In article <
[email protected]>,
Tom Sherman <
[email protected]> wrote:
> Ryan Cousineau wrote:
> > In article <[email protected]>,
> > Tom Sherman <[email protected]> wrote:
> >
> >> Ryan Cousineau wrote:
> >>> In article <[email protected]>,
> >>> Tom Sherman <[email protected]> wrote:
> >>>
> >>>> Ryan Cousineau wrote:
> >>>>> In article <[email protected]>,
> >>>>> Tom Sherman <[email protected]> wrote:
> >>>>>
> >>>>>> ZBicyclist aka Mike Kruger wrote:
> >>>>>>> Tom Sherman wrote:
> >>> [sales history of recumbents versus mountain bikes]
> >>>> Also, at the time ATBs were marketed as being more comfortable than
> >>>> drop-bar road bicycles - not exactly a promise they have fulfilled, eh?
> >>>> It seems that the manufacturers are now introducing "comfort bicycles"
> >>>> to meet the unfulfilled need for a comfortable (to the non-hardcore
> >>>> rider) upright. And the drop-bar road bicycle has returned to the
> >>>> "crappy department-store bike" category.
> >>> Comfort bikes look like rigid MTBs. It's more that the race/freeride end
> >>> of the market has specialized and gone upmarket, and the vestigial knobs
> >>> have disappeared from the comfort bikes.
> >
> > By 1983, Trek and Schwinn had mountain bikes for sale, with Raleigh and
> > Bridgestone there by 1984. That level of market entry indicates that by
> > 1982 (given typical product lag times), the existence of the market was
> > clear enough that bike companies started to want in, and by 1983 the
> > sense was there that this was an very interesting bicycle category.
> >
> > http://www.firstflightbikes.com/frames/museum.htm
>
> Back when I was in high school in the mid 1980s, Bicycling (hey, I was
> too young to know better) was promoting the mountain bike as a more
> comfortable alternative to the drop-bar road bicycle due to the more
> upright seating position and longer cranks! (We all know how well that
> worked out.) Just as Jobst likes to complain about recumbent
> evangelists, the cycling world was full of ATB evangelists at that time,
> and they did their job well.
>
> >>> If I thought that recumbents were underperforming their "natural" place
> >>> in the market, I'd put the blame largely at the feet of the horrible
> >>> first impression their low-speed handling makes.
> >>>
> >> The low speed handling is not bad, merely different. People are used to
> >> upright bicycles, not recumbents. For me, the occasional ride on my ATB
> >> feels really odd at first, with all the body motion required to mount
> >> and get started; and sitting WAY UP THERE on a perch is also odd.
> >
> > No, seriously Tom, recumbent handling at low speeds is objectively bad:
> > their low moment of inertia about the roll axis makes 'em tippy (just as
> > tallbikes and highwheelers are eerily stable at low speeds*), and that
> > contributes to the steering that's much more fussy than that of an
> > upright bike, and there's not a lot you can do about that.
>
> That is only a concern if you are one of those people who likes to roll
> around at 10 to 15 kph speeds, or are riding technical off road trails.
> The former will not be going that far, and is best served by a city
> bike, since comfort is not a concern over short distances (e.g. the
> Dutch utility rider and bicycle). The latter group is of course best
> served by a true ATB that is NOT a good road bicycle.
Here's a funny thing Tom: almost every bike on the planet has been
ridden at 10-15 km/h. Bikes that can't do that well are badly
compromised. Here's another point: if we exclude the seriously technical
trails now tackled by serious mountain bikers, and limit ourselves to
the kind of low-challenge roots-and-ruts trail that can be found in a
lot of parks, a road bike or mountain bike (preferably sans rear
suspension) can do those things pretty well.
> > They're not menaces by any means, but it would take an awfully icy set
> > of veins to (as one example) trackstand a recumbent, but that's a trick
> > I can manage while seated on my uprights.
>
> But who NEEDS to trackstand outside of the velodrome?
Need is a very strong word. I suppose nobody needs to hop curbs, either.
But both are quite practical (and dare I say it, entertaining) things to
do in urban riding.
> > Back to my original point: blaming marketing failures on the non-arrival
> > of the recumbent boom is silly. It verges on being an unfounded
> > conspiracy theory. You know what mountain bikers did to convince people
> > to join their ranks? They rode their bikes. It was remarkably convincing.
>
> Actually, no. Drop bar road bicycle and upright "comfort" bike sales are
> increasing as a proportion of total bicycle sales, as the on-road
> limitations of the ATB become more evident. Meanwhile, ATBs are becoming
> more specialized for off road (and more expensive), and less suitable
> than ever for road riding (e.g. full suspension XC, downhill, free ride,
> etc.).
Discovering that mountain bikes have started waning (slightly) in
popularity now that they are the most common sort of bicycle sold in the
US, and 25 years after their introduction, does not do much for your
thesis.
As mountain bikes have become more specialized, they have become less
preferable as a city bike substitute. Indeed, the original serious
mountain bikes were mutated fat-tire cruisers, the closest thing to a
city bike that was available on these shores. By 1984, mountain bikes
were more like a 10-pounds-lighter city bike (plus knobby tires) than
any other bicycle of the era.
Meanwhile, the reactionary singlespeed trend (often coupled with a rigid
frame) is taking mountain bikes back to a simpler era.
> > I'm not discounting the possibility that recumbents could still boom.
> > They have some advantages in certain applications. But Tom, I think you
> > tend to understate the disadvantages, both visceral and practical.
>
> And I think you understate the effect of the vast majority of LBS and
> their staff having an ignorant and negative attitude towards recumbents.
It's possible, but I doubt it. The only figure I could find online
suggests that recumbents are around 0.4% of US bicycles by volume, and
4-6% by value. At a guess, that's a figure that has been eclipsed in the
last five years by the rise in demand for cyclocross bikes.
I think I understand CX bikes quite well, since I've raced the sport for
a couple of years, seen the great rise in the popularity of both the
sport and the bikes, and have built up a couple of CX bikes, too.
In essence, they can be thought of as superlight mountain bikes with
drop bars, or as road bikes with clearance for big tires. The single
notable innovation in modern CX bikes is the creation of the bar-top
interrupter lever, which makes the top-bar postion really practical.
They're selling like hotcakes, particularly to urban riders. Why? They
fulfill the desire for a sturdy and versatile machine.
CX bikes are practically the anti-recumbent: maneuverable in close
quarters, comfortable on a ridiculously wide variety of terrain, able to
conquer everything from curbs to potholes to stairs, compact, and light.
Note how well such a bicycle is suited to an urban environment. Those,
by the way, are the same people who find trackstands useful. I think the
single biggest thing stopping the ascendancy of recumbency is the fact
that the bikes are as awkward as a Hummer H1 in the city.
I once glibly summed up the state of recumbents as "the fast ones are
sketchy, the comfy ones are slow," and I stand by that. The kind of
recumbents that are demonstrably faster than road bikes (TT style) in a
time trial environment are generally very compromised in a wide variety
of ways compared to upright bikes. This bike, in general, is going to
commit all the weight positioning oddities, bulkiness, and generally
fussy bike-handling sins that are typical of recumbents. In exchange, it
will have a slightly higher top speed than a well-configured TT bike,
which is basically a road bike with an extra handlebar position and
funny wheels. The really fast recumbents are essentially unusable as
road machines.
Perhaps a little suitability trial might illustrate why I think people
find recumbents problematic. I have modeled all of the following tests
after elements of my basic bike commutes, and which I suspect are quite
typical of "serious" urban riding. Feel free to dispute the nature of
these tests: almost none of the moves or obstacles I mention are
absolutely necessary to my commute, though in most cases, avoiding them
would likely add minutes to a commute that is about 30 minutes long.
You can envision these tests as either time trials, qualitative,
pass/fail. There's a case for each approach.
1) Remove bicycle from shed. From a standing start, ride 50 feet on
grass, down a short (3' drop, ~50% grade) slope of grass, across a
sidewalk. Exit sidewalk, pause 1 second on hard-packed gravel surface
(simulating a wait for cross traffic). Start again, left turn to enter
roadway.
2) hill trial: from standing start, ride 1.8 km up 7% (average) grade.
At the halfway mark, peak grade is 15% around a moderate right-hand
curve. On an upright bike, my speed often falls below 10 km/h at that
mark.
3) curb hop: drop off a standard curb. Now, ride up a standard curb.
4) the office: dismount. Pass through four self-closing doors. The first
two have push-button opening, the last two do not. Climb one flight of
stairs with your bicycle. Lock to bike rack.
5) lane-split: ride 1 km between two lines of stopped traffic. At the
end, do a 90-degree right followed by a 90-degree left in 12 feet,
simulating the shift from centreline to curbside between two stopped
cars (assume 6' from bumper to bumper).
6) home again: from the roadway, do a sharp right. Now you are riding
the course from test #1 in the other direction. UP a short steep slope
to a grass lawn, then 50' on the grass, dismount, stow bicycle.
These are some of the obstacles I face on my commute. It's not all of
them. I would posit that if you want to figure out why recumbents aren't
very popular, it's because a lot more cyclists on this continent have
rides that look like my commute than have rides that look like, well,
whatever the rides are that make you like your recumbent so much.
I normally do my commute on an early-80s tourer set up with rack and
fenders. I have done it on my race bike, my cx bike, and my hardtail
mountain bike. About a year ago, it snowed heavily, and as a novelty I
chose to ride to work on my cyclocross bike (I also had some concern
that the transit system might fail, and I definitely did not want to use
my car).
The CX bike found traction where the cars could not, and happily
negotiated hub-deep snow when asked to. All that from what is basically
a road bike with knobby tires.
Can your bike do that?
--
Ryan Cousineau
[email protected] http://www.wiredcola.com/
"My scenarios may give the impression I could be an excellent crook.
Not true - I am a talented lawyer." - Sandy in rec.bicycles.racing
