Surprise! People Aged 60-79 Are Behind More Than a Third of the Biking Boom

Michael Andersen blogs for The Green Lane Project, a PeopleForBikes program that helps U.S. cities build better bike lanes to create low-stress streets.

The national surge in bicycling since 1995 may have more to do with hip surgeries than hipsters.

More than a third of the increase is coming from people between the ages of 60 and 79, an analysis of federal data shows.

As recently as the Clinton administration, biking was for the young. Riding a bicycle over the age of 55 was very rare; riding over the age of 75 was almost unheard of. Even today, the rapid drop in car use among young adults sometimes leads to assumptions that millennials are driving the nationwide boom in bike trips.

Nope.

There’s no question that Generation Y’s tendency to favor city life and declining enthusiasm for car ownership has boosted bike transportation. But as the older civil rights generation and the baby boomers who followed them have entered their golden years, they’ve quietly transformed what it means to be the kind of person who rides a bicycle.