The New Road Culture

We had a comment not too many months back from a longtime reader who said, in effect, he was going to stop reading the site, because he thought it had become too gravel and mountain bike centric. What he was after was road content. This is fair enough, and he said it in a respectful way, so no problem, but it did get me to thinking about road riding and how it’s changed, not only in my own mind, but in the world at large

How has the emergence of gravel riding had an impact on the number of people out on the road, for example? The truth is, I’m confused, and I think it has to do with my own experience (trending toward the dirt) and also living inside the cycling industry bubble (where I consult for a few different companies), two factors that probably overlap and amplify each other.

First, my eyes tell me there are more roadies out than ever, although it’s a different configuration of roadies than it was 20 years ago. What I see is a lot of people out on their own, or in pairs, whereas I used to see big group rides, organized by clubs or shops, more often. It’s like the interest in road riding hasn’t waned, but interest in the older, traditional riding culture has. My gut tells me this is mostly to do with shops living inside the bubble and spending more time organizing trail rides than they used to, chasing what they perceive as the growth market, but it may also be about the oldness, maleness, and whiteness of club and shop rides. Even the most welcoming ride, if it appears homogenous in its rider composition, will be intimidating to folks who don’t feel they fit the mold.

And the disappearance of the big club/shop ride explains why groups of riders are smaller and generally less informed about riding etiquette. People just aren’t being, excuse the term, “indoctrinated” the way they used to be, for better and for worse. If you’re a joiner and you are welcomed into a big group AND you’re open to being “taught how to do it,” that’s great. But if you’re not that type of person (I’m not), then you’re out on your own, figuring things out, which is an equally valid way to arrive as a cyclist.

Inside the industry, there’s a sense that everything is trending gravel, which is, itself, a misnomer, because I think what is really happening is everything is trending “all-road.” Yesteryear’s roadies are actually just rocking wider tires and riding more mixed terrain. That feels like the reality to me. Many people are never going to ride on dirt. They’re as nervous about how to handle a bike on a trail as others are to ride in traffic. There is a wide gulf in skill and comfort level between a graded dirt road and strip of single-track.

Now, the conventional wisdom says that the very existence of ‘gravel’ as a riding type is down to people being too anxious in traffic to stay on the road. Gravel affords a lower stress way to do what we love. And the supposed cause of that is the distracted driving that came along with the rise of smart phones.

Now, I suspect that all that is a bit overplayed. As I said at the top, I see a lot of roadies out there still, and in my other work, I see a lot of all-roads bikes being purchased. I think the all-roads bike is actually the sweet spot, where roadies get wider tires and get to feel comfortable on dirt roads, NOT the pure gravel rider who might be riding some large percentage of single-track. There are also countervailing forces against the demise of road riding, which are the improvement of infrastructure and the growing awareness in densely populated areas that bikes are going to be a part of the solution for climate change. 

What I think is that the roads are more or less as safe as they ever were. You’re still more likely to be hit as a pedestrian than as a cyclist. You’re still more likely to be hit as a driver. Infrastructure has improved even as drivers have become more distracted. On balance, I think it’s the same.

The zeitgeist is another story. Many of a certain kind of American (white, male, older) abandoned road bike culture in the wake of pro-cycling’s blood doping era. That has had all sorts of consequences, not necessarily in the sense of fewer people riding, just many doing it in different ways. The bicycle endures, as it usually does, and the pavement calls to people of every stripe. What I see is a slew of new riders on road bikes who are creating a new road culture that is just as vibrant, and possibly more sustainable than ever before.