaced most of its delivery trucks with bicycles. At the Mercedes-Benz factory in Sindelfingen, Germany, workers ride bicycles color-coded by department to move around the plant. Police forces have increasingly deployed bicycle officers because they can reach bicycle and pedestrian zones that cars cannot enter, and can move through congested streets more quickly than motorized units.

  The London Ambulance Service introduced bicycling paramedics who can often reach incidents in Central London faster than a motorized ambulance. In Denmark and the Netherlands, where cycling is more culturally embedded than elsewhere in Europe, these countries have the most bicycles per capita on the continent. In the Netherlands specifically, a quarter of all trips are made on bicycles, including a quarter of those to work. Even the prime minister cycles to work when weather permits.

• 4. The Netherlands as a Blueprint

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  Some 35,000 km of cycle track in the Netherlands has been physically separated from motor traffic. That figure equals a quarter of the country's entire 140,000 km road network. On roads where adjacent bike paths or cycle tracks exist, using them is compulsory; cycling on the main carriageway is not permitted. The scale of that commitment has produced measurable outcomes that other countries study closely.

  Cycling in the Netherlands is estimated to save the lives of 6,000 citizens per year, prolong life expectancy by 6 months, save the country 20 million dollars per year, and prevent 150 grams of emissions per kilometer cycled. The Dutch cycling event known as the fietsvierdaagse draws participants every year for four days of organized cycling through local environments. The flat land and dense network of public bicycle trails make the country well suited to cycling recreation as well as daily transport.

  The contrast with cities that took the opposite approach is instructive. In Shanghai, where bicycles were once the dominant mode of transport, bicycle travel on certain city roads was banned temporarily in December 2003. Research consistently shows that in jurisdictions where motor vehicles were given priority, cycling rates declined; where cycling infrastructure was built, rates held steady or rose. The infrastructure decision is, in effect, a policy lever with predictable results.

• 5. Health and the Body

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  A Dutch study found that cycling can extend lifespans by up to 14 months, while the associated risks equate to a reduced lifespan of 40 days or less. That ratio matters. The same research estimated that approximately 6,500 deaths per year are prevented by cycling in the Netherlands. Benefits of cycling or walking have been shown to exceed risks by ratios of 9:1 to 96:1 when compared with no exercise at all.

  The World Health Organization's 2009 report described physical inactivity as second only to tobacco smoking as a health risk in developed countries, linking it to a 20-30% increased risk of cancers, heart disease, and diabetes, plus tens of billions of dollars in healthcare costs. The charity Sustrans calculated that investment in cycling provision can yield a 20:1 return from health and other benefits. An Italian study using a health economic model found that commuting by bicycle was associated with lower incidence of type 2 diabetes, acute myocardial infarction, and stroke, and estimated that public healthcare costs could fall by 5% over a ten-year period.

  Illinois designated cycling as its official state exercise in 2007. Studies on commuting specifically found that cycling reduces the risk of cardiovascular outcomes by 11%, with slightly greater risk reduction in women than in men. A Danish study published in 2000 found that those who did not cycle to work experienced a 39% higher mortality rate than those who did, even after adjusting for other risk factors including leisure time physical activity. A 15-month randomized controlled trial in the United States found that cycling for at least 15 minutes per day had a protective effect on cognition and attention in older adults without cognitive impairment.

• 6. Racing and Competition

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  In 1899, Charles Minthorn Murphy became the first person to ride a bicycle a mile in under a minute, drafting a locomotive at New York's Long Island. That feat earned him the nickname Mile-a-Minute Murphy. It arrived just as cycling was passing through what observers called its Golden Age, a period in the 1890s when large races drew crowds across Europe, the United States, and Japan, and when almost every major American city had a velodrome or two.

  The Tour de France began in 1903. Marcel Berthet set a new hour record on the 18th of November 1933, covering 49.992 km in his Velodyne streamliner recumbent bicycle. The following year, 1934, recumbent bicycles were banned from competitive races entirely. The Union Cycliste Internationale, the governing body of international cycle sport, later formalized rules in the late 1990s prohibiting racing bicycles that weigh less than 6.8 kilograms. The UCI's double-triangle frame requirement effectively bars frame innovations like the recumbent from sanctioned competition.

  The price range for bicycles tells a similar story of variety. A new bicycle can cost as little as US$50 or as much as US$20,000 in standard form. The highest-priced individual bicycle on record is a custom Madone by Damien Hirst, sold at US$500,000. At the other extreme, the most exotic road bicycles can weigh as little as 3.2 kg, well below the UCI's legal race minimum of 6.8 kg. Mountain bike racing, once a niche discipline that began in the 1970s around Mount Tamalpais as a downhill sport on customized cruiser bicycles, had by recent decades become an Olympic sport.

• 7. Activism and Equity

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  Critical Mass is an event held on the last Friday of every month in cities around the world. Cyclists gather and ride through city streets en masse, with no formal leader and no single declared goal beyond the act of showing up and moving together. The ride was founded to draw attention to how unfriendly cities had become for cyclists, but the leaderless structure deliberately resists any fixed agenda.

  Research by Transport for London found that cyclists in London are typically white, under 40, male, and have medium to high household income. Studies from Germany show that people with higher education cycle substantially more often than those with lower education, even controlling for income and trip distance. Organizations such as Street Riders NYC, inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement, have used bicycles as a platform to protest systemic racism and police brutality. Participants in those rides also encountered something unplanned: a direct experience of where safe cycling infrastructure exists and where it does not, which many interpreted as a form of classism embedded in urban planning.

  The League of American Wheelmen was founded in 1880 and changed its name to the League of American Bicyclists in 1994. In the late 19th century it lobbied for road improvements, founding and leading the national Good Roads Movement. The paved roads and political organizing model that cyclists built then directly facilitated the growth of the automobile. The mandatory helmet debate remains unresolved: Spain, New Zealand, and Australia require adult cyclists to wear helmets, while opponents argue that making cycling seem more dangerous reduces the number of cyclists on roads, creating a net negative health outcome through what researchers describe as a reversed safety-in-numbers effect.

• 8. Environment and Carbon

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  Riding a bicycle produces average emissions of 17 g CO2e per kilometer. An electric bicycle, over its full life cycle including manufacturing, electric energy production, and food production, averages 15 g CO2e per km according to figures from a 2011 European Cyclists' Federation publication. Those numbers shift considerably based on diet: a rider eating beef might produce 570 g CO2e per km, while one with access to climate-neutral food and electricity could emit as little as 7 g CO2e per km.

  A 2010 study estimated that the gained life expectancy from health benefits of cycling, roughly 3-14 months, greatly exceeded the lost life expectancy from air pollution exposure, estimated at 0.8-40 days. Some researchers have argued that pollutant concentrations inside cars are consistently higher than those experienced by cyclists in traffic, because car interiors have limited air circulation and their air intakes draw directly from the vehicle stream ahead. The significance of cyclist air pollution exposure remains uncertain but is judged to be much smaller than the health benefits from physical activity.

  Ivan Illich argued that bicycle use expanded the usable physical environment for people, while cars and motorways degraded and confined both environment and mobility. That claim from 1972 has found quantitative support in the Netherlands, where the annual savings from cycling have been calculated at 20 million dollars per year and 150 grams of emissions prevented per kilometer cycled, a figure that points toward what happens when cycling infrastructure reaches the scale of a quarter of a national road network.