more Americans are riding bikes.

Bike sales are surging.

The bike industry said that sales in May were up

81 percent.

That's a second consecutive month that sales have

topped a billion dollars.

People have been scrambling to buy bicycles,

causing major shortages.

During the pandemic, some cities closed their

streets to give bikers and pedestrians more room

to maintain a social distance.

In the spring and summer of 2020 bike shops

struggled to meet the surging demand from new

cyclists. Since then, retailers have been able to

get their inventories in shape.

With more bikes, motorcycles, mopeds and scooters

on the road, transportation experts say the

moment is primed for a transit upheaval.

All of this combined is called micromobility.

Here's how having more bikes on the road could

change the U.S. transportation system.

There are two groups of people who have picked up

biking during the pandemic, those who use it to

commute to work or get around, and those who use

it for fitness and recreational purposes.

Shannon Ng falls into the first bucket.

She signed up for a Citi Bike membership in New

York City this September.

Using the bike for me right now is basically just

getting myself from one place to another.

I was not biking before the pandemic just because

biking in New York City was so scary and cars are

just all over the place and I just avoided bikes

at all costs. But now the reason why I changed is

because that there's lesser cars and I just feel

much safer on the bike.

Shannon also represents the growing number of

women in the traditionally male dominated

activity. In New York, women are now the biggest

users of the city's bike-share program since it

launched in 2013.

A big reason behind the gender difference is that

fear and concerns about traffic safety, in

addition to personal safety, but primarily

traffic safety. And so in this environment where

there's less motor vehicle traffic, it certainly

has the potential for getting more women out

there riding.

Cyrus Kolar lives in North Carolina.

He wasn't biking before the pandemic, but now he

bikes around seven hours a week.

During the pandemic, the gyms closed.

And so I bought some weights, but I really wasn't

I was getting a lot of cardio from basketball and

was, I guess, looking for another way to get some

exercise. I might just race for one season and

that might fall off. But I think cycling just for

fun and just for exercise is something that might

hold on. Cyrus was lucky.

He scored a road bike by looking on Facebook

Marketplace, but not everyone has been as

fortunate. Early on in the pandemic, basic level

adult bicycles under 200 dollars led bike sales

soaring more than 203 percent from the year

prior. Sales of mountain bikes increased by more

than 150 percent in children.

Bikes grew by 107 percent.

Then in June 2020, the demand shifted to

higher-end bicycles worth more than $1000 like

road, mountain and electric bikes.

Before the pandemic, high-end electric by company

VanMoof tripled its production in anticipation of

growth, but that wasn't enough.

Covid changed a lot for us as a company.

It cost a lot of more demand.

Demand is much higher than production at the

moment. To give you an idea.

I think we in Q2 2020, we had six times

more demand than in 2019.

We worked harder than we've ever worked in our in

our lives. Just trying to keep up with things.

You know Specialized has been around almost 50

years. So it's not like there's no bikes, it just

depends on which bike you want.

The biking infrastructure in the United States

lags behind European nations and other countries

where cycling is already integrated into their

transportation systems.

And for one big reason in the U.S., cars are

king. It's still the most common transportation

mode. And actually this is also very much an

impact of federal funding and federal policies.

Up to 1991, almost all federal funding was going

towards the building of highways towards, you

know, the car and public transit.

It's the first time in 1991 that we see some

dollars that is allocated to active means of

transportation, improvements for cycling and

biking. Since then, we have witnessed more

funding, which has some impact in terms

of, you know, building an infrastructure that is

safer for cyclists.

So cities already had the funding and plans in

place to launch an expansion of their biking

network ahead of the pandemic.

They were able to act quickly when they saw a

rise in cycling interest.

Seattle was one of those cities.

It also was one of the first municipalities to

announce it was making 20 of its 25 mile Stay

Healthy Streets program permanent, a program

meant to allow residents outside while

maintaining a social distance.

Really early on in the pandemic, we made a

decision to repurpose some of our neighborhood

streets, our Neighborhood Greenways, as we call

them, to be local access only and to make them

closed for cars going through and open for people

walking and people biking. And this allowed

people to socially just and also get to key

destinations. And we found really quickly that

more people were walking and biking on the

streets and we decided to make them permanent.

And now we're working with communities as we

hopefully emerge from the pandemic to figure out

what exactly that means in terms of making those

permanent. Seattle isn't alone around the world.

Cities like Bogota and Berlin also expanded their

biking infrastructure.

Others, like Milan, London and Geneva have added

flexible bike lanes to separate bikers and cars

in the U.S. Some cities have seen a gradual

recovery and rides on shared bicycles and

scooters as a result of temporary cycling

infrastructure. But one of the things we are

starting to see in the data is that the trips are

actually growing in length, which I think is a

really interesting finding is people are are

taking longer trips with shared micromobility

post pandemic, and I think that may be closely

aligned with a growth in infrastructure to

support it like slow streets.

The biking infrastructure in the U.S.

can range from a parking protected bike lane,

protected bike lanes, bicycle boulevards,

off-street trails and paths, traffic cones,

streets and traditional striped bike lanes.

Those elements, in addition to things like bike

traffic signals, we have all of those tools and

they just need to be combined in the right

context, in the right environment.

And usually what we find are or what I would

argue is that the biggest barriers is more

political will to make those improvements.

I think we know how to build those types of

networks. We just aren't always willing to do it.

In March 2020, the Transportation Research and

Education Center at Portland State University

looked at six cities and compared the sales,

wages, employment numbers of the retail and food

services before and after the cities added biking

infrastructure to those areas.

The study was built on a 2013 New York City

Department of Transportation and a 2014 San

Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency survey.

So we have found that in a number of places, new

bike lanes, new pedestrian infrastructure in

business areas can often is associated with

increased sales, increased employment to

businesses along those corridors.

So in some cases, there's no effect, but rarely

have we seen a negative effect.

Funding remains a big challenge for biking

infrastructure. The money for bicycle

infrastructure traditionally comes from federal

and state gas taxes.

Most of the money ends up going toward automobile

infrastructure. Opponents argue that since it

comes from gas taxes, the money should be used on

improving infrastructure for motor vehicles, not

bikes. Once funding is secured, the next step is

determining where to place the infrastructure.

That placement can often cut along class and

racial lines. Currently, up until now, when we

look across cities in the U.S., bicycle

infrastructure is usually not equitably

distributed. And so there's some good research

out there that shows, at least in larger cities,

white and higher income people are probably going

to have better access to bicycle infrastructure.

So that certainly has to change.

We need to do a much better job of being more

equitable in providing accessible, safe

infrastructure for everyone.

Even though more Americans are biking during the

pandemic, it's not clear biking will maintain the

popularity once it's over.

When the U.S. reopen from covid lockdowns during

the summer months, transportation planners

carefully watched a metric known as the vehicle

miles traveled.

It measures the amount of travel for all vehicles

in an area over a period of time.

That metric fell in March 2020.

The number increased when cities reopened from

covid lockdowns, indicating that people were

taking longer rides in their cars and a possible

return to congested roads.

Car traffic levels have not returned completely

to pre-pandemic levels.

For cities that have already prioritized shared

mobility and pedestrian pathways, biking will

continue to grow as a permanent transportation

option. One of the silver linings that we're

seeing is an increased appetite for cycling and

scooter use and walking.

So one of the things we're predicting is that

we're going to see more infrastructure dedicated

to safe walking and cycling and scooter use

moving forward and people taking advantage of

active transportation as a mode.

So as we look at where we're making those

infrastructure investments, a lot of it is based

on where the streets themselves need the

investment and where we need to rebuild streets

or repave streets. And when we do that, what we

can do in terms of making those streets into

supporting multimodal travel as we recover from

the pandemic and people need to move again, we're

going to need to make sure that people have all

sorts of travel options so we don't get back to

congestion and frustration with our with our

transportation system. And we can make sure that

people can get around the city safely no matter

how they choose to do so.